Opera Takes Over Payments In Its App Store; Inks Deal With Yandex In Russia

Mobile browser company Opera — which claims to be the world’s largest, with 160 million monthly users — today announced two more developments in its drive to make more money from mobile: today it is launching its own payment exchange for its Mobile Store app store; and it has named its first regional partner for the service, Yandex, which will become the preferred method of payment in Russia and the CIS.
The news is the latest in a week of mobile money and payment announcements — including the news that Facebook will also offer carrier billing for mobile users of its apps.
Sameer Merchant, VP of commerce services for Opera, tells us that the focus on payments is to drive more premium content downloads on the app store. To be clear, paid apps had already existed on the app store — people could pay with credit cards, PayPal and carrier billing in some regions. But this move will, Opera says, make the experience easier for people to use: “We are constantly looking for better ways to pay for premium content,” he says.
Part of the push, he says, will be to offer the most popular forms of mobile payments in specific regions. The first of these deals is with Yandex, the Russian Internet giant, whose Yandex.Money will now be the preferred payment method when a user visits the Opera Mobile Store.
Merchant tells me that Opera focused first on Yandex because Russia is one the company’s most popular markets, and Yandex.Money because that is one of the region’s most popular payment services. He notes that Opera has a number of other regions where its browser is popular, including China, India/Indonesia, South Africa/Nigeria, the U.S., U.K./Germany/France, and Brazil/Mexico/Argentina. These may well be the next targets for further local payments services.
The news today covers only payments for downloads but the intention is to extend that to the full set of payment services that you currently get on other app stores. Merchant says that in-app payments and subscription-based content are “on the roadmap.”
The Opera Mini browser — a free mobile web browser used by 160 million people — has partly grown so big because it is usable on a number of different platforms spanning both smartphones and feature phones. The Mobile Store currently offers 55,000 apps covering Android, Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS platforms and Merchant tells me that Opera will also start to include web apps in the store later this year.
Since launching its Mobile Store last year, Opera has gradually been taking more of the operation under its wing. First launched as a white-label service with Appia — formerly known as PocketGear and funded in part by Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures — Opera now runs the service itself using technology from Handster, a mobile app store company it bought in September 2011.
Opera has seen some good growth in its app store to date, with 30 million monthly visits, a 63 percent increase in page views (with now the average being five page views per user), more time spent on the site (it’s now at four minutes, growth of 199 percent), and 45 million monthly downloads.
The downloads per user, however, are still at the low end: 1.5 apps per month per user, judging by Opera’s figures.
This looks like just one step in Opera’s ambitions to do more with payments. A separate deal with InMobi’s SmartPay platform will see Opera looking to get involved in content payments in areas beyond its own Mobile Store and into the wider web when visited through Opera’s browser.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/opera-app-store-yandex-payments/

MTV Europe Mobile Moves Into Social TV With Digital Agency AKQA

Viacom’s MTV is making one more move into trying to capture the youth market on the platform where it’s increasingly spending most of its time: the broadcaster, in partnership with digital agency AKQA, has launched “Under The Thumb,” a new social TV app.
MTV and Viacom are calling this a “world first” in that it will let users watch MTV content on mobile devices, share it on the go with others, and then watch those on-demand programs simultaneously with those friends. It builds on a pretty extensive business that MTV has already established in Europe, including its own mobile service.
The service, developed by Viacom International Media Networks and AKQA in Viacom’s European HQ in Berlin, is available today as an Android and iOS app. It will initially be available for free, and ad-funded in Europe, but it will also introduce paid sections with premium content. MTV says it currently has some 2.7 million users of its mobile products across seven countries in the region.
“This is designed as a platform for the future,” said Ben Jones, European director of technology at AKQA, who points to the fact that young “millennial” users are no longer watching much traditional TV, but they are watching TV content on a number of other screens like PCs, tablets and handsets. (Update: MTV Europe has contacted us to say that their research indicates otherwise: “Millennials watch content on TV as well as second screens, not instead of. Everything MTV does leads back to linear television.”)
There is some interesting integration that MTV and AKQA are putting into the app to bridge the mobile experience with what they are doing on their computers. That speaks to the idea of multitasking and viewing content on more than one screen. The “co-viewing” feature, as MTV and AKQA calls it, will let users not only watch the content on both on its mobile and PC devices, but users will also be able to tap friends and watch the same on-demand content simultaneously.
MTV is integrating the app with Facebook to connect into the service, but interestingly it hasn’t chosen to use Facebook for the messaging system: it has created its own chatting service for the service so that they come in as real time, without interference from other services that might be part of a person’s Facebook stream.
MTV is also putting in its newsstream into the service, which runs entertainment news from the company’s site.
“I know of another large broadcaster that has claimed to want to do this in the past but has not been able to, otherwise it’s a world first,” said Jones.
MTV said that the main part of the service ‘Tiny Thumb’ which offers celebrity news and MTV highlights, as a limited selection of episodes to watch, will be free to use. ‘Super Thumb’ unlocks further shows, seasons and content to subscribers on a monthly basis for €2.99, and those who pay up €29.99 annually will have access to everything — that content is only available to those users who take contracts with MTV Mobile, the company’s mobile service.
But apart from the business push, the new platform is a single way for MTV to distribute its content on mobile: the company has up to now had various apps and this now brings several services onto a single platform.
For now, Under The Thumb will only be available in Europe, with no plans to launch it in MTV’s much bigger market of the U.S. “But of course the U.S. is aware and is following what we are doing. All the content is cleared and we have buy-in from at the Viacom level but no short term plans to launch it there,” said Michel Dupont, SVP of MTV in Europe.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/mtv-mobile-moves-into-social-tv-with-digital-agency-akqa/

Gnzo Is Instagram For Video And A Flashy Multi-Video Viewer In One

Gnzo, the video startup that made its debut at TechCrunch Disrupt in September 2010 (it was called Gunzoo then), has its first consumer-oriented product ready. Named after the Japan-based maker itself, Gnzo (pronounced gun-zou) is an iOS application that can best be described as “Instagram for video” and a (pretty cool) multi-video viewer rolled into one (free download in English/Japanese).
Users can shoot six-second videos, upload the them to Gnzo, and share them with friends on Gnzo itself, Twitter or Facebook in just a few seconds. It’s also possible to tag videos, leave comments, “clip” videos you like, or follow what friends are posting (there is also a “public” screen where new videos are getting uploaded constantly).
However, Gnzo doesn’t offer filters or other effects to add to content. As opposed to apps like Vlix,Viddy or Recood (to name just a few), a key selling point here is the multi-video viewer that allows users to arrange videos in a matrix as a group related to a specific tag or user.
Here’s how a Gnzo matrix looks for keywords like “color” and “sky”:
    
What’s cool is that Gnzo plays all videos (up to 30 of them on a single screen) simultaneously, meaning that in the app, the thumbnails you can see above aren’t images but “mini videos”. Users can continuously scroll down the feed to see additional sets of 30 videos: a tap is enough to view a specific video in full-screen mode (see below).

This how-to video shows the app in action:

Gnzo’s core technology is an impressive piece of video technology called ”fabric video”, which was developed by Prof. Kasai’s Lab (Prof. Kasai is a Gnzo co-founder) at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. (At said TechCrunch Disrupt event, Gnzo was pitched as an alternative way to search for and organize video content, mainly for businesses like device manufacturers, video ad providers, or web platforms like YouTube. Watch this video for more.)
Gnzo, which is currently in beta, is available on iOS only at the moment, but the eponymous startup says other versions (for Android and tablets, for example) are planned.
Here is another Gnzo demo:

More information and Gnzo videos can be found on the app’s Facebook page and the corporate website.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/gnzo/

TC@MWC: Hands-On With The Surprisingly Solid Asus Padfone

The Padfone is a peculiar beast, to be sure. Given the right accessories (and enough money, I suppose), Asus’s newest smartphone can easily transform into a tablet and a faux-notebook in the blink of an eye, but how well does the thing work? Asus was kind enough to let us play with one for a short while in their booth here at Mobile World Congress, and we’ve put together a quick video tour for your viewing pleasure.

As far as the Padfone phone itself is concerned, I have a feeling people will either love it or hate it. At 8.9mm thick it’s a very slim device (though not the thinnest we’ve seen over the past few days), and a surprisingly lightweight one too. I personally wasn’t a fan of the Padfone’s feel — I thought it felt sort of chintzy and inexpensive, though the latter probably won’t turn out to be true. Your mileage may vary on that front though, as I’m generally a fan of devices with a bit more heft to them.

The rationale behind the Padfone’s design seems pretty clear here — with the Padfone meant to dock into another into a tablet frame, Asus had to make the phone itself as slim and light as possible so as not to give the tablet a hunchback. I’m happy to report that the docked Padfone tablet indeed manages to avoid the Quasimodo route, though the bulge is still very noticeable.

Once docked in the so-called Padfone Station, users are greeted with a slightly retooled UI meant to take advantage of the 10.1-inch display running at 1280 x 800. All of the Padfone’s functionality remains intact when docked, including the ability to make and receive phone calls thanks to a little help from Asus’s Stylus Headset. The keyboard dock doesn’t require much explanation — it sports its own battery like the tablet dock, and the keys were well-spaced and had good travel.

One thing that has become very clear to me over the past few days is that it’s very hard to judge a device’s performance in these conditions. Without any benchmarking apps (or any third-party apps at all) on hand, there isn’t much to go off of, but the Padfone’s 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 1GB of RAM were more than enough to deliver smooth navigation of menus and websites. I suspect that it’s more than enough horsepower for most users too, though we’ll have to see how well it stacks up after more time with it.

Note: I mistakenly referred to the Padfone’s processor as clocking in at 1.4GHz in the video when it’s actually 1.5. Whoops, sorry about that.

On the software front, Asus did exactly what I had hoped they would: they left it (mostly) untouched. Asus opted to leave Ice Cream Sandwich almost entirely alone on the Padfone aside from a few new widgets and a new Pad Apps section in the app launcher. I’ll admit that manufacturer-specific UIs have undergone a huge jump in quality lately (I’m looking at you Sense 4.0), but I’m still a fan of simple, clean, unfettered Ice Cream Sandwich when all is said and done.

In the end, it’s a great concept from Asus, and it’s been executed far better than I had expected. Hardware preferences aside, Asus did a solid job of taking an off-the-wall idea and making into an actually (some would say compelling) product. Still, the real question remains: how many people would ever actually buy one of these things?

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/tcmwc-hands-on-with-the-surprisingly-solid-asus-padfone/

Forget About Android 4.0! Google Exec Hints Android 5.0 Will Launch In Fall Of 2012

Android is force that will not be stopped. Google’s Andy Rubin announced yesterday that there are 850,000 daily Android activations, excluding devices like the Kindle Fire that don’t use Google services. Now, even though only one handset is currently sold with Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean might launch later this year.
Speaking to Computerworld, Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice president of engineering for mobile at Google, suggested Android 5.0 will launch in the fall. He stated “In general, the Android release cadence is one major release a year with some maintenance releases that are substantial still.” Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, launched in November 2011 and it seems that Google is set to release the next version around the same time this year. Fragmentation much?
This is actually the second rumor in as many weeks concerning Android 5.0. Digitimes reported two weeks ago that Jelly Bean would launch in the second quarter of 2012 primarily to assist in Google’s tablet movement.
This move, if it does happen, shows the stark contrast between Google and Apple. Google is trying to outpace Apple, with team of mighty engineers churning out innovations and updates on a pre-set schedule. However, this schedule is seemingly not on the same pace as handset makers which often move at a much more strategic pace.
Apple controls both the hardware and the software and can better time and coordinate launches based on the market’s needs.
Ice Cream Sandwich is still in its very early stages of life. Only the Galaxy Nexus is sold with the operating system. Hell, most flagship handsets from late 2011 won’t even get Android 4.0 until late spring or early summer — just months before Android 5.0 is said to launch.
Google might argue that this is its target strategy. It’s giving consumers and handset makers choices, they could say. But it’s still wacky. Instead of blindly pumping out major revisions every year, how about delegating some engineering might to assist makers in transitioning between Android platforms? That’s pro-consumer.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/forget-about-android-4-0-google-exec-hints-android-5-0-will-launch-in-fall-of-2012/

GraphScience Promises To Turn Facebook Commerce Into A Moneymaker

Whenever I hear brands talking about advertising on social networks, one of the most common questions is, “Well, what’s the actual return?” Now a startup called GraphScience says it has turned measuring and optimizing that return into, well, a science.
The company is officially launching today, but it’s one of those startups that has been in stealth mode for a ridiculously long period of time. GraphScience was founded in 2010, and launched many of its services in 2011. And the company already counts jewelry site Ice and fashion site HauteLook among its customers.
GraphScience’s SocialEngine technology taps into the Facebook ads API. SocialEngine was originally built as an engine to drive e-commerce. Whether a purchase happens in a Facebook store or on a business’ website, SocialEngine can tell if it was prompted by a Facebook ad, and it makes recommendations on which Facebook users should be target to drive the most purchases.
For example, founder and CEO Raymond Rouf said GraphScience found certain ads would do well if they were directed at Facebook users who “liked” the Bible — in fact, the ads were similarly effective if they were targeted at people who liked other holy books like the Koran. (Yes, it felt a little weird to be talking about the relative conversion rates of the Bible and the Koran.)
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported on the closure of Facebook stores from retailers like Gamestop and J.C. Penny. Most memorably, it quoted Forrester analyst Suchin Mulpuru as saying that Facebook commerce didn’t work, because it was “like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.” When I asked Rouf about the Bloomberg story, and he countered that failing stores were “lackadaisical efforts that were not being strategic about what will work and what won’t.”
And yes, there are other systems for monitoring and targeting Facebook ads, but Rouf argued that most of them come from search companies who ported their services over to social — unlike GraphScience, which he says was designed specifically for Facebook.
As for GraphScience’s customers, the company says its customers saw an average 4-8x increase in their return on investment (ROI) from their Facebook ads. And while its initial focus was e-commerce, GraphScience expanding beyond that to serve more traditional consumer packaged goods companies and other advertisers. A laundry detergent company, for example, might not care about selling detergent from its website. Nonetheless, GraphScience can provide valuable data about who’s looking at and engaging with its ads, which in turn helps the company understand whether those ads are paying off.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/graphscience-socialengine-launch/

Samsung Stabs SMS In The Heart, Ports ChatON Messaging Client To The Web

Samsung is quietly killing text messages. The company’s cross-platform messaging app launched last October on the Android Marketand then came to the App Store in January. But Samsung is looking to replace text messaging on more than just Android and iOS devices. It wants to kill text messages dead and just released a web version of the messaging client that should work on most feature phones and computers.
This wide-scale launch has been in the pipeline the whole time. Samsung made it very clearwhen it announced ChatON that it will be a cross-platform service. Now, with the web app, the crusade is seemingly complete. ChatON users can easily communicate using either their platform’s app or just a web browser. Accounts are linked, so no matter what device you’re rocking, you’ll be available. See ya later, text messages!
ChatON supports a variety of features. On feature phones, the service allows for text, images, calendar appointment and contact sharing. But on smartphones, users have a few extra options, such as the ability to comment on each other’s profiles, send multimedia messages that combine text and audio, and view their own “Interaction Rank,” which displays how active they are on the ChatOn network.
The new web-based app allows users to group chat, have 1:1 conversations, and supports attachments, emoticons and more.
Carriers are reportedly losing major revenue from services like ChatON that use a data connection rather than traditional messaging rates. Plus, while text messages are essentially locked into a 2003-ish feature set, apps like Samsung’s ChatOn and Apple’s Messages are free to roll out innovative features to users anytime. I say good riddance. Death to SMS and it’s crazy cost.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/samsung-chaton-web-client/

HBO GO Finally Lands On Xbox 360 On April 1 (And No, It’s Not A Joke)

I remember back when HBO GO first launched, and it was only available to Verizon Fios subscribers. All that True Blood, and so very few viewers to enjoy it. But in the past year, HBO GO has extended itself to the far reaches of our Internet-connected universe, and according to a report out of Engadget, it’ll stretch even further.
HBO co-president Eric Kessler said at an HBO event last night that HBO GO would come to the Xbox 360 on April 1. Unfortunately, we have no way of deciding whether or not this is legit or a very calculated April Fools joke that is already in pre-production. I’m leaning toward its validity, though.
According to a video released by Microsoft, the Xbox 360 has seen over 66 million sales. If even half of those people get on board with HBO GO, it’ll put the service on an entirely new level.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/hbo-go-finally-lands-on-xbox-360-on-april-1-and-no-its-not-a-joke/

TC Interview: Nokia CEO Elop On Phablets, 41 Megapixels And Competition

It was over a year ago that Nokia and Microsoft announced their partnership to make Windows Phone the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones. But the real test in the consumer market starts now, the first full year of Nokia selling its new handsets, with a portfolio of four models shipping in a range of markets, including China.

Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia, is all too aware of the challenge ahead. Although his company is still the world’s biggest handset maker, its leadership is now much more narrow, at 23 percent, according to Gartner. And its fightback strategy on Windows Phone is effectively starting from scratch: Windows Phone accounted for only 1.9 percent of smartphones sold in Q4 2011, a decline on the 3.4 percent it took in the same quarter in 2010.

We got a chance to sit down with Elop earlier today, in a meeting room at the top of Nokia’s ginormous MWC stand, to talk about some of the challenges and opportunities the company is facing up ahead, and how its news this week will play into that:

On innovation and whether Nokia is moving fast enough to change its ways and adapt to a new world dominated in mindshare and market share by Android and iOS. “We have absolutely changed the clock speed of Nokia,” Elop insisted, citing the Lumia 800 and 710  introduced in October, and the 900 and 610 that have come out since. “The pace we’re accomplishing this, including the next builds of the WP software, will continue at an accelerating pace.”

He says it’s a two-way street: with the lower-priced Lumia, the 610, and its aim for the Chinese market, actually helping influence how Microsoft was developing the OS. “That’s a good example of that collaboration working.”

On that 41 megapixel camera, and why it is that Nokia put it into a Symbian device rather than its line of Windows Phones. Elop says it’s because Nokia wanted to introduce the product as soon as possible; then work out the engineering to get it on to a Windows device.

“This is the type of innovation that Nokia has traditionally been known for,” he said. “It was more important to bring that to the market, and to see what works and what needs to be improved.” He says that the technology will make it into its Windows devices, too: “This will live on in the future,” he said. Unlike Symbian, he might have added.

On tablets. Recall that yesterday Nokia introduced, Reader, which will be its first foray into e-reading and possibly one of the surest signs yet of what it needs to get in order before it really launches a tablet. Today he would not be drawn out on whether Nokia will be making one and when. The software from Microsoft is getting more uniform across screens: “That is something really interesting to us.”

The future of Symbian. So many rumors that Nokia is pulling out of Symbian altogether, and that what they’ve announced there this week (the 808 Pureview, with the 41 megapixel lens), could be their last. No answer to that, but Elop is also aware of alienating those who have remained loyal to that platform. Indeed that is a tricky line to play because those are his first natural customers for the new devices.

What’s next in line for innovation, after the camera? Location-based services, he says, citing the rise in citizen journalism, and people walking around and photographing and documenting events, as a mark of that. “I think you will see more innovation around that activity. A big part of our strategy going forward will be location-based services.”

That makes sense, given how many assets Nokia already has in this area: Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and Transport among them. What’s interesting is that Nokia is keen to spread as much of that to other OEMs building on Windows Phone as for itself — which of course can help the services gain better critical mass.

Going cheaper and smarter. Elop says that the 610, the least expensive yet of Nokia’s Lumias, at $250, is probably just the first step before we see devices that are priced even lower. He calls this model the “realistic first step.” He notes that the more expensive 710 is being offered for $50 on contract in the U.S. With this phone priced substantially lower, that could imply free Lumias.

On Motorola and Google. He’s in the dark on what happens next. “They now have in their hands a hardware platform.” It’s a mark, he says, of how “the Android ecosystem has shifted quite a bit over the last year… It’s a hard one to predict.”

He notes that he doesn’t see the Google/Motorola deal impacting Nokia. “Whatever goes on there will be activity in Android. But just think if we made a decision to go Android instead of Windows Phone, how would we feel right now?”

On following an Apple (few) versus Samsung (many) model for handsets. “If you think of Nokia a few years ago where there was a large number of devices, we will be a lot more pared down going into the future. It’s not a single device strategy but there will be a paring down.”

On competition from other Windows Phone makers. He welcomes the likes of ZTE, HTC, Samsung and others making devices on the same platform as Nokia’s because “The principal competition is Android, and then Apple.” He notes that “a factor of the perceived success of Windows Phone” will be whether those many handset makers develop and sell those devices:

“When it comes to competing because there are too many Windows Phones? That would be a nice problem to have.”

The “phablet” mid-size devices like the Galaxy Note from Samsung, that straddle the break between tablets and smartphones. “Tablets are an opportunity, and smartphones up to a certain size are an opportunity,” he says. “We are looking closely [at the mid-size tablet market] and looking to see whether it will catch on.” He says he likes the form factor of the Lumia 800 the most because he can reach across the whole screen with his thumb. “But different things for different people in different markets.”

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/tc-interview-nokia-ceo-elop-on-phablets-41-megapixels-and-competition/

Ginger Software Raises $6.3M For Its ESL Writing Tools; Adds Former Facebook Exec As CEO

Ginger Software, the makers of contextual grammar and spell-checking tools, announced today that it has raised $6.3 million in series D financing, led by Israeli investment firm, Vaizra Ventures. Founded in 2007, Ginger has raised $15 million to date from investors which include serial entrepreneur and Lightspeed partner, Yoni Hefetz, and well-known Israeli angel investor Zohar Gilon, who has funded companies like Radvision, Ceragon Networks, Metalink, Radware, and Outbrain. As a result of its new investment, Shlomo Kalish of Vaizra will be joining the startup’s board.
In conjunction with its funding announcement, the Israeli and Massachusetts-based company is announcing today that former Facebook and AOL executive Net Jacobsson will be joining Ginger as its new CEO and as a board member. Jacobsson was, among other things, formerly the director of business development at AOL in the early 2000s, before going on to join Facebook in 2007, where he led international business development and user acquisition for nearly two years. The entrepreneur and exec is also an advisor to and shareholder in both the open source mobile/social gaming network, OpenFeint, as well as social games developer CrowdStar.
Jacobsson brings his social gaming and international business development experience to a company that is looking to expand its footprint overseas and capitalize on what it sees as an underserved market. For those unfamiliar, Ginger Software’s contextual spell-checking andgrammar tools target both those learning English as a second language as well as those suffering from Dyslexia, providing its users with an online service that automatically corrects text as they type.

For the billions of ESL learners and the more than 50 million people with Dyslexia in the U.S. and the U.K. alone, Ginger’s patent-pending technology allows them to produce error-free documents, emails, and so on and learn to communicate as a native speaker — with support for Microsoft Office products as well as IE and Firefox.
The company’s “Proofreader” product, for example, corrects both spelling and grammar mistakes based on the context around the typed words, learning from each error the user makes, before offering personalized educational tips, lessons, and quizzes based on those miscalculations through its “Personalized Tutor.”
Ginger’s technology was developed by a team of natural language processing experts, statisticians, linguists, educators, and more, who created a text-correction algorithm to automatically analyze the context of errors written in English and to select the most appropriate semantic and grammatical correction.
“Initially, I quickly dismissed Ginger as boring software for grammar correction,” the company’s new CEO said, “but after digging much deeper into the technology, the platform and the potential usages, I realized that I had just seen the tip of the iceberg and that perhaps the company just did not have the right positioning and message.”
Giving it the right message, the former Facebook exec continued, is a meaningful challenge, considering the billions of people around the world who want to learn English (China, in particular, has 325 million English learners), but struggle to maintain their proficiency because they don’t live in an English-speaking environment and thus lack that level of immersion.
Thus, the new CEO believes that Ginger’s software not only has serious market opportunity, but that it has potential to be scaled across technologies, as the company currently has a text-to-speech product as part of its premium offering, but has not yet productized around the the technology’s capabilities to contextually help users search for images, videos, etc.
As of now, the CEO says that the company’s technology can eliminate up to 95 percent writing errors common to people with dyslexia, as well as those learning English for the first time.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/ginger-software-raises-6-3m-for-its-esl-writing-tools-adds-former-facebook-exec-as-ceo/

Reply Relaunches MerchantCircle As A More Consumer-Focused Merchant Marketplace

As we reported last year, Reply acquired online marketing network for small business owners MerchantCircle. Merchant Circle which provides a business directory for merchants in smaller towns and currently lists over a million small businesses has long targeted merchants in small locales versus catering towards the consumers, as sites like Yelp and CitySearch do. Today, Reply is relaunching MerchantCircle has a more consumer-focused destination.
Basically, the newly redesigned site allows consumers to find qualified providers in their local area, receive quotes and find expert advice, while giving merchants tools for servicing their local markets. Consumers can search for and find providers across all business categories, including home repair and improvement; health and beauty; financial and professional services; construction and real estate services; restaurants; and more. Currently the site has more than 1.2 million active member merchants.
Consumers can request a quote from providers, access ratings and reviews, get questions answered by a community of experts, and find discounts and special offers from local merchants. As the company explains, MerchantCircle is trying to compete with the giant in the space, Yelp, by allowing consumers to move from search to transaction.
For example, consumers searching for “roof repair” in their local area will be presented with the option to connect to the best local roofers and/or “request quotes” from multiple local providers.
On the merchant side, MerchantCircle now offers a “LeadStore”, which gives local merchants the ability to purchase relevant local leads for their business on an on-demand basis; and is debuting a “DealStore,” to increases the visibility of merchant’ deals, coupons and other promotions.
The transition over to becoming a consumer focused-site is certainly a challenge but could be interesting considering MerchantCircle is trying to help consumers actually connect to merchants and service providers. MerchantCircle is similar in some ways to home services marketplace RedBeacon, which was recently acquired by Home Depot.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/reply-relaunches-merchantcircle-as-a-more-consumer-focused-merchant-marketplace/

Millennial Media Aims For Smaller Advertisers with Self-Service Launch

Mobile ad network Millennial Media says that it’s now making its self-service advertising product mMedia available to the general public.
The company filed for an IPO last month with documents stating that it reached 200 million unique users in December 2011, and that it was nearly profitable (losing $417,000) in the first nine months of the year. Adding a self-serve option should expand its usage among smaller advertisers without having to significantly grow its sales team. (Update: Actually there’s a new filing reporting revenue of $104 million and a net loss of $287,000 for last year.)
Millennial says it started testing mMedia in January. The company’s announcement says mMedia provides “a comprehensive dashboard” where advertisers can control their bids, targeting, and creative. It also highlights a “hyper-local targeting feature,” where advertisers can draw a virtual fence around their desired area, and only deliver ads to users in that area.
The ad network already offered a self-service option for smaller app developers, called mmDev. Millennial says the new mMedia ads will be available to developers through the same portal.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/millennial-media-self-service-mmedia/

Charles River Ventures Raises $375 Million For Its 15th Fund

Veteran VC firm Charles River Ventures is announcing its 15th fund today, increasing its fund size from $325 million in its last raise to $375 million in its latest “heavily oversubscribed” round.
Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary tells me that the firm, which has 42 years of investment behind it, is looking to go in early and at a high percentage in “change the world” companies. It eschews fancy later stage grandstanding in favor of the undervalued treasure.
Putting its money where its mouth is, CRV was the original investor in Twitter and the lead investor inYammer, Millennial Media, Zendesk and Udacity. Current portfolio companies with promise include the aforementioned as well as Hubspot, iControl and Orchestra.
The fund has recently seen over $2.6 billion in IPO market cap from its exits for RPX Corporation, Broadsoft and The Active Network (Millennial Media plans to go public by the end of this year).  It recently sold BNI Video to Cisco and Vlingo to Nuance Communications, Inc..
The modest firm has the distinction of being the first VC to get into early stage seed investing through its Quick Start program, “We pioneered and successfully delivered on the “venture seed investor” model since 2006,” Zachary tells me, “We were the first and now most other firms have attempted to clone our program when they mocked it.”
In addition to Zachary, CRV consists of partners Izhar Armony, Jon Auerbach, Saar Gur, Bruce Sachs and Devdutt Yellurkar.
“We are a partnership of equals (in every way) where founders can easily talk with and tap each and every partner’s relationships and networks,” Zachary tells me, “Zero politics to bring founders fast answers and introductions.”
The raise is impressive in and of itself in this fiscal climate, as many in VC are finding that the gap between “haves and have nots” and the distance between the first tier firms and everyone else is increasing. According to Dan Primack, the fund was aiming for a $300 million target, and exceeded that in a little under two months.
While CRV isn’t doing massive late stage rounds like A16Z or isn’t as storied a local brand asSequoia, it’s definitely one of the haves.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/charles-river-ventures-raises-375-million-for-its-15th-fund/

Hearsay Social Signs Up Northwestern Mutual And Other Financial Firms To Social Media Management Platform

Hearsay Social, a SaaS dashboard for national businesses and their local branches to manage Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter pages, is announcing that a number of financial firms have been added to its customer roster, including Northwestern Mutual, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, and California Casualty, an insurance provider.
Hearsay Social, which launched to the public in February and has raised $21 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates and Sequoia Capital, aims to help big brands who have local branches (i.e. Starbucks, BestBuy), manage Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages. Because of the highly distributed nature of some companies that have local branches, managing social media pages for stores or offices that are still in compliance with a company’s regulation is a challenging process.
Hearsay Social is optimized for “corporate/local” enterprises to allow local representatives, agents, advisors, franchisees or store managers to manage social media pages while ensuring local representatives stay in compliance with brand guidelines, and content regulations. The SaaS application puts compliance, workflow, content management and analytics on top of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and most recently, Google+.
For Hearsay, Northwestern Mutual, which will be using Hearsay’s full suite of products, is a huge customer wine. The firm announced this week that it has standardized its more than 6,000 FINRA-registered representatives using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook onto the Hearsay Social platform. Northwestern Mutual
The startup is also announcing that it is debuting new FINRA and SEC compliance capabilities, making it easier for compliance staff to safeguard firm liability at scale. Basically, the Hearsay Social Compliance Module provides complete compliance and coverage for all firm employees on all major networks, no matter their point of access. The platform allows advisors to use social media to build their books while meeting FINRA and SEC regulations on advertising, monitoring, and record retention.
For example, Hearsay is launching continuous monitoring and real-time remediation for infractions. So if anyone posts prohibited words and phrases (e.g. free, guaranteed, profanities), private customer data, stock ticker symbols, and other infractions, these are identified as they happen and automatically deleted or flagged for resolution.
As CEO and founder Clara Shih explains to us, “We are confident in saying we own financial services for social media.” She explains that in particular, the realtime monitoring for infractions is key for financial services compliance. She adds that the company is also seeing adoption across other industries including hotels, auto, and real estate.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/hearsay-social-signs-up-northwestern-mutual-and-other-financial-firms-to-social-media-management-platform/

YouTube Improves Captions With New Formats, Languages, And More

Captions on YouTube videos can’t be all that exciting. It’s been around since 2006. But apparently caption functionality has been widely extended, according to a blog post by YouTube.
The video sharing platform that takes up half the work day for most of us has introduced new languages to YouTube’s caption feature. Automatic captions and transcript synchronization are now available for Japanese, Korean and English, and there are over 155 supported languages for manual captions and subtitles. YouTube rentals will also start telling you what subtitles are available to you before you rent.
Channel owners will also now have support for their chosen format when it comes to broadcast video captions. In other words, text will be seen in its original position and style, and can be placed near the speaker, italicized to indicate off-camera voice over, or even set to scroll if the captions were generated in real-time model.
Of course, we’re looking for videos on YouTube more often than we’re posting them (in most cases). That said, YouTube has added a new search option for closed captions. Simply add “, cc” to any search or click Filter > CC.

And while finding what you’re looking for is great, customizing what you’re looking at can be even better. YouTube has added caption settings to let you change the font size and colors used. Just click on the “CC” icon and then the “Settings” menu. It should be self-explanatory from there.
Last, but certainly not least, YouTube has added support for new caption formats used by broadcasters including .SCC, .CAP, EBU-STL, and more. Any closed captions created for TV or DVDs will be converted by Youtube.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/youtube-improves-captions-with-new-formats-languages-and-more/

Float Does Simple Scheduling For Teams (And Simple Is Hard!)

Float (no, not that Float – what is with the duplicate names for startups lately?), is a new, minimilist scheduling application for teams. The software comes from the New York-based startup Pixel Paddock, whose three co-founders have some 30 years of combined digital agency experience behind them. They know first-hand what agencies need, and designed the software to suit. But agencies aren’t the only ones who could benefit from using Float – studios, firms, and other small teams that need a simple scheduling complement to their project management suite or current workflow may find Float useful.

Although the project/task management space seems to be a crowded field, with all-in-one solutions like Clarizen and Podio, Basecamp, and new entrants like Schedule and ResourceGuru, just to name a few, Float was designed to be easy and straightforward to use. It’s also not meant to replace more complex PM tools, only to run alongside them.

To use Float, admins set up project tasks, which they can drag-and-drop into the scheduling space. Employees are tagged with their skill set (like “Photoshop,” Javascript,” etc.) for easy search and assignment, and several built-in reports give you both a view of your team’s current utilization, their utilization over the coming weeks, or in the past. There are also built-in email notifications, so Float can send out weekly schedules to team members, as well as schedule updates.

“The trouble with agencies is that they’re the ones that have the most problems with having multiple teams and multiple projects and having to balance the time between those,” explains Glenn Rogers, CEO of the bootstrapped startup’s focus on the digital agency.

“But to be honest, Float would apply to any group of people, whether that’s freelancers with a small team under them, small studios, or even accounting firms that have clients they need to service,” he says.

To that end, Float already has 120 active accounts helping it beta test the software (for free, it should be noted). And it will continue to offer a free version in addition to the three pricing plans starting at $19/month. (Just scroll down on the pricing page – they’re sneaky about tucking away the free plan below the fold).

As for the simplicity? That was the hardest part.

“Simple is hard. Every feature that’s in this had to fight to be a feature,” says Rogers. “And we took a lot of features out because it either complicated the user flow or just wasn’t quick enough. It’s very easy to add a feature, but it’s very hard to take a feature out.”

More info on Float is available on the homepage here.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/float-does-simple-scheduling-for-teams-and-simple-is-hard/

Verizon CFO: Shared Data Plans Coming Mid-Year

We’ve been hearing about Verizon’s forthcoming shared data plans for quite a while, but it’s possible that we’ve finally been given a timeline, albeit a vague one. At an investors conference Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said that family data plans will probably be offered around the middle of this year.
But it won’t be as simple as a launch date. Mr. Shammo explained that the company has spent a great deal of time (a year, basically) researching shared data. It’s “a very complex equation because we have to make sure that it’s good for Verizon and it’s also good for the customer,” said Shammo. “It’s important to realize that the day we launch this account billing, everbody won’t be migrating to the account billing day one. This is going to be a long-term migration into where we want to get data plan sharing, but this will be more of a 4G play.”
Speaking of 4G, it would seem that only 5 percent of Verizon’s customers have transitioned to the superior network. The service is currently available to 200 million Americans on 20+ devices. Still, we’re just now picking up momentum on the hardware front with some really stellar 4G LTE offerings, so I’d expect to see more customers make the transition in the next few months.
Of course, Verizon will do everything it can to help push that along. We’ve already seen plenty of 4G LTE ad campaigns out of Verizon, and with the release of the Droid Razr Maxx, customers can finally believe in a solid battery when they look into 4G devices.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/verizon-cto-shared-data-plans-coming-mid-year/

We Watch Our Phones More Than We Watch TV, But The PC Wins The Day

Earlier today we saw a significant move from MTV to launch a social mobile TV service and some research out from InMobi today underscores just why these kinds of moves are so important right now for TV companies:
In its most recent quarterly report on mobile media consumption, InMobi surveyed some 20,000 consumers using both feature phones and smartphones across 18 different markets and found that they are, on average, spending 27 percent of their time on the mobile web, while they are only spending 22 percent of their time watching TV. (We’re assuming that’s leisure time, not all time.) PC usage trumps them both, though: they spend 32 percent of their time online.
The findings call this “mobile web” usage, so that means if you factor in other kinds of content — for example videos or music on your handset — there’s a chance that the gap between traditional media like TV and new media like mobile and PC could be even bigger.
InMobi also found that the most-popular categories among mobile web users are social media, entertainment and search. That points to the fact that mobile is seeing very much a dual-track growth in terms of how it is used: it’s for fun, but for practical uses, too.
That speaks to the opportunities that are there not just for media and entertainment companies like MTV but for those who are focused more on information and productivity.
On the latter point, there are some encouraging signs for all those many companies trying to do more in mobile commerce: some 76 percent of respondents said they would probably use their phones to buy services or products in the next year. Of course, that could mean one measly app purchase, but more optimistically it could mean more.
InMobi itself focuses on mobile advertising and marketing — it claims to be the largest independent mobile ad network in the world — so it also drilled downinto how those areas are progressing:
Some 66 percent of respondents said that they were as comfortable with mobile ads as they are TV or online ads. That’s not a brilliant number: turned around 36 percent said they felt uncomfortable with mobile ads. (That’s a problem that was highlighted in another survey last week, from Upstream, which provided a pretty dismal picture for how mobile ads are viewed today.)
Among those that are happy with mobile ads, InMobi’s numbers seem to point to small numbers when it comes to the benefits of these ads: only 14 percent said a mobile ad had influenced them to buy something via a mobile device; and only 23 percent said that mobile ads saved them time and money.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/we-watch-our-phones-more-than-we-watch-tv-but-the-pc-wins-the-day/

LTE-Packing Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 Hits VZW Shelves On March 1

For those of you who feel that the Galaxy Tab 8.9 is too big and the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus is too small, the LTE-packing Galaxy Tab 7.7 should feel justright. And according to Verizon, the little 7-incher should be available March 1 on the big red network, just as we expected.
The GalTab 7.7 was announced way back in September alongside the international Galaxy Note, and as my controversial review proves, we’re already playing around with the Note here in the States. That said, a little memory refresh seems to be in order.
The Galaxy Tab 7.7 sports a 1280×800 resolution Super AMOLED Plus display at (obviously) 7.7-inches. A 1.4GHz dual-core processor can be found under the hood, and both the front and back of the tablet are equipped with cameras, 2-megapixels and 3.2-megapixels respectively. The rear camera can shoot video in 720p.
Unfortunately, the Galaxy Tab 7.7 won’t ship with ICS so hopefully you’re a fan of Honeycomb. Even more unfortunately, the GalTab 7.7 wears a $499 on-contract price tag. This means it’s going up against the likes of a 10-inch iPad, or priced way more expensively than the $200 Kindle Fire.
The good news is that you have two whole days (thanks, leap year) to mull over these options. Good hunting.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/lte-packing-samsung-galaxy-tab-7-7-hits-vzw-shelves-on-march-1/

Brayola Wants To Help Women Find The Perfect Bra

For many women, finding the right bra is a challenge. Enter Israeli startup Brayola, a new site that aims to make it easier for women to find their next favorite bra. Brayola helps women find their perfect bra size and discover new bras that match the style she likes.
Founder Orit Hashay explains that online stores fail to consider how important bras are to women, and that finding a bra is a highly personal experience. Additionally, an ill-fitting bra can cause serious discomfort, including back pain and other problems. The result is that most online shoppers buy a bra that they already own, since they are familiar with the brand.
Brayola takes a different approach. The website helps women find bras by asking them a simple question: “What is the bra that you love to wear?” When a Brayola user first gets started with the service, she is asked to create her own personal Brayola drawer. This is a collection of bras that she already owns and loves, that fit perfectly, and match her own personal style.
Brayola then looks at the bras a user has selected, and finds other users in the system who own the same bras with the same size. Brayola employs its bra fitter technology, a smart recommendation algorithm, to suggest new bras from e-commerce sites for the user based on the preferences of similar women.
Brayola gives each user a custom set of virtual drawers filled with different styles and types of bras. Each bra is chosen especially for the user based on her Brayola bra size. Brayola aggregates bras to purchase from a number of different sites including Macy’s, Amazon, and others. You actually purchase the bras through the retailers’ sites but in the future you’ll be able to buy through Brayola.
Brayola has received seed funding from Roi Mor and Shahar Smirin.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/brayola-wants-to-help-women-find-the-perfect-bra/

Textbook Rental Site BookRenter Spawns Rafter, A Course Materials Management Network For Colleges

College textbook rental startup BookRenter is announcing an interesting new venture today, pivoting slightly from the singular focus on rentals to a broader market. Rafter is launching as a network of software services which basically allows college administrators and educators to better control cost and manage course materials and products for their students. BookRenter will continue to operate, but as a division of Rafter.
As BookRenter and Rafter CEO Mehdi Maghsoodnia explains to me, the sourcing of course materials is actually a challenge for many professors and administrators for a number of reasons. First, discovering the best course materials for a particular subject has been a process that has taken place largely through word of mouth and offline conversations. Second, there are major complexities in accessing the rights to content as well as fulfillment.
Maghsoodnia is bringing this entire process online. BookRenter has already been working with schools (over 500 to be exact) to license its textbook rental platform, so the company says it is aware of the challenges that these schools face in the fragmented course materials sourcing and fulfillment market.
Rafter partners with universities to provide the Course Materials Network, which manages content discovery, supply, distribution, pricing, and commerce of everything from textbooks, lab instruments, online education software and more.
Rafter’s course materials discovery platform leverages eight years of adoption, bibliographic and economic data to give professors insight into adoption patterns, prices and content of more than 11 million textbooks and other course materials. Discover will also provide course material adoption information and reviews by educators across the country to enable them to share best practices and make more informed content adoption decisions. Rafter Discover includes information on editions, publication dates, inventory, life cycle, adoption patterns and current market pricing.
While BookRenter has been growing, a broader scope could be a more strategically sound move as textbook rentals giant and learning platform Chegg has become a formidable opponent. Armed withmassive amounts of funding, the textbook rentals giant is expected to pursue an IPO this year, and has been extremely acquisitive. Rafter could find a place in the education technology market as a comprehensive sourcing platform for educators.


Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/textbook-rental-site-bookrenter-spawns-rafter-a-course-materials-management-network-for-colleges/

StarStreet Launches A Daily Fantasy Sports Game That Turns Athletes Into Stocks

You may remember StarStreet from last year’s launch – it’s the TechStars and SV Angel-backed sports investing game that turns fantasy sports into a stock market system where you build up portfolios of top players as if they were stocks. Today, the company is launching a new, more addictive game that lets you play head-to-head with other players on a daily basis, both for fantasy wins or for real cash. The new game will run alongside its older counterpart, offering a more casual gaming experience for those not interested in the commitment of building a season-long portfolio.
In traditional fantasy sports gaming, setting up a team, adding and removing players, and continually tracking their performance often continues throughout the season, whether it’s for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB or another sports market. StarStreet originally wanted to offer a twist on that type of gaming experience, by allowing users to make stock market-like portfolios, where gamers “invest” using real money, instead of playing in fantasy leagues. To date, that effort has only been moderately successful – the company says it has gained 1,000 registered users playing with real money on the site.
But with the launch of the new daily gaming option, users can now play the same type of game for a day, betting on who will earn the most fantasy points by night.

Here’s how it works: you get a fantasy budget of $100,000 to build your portfolio, then enter into a head-to-head contest with another player through a random match. The contests can be anywhere from free to $53 (to win $100). Throughout the game, you watch the live stats update in real time on StarStreet. Then at the end of the night, whoever has the most fantasy points wins the money (or just the glory, if you played for free.)
StarStreet, meanwhile, takes a small commission on each entry. On the older stock market game, it’s 4 percent on the sell side, and on the new daily game, it’s between 6-8 percent.
To kick off the launch, StarStreet is focusing on the NBA, but will move into the other sports verticals in the future.
To be clear, this isn’t sports betting, explains founder Jeremy Levine, as StarStreet is a game of skill, not one that depends on a single outcome or result. So it’s not subject to the same legalities that surround real money gambling outfits. But it is fun.
“It’s a very addicting game,” Levine says. “We saw a lot of of opportunity in this concept of daily fantasy game, and given that we can move pretty quick on that, we said let’s take no more than a month, build the game, and see if people like it,” he says. “In testing, it’s been exciting – we saw people getting really addicted.”
That’s right, the game was built in a month. That’s fast!
The team says they have other plans for StarStreet’s daily game in the future, including  a mobile interface (initially mobile web, then native app), social integrations and more. Users will be able to invite Facebook or Twitter friends, instead of being randomly matched, or they can email out invites or get matched to other StarStreet users they’re following on the company’s internal social network. The company also wants to move into hosting larger tournaments between top players further down the road, to extend beyond just the head-to-head matches.
The first of these new features (mobile and social) will arrive in around a month.
To date, StarStreet has raised $250,000 from SV Angel, TechStars, Jarr Capital (Jarrod Yuster),Don McLagan, Andrew Blachman and Ben Littauer, and is in the process of closing another round right now.
To sign up and play the daily game, head over here: starstreet.com/daily.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/starstreet-launches-a-daily-fantasy-sports-game-that-turns-athletes-into-stocks/

CNBC: Apple To Announce Quad-Core, 4G LTE iPad Next Week… In NYC! (Update: Nope)

CNBC just tweeted that Apple is set to announce the next iPad next week. Like previous unconfirmed reports, the next iPad will rock a quad-core CPU and 4G LTE data connectivity. But unlike every other leak, CNBC is stating that the unveiling will happen in New York City.
Apple is reportedly thinking different in the post-Steve Jobs era. The company actually held intimate briefings with media outlets regarding Mountain Lion rather than holding an overblown dog and pony show. But launching the next iPad on the East Coast is thinking completely outside the box — but not that us East Coasters are complaining.
This report is of course unconfirmed but it’s slightly strange that Apple hasn’t sent out invites for the unveiling yet. Nearly every so-called leak over the last month has placed the iPad launch event in the first week of March. That’s next week.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/cnbc-apple-to-announce-quad-core-4g-lte-ipad-next-week-in-nyc/

To Meme, Or Not to Meme, That Is The (Startup) Question

Smart B2B companies have long known that winning big is predicated on redefining the rules of competition to your advantage over incumbent vendors. A more difficult question is whether you want to own a meme. In other words, do you want to define a new categorical term. Microsoft did that to great effect when they created the office suite category. More recently, Salesforce.com did something similar, becoming the de facto player one thinks of when they think of cloud computing in the process. It’s a very high-risk, high-return strategy.
For my money, the best recent example of this approach is HubSpot. HubSpot that has created and “owned” the Inbound Marketing meme and category. Having recently started discussions with investors, there is a paradox that I’ve discovered: On the one hand, investors like startups that shoot for big opportunities. On the other hand, they get sweaty palms when you describe how you are going to own a new category. Most of them would rather have you go after a known category. I thought it would be interesting to hear how Hubspot went through this decision process.
Hubspot’s Biggest Internal Debate
It wasn’t clear cut at the beginning, yet Hubspot’s choice to own a new category now has their competition playing by Hubspot’s rules. In fact, their competition is essentially funding Hubspot’s marketing — many of their competitors define themselves as “Inbound Marketing” companies. Yet Google “Inbound Marketing” and you’ll see how Hubspot dominates the results.
In the early days, the choice wasn’t obvious for Hubspot. There was known market demand for search terms like Internet marketing optimization, SEO, etc. As Hubspot’s CEO, Brian Halligan, said “we decided if we wanted to own something big, we’d need to create our own solar system rather than live in someone else’s.” At that point, they spent roughly 60 percent of their time building the concept of Inbound marketing and 40 percent on marketing Hubspot itself. Today, the mix has flipped as their competitors are picking up the tab for category marketing.
Hubspot Becomes a Content Production Machine
Halligan describes Hubspot as virtually a TV production operation given the volume of content they produce. The advantage from the outset that Hubspot maintains today is that they are gated more by the width of their brain than the fatness of their wallet. As long as they can continue to come up with new insights and ideas on how to be a more effective inbound marketer, they are able to inexpensively produce content in a model that scales very efficiently. Hubspot’s array of inbound marketing drives 95 percent of their 50,000 monthly leads/inquiries. The following list is the stack rank of the highest ROI inbound marketing tactics they employ (see links below to their most popular webinars, e-books and blog posts):

1. Grader applications: Free tools such as the Marketing Grader that assess a business’ marketing via code
2. Corporate blog: Filled with an ever-expanding mix of evergreen content
3. Webinars: Thought leadership webinars sharing data and insights
4. Opt-in email list (mainly built via Grader applications)
5. Annual conference: Roughly 1,000 people attend their annual in-person event
6. Twitter: Across their various Twitter feeds, they have a few hundred thousand people following them while their nearest competitor has less than 10 percent of followers
7. LinkedIn: Over 75,000 people in their LinkedIn group
8. Book
9. Facebook: Close to 100,000 people in their Facebook group
10. YouTube: Their videos have been viewed over a million times

Hubspot has demonstrated that if you are long on your opportunity, building your own meme that you can own reaps major dividends. Naturally, one has to be particularly deft at producing interesting content (or apps) that isn’t marketing pabulum. However, if an organization produces valuable content that grows a category that it “owns” the ROI of that content production is likely the highest ROI item that a company can invest in.
Related Links:
Most popular webinars:

• The Science of Social Media
• Social Revolution: Connecting with Today’s Customer
• The Science of Email Marketing

Most popular e-books:

• The Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing
• How to Use Facebook for Business
• Learning SEO From The Experts – A Step-By-Step Guide

Most popular blog posts:

• The 15 Best Facebook Pages You’ve Ever Seen
• The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing
• Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/28/to-meme-or-not-to-meme-that-is-the-startup-question/