Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Y! Alert: TechCrunch

Yahoo! Alerts
My Alerts

The latest from TechCrunch

Is Google Asking The Wrong Question With Social? Top
Editor's note : Guest contributor Semil Shah is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer internet, and social networks. He is based in Palo Alto and you can follow him on twitter  @semilshah . Today’s soft-launch of Google’s new social galaxy, Google+ , raises one interesting question: Can Google, a massive, multinational, cash-rich, consumer technology company with multiple successful productivity applications and services, take its dough out of the oven and bake a social network into their bread? Over the past year, Google has undergone some big changes. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt stepped down. Co-founder Larry Page stepped in, reshuffling the deck and tying employee bonuses to creating a successful social experience. The result seems to be a slick-looking yet potentially Wave-like confusing constellation of social “circles,” “huddles,” “hangouts,” and  ”sparks” that could, theoretically, lay the foundation for new, more nuanced social networks to form. In the middle of all the reactions to today’s release, I believe it’s important to step back and ponder whether Google is focusing its efforts on the wrong problem, and in doing so, to investigate a potentially better fit that coincides with the company’s own DNA. What made Google “Google” was its groundbreaking PageRank technology that allowed us to search the web more efficiently. Powered by a mandate to organize the world’s information online, Google trained all of us over more than a decade to tune our online search behavior to entering in keywords and symbols. As obvious as that seems today, this is not how humans as a species are wired to search for new information. Before the Internet, most “search” was conducted through offline directories and by the time-honored evolutionary tradition of asking questions. “ Where would you recommend I stay on my trip to Hawaii? ” “ What dish did you order at that new restaurant in the hotel? ” “ Where can I get the best deal on that hotel? ” Google has elegantly stripped down these queries and trained us to, instead, enter the following text in a search box: “Hawaii + hotel deal” or “Hawaii + restaurant + popular dish.” Now, that might be how some geeks actually ask questions in real life, but this is not how we are wired to search. We are most accustomed to asking questions as an extension of our own curiosities. And while Google keyword search is incredibly efficient, the content it points us to is unfortunately declining in quality. There’s been enough debate about the proliferation of run-of-the-mill and high-end content farms, so I won’t beat that drum. The bottom line is that although it’s never been easier to search online, it’s getting harder and harder to find exactly what we’re looking for because there are perverse incentives to not only create, but also promote, keyword-optimized content. The alternatives, however, don’t provide a clear path yet either. The idea of shifting search back to questions isn’t new. Ask  tried it, as did Yahoo! Answers . More recently, companies like Aardvark (acquired by Google), Fluther (acquired by Twitter), Formspring , Quora , and AnyAsq  are picking up where the 1.0 versions left off, each taking a slightly different tack and growing in slightly different ways. On Formspring and AnyAsq, users can invite the audience to ask them direct questions, provide answers to the ones they want to, and then remain searchable for others to peruse. On Quora, users can pose questions within topics or, if the question has already been asked, to search within the site for the answer, assuming someone has provided one. No doubt, Google and Twitter were thinking about capturing questions when they acquired the Aardvark and Fluther teams, respectively. I wanted to lay all of this out to demonstrate that it’s the questions posed by people—not the people themselves—that are most central to Google’s DNA. In spite of this, the company has trained all of us to ask questions in unnatural ways.  The flurry of new companies trying to get back to questions demonstrates just how powerful that force can be. With the threat Facebook is posing to the company, Google’s search strategy has been two-pronged: (1) to crop-dust the emerging mobile handset landscape with Android and, thereby, to have a huge footprint on mobile search; and (2) to “bake” social retroactively into its overall makeup, the digital equivalent of genetically modified food. On #1, Google’s acquisition of Android will prove to be one of its most important moves, though there remains much work to be done to provide some controls on the platform. On #2, however, I believe that while social isn’t perfect (can it ever be, online?), that war has already been won. The fear for Google is that as more people spend more and more time on Facebook , people will search less by keyword and conduct more searches by discovering things through their friends online. We may chose our next vacation based on seeing where our friends have been, but we’re still going to ask them questions about the trip. This type of search, or social discovery, will become important, but it won’t dominate search—it’s just one channel, and different social networks exist for different parts of our lives. Google still holds tremendous mindshare and user-intent for search. While in a perfect world it would have been helpful to require every GMail user to create a Google Profile account when they signed up (Whoops!), the reality is that Google is in a better position to organize all of the social signals we broadcast online rather than to organize all of the individuals making those signals. Instead of building another social network, I’d like to see Google focus on helping us search through all the user-generated signals and content and to help us with our search, much of which is done offline through social questions, not keyword-speak. (Although, the threaded comments approach Google+ is using in the main stream it presents to users does lend itself to friends asking each other questions and answering them).  This approach would let Google focus on what it excels at, helping us find information online, especially information created by our friends and friends of friends, perhaps even in an instant. Now, that would be a huge plus. Photo: Stefan Baudy CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase
 
While We Await The Native App, The Google+ iPhone Mobile Web App Is Pretty Solid Top
After the big launch today , some of those lucky enough to get a Google+ invite were still left out in the cold a bit: iPhone users. You see, while the Google+ Android app was there ready to go on day one, the iPhone app remains in review with Apple. But fear not iPhone users, there is a little hidden gem you may not know about: a mobile web version of Google+ that works great in Safari. If you simply point your iOS Safari browser to plus.google.com , you’ll find a solid web app written in HTML5. You can’t do quite everything you’ll be able to with the native app, such as Huddle (group chat). But it the main parts of the Google+ functionality are there. Stream, Photos, Circles, Profile, and Notifications appear in the main menu. And there are actually some other unique features, such as the ability to check-in to a venue and see Google+ message from users nearby to your current location. The app is solid enough that it might be acceptable as a native app replacement if it did actual notifications. Alas, that’s not possible. And that will be a big part of the Google+ iPhone app, especially with the revamped notifications coming in iOS 5. There are mobile web notifications that are pretty nifty (a red box in the upper right corner), but you have to have the app open to see them, obviously. Below, find some pictures.     CrunchBase Information Google+ iPhone 4 Information provided by CrunchBase
 
HomeAway Prices IPO At $27 Per Share With A Market Cap Of $2 Billion Top
Vacation home rental service HomeAway has priced its IPO, which is set to begin trading tomorrow morning at $27 per share, giving the company a valuation of $2 billion. The company aims to raise as much as $248 million in the offering. Last week, HomeAway priced the range of its offering between $24 and $27 per share, so this final pricing is at the high end of the range. The company’s shares will begin trading tomorrow morning on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "AWAY." The company’s IPO is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. HomeAway, which filed for an IPO in March, currently offers home rentals through 31 websites in 11 languages and provides listings for vacation rentals located in over 145 countries. In 2010, its sites averaged over 9.5 million unique monthly visitors. In the offering, HomeAway is offering 5,931,335 shares and 2,068,665 shares are being offered by selling stockholders. In addition, the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 1,200,000 shares of common stock. Unlike some of its predecessors in the tech IPO market, HomeAway is actually brining in both revenue and profit. HomeAway saw $167.9 million in 2010 revenue, which is up 39.6% from 2009. In 2010, 37.9% of the company’s revenue came from outside the United States, including 36.6% from Europe and 1.3% from Latin America. In 2010, rental listings contributed 91.1% of HomeAway’s revenue. Net Income for 2010 came in at $16.9 million, up from $7.6 million in 2009. And the company says there is plenty of room for growth—the vacation rental market is valued at $85 billion in 2010 in the United States and Europe. HomeAway has raised close to a half a billion dollars in venture funding, and in its most recent investment round was valued at $1.4 billion . So $2 billion isn’t too far off from this estimate nine months ago. It’s important to note that company isn’t raising its IPO range significantly, as others have in the past. How that will impact the opening price is unclear. For example, LinkedIn priced at $45 (at the high end of its set range) but opened at $83 per share. Pandora, on the other hand, priced at $16 per share (well above its range of $10 to $12 per share) and opened at $20 per share . We’ll see how the markets respons to HomeAway tomorrow.
 
Meet The Newest Startup Brood From i/o Ventures Top
The i/o Ventures Demo Day starts in a little under a half an hour, and I am about to head over to Valencia Street to watch the startups present. i/o Ventures is the SF-based incubator that offers five or six startups a 4-6 month long spot in its 7,000 square foor loft/coffee shop space as well as $25,000 in seed money, in exchange for around 8% of the company. We’ve covered some of the companies before, put I am publishing a preliminary list here (to be updated as I watch their presentations). CodeEval ( our coverage ) – A platform for interviewing and testing programmers, CodeEval lets companies automate the process of filtering job candidates through giving them a coding challenge. CodeEval co-founder Jimmy John estimates that there are 13.5 million developers in the US alone, with a $10.6 billion global market. ” We want to make this the de-facto standard of hiring across the board,” John says. Pieceable ( our coverage ) — Pieceable, which just released Pieceable Viewer, is a platform that attempts to make mobile development easier by offering customers ready-made components for iOS apps. Prepay — A mobile loyalty program that offers customers prepaid store credit, allowing them to save up to 10-20% on purchases. Cortex  ( our coverage ) — A browser extension that allows you to rapidly share web content like images and links. Mobbles — “Pokemon meets Tamagotchi,” a mobile game that lets you raise and fight whimsical creatures called Mobbles. i/o Ventures co-founder Paul Bragiel tells me that the over-arching theme in this spring’s class is consumer internet gaming and mobile, and that the incubator prefers startups with at least one technical co-founder. When asked about the relatively small size of the class, he said, “We are not interested in being a factory and we are super selective.” i/o picked five out of a pool of 500 applicants for this spring’s group. When asked what it took to be an i/o Ventures company, he replied, “At the end of the day we ask ourselves ‘would we have started a company with these guys when we were younger.’” Rad. Out of the six companies in the last batch of i/o startups, two were acquired and the rest all raised financing of between $500,000 – $1 million to execute on their ideas. See you at the meetup. You can read more about the last i/o Ventures demo day here and watch a video of Bragiel describing the program, below. CrunchBase Information i/o Ventures Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Sean Parker On Why Myspace Lost To Facebook Top
With reports of social network Myspace about to sell for ~$30 million, the tech world eagerly awaits the HBS study for why the service, which was bought in 2006 by Newscorp for $580 million and was at some point valued at $1.5 billion (a quote in a Business Week article referred to it as “one of the best acquisitions ever”) ultimately failed. For those that can’t wait for the inevitable GSB white papers, former Facebook President and Napster co-founder Sean Parker explained why Myspace succumbed to Facebook in an interview with Jimmy Fallon at the  NExTWORK Conference  in New York. While the entire interview is a delight to watch, the highlight is when Fallon starts asking Parker about whether Facebook is “it,” (“Is Facebook the end game?”) bringing up the failed Myspace for comparison. Parker answers, “It's never the end game. Facebook is now a platform upon which all kinds of applications are being built it's definitely not it. It would be incredibly presumptuous and self-serving of me to believe that Facebook was the end of history. The only way it could possibly be the end of history is if it becomes some sort of artificial super intelligence that takes over the world.” Able to put being the possibility that it was victim of some artificial super intelligence aside, at minute 20:54 Fallon asks Parker, “Where did Myspace go wrong?” “The failure to execute product development,” Parker replies. “They weren't successful in treating and evolving the product enough, it was basically this junk heap of bad design that persisted for many many years. There was a period of time where if they had just copied Facebook rapidly, they would have been Facebook. They were giant, the network effects, the scale effects were enormous.” Parker goes on to credit the ingenious move of targeting college kids for Facebook’s eventually market dominance, “Facebook entered the market through college and the reason we went in through college was that college kids were generally not Myspace users. College kids were generally not Friendster users …” Taking an almost Machiavellian tone, Parker also alludes to the latter social network’s displacement being deliberate, “It was this completely open market and it was a real longshot. Nobody actually believed, outside of us three or four people in Palo Alto, that you could enter the market through this niche market and then gradually through this carefully calculated war against all the social networks become the one social network to rule them all.” “Carefully calculated war against all social networks” is a very interesting word choice by Parker especially when coupled with the extremely self-aware statement that “if they had just copied Facebook rapidly, they would have been Facebook,” a line which seems like it came straight out of The Social Network . Well now is as good as a time as any to mark the end of that war; Myspace is selling for comparative peanuts while Facebook is valued at $70 billion. To the victor go the spoils , at least for the moment. CrunchBase Information MySpace Facebook Sean Parker Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Fitocracy Brings Games And Social To Your Workouts (Invites Within) Top
You may not have heard of them quite yet, but a startup called Fitocracy is pretty hot right now. Six months into its private beta and Fitocracy has already gathered 18K users and has 8K more on the wait list. (And we have 1,200 free beta invites here , so click away!) But, ‘why is Fitocracy so hot right now?’ you ask in your best Zoolander impression. Well, for starters, Fitocracy brings role playing game mechanics and a social aspect to online fitness — and it’s got a great name. What’s more, Fitocracy blew up on Reddit and a few fitness forums because it has a backstory that a lot of people (especially the nerdly-inclined) can identify with. Fitocracy Founders Brian Wang and Richard Talens are college friends and are both currently fitness buffs and have been known to even compete in a body-building competition or two. But it wasn’t always that way. Wang is a self-described skinny kid and Talens a self-described chubby guy. Their not-exactly ballooning in muscles (and the inspiration for their startup) is largely due to the fact that both guys are long-time gamers, having been playing MMO and RPGs since Ultima Online and Chrono Trigger. Of course, today, they look like this . (Oh, and here’s a before-and-after picture of Dick, FTW .) So, the founders decided to approach fitness exactly as they did their favorite RPGs: Give people a reason to get excited about, or addicted to, fitness by bringing the gaming reward system to workout routines. For example, when you join, it won’t be long before other users are offering you Fitocracy’s version of a workout plan, called “quests”, in which you are encouraged to do a certain number of squats, lifts, crunches, etc. The platform awards you with points, the ability to level-up, badges and more to get you dedicated to your fitness and treating it like a game, rather than some arduous task you’d rather put off until never. Of course, you’re going to be a lot less likely to adopt (and stick to) a workout routine without a little encouragement. Points are nice, but we need that carrot — that positive reinforcement to keep going. Which is why Wang and Talens have added a social aspect to Fitocracy — to build an environment of support and social reinforcement to keep people trucking on their personal fitness quests. You can interact with friends, share regimens, points-earned on social networks, get advice from others in various forums, and so on. Another reason why fitness has such a high drop out rate is that, for any number of reasons, many people fail to see quick results from their workouts. (See any exercising infomercial on television if you think this isn’t a problem.) A lot of times, we’re too lazy to seek out advice or research the right routines. Adding game elements, social layers, and significantly shortening the feedback loop all work towards increasing retention and keep you coming back. I had one Fitocracy user tell me that, in just three months of using the site, he had already dropped a waist size and added significant muscle mass. With a platform targeted at tech-savvy people, and for those of us who may live largely sedentary or laptop-centric lives, this is music to our ears. Of course, Fitocracy does face some competition from another hot startup — Boston-based RunKeeper, which is building a platform that allows users to integrate all of their various health gadgets and apps in one place online. While RunKeeper has built a data-driven service with an open API (as part of what they call their “HealthGraph”) and is mobile on iOS, Fitocracy is more focused on gaming and, of course, less on running. In light of its competition, Fitocracy could definitely use some more information on nutrition and some mobility — it would be great to be able to tap into Fitocracy when at the gym or on-the go. Though, as I understand it, both of these are at the top of the team’s priority list. Fitocracy is currently looking to raise a seed round, somewhere in the ballpark of $500K I’m told, and is courting fitness-loving investors. It’s a cool site, and a great idea. It’s about time someone created a RPG for fitness, so that nerds can get back to doing what they do best: Kicking ass. And also earning XPs. CrunchBase Information Fitocracy Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google+ Project: It's Social, It's Bold, It's Fun, And It Looks Good — Now For The Hard Part Top
Last night, you may have heard talk of a mysterious black bar appearing on the top of Google.com. Or you may have even seen it yourself. No, you weren’t hallucinating. It was a sign of something about to show itself. Something big.  Google+ . What is Google+? It’s the super top-secret social project that Google has been working on for the past year. You know, the one being led by General Patton ( Vic Gundotra ) and General MacArthur ( Bradley Horowitz ). Yes, the one Google has tried to downplay as much as humanly possible — even as we got leak after leak after leak of what they were working on. Yes, the one they weren’t going to make a big deal about  with pomp and circumstance. It’s real. And it’s here. Sort of. You see, the truth is that Google really is trying not to make a huge deal out of Google+. That’s not because they don’t have high hopes for it. Or because they don’t think it’s any good. Instead, it’s because what they’re comfortable showing off right now is just step one of a much bigger picture. When I sat down with Gundotra and Horowitz last week, they made this point very clear. In their minds, Google+ is more than a social product, or even a social strategy, it’s an extension of Google itself. Hence, Google+. How’s that for downplaying it? “We believe online sharing is broken. And even awkward,” Gundotra says. “We think connecting with other people is a basic human need. We do it all the time in real life, but our online tools are rigid. They force us into buckets — or into being completely public,” he continues. “Real life sharing is nuanced and rich. It has been hard to get that into software,” is the last thing he says before diving into a demo of Google+. What he proceeds to show me is a product that in many ways is so well designed that it doesn’t really even look like a Google product. When I tell Gundotra and Horowitz this, they laugh. “Thank you,” Gundotra says very enthusiastically. Clearly, they’ve put a lot of work into both the UI and UX of Google+. The first thing Gundotra shows me about Google+, and the first thing you’re likely to interact with, is something called “Circles”. You may recall that talk of this feature leaked out a few months ago — though it wasn’t exactly right. In fact, our story from months prior about a feature of Google +1 (the name of the network at the time which ended up being the name of the button — more on that in a bit) called “Loops” may have been a bit closer . That is, Circles isn’t actually a stand-alone product, it’s a feature of Google+ — an important one. “It’s something core to our product,” Gundotra says. It’s through Circles that users select and organize contacts into groups for optimal sharing. I know, I know — not more group management. But the truth is that Google has made the process as pleasant as possible. You simply select people from a list of recommended contacts (populated from your Gmail and/or Google Contacts) and drag them into Circles you designate. The UI for all of this is simple and intuitive — it’s so good, that you might even say it’s kind of fun. It beats the pants off of the method for creating a group within Facebook. Gundotra realizes that many social services have tried and failed to get users to create groups. But he believes they’ll succeed with Circles because he says they’re using software in the correct way to mimic the real world. More importantly, “you’re rewarded for doing this,” he says. How so? A big feature of Google+ is the toolbar that exists across the top of all Google sites (yes, the aforementioned black one). Once your Circles are set, sharing with any of them from any Google site is simple thanks to this toolbar. Speaking of this black toolbar, which was codenamed the “Sandbar” as Google was working on it, Horowitz explains that it arose from the fact that sharing models on different sites are all different. The toolbar is an attempt to unify them. This toolbar will exist across all Google properties (though it may take some time to fully roll out). And down the road, you can imagine browser extensions, mobile versions, etc. But again, we’re on step one here. Next, Gundotra showed off a feature called “Sparks”. He was quick to note that even though it’s a search box, this is not some sort of new search engine. Instead, he calls is a “sharing engine”. “Great content leads to great conversations,” he says. With Sparks, you enter an interest you have and Google goes out and finds elements on the web that they think you’ll care about. These can be links to blog posts, videos, books — anything that Google searches for. If you find something you like, you can click on an item to add it to your interest list (where it will stay for you to quickly refer to anytime you want). Or you can see what others are liking and talking about globally in the “Featured interests” area. “Our goal here is to connect people. And everyone has a camera in their pocket,” Gundotra says as he shows me “Instant Upload”. This feature of Google+ relies on the use of an Android devices to take photos or shoot video. From a new app, you’ll do either of these things and the content will automatically be uploaded to Google+ in the background and stored in a private album (which you can share with one click later). Another feature of Google+ is called “Huddle”. It’s essentially a group messaging app that works across Android, iPhone, and SMS to allow you to communicate with the people in certain Circles. When I asked why they wouldn’t just use Disco, the group messaging app that the Slide team within Google built , Horowitz would only smile and pretend that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, there’s a feature called “Hangouts”. “Everyone has high-speed networks these days, but how many use group video chat?,” Gundotra asks. “Not a lot.” He notes that while there are technical challenges, and some cost money, the biggest problem is that it’s socially awkward to video chat with someone. The Google+ team set out to fix this by thinking about neighbors sitting out on porches. If your neighbor is sitting there, you know that they’ll likely be interested in striking up a conversation. In fact, it would be rude for you to walk by and not say anything. With that in mind, Google+ Hangout attempts to solve the social problem of video chat by making it easy for you to let others know that you’re interested in chatting. And if you’re already chatting with a Circle, everyone else in that Circle will get an alert to come hang out. This works for up to 10 people. And seeing it in action is a bit magical. Gundotra starts a Hangout with some co-workers and as they join, conversations start between multiple people. But the Google+ system is smart enough to focus on who is controlling the conversation in any given minute. This makes the conversation easy to watch. It was almost as if an editor is working behind the scenes, cutting between people. Even cooler is that you can share a piece of content, like a YouTube clip, and everyone in the Hangout can watch it together while talking about it. It sounds a bit cheesy, but it’s really pretty great. After the rundown of all of these features, Google+ may sound a bit convoluted. But the key to the project is the attempt to unify everything. This is done via the toolbar (which features a drop-down showing you all of your relevant Google+ activity), but also on the mobile apps (again, Android and iPhone), and, of course, on the web. The Google+ site is the main stream on which you’ll find everything. From here, you can easily switch between all of your Circles, share content with any of them, start a Hangout, look up Sparks, etc. All of the information flowing through the system does so in real time. As something is shared with you, it appears at the top of your stream. It’s a bit like FriendFeed, in this regard (which I love). You’ll also find a link to your Google+ Profile, which will replace your old Google Profile if you have Google+ enabled. On this profile you’ll find not only a stream of everything you’ve shared across Google+, but also your +1 content. That’s likely important. While there has been plenty of speculation ( by myself and others ) that the +1 Button is already a dud, the larger picture is still a bit hidden. While Gundotra and Horowitz declined to specifically talk about it too much, you’ll see a +1 button on all Google+ content — the +1 Button clearly ties deeply into all of this. It is going to be their Facebook “Like” button . All of this sounds great so far, but what about the downsides? Whether they’ll admit it or not, Google is making a bold and perhaps risky move by attempting to attack social from scratch. What if they flop again? From the little that I’ve seen so far, Google+ is by far the best effort in social that Google has put out there yet. But traction will be contingent upon everyone convincing their contacts to regularly use it. Even for something with the scale of Google, that’s not the easiest thing in the world — as we’ve seen with Wave and Buzz. There will need to be compelling reasons to share on Google+ instead of Facebook and/or Twitter — or, at the very least, along with all of those other networks. The toolbar and interesting communication tools are the most compelling reasons right now, but there will need to be more of them. And fast. Speaking of Buzz, one thing that strikes me about Google+ is that it seems a bit like Google Buzz done right. When I asked if Google+ would be the official death of Buzz , Horowitz declined to say, but did note that it was still being decided how those pieces will play together. And that could be a bigger issue for Google. With much of Google+, they’re simply creating a new layer rather than utilizing Google’s existing services. For example, when you upload pictures to Google+, they don’t just go to Picasa (though they do go there as well), they also reside on Google+. On one hand, that will confuse some users. On the other, it’s quite refreshing to see Google attempt to start fresh with this new project. What about Twitter, Facebook, or other social integration? Horowitz wouldn’t go into too much detail as it sounds like tie-ins are still being discussed. As I understand it, right now, Google+ will largely be a stand-alone network with some low-level third-party social network integration. So when can you try Google+? Here’s the thing that will be a kick in the pants to some users: Google is beginning to roll it out today, but it will only be a very limited field trial. You can submit your email address here to be entered into the system and notified as roll-outs continue, but Google says that they have no set time table for a full rollout. Again, this is phase one of what Google hopes to do with Google+, so they’re taking it slow. “It’s not about one particular project, it’s about Google getting better. We know this is going to take us a considerable amount of time. But we want to make Google better by connecting you with your relationships and interests,” Gundotra reiterates. He declined to state how big the team within Google currently working on the project is, but says that it’s a “decent sized team”. “Today’s web is about people. To organize the world’s data, you have to understand people,” Gundotra concludes, noting that newly crowned CEO Larry Page has been heavily involved in this project from the get-go. As it is unveiled to the world, Google+ sounds and looks great. But we’ve seen that before from Google . Now comes the hard part. More:  Why Google+ Looks Good: Original Macintosh Team Member Andy Hertzfeld While We Await The Native App, The Google+ iPhone Mobile Web App Is Pretty Solid
 
One To Watch: Augme Sees Continued Growth, Launches SaaS Mobile Marketing Platform Top
As many know, mobile advertising has already taken the first steps into an era of explosive growth, and forecasts today continue to be doggedly optimistic. And why shouldn’t they be? Over 100 million smartphones were sold in the fourth quarter of 2010 alone, which easily outpaced the number of PCs sold over the same quarter. People are flocking to smartphones literally by the millions, and as a result, mobile technology is evolving at a relatively blistering pace. Not unsurprisingly, mobile advertising is being brought along for the ride. For example: Gartner expects mobile ad revenue to hit $3.3 billion by the end of 2011, more than double revenue in 2010 — and to hockey-stick to $20.6 billion by 2015. What’s more, you may remember Eric Schmidt saying in a keynote back in February , that mobile growth is happening quicker than anyone imagined, outpacing even the expectations of those optimistic parties at Google and beyond. Founded in 1999, Augme Technologies is an under-the-radar company that, over the last few years, has quietly built a mobile marketing technology platform that may see it become a big player in the mobile technology and marketing boom. The platform, called Ad Life , allows marketers, brands, and agencies to plan, create, test, deploy, and track mobile marketing programs — with the most noteworthy feature of Augme’s patented technology being the fact that it is able to reach targeted groups while remaining device-agnostic. Ad Life has seen several iterations over the years, and today Augme is announcing version 4.0 of its platform: A software-as-a-service model, built on an API architecture that’s designed to be compatible with any-size enterprise and customizable for contextual mobile user experiences. The software platform is also happens to be built on Augme’s proprietary mark-up language that has “site builder” capabilities, which allows this automated delivery of ad content to nearly every 3G and 4G smartphone in the market today, according to Augme Founder Anthony Iacovone. It does through the use of consumer response tags (CRTs), including 2D codes, UPC codes, SMS, and Image Recognition, enabling brands to track and analyze marketing campaign results. Using its patented device-detection and proprietary mobile content adaptation software, Ad Life takes some of the hassle out of the challenges inherent to the industry, especially in relation to the many disparate OSes, device types, and on-screen mobile content rendering. As mobile technology evolves, brands and advertisers are often subject to fragmentation and, not only that, but they struggle to keep pace with the evolving technology while keeping costs at bay, especially while trying to avoid rebuilding their mobile infrastructure every few years. As a SaaS platform, AD Life helps mobile advertisers avoid infrastructure obstacles, as enterprises have the ability to go mobile by customized rendering for mobile web content, while delivering and managing coupons, rebates, social connections and all that good (read: annoying) stuff, through the platform’s API. Unsurprisingly, Iacovone said that the Augme team is likening Ad Life 4.0 to MaaS, or mobilization as a service — for ads. “The mobile marketing industry as a whole has been stuck in a 1.0 version of fragmented technology”, the Augme Founder said. “With Ad Life 4.0, we’re trying to redefine mobile marketing by connecting mobile technology to every facet of an organization's core marketing functions through robust APIs, while providing deep measurement and consumer interactivity that talks with data warehouses and CRM systems”. Poised as it is within a hot growth sector, Augme will definitely continue to be a company to watch, especially for investors, as the company has traded publicly on NASDAQ since early this year. While revenue in 2011 was $2.8 million, Augme management expects revenue to push $16 million in fiscal 2012 — and that the company will in turn achieve positive cash flow next year. What’s more, the company’s customers currently include four Fortune 100 companies, six Fortune 200 companies, and four Global Fortune 500 companies, and earlier this year, Augme announced a contract with Smartsource.com, NewsCorp's division focused on coupons, to help lead the company’s push into mobile coupons. Kellogg has also been using Ad Life to directly engage with consumers by providing enhanced content for mobile devices, using a number of campaigns involving QR codes and SMS keywords — all of which have been successful. If Augme continues to expand its list of blue-chip clients and take advantage of its bullpen of patents, the company could very well be at the forefront of the mobile advertising boom, and a potential industry leader down the road. Definitely long on Augme. For more on the Ad Life platform, check out the landing page here . CrunchBase Information Augme Information provided by CrunchBase
 

CREATE MORE ALERTS:

Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted

Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope

Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more

News - Only the news you want, delivered!

Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more

Weather - Get today's weather conditions




You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)