Crackdown On Download Bots Meant Installs For Top iOS Apps Took A Dive In March

Downloads for the top 200 free apps in the U.S. iTunes app store took a 30 percent dive in March, according to Fiksu, a Charles River Ventures-backed company that helps mobile developers find users cheaply.
The culprit? Two things. One is that we’re just coming out of the very lucrative holiday season, when downloads spike and people get new phones that they’re eager to experiment with through trying tons of apps. The other may be Apple’s crackdown on download bots, orautomated programs that downloads apps tens of thousands of times to help them break into the top of the charts.
Fiksu says that the top 200 free U.S. iPhone apps saw 4.45 million downloads per day in March, down from 6.35 million per day in February. Apple issued a warning to developers during the first week of February, telling them not to use services that explicitly manipulate the charts.
“An unexpected contributing factor could be the decline in the use of robotic install tactics by app marketers responding to Apple’s new policy,” said Fiksu’s chief executive Micah Adler in a statement.
The crackdown has had huge implications for the types of apps that make it to the top of the charts. If you watched the charts like I did for well over a year, it was pretty common to see really strange, esoteric (and frankly, not very well-made) apps pop on the charts every single week. At the same time, very social, more utility-like apps like Instagram or Facebook would hover in the teens or twenties — or between #50 and 100.
The decline of download bots has made room for apps like Viddy, Socialcam, Instagram and Draw Something to move higher on the charts. Plus, because of the way the Apple app store is designed, once an app breaks above #25 or #10, it gets a huge increase in downloads per day.
Even despite the decline, the amount developers have to pay to get a good mobile app user was relatively unchanged at $1.30 from $1.31 in February. By good user, we mean one that opens an app at least three times after they downloaded it.


Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/27/crackdown-on-download-bots-meant-installs-for-top-ios-apps-took-a-dive-in-march/?grcc=ee379f9a92026e32eee24b66c9a810d7Z8ZwdgtZ0Z2947Z200Z133Z3

Pepsi Puts A Pop Culture “Cheat Sheet” At The Heart Of Its New Campaign

Pepsi is launching a big rebranding campaign today, and the company says social media is going to play a crucial role. Specifically, PepsiCo Global Head of Digital Shiv Singh tells me that the biggest online piece of the campaign is a “social media cheat sheet” called the #NOW board — it has, in fact,taken over the Pepsi website.
The board is built on top of Pulse, the social media visualization platform that Pepsi launched last fall. Looking at the RSS feeds from across the Web, as well as the firehose of wants being shared through Twitter and bit.ly (with help from startup SocialFlow), Singh says the #NOW board presents the pop culture stories that are hottest in social media at any given moment, presented in easily-digestible form.
Beyond serving as a news aggregator, Singh says the site will include other features, like the ability for celebrities to pose challenges to their fans, and exclusive deals courtesy of sites like Thrillist. And naturally, the content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
That all sounds fun, but what does that have to do with a food and beverage company? Well, the theme of the campaign is “Live for Now,” and it tries to reconnect the Pepsi brand with, as Singh puts it, “the heart of pop culture.” He argues that “the more deeply integrated” Pepsi is with broader pop culture trends, the better the company does.
My other question: Are people actually going to return to a Pepsi-branded site as a source of news? I mean, any news website is probably going to have advertising and sponsorships, and sure, we’re not probably not talking about hard-hitting journalism here, but it still feels a little weird to treat a Pepsi-owned site as a “real” news aggregator. Singh counters:

In the last few years we’ve seen people in general care less about the source of an experience or who’s creating the content, and more about the experience itself. People care less whether it’s a TV network that’s creating a really funny piece of video or whether a brand is.

The argument carries some weight, when you think about how ads like the Old Spice guy have become popular viral content. So is this advertising? Is it content? It’s a little bit of both, and it sounds like that’s what Pepsi wants.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/30/pepsi-live-for-now/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0

How Great Entrepreneurs Create Their Own Luck

This is the story of how a young Irish fine artist accidentally became a materials scientist, founding a high-growth company that created a whole new product category. It’s also a parable for how great entrepreneurs systematically create their own luck.
Jane ni Dhulchaointigh is the founder and CEO of Sugru, a London-based startup that makes an amazing moldable adhesive for repairing any physical object. It’s a cross between silly putty and duct tape, a space age rubber that can be molded into any desired shape by hand, and that sticks to a vast array of surfaces. With customers in over 100 countries, and all seven continents, Sugru has taken the world by storm.
What we see in Jane’s journey, so far from California’s tech startup scene, is the same thing we see in virtually all startups that work: the ability to harness serendipity, the unplanned discoveries, large or small, that end up being the turning points in careers and businesses. Hard work, training and process may be the foundation of success, but serendipity is where the magic happens. And even though serendipity is by definition unpredictable, its appearance is anything but random.
Jane’s stunning rise is the result of her mastering what we call the skills of planned serendipity, a set of behaviors that have allowed her, over and over again, to generate the chance discoveries, recognize the good ones, and take action on those that matter most.
Here’s how it happened, and what we can learn from her breakout success.
Start With A “Geek Brain” 
Jane originally studied to be a sculptor, an interest that had possessed her for years. She returned to school in 2003 to study commercial product design at the Royal College of Art. It seemed a prudent career move given the high demand for designers (and the lack of jobs for sculptors), but it was a switch that proved difficult. Her impulse was to follow her own interests over solving the narrowly defined product problems discussed in class. Before long, her background in sculpture combined with her insatiable curiosity led her to begin experimenting with new materials.
Jane was equipped with one of the great advantages in cultivating serendipity, a geek brain–what we define as an obsessive curiosity in an area of interest and the ability to notice anomalies, overcoming the conventional wisdom that constrains others. The geek brain gave Jane distance from the rote conventions of design school, allowing her to connect ideas from across domains in unusual ways.
Find Space to Play 
Having a mindset geared for recognizing unexpected ideas is rarely enough on its own—Jane needed an environment that allowed her to explore and put this geek brain to good use. The workshop at her college served this purpose well:
I was destroying things and putting them back together: chipping blocks of wood apart and putting them back together with other materials…One experiment I did was combining silicone caulk with very fine wood dust from the workshop. From that combination I made these fancy wooden balls. I found it fascinating that you could make something that looked like wood but had other properties—if you threw them on the floor they’d bounce.
Jane’s early explorations with her strange rubbery material was driven by a fascination with the possibilities of what she could make, rather than any specific purpose to which it could be put. This is the hallmark of a true exploratory mode, as premature focus can kill good ideas before they ever emerge. Still, as her discovery started to take shape, she began to spend more and more time wondering what it might actually be good for.
Be Opinionated 
Jane’s boyfriend noticed that she had been using her funny rubber to repair or customize things around the house—enlarging a sink plug that was too small, or making a more ergonomic knife handle. It had been so natural for her to use the rubber in this way because she personally believed in the value of repairing her things rather than running out and buying a replacement. The instinct was so natural, in fact, that she hadn’t even consciously registered what she was doing. It was only when her boyfriend drew her attention to it that she saw the opportunity in a flash.
Jane had stumbled on a product idea that mapped perfectly to a deeply held conviction: she hated waste. She was fed up with it and knew she wasn’t alone. “In the past, some people would have thought that repairing something is a compromise because you couldn’t afford to buy it new again,” Jane says. “But now there are increasing numbers of people who would rather repair or reuse than throw something out and needlessly buy something new because of the waste involved.”
Her insight was that this space-age rubber she’d invented could be an essential innovation in this cause. She saw the potential in her chance discovery only because she had an overriding purpose that gave her a unique perspective. “Every granny who finds it hard to open a jam jar can manipulate this material,” she said. “Anyone who has a stiff part on their bike can adapt it to be whatever the bike needs.”
Project the Possibility
The only problem was that the material didn’t actually exist yet. The makeshift rubber Jane had been playing with had all kinds of problems: it didn’t adhere to enough surfaces, it had a terribly short shelf-life, and it was too high maintenance to make a successful commercial product.
This was the do-or-die moment. As an artist, there was every reason in the world to give up—she had no business thinking she could solve this incredibly technical problem. Instead, Jane pulled a Jujitsu serendipity move: employing only her faulty prototype and her storytelling skills, she projected her vision as broadly as she could, telling anyone who would listen about it. Early stage entrepreneurs like Jane don’t always know what exact outcomes to expect, but they are willing to publicly put their ideas into the world, allowing them to connect with the as yet unknown people and opportunities that make their products possible.
It worked. Attention followed from the strength of her vision, attracting local press mentions, a set of science advisors, and a grant from the National Endowment for Science, Technology, and Arts.
Follow Unplanned Paths
The grant wasn’t huge, a mere £35,000, but it was enough to start testing materials—as long as Jane did the testing herself. To do that, she realized, she would have to do something that was not only unexpected, but would have seemed absurd a few months before: she’d have to diverge from her career path and be trained as a lab technician and set up her own laboratory. She wasn’t waiting around to find a CTO who knew better. This former art student must learn to be a materials scientist.
It took her two years of painstaking trial-and-error, but eventually she created a brand new, patented class of silicone that worked for her aims. Only Jane’s immovable sense of purpose kept her going through month after month of laborious formulation and failure, long before her work would bear fruit. This is a recurring paradox of serendipity: stick-to-itness—the ability to stay committed to a purpose—is often the very thing that allows new paths to be recognized and taken.
Design Openness into the Product and Company
Initially there was tremendous pressure to fit the new product into a well-worn category that the traditional business world would understand. Then it struck Jane that she could create a brand designed to activate the creative spark in people. She could leave the product’s purpose intentionally open—the tagline would become “Hack Things Better”—so that customers could use their own imagination. One of the first things she did after launching the product was create an online community for customers to share their ideas. Creating permeability at the edge of her company allowed new directions and opportunities to serendipitously emerge.
As a result the company and its customers have developed a truly symbiotic relationship. That “perfect fit” Jane had been seeking for her unusual rubber years ago? Her customers are telling her what it is—or rather, all of the perfect fits they’ve found. Repairing computers, cables for laptop chargers, phones, and outdoor equipment have emerged as the leading uses for her one-of-a-kind product. Jane is finding the company being pulled by customers in directions she could never have imagined during those years of painstaking materials research, but in each case the path is perfectly aligned with the company’s purpose.
The Kind of Luck That Matters
Entrepreneurs often cite “luck” as a key ingredient of success, yet this means far more than just being in the right time, right place. The luck that builds careers and companies is the kind that unfolds gradually, choice by choice, as people recognize and seize surprise opportunities, attracting others to them long before it’s obvious that their business is the next big thing. These skills of planned serendipity are not vague, metaphysical concepts; they can be mastered by any of us, and can shape how we run our startups as they grow.
We can learn how to make our businesses luckier.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/how-great-entrepreneurs-create-their-own-luck/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0

They Ain’t Making Any More of Them: The Great Engineering Shortage of 2012

Corner any up-and-coming Kevin Systrom wanna-be and have a heart-to-heart about the challenges of building a successful company and at some point you’ll likely wander into the territory of bemoaning how tough it is to hire people with technical skills. At a party recently a startup founder told me “If you could find me five great engineers in the next 90 days I’d pay you $400,000.” Which is crazy talk. Unless you stop to consider that Instagram’s team (mostly engineers) was valued at almost $80 million per employee or that corporate development heads often value engineers at startups they are acquiring at a half-million to million dollars per person. $400,000 actually might not be so crazy for a basketball lineup’s worth of guys who can sling Ruby or Scala code.

So with all this widespread talk about the value of hiring great engineers and the apparent dearth of technical talent in the market, college students must be signing up to computer science classes in droves. This is the next California Gold Rush is it not? The era in which a self-taught programmer can emerge from relative obscurity and land a mid-nine figure payday. Engineering enrollments surely must be at an all-time high?

Au contraire, mon frère. Consider this (from the Marginal Revolution blog):

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 37,994 students with bachelor’s degrees in computer and information science. This is not bad, but we graduated more students with computer science degrees 25 years ago!

Coding is as hot as it’s ever been and yet we graduated more students with CSci degrees in The Year of Our Orwell as we do today? What’s going on here exactly? A little more from the same blog post:

In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985.

We are raising a generation of American Idols and So You Think You Can Dancers when what we really need is a generation of Gateses and Zuckerbergs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF download) computer and mathematical occupations are expected to add 785,700 new jobs from 2008 to 2018. It doesn’t take a math major to see that we’re graduating students at a far lower rate than required to meet demand.

But what’s important is not just what is happening but also why it’s happening. If there’s both security on the downside (computer science majors experience rock-bottom unemployment rates) and untold riches on the upside, it seems the rational economic choice for people to flock to majoring in computer science and engineering. And yet, that’s not what’s taking place.

Let’s look at a few of many theories as to why people might be choosing to study drama and music instead of C++ and algorithms.

People don’t get excited by technology. The glamour and glitz of Hollywood that attracts thousands of Midwestern prom queens every year is undeniable. And the stereotype of the lone coder sitting alone in a cube somewhere can’t quite match up to the thrill, however unlikely, of one day performing in front of Steven, Randy and Jennifer.

But that doesn’t seem entirely logical. After all, Sorkin did his best to put nerds front and center with The Social Network and show the rags-to-riches possibilities associated with tech entrepreneurship, at least to the extent that you’re allowed to ever consider a Harvard undergrad as a “rags-worthy” starting point. Furthermore, you need look no further than the Forbes 400 to see alpha geeks racing yachts and buying sports teams. And of course there has never been a time in history when technology was more ubiquitous, with all of us carrying an incredibly powerful computing device in our pockets.

Technology is hard. OK, now perhaps we’re getting a little closer to the truth. It’s not that learning how to program has gotten noticeably more difficult over the years. If anything, frameworks like Rails for Ruby make it easier. But there is a basic level of understanding that, if you don’t have it, drastically reduces the likelihood that you’ll become an engineer.

Indeed, at each level of our education there’s a chance to miss out on fundamental knowledge that, if not acquired at that point, becomes progressively more difficult to pick up later in life. Salman Khan said it best in his TED talk that should be mandatory viewing:

“…you fast forward and good students start failing algebra all of a sudden and start failing calculus all of a sudden, despite being smart, despite having good teachers, and it’s usually because they have these Swiss cheese gaps that kept building throughout their foundation.”

There’s likely, in part at least, an education challenge here. But it’s doesn’t appear to be just that. There’s something else important here.

There’s little incentive, early in one’s career, to choose to go into computer science or engineering. At the time you’re choosing your career path, say around 20 years of age, you often haven’t fully digested that the rational economic choice for your studies is something in the STEM disciplines. And when all things are the same “price” (i.e., a degree in the humanities costs the same as a degree in engineering) if you don’t internalize that the net present value of that diploma with a computer science major is significantly greater than the net present value of that diploma with a drama major then maybe drama isn’t such an irrational choice.

Therein lies the problem. If a drama major costs society substantially more than a computer science major (e.g., drama majors pay less taxes, draw more unemployment benefits, etc.) then perhaps a drama major should be more expensive than a computer science major? While this sounds, no pun intended, dramatic, it’s worthwhile to consider that China is canceling majors they don’t deem to have good employment prospects.

Or maybe there isn’t a big problem here after all. Before we completely overhaul the incentive process around how students choose their major perhaps there’s another thing worth considering and that’s the rise of self-directed learning services and websites such as Codecademy,CodeLesson, General Assembly, Dev Bootcamp, Treehouse and Udemy (Disclosure: I’m an advisor to Udemy) make the lower numbers of college graduates with computer science degrees less disconcerting. After all, the important thing is that people are acquiring these skills, not necessarily that they are majoring in the discipline.

There is a lot to think about here and no easy answers but a dialogue on the topic seems important. After all, some of the most innovative companies on the planet are starved for talent while at the same time job prospects for new college graduates are pretty bleak. What will it take to resolve that paradox?

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/they-aint-making-any-more-of-them-the-great-engineering-shortage-of-2012/?grcc=33333Z98ZtrendingZ0

No, AirPlay Is Not The New Apple TV

If you asked your mom or dad what DLNA or UPnP stood for or did, would they just look at you weird? While the two technologies enable users to wirelessly beam content to Internet Connected TVs from their tablets, phones, and computers, Apple’s AirPlay is the first implementation that makes the experience seamless. Tap the button again and playback resumes on your root device. No complicated setup is required – it simply works.
Some, like Bloomberg and Hunter Walk, have suggested that AirPlay is Apple TV, and that Apple will simply license AirPlay to the major Connected TV manufactures – and by default every Connected TV sold will be an “Apple TV” – the remote being your iPhone or iPad. It’s certainly a sensible theory – there are 250 M+ iOS devices, and with the upcoming OS X update, laptops can now leverage Airplay as well. That’s over 300M Apple devices that can push content to TVs.
Fragmentation is the reality
That level of integration would be a dream come true for many networks, studios, and cable companies looking to sell a “TV Everywhere” experience directly to users. Simply integrate with an iOS app, and with one tap consumers can watch content on hundreds of TV devices. Today it’s a big competitive advantage to be able to offer a consistent and incredible TV experience across hundreds of devices. Netflix built its early lead around that competitive advantage, and many networks, studios, and cable companies are looking to build technological solutions to combat fragmentation so that they can compete with Netflix. A content network or studio needs to be able to deliver a discovery and consumption experience better than Netflix’s across just as many devices — otherwise the consumer will turn to Netflix.
A ubiquitous AirPlay integration would level the playing field considerably, but is unlikely for several reasons:
(1) AirPlay adoption is not wide yet. There are less than 5M Apple TV units in the market, which means that today there are less than 5M users in the market that use Airplay for video.
And while Apple is heavily promoting AirPlay-video-enabled apps in the iTunes store, wide consumer adoption is unclear. Unfortunately, stats on Airplay usage aren’t widely available, but anecdotally – in my group of friends I’m the one evangelizing it – many Apple TV owners I meet don’t even realize AirPlay exists.
(2) Manufacturer adoption will be slow. Given that AirPlay does not have a critical mass of users, it’s hard to imagine how in the short-term Apple will convince any of the top five TV manufacturers to adopt AirPlay. Margins on TVs have been decreasing over time, and manufacturers are looking to integrate Connected TVs into an ecosystem of higher-margin tablets and phones. Integrating AirPlay,while it may sell more TVs (when Airplay has critical mass) will reduce sales of higher-margin tablets and phones they could have sold that exclusively interfaced with their TVs.
(3) A seamless experience is unlikely. It’s unlikely video AirPlay would be integrated consistently across all Connected TVs to create the same seamless experience consumers have with an Apple TV today. DLNA is a good example. It’’s an open protocol that in theory should accomplish what AirPlay does, except it’s implemented inconsistently across devices and often doesn’t work at all. Unless Apple has full control of the software layer, simply licensing out AirPlay would not achieve the desired experience.
Apple can overcome the issue of critical mass with enough of its own Apple TV units in the market. But at the pace of sales for its existing Apple TV, it will be years before AirPlay would have the usage to give Apple the clout to get integrations with other manufacturers. That’s why the rumors of an upcoming integrated Apple TV or upgraded device make sense. While AirPlay may be the long-term bet, in the short-term Apple needs a critical mass of users airplaying content to their TV. And AirPlay may be a central part of the rumored AppleTV. It  wouldn’t be surprising if Apple uses their new device to train users how to use AirPlay. At that point, AirPlay could become a must-have for other TV manufacturers. As a TV manufacturer you would lose sales by not having it integrated.
But even with a critical mass of AirPlay users in the market, it’s still unclear whether Apple could convince many manufacturers to adopt AirPlay, or would even have success getting them to implement it the way it’s implemented in Apple TV. That’s why Apple owns the hardware and software layer; they can create experiences that would never be created by leaving third-party manufacturers to their own devices.
Winners in TV will have technological solutions to fragmentation
What’s more, a fragmented approach to DLNA and Connected TV has already developed. Just as the Android ecosystem is increasingly fragmented, while iOS is uniform, the Apple TV of the future will be nicely unified with other iOS devices through AirPlay, whereas other Connected TVs will have fragmented platforms with fragmented DLNA protocols.
That means that succeeding in the fast-growing Connected TV ecosystem will require a killer approach to fragmentation. Leading cable companies, and networks looking to sell directly to consumers will have to sit on top of iOS’s uniform AirPlay platform, as well as a highly fragmented Connected TV and DLNA platform to reach meaningful scale.
There’s also the issue of whether or not Apple can strike a deal with Hollywood and other content creators but that’s a story for some other time.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/no-airplay-is-not-the-new-apple-tv/

Google Releases Full Report On Street View Investigation, Finds That Staff Knew About Wi-Fi Sniffing

Earlier today Google released the full report of the FCC’s investigation into the collection of  “payload data” from open Wi-Fi networks — aka passwords, email and search history from open networks — that its fleet of Street View cars obtained between 2008 and April 2010. An earlier and heavily redacted version of the report was released on April 15 but today’s version only redacted the names of individuals.
The report found no violation of any wrong doing by the company because there was no legal precedent on the matter. The FCC found that Google did not violate the Communications Act citing the fact that Wi-Fi did not exist when it was written. However, the FCC did fine Google $25,000 for obstructing the investigation, which was presumably the outcome of Google refusing to show the FCC what the data being collected entailed because it might have shown that the company broke privacy and wiretapping laws. Google says any obstruction was result of the FCC dragging out the investigation. Interestingly enough, the report did reveal that the data harvesting was not the act of a rogue engineer and that said engineer notified the Street View team of what was going on.
(Wait. What? Google knew this was going on! It gets even better.)
Except that those members of the team told the FCC that they had no idea it was going on even though the engineer in question sent documentation of the work being done to the entire Street View team in October of 2006. The report also found that up to seven engineers had “wide access” to the plan to collect payload data dating back to 2006.
From the report:

In interviews and declarations, managers of the Street View project and other Google employees who worked on the project told the Bureau they did not read Engineer Doe’s design document. A senior manager of Street View said he “pre-approved” the design document before it was written. One engineer remembered receiving the design document but did not recall any reference to the collection of payload data.

For a little more background, let’s examine what Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering & Research blogged back in 2010:

Nine days ago the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany asked to audit the WiFi data that our Street View cars collect for use in location-based products like Google Maps for mobile, which enables people to find local restaurants or get directions. His request prompted us to re-examine everything we have been collecting, and during our review we discovered that a statement made in a blog post on April 27 was incorrect.
In that blog post, and in a technical note sent to data protection authorities the same day, we said that while Google did collect publicly broadcast SSID information (the WiFi network name) and MAC addresses (the unique number given to a device like a WiFi router) using Street View cars, we did not collect payload data (information sent over the network). But it’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.
However, we will typically have collected only fragments of payload data because: our cars are on the move; someone would need to be using the network as a car passed by; and our in-car WiFi equipment automatically changes channels roughly five times a second. In addition, we did not collect information traveling over secure, password-protected WiFi networks.
So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.
As soon as we became aware of this problem, we grounded our Street View cars and segregated the data on our network, which we then disconnected to make it inaccessible. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it.

Fair enough. But the following excerpt from the report doesn’t quite sit so well with me: “We are logging user traffic along with sufficient data to precisely triangulate their position at a given time, along with information about what they were doing.” To be more specific, the last portion about knowing “what they were doing” seems a bit peculiar. Why would Google need to know what they were doing? Seems irrelevant if you’re just mapping the location of networks, doesn’t it?
So how did Google spin this to the media? It said the data mining was “inadvertent” and that Google now has stricter privacy controls than in the past. Oh and the company hopes the release of the full report would allow them to “put this matter” in the rear view mirror.
Crazy, right? Or maybe not! Discuss.
Correction: April 28, 2012 9:46PM PT
An excerpt from the report has been added regarding the pre-approval of a document sent out by “Engineer Doe” to the Street View team that detailed the work being done and included the fact that Google would be collecting such data.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/543181/

Data Driven Decisions for Startups

“If you don’t have any facts, we’ll just use my opinion.” – Jim Barksdale (former president and CEO of Netscape).
Startups are the sum of the decisions made by the people who run them. Should you raise money? Who should you raise money from? What should be your marketing strategy? What are the next features you should build? Who should you hire? Ok.. you get the point.
If decisions are so important then it might be worthwhile to think about how to make them better. A lot of research has been done on this subject and you can literally spend years going through the books, papers and the various theories and schools of thought in decision-making. Needless to say, that will probably be a bad decision by itself. Instead, it is more important to understand why data driven decisions work and to instill such a culture in your company.
Why Data Driven Decisions Work
From all the papers written on the subject, there was one paper that left a huge impression on me. In 1979 the late psychologist Robyn Dawes wrote a paper titled “The robust beauty of improper linear models in decision making”. The idea is simple. Prior research discovered that a decision made using a good professional objective decision-making model will always trump expert intuition. The breakthrough in Dawes’ work was the finding that even improper, simple, “stupid” models are better than intuition.
Let’s put that into context and talk about hiring. Say you want to hire for a new position. Building a proper model would require you to collect and analyze all data about people you hired so far and come up with a statistical model to evaluate and identify the top candidates based on various parameters. This is what Google does. However, Google has a LOT of data since it hired tens of thousands of people so far. As a startup, you don’t.
Turns out that you can build a simple model based on what you think are the important parameters of a candidate and then evaluate candidates based on that model. More importantly, it will force you to think analytically about what are the important parameters to consider for that specific role. This by itself will lead to a better decision and will remove subjective biases. This is why data driven decisions are so powerful.
Instrument Everything
The idea from Dawes’ paper can be extended to other areas in your startup. Almost everything that you do can be boiled down into a formula. Doing that will force you and your team to think about what are the critical parameters for success in any given project or initiative and then better optimize for that success.
As mentioned before, as a startup you don’t have a lot of data. There are many resources online that you can use on day one. For instance, if you are building a marketing model and are wondering what is an average conversion rate for the freemium model, you can find an answer. However, it is critical that you start collecting data from day one so you can make more accurate estimations and as a result, better decisions.
Jack Dorsey and The Inference Team
I am not a fan of the “before and after” marketing tactic but it works well because it focuses on results. In the case of the data driven startup, one of the most interesting cases is the case of Jack Dorsey who has seen the power of data driven decisions and made it his job to put together an “inference team” at Square. This team focuses on collecting and analyzing data to make better decisions. In his words: “For the first two years of Twitter’s life, we were flying blind… we’re basing everything on intuition instead of having a good balance between intuition and data… so the first thing I wrote for Square is an admin dashboard. We have a very strong discipline to log everything and measure everything.” Amen.
Start Now
The earlier you start collecting, analyzing and inferring from data, the better your decisions will become. A year from now you may wish you had started today.
If you are interested in decision-making theory, then you should really spend time reading aboutProspect Theory – the Nobel Prize winning work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. It will give you a good grip about how we make decisions and what are the common biases we fall into.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/28/data-driven-decisions-for-startups/

How Tablets Are Transforming Business Intelligence

Staying on top of your game and understanding the competitive landscape is essential to winning in the modern business world. A huge component to staying ahead of the curve is keeping a close eye on competitors in your market, which entails maintaining a watchful eye on industry news. Some companies turn to expensive news monitoring services to keep track of their respective industry, but in reality there are more viable options. Emerging tablet news and information services like Flipboard, Pulse and others are proving an incredible companion to business and consulting executives in staying current with industry changes occurring around them.
Jeff Cavins, CEO of Fuzebox, recently wrote in Business Insider that the explosive uptake of tablet computers is fueling the growth of what he called the new “iPad economy.” Cavins said: “The iPad is shifting the way businesses function, changing how executives interact and transforming the economics of today’s business operations.”
The iPad economy is a growing reality across the globe, and businesses are turning to enterprise apps to help them succeed. Simple RSS readers are used to condense multiple streams of content from a variety of sources into single channels, granting users access to diverse content all in one place. Some applications have further simplified news aggregation by using innovative search technology that goes beyond the function of RSS readers to deliver richer streams of highly targeted information to business users – a critical asset to businesses large and small.
Better Search and Filtering Offers Essential Time Savings
Improved search and filtering techniques make it simple and easy for a business to set up a Web-monitoring service. Google News and Google Alerts were an early step in the right direction, but anyone who monitors news on a daily basis knows that these services don’t always give you the news you want when you need it.
As users continue to adopt tablets as a primary reading outlet, there is a huge opportunity to create real-time, targeted news experiences. Apps like Zite, which was bought by CNN in 2011, aim to learn about users’ interests through the stories they read, and provide related content based on those preferences. News-reader apps give users the power to create their own streams of content based on keywords to offer analysis of the topic across any genre of content, keeping them constantly updated in the ever-changing world of business.
Recently we have seen innovative companies like Wavii launch to further personalize the way users get their news, and as this vertical continues to mature, we should see more sophisticated technologies making their way onto tablets.
By utilizing apps that filter and search, tablets are changing the way news is channeled and consumed. Best of all, once streams are set up, they can be shared business-wide or between colleagues so the wheel never has to be re-invented.
Gesture Based Information Consumption Increases Efficiency
Touting efficiency, news-readers give users the opportunity to scan hundreds of articles in a few moments and immediately delve deeper into the most interesting content. News-reading services do all the heavy lifting by aggregating the stories that match your interests, giving you more time to spend reading the news you care about rather than searching for it. The same way Evernote helps you save your daily thoughts and ideas all in one spot, news-readers concisely track what’s going on in every field that interests you.
Beyond increasing efficiency, news-readers also allow for easy sharing of any stories of interest with your community of colleagues or friends. Every blog and news site has its own way to share stories you enjoy with friends, but they are not always convenient for users. Tablet apps make sharing simple, while still driving traffic back to the original source.
Bookmarking Makes for Easier Follow Up
When browsing a vast number of stories every day, it’s often hard to keep track of the important ones, or to flag them down once you’ve flipped past. Easy in-app bookmarking tools such as Pocket or Instapaper make for a better overall experience because returning to a piece of interesting news is simple. Creating your own playlist through bookmarks is intuitive, as is sharing that list with colleagues, which is an asset for group collaboration.
Apps are abundant, but the ones with the potential to make a difference to the business world are those that improve productivity, efficiency and knowledge sharing. Discovering and utilizing these gems in a marketplace that has become a sea of apps is a difficult task. Apps like news readers set themselves apart by providing essential tools for businesses and adding value to help them win in their respective vertical.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/how-tablets-are-transforming-business-intelligence/

The TechCrunch Meet-Up In NYC Is Officially Official: RSVP Now

As the days pass, the big moment draws nigh. No, I’m not talking about Disrupt, which is a big moment in its own right, nor am I teasing any otherbig launch. I’m talking about a party.
A huge party.
We initially called it a mini meet-up — a gathering of New York’s tech startup scene, including investors, entrepreneurs and TechCrunch editorial — but its grown into so much more than that. With over 600 RSVPs, ten sponsors, a badass venue, and more TC staff in attendance than we’d originally expected, our mini meet-up is now massive.
It’ll be at Bar13 on 13th St. between University and Broadway, from 6pm to 10pm on Tuesday, May 8.
What to expect:

• An overflowing source of beer
• Hard liquor, too
• Pizza (there’s a surprise that comes along with the pizza, but I won’t ruin it)
• Karaoke
• A photo booth
• An after party complete with DJ, dancing, and general merriment
• John Biggs, Jordan Crook, Chris Velazco, Matt Burns, Eric Eldon, Peter Ha, Josh Zelman and possibly Alexia Tsotsis
• A lot of: “So, this is what we’re working on…”

If you haven’t gotten the memo yet, you can RSVP on our PlanCast page.
Here’s yet another look at our wonderful sponsors, without whom none of this would be possible:

Yext helps provide amazing local search results with PowerListings, a local information hub that syncs listings across a network of premium sites and mobile apps. With Yext PowerListings, small and large businesses can quickly and easily update their business information, photos and specials from one central location. Today, Yext PowerListings syncs information for over 45,000 locations.

Traducto is a powerful and easy to use translation and localization app.
With Traducto users can leverage human translation to translate documents, emails, newsletters, social postings, marketing materials and more. TraductoPro allows developers to convert iOS or Mac apps, into a multilingual application, making the app available to a wider global audience. By making it simple to localize your application and offering 16 different language translations, TraductoPro is designed to reduce the pain typically associated with localization. Our integrated approach combines automating app localization through direct Xcode integration, with a high quality human translation service all within a single application. TraductoPro offers support for content translations, app store metadata and Xcode projects localization.

WhatRunsWhere is a competitive intelligence service for online media buying. It allows you to look up what advertisers are doing online; where they are running ads, who they are buying their inventory through and what exact ads they are using. WhatRunsWhere allows you to see what is happening on any website; who is advertising there, who’s selling the inventory for them and what ads are they using. With data from multiple countries and actionable insights regarding the data, WhatRunsWhere quickly allows anyone to dissect advertising campaigns resulting in reduced risk and a higher ROI media buying process.

Parlor® is the creator of unique branded communication applications: GroupCall™, TopicTalk™ and MobiCast™. Our goal is to make useful tools to communicate globally, both efficiently and for free. We will be unleashing these three awesome applications on iOS and Android at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012. Follow us at http://Parlor.fm for news and updates.

Speak to any business in the world with MyGenie™, a location-based 2-way communication platform that allows iPhone and Android users to speak to businesses in real-time! It’s free, it’s quick, and it’s simple to use. No need to find a manager, an email address, or a telephone # to contact. With MyGenie™ consumers send questions, comments, complaints, feedback, and more (can also upload photos) directly to any business they choose via their smart phones. Businesses can immediately respond (and include special offers) via a business portal. MyGenie™, not just ratings, not just feedback, it’s anything and everything you want it to be! Free on Apple App Store and Android Market.

Return on Change (RoC) connects innovative startups and investors who are looking to change tomorrow’s world today. Entrepreneurs with great ideas need capital funding to jumpstart their businesses, and investors are looking to help fund the next big idea. RoC provides the online medium through which startup companies and entrepreneurs will be able to pool capital through crowdsourcing. For more information about Return on Change, please visit www.returnonchange.com or contact RoC at RoC@returnonchange.com.

PeoplePerHour is Europe’s leading marketplace connecting startups and entrepreneurs to freelance talent worldwide and we’ve just landed in NYC! Project by project we’re awakening an enormous latent workforce, from the stay at home mom and the retiree to the moonlighter and the hobbyist, removing the constraints of the traditional 9-5 office. Be it for a quick logo design, building a website, copywriting or a small translation… we’re helping businesses keep their core lean and to get the job done fast. Our vision is for this to be the defining factor in the future of work.

TouchTunes Interactive Networks is the largest interactive out-of-home entertainment network in North America. TouchTunes provides entertainment and marketing solutions to 52,000 bars and restaurants. Founded in 1998, the network has become the largest of its kind with 54M monthly users who played more than 900 million songs in 2011. The TouchTunes mobile app allows consumers in bars, restaurants, hotels, retail and arenas to play any song from our catalog without having to leave their seat and is socially integrated. TouchTunes network is the largest digital out-of-home advertising network in the US (Nielsen) and includes TouchTunesTV, a unique screen-within-a-screen interactive television experience that provides custom advertising capabilities, venue promotions and social networking opportunities. TouchTunes is a privately held U.S. corporation with offices in New York City, Arlington Heights, Illinois and Montreal, Canada. For further information, please visit us at touchtunes.com.

MyPizza.com, is an interactive menu and marketing portal for local pizza restaurants which allows users to order their favorite local pizza online or by phone. MyPizza.com is a free service that makes it very easy for pizza lovers to order their favorite meal. Customers enter their address and zip code in the MyPizza.com homepage and are presented with a complete list of local pizza restaurants that provide take-out and delivery in their area, along with live menus. After customers make their meal selection and enter their payment information, an automated order is generated to the pizza restaurant.

YourPartyHub.com is a social search engine that allows users to find nightlife events and bar venues based on location. It serves as a platform as well for bar owners, party promoters and DJ’s to upload their event/party information for the users to find. With YourPartyHub.com you will never be out of the loop concerning nightlife events and deals in your area.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/the-techcrunch-meet-up-in-nyc-is-officially-official-rsvp-now/

Weathermob Nabs Funding To Make Sharing Weather Reports More Social

Weathermob, a mobile, social network for sharing weather reports around the globe, has raised $360,000 in new funding from a number of angel investors including Christopher Austin, Tim Albright, Drew Volpe and Mark Hastings.
Via a free iOS app, Weathermob allows anyone to become a weather reporter. The app mashes up real-time meteorological data, photo and video sharing to allow users to report on and share the weather in their current location. Since launching in November, the app already has millions of users from 128 countries.
Founder Julia LeStage tells us that each crowdsourced Weathermob report attracts an average of 2.5 comments. Within the app, you can see local weather reports in your location, or search for reports in other destinations. Users can choose to view reports by popularity as well, and the app connects with Facebook Connect so you can see reports from friends.
The home screen presents a snapshot of the current weather conditions and current climate in your location. This screen also includes Flurries, which are short weather headlines that highlight something about the current or upcoming weather. And users earn points and titles for talking about the weather. For example, if you are producing popular weather reports viewed by other members, you can become the Bureau Chief for your zip code/area.
The new funding will be used toward international expansion and product development.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/weathermob-nabs-funding-to-make-sharing-weather-reports-more-socia/

Achievement Unlocked: Apple Wins Applecom.com And Appleprinters.com After WIPO Complaint

Apple doesn’t own iPad.com, apple.co.uk or many other domains that contain its name or the names of its products, but it is now the proud owner ofapplecom.com and appleprinters.com — two domains that were the subject of a complaint Apple made to the World Intellectual Property Organization about a month ago.
If you now visit those URLs, they automatically redirect to Apple’s main site.
The site Domain Tools notes that Apple picked up bothapplecom.com and appleprinters.com from Mark Monitor, the domain management and brand protection firm that provides services also to Facebook and Google, among others. Apple Inc. now owns “about 1,071 domains,” according to Whois records.
Apple has not made many pleas directly to the WIPO, an agency of the United Nations, in its attempt to gain better control over its brand, but in those cases where it has, the outcomes seem to have always gone in Apple’s favor.
In November, it complained to the WIPO over seven domain names that included “iPhone” in their names that went straight to porn sites. Now most of those domains are dead except for iphone4s.com, which now redirects to Apple’s main site.
It was also a WIPO complaint that helped Apple pick up iPods.com in July 2011.
Despite its ownership of over one thousand domains, there is still a lot of ground to be covered for Apple. For example iBookstore.com currently redirects to the mobile site for Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort to digitize cultural works and quite possibly the oldest digital library around (very clever, Gutenberg guys — since it’s likely that someone using and iPad or iPhone accessing iBooks, a mobile site is exactly where they’d want to go).
iBooks.com seems to go nowhere at the moment, although iBook.com goes to Apple, too.
There is also the issue of trademarks: earlier this year Apple was unsuccessful in getting Wapple, a mobile internet company in the UK, to stop using the name Wapple, claiming the company was trading off of Apple’s success (Wapple’s argument is that it existed before Apple waded into mobile, and when mobile Internet was synonymous with the WAP protocol).
You might well wonder why it is that, given just how many Apple domain permutations there are out there (AppleiCloud, anyone?), Apple went for these two domains. Applecom.com is an easy guess: people mistype without the .com all the time, and a lot of browsers automatically add the .com when that is missing.
Or it could be — as was the case with the seven iPhone domains Apple got last year — because there was something dodgy on those sites (“best to avoid visiting those” wrote TNW at the time when Apple filed its original WIPO complaint for appleprinters.com and applecom.com). I tried looking for a historical view of both, but Wayback gave me no dice.
Or perhaps the Onion did a double-bluff and Apple really is looking at a renewed effort into the world of printers?
Stranger things have happened.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/achievement-unlocked-apple-wins-applecom-com-and-appleprinters-com-domains-after-its-wipo-complaint/

Wrapp Brings Social, Mobile Gifting Service To The U.S.; Partners With The Gap, H&M And Others

Wrapp, a social gifting service backed by Greylock Partners and Atomico, is crossing the pond with the U.S. launch of its mobile gift card and retail app. Wrapp, which was available previously only in the UK, Norway, Sweden and Japan, Wrapp is actually launching today with a number of U.S. retailers including Fab, Gap, H&M, Sephora, The Wall Street Journal, Wayfair, and others.
As we’ve reported in the past, Wrapp was co-founded by Rebtel and SendIt founder Hjalmar Winbladh, Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn, and lets friends give, receive and redeem digital gift cards using mobile devices, and allows friends to contribute to gifts given by mutual friends. With Wrapp, which offers iPhone, Android and web apps, you sign in via your Facebook account, and you can then tap the Celebration tab on the app, browse your friends or major events, and select the person you want to send a gift card to. All available gift card offers for that friend are automatically listed.
You can then select the retailer and the gift card offer you want, write your celebration greeting, select a delivery date, enter payment details (if you’re contributing extra funds to a free gift card), and send the gift. Your friend will be notified and celebrated through Facebook and the Wrapp application. Merchants can actually specify the amounts they’d like to offer via the service, and target specific demographics of users with gift card options, which is something other online social gifting options don’t allow.
To collect a gift card you click on the link sent to you in email, text message (SMS) or on your Facebook wall, which lets the user automatically download the Wrapp app. To use the card, you select the card you want to redeem, and then show the resulting barcode to the cashier, which then gets scanned to complete the transaction.
For merchants and in-store retailers, says founder Winbladh, Wrapp is an ideal way to connect with potential customers because it not only allows them to target specific users by demographics, but also provides a valuable form of advertising.
Winbladh says that while he’s always been bullish on mobile, in 2008, he started observing the increased pressure on brick and mortar retailers and was thinking through the ways that retailers can drive people in stores. He and his co-founders sought out to reinvent the gift card market to help drive traffic for retailers. He believes the gift card, which has gone through little innovation to date, can be made social, viral and mobile.
“Friend to friend marketing is best way to drive sales in retail market,” he explains. “Not only is Wrapp a innovative, social way for consumers to gift, but it’s also a performance tool for big retailers.”
And the service seems to be gaining traction amongst both consumers and retailers. Participating merchants report that each sale averages four to six times the value of the free gift card they let Wrapp users give to their friends.
In December alone, Wrapp users used the service to buy 250,000 gift cards. And the app went viral in the country, with 2 percent of all Facebook users in Sweden downloading the app. After three months live in Sweden, one percent of the Swedish population had interacted with Wrapp. During the last four months more than 165,000 people have given their Facebook friends over 1.4 million free gift cards that could be redeemed in stores operated by nearly 60 major retailers in Europe.
A launch in the U.S. could be a turning point for the company. As board member and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman tells us, for the vast majority of Internet companies, the degree with which they succeed is determined by how well you an do in the U.S. But he believes Wrapp is in a perfect position to potentially reach critical mass, and create a network between retailers and consumers at a high volume. “Retailers know that they need to move towards retail 2.0; and Wrapp provides this valued experience,” Hoffman tells me. And because of the upswing in consumer use of smartphones and social network, Wrapp is in a prime position to gain traction amongst shoppers.
There are other players trying to shake up the gift card market with mobile technologies, including recently launched Karma. But what’s compelling about Wrapp is the win for retailers in helping drive traffic in-store and being able to target certain user based upon social and demographic data provided by Facebook.
What’s next for Wrapp? We’ll be seeing a number of more big-name U.S. merchants announced in the next few months, says Winbladh. We’re told that more than 15 additional U.S. merchants are now scheduled to start using Wrapp in the coming months. And we’ll see the company expand to other countries as well.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/wrapp-brings-social-mobile-gifting-service-to-the-u-s-partners-with-the-gap-hm-and-others/

Zillow, Mum On $45M RentJuice Rumor, Launches First Dedicated Rental App, On Android

Zillow, according to one report, may be closing in on a deal to buy rental marketing software maker RentJuice for $45 million, but in the meantime the online property portal is focusing on the rental market in another way: by launching its first dedicated rentals app — a free app for Android devices.
Zillow Rentals is the latest development in Zillow’s strategy for mobile, which — now numbering at 10 apps — has become a huge part of its business: on weekends, a full 40 percent of all of Zillow’s traffic — 32 million uniques in March — comes from mobile devices, and in the same month 155 million homes on Zillow were viewed from mobile devices: that works out to 57 homes per second, the company tells me.
And although users are able to view some rental information on the original app, the new, dedicated app gives a speedier and more streamlined experience for the fast, high-volume property viewing that characterizes the average would-be renter, says Jeremy Wacksman, VP of marketing at Zillow.
Wacksman says Zillow opted for Android first over iPhone for the launch because its Android users “tend to skew younger, and we felt this group of earlier adopters could benefit from an app developed specifically with renters in mind.” He says the company will extend it to other platforms in the “near future.” Other apps from Zillow work on iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Windows Phone and BlackBerry platforms.
Zillow is partly launching this rental app — and in general getting more focused on the rental space because activity in that segment is on the rise. At the moment, some 70 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Rental Index showed increases in annual home value. In contrast, only 14 percent of markets tracked in the Zillow Home Value Index (for house sale prices) went up in price.
The new app will have several features that are unique to it. Among them will be the ability to view Rent “Zestimates” — the company’s proprietary rental price estimates on some 100 million properties in the U.S.
The app also lets users compare selected rental properties on a side-by-side list and to narrow searches by geography by drawing boundaries around neighborhoods. It also integrates with Android voice search to find homes in a specific area. People can also browse based on the age of the rental posting, to find those that have just been listed versus those that have been on the market for longer or have already been viewed (and may therefore be a waste of time to visit). Users can also get push notifications for when homes that match their search criteria get posted. There is also the ability to contact owners or landlords through the app.
Zillow has added in a few elements to its property portal that have set it apart from many others in the same field: in addition to list prices, it compiles a list of data around price valuations and recent renovations among other things; and it has inked big deals with other portals like Yahoo and some 180 newspapers to extend its reach.
Wacksman says that Zillow is still seeing “tremendous” growth from its activities in the U.S. so it is continuing to stay focused here rather than expand internationally.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/zillow-mum-on-45m-rentjuice-rumor-launches-first-dedicated-rental-app-on-android/

McCann Invests $4M In Israeli Incubator ‘thetime’

With a $4M investment, McCann Worldgroup has bought a 15% stake in Israeli incubator ‘thetime‘.
This move isn’t a particularly surprising considering ‘thetime’ was founded by Ilan Shiloah, who for the past 10 years has been chairman of McCann Erickson Israel. ‘thetime’ was also co-founded by angel investor, Nir Tarlovsky. Uri Weinheber, previously of Lab One, acts as the incubator’s CEO.
A Chief Scientist licensed incubator, the stated objective of the ‘thetime’ is new media investments (although this seems not to be a hard constraint). The current portfolio consists of 30 startups, including Tawkon & SohoOS.
This is of course great news for the Israeli startup ecosystem, which over the past couple of years has seen a substantial increase in early-stage investment outfits and accelerators.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/mccann-thetime/

Opera Mini Now Has 169 Million Users, 56% Of Them Only Use The Mobile Web

On the desktop, Opera‘s browser is only a minor player compared to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, but as a mobile browser, Opera competes head-to-head with Apple and Google. Worldwide, depending on which statistics you believe, it is either just ahead of the competition or a close runner-up. In developing countries, Opera is generally far ahead of the competition. According to an interesting new white paper by Opera, in which the company took a look at how its users around the world actually use the browser, it’s hard to underestimate the importance of mobile browsing in developing countries.
The study, which was conducted between November 2010 and November 2011, found that globally, 56% of Opera users and 43% of those who use another browser only access the Internet via their mobile devices. In some countries, including Egypt (72%), Bangladesh (69%), Brazil (65%) and South Africa (61%), these numbers for Opera users are significantly higher. At first glance, these numbers look very high. Given that traditional wired Internet access in many of these countries is rather limited, though, mobile phones are often the easiest and cheapest way to get online for many of these users.

This being an Opera report (so take this data with a grain of salt), the company also compared what its users do on the mobile web to users who use other browsers. The company, for example, found that its users are 35% more likely to purchase music and games via their mobile devices than those who use another browser. In most countries, Opera users are also younger, better educated and report higher satisfaction with their mobile Internet experiences. According to the report, these users are also “eight percentage points more likely than average to spend more than an hour online in one session and 12 percentage points more likely than non-Opera users.”
As for Opera itself, the company also today announced that it now has 168.8 million Opera Mini users (up 64% from March 2011). These users viewed over 117 billion pages. That’s up 96% from last year and up 8.1% compared to February 2012. In total, Opera Mini users generated over 1,918 million MB of data worldwide.
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/opera-mini-now-has-169-million-users-56-of-them-only-use-the-mobile-web/

Greylock Deepens Enterprise Experience, Adds Former BladeLogic CEO And BMC President As Venture Partner

Greylock Partners has been long focused on two distinct areas when it comes to venture investments—consumer and enterprise. The last consumer partner hire the firm made was former CEO of Mozilla, John Lilly. And today, the firm is deepening its experience in its enterprise practice with the addition of Dev Ittycheria as Venture Partner in Greylock’s Silicon Valley office.
At Greylock, Ittycheria will be focusing on investing in enterprise software companies, with a focus on cloud-based services and enabling IT infrastructure. Ittycheria is a long-time enterprise veteran with a history of not only founding successful startups, but also helping lead established companies towards revenue growth. He co-founded BladeLogic, which he led through a successful IPO and eventually a sale to BMC Software in 2008 for $900 million.
Following the acquisition, Ittycheria was the President of BMC Software where he led BMC’s $1.4 billion enterprise service management business with more than 4,000 employees in over 25 countries. Prior to BladeLogic, he founded early cloud computing pioneer Applica, which merged with Brakeaway Solutions (Brakeaway went public in the late 1990s). He also had a brief role as Entrepreneur-In-Residence in Bessemer Venture Partners.
More recently, Ittycheria has been a startup investor and board member at several companies including Bazaarvoice, AthenaHealth and application management company AppDynamics (where Greylock is a founding investor). It was actually through his recent work with AppDynamics that he grew closer to Greylock partner Asheem Chandna, who also serves on the company’s board. Chandna tells us he felt that Ittycheria’s experience advising enterprise companies and leading his own ventures would fit perfectly with Greylock’s venture strategy.
Ittycheria, who has already started actively helping a number of Greylock companies think through and refine their go-to-market and distribution strategies, tells us jokingly that after having started, built and scaled two companies, he has lots of scar tissue, and enjoys helping advising other enterprise companies navigate through these waters. He explains, “I chose Greylock because they have amazing track record in both enterprise and consumer…It’s a great cultural fit.”
With the addition of Ittycheria, Greylock’s senior investing team in enterprise now includes six professionals, says Chandna.
Ittycheria explains that particularly interested in investing in companies enabling cloud servers and underlying management and IT infrastructure, including storage, big data, enterprise mobility, and security.
He adds that he believes that IT buying behavior has changed significantly since his days at BladeLogic. “Companies are realizing there’s not a lot of innovation coming out large incumbents in the enterprise. Today, because of the disruptive technologies coming out of startups, customers are much more open to working to smaller, innovative companies.” Because of this trend, he believes it’s a “great time to be en enterprise investor.”
Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/29/greylock-deepens-enterprise-experience-adds-former-bladelogic-ceo-and-bmc-president-as-venture-partner/

Just-Eat Just Raised Another $64M From Vitruvian, Index, Greylock For Online Food Ordering

The UK may have just entered a double-dip recessionbut that doesn’t seem to have trickled down to how consumers are spending money on take-out food — and the companies that are building businesses around that. The UK-based online food ordering site Just-Eat has picked up a third round of funding totaling $64 million, its biggest yet, to further build out its online food ordering service.
The round was led by private equity firm Vitruvian Partners, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The investment comes only a year after the company raised a venture round of $48 million, and a Series A of $17.4 million in 2009, and brings the total funding in the company up to a whopping $129.4 million in the last three years.
Just-Eat will be using the money to expand into more markets outside of its current footprint of 13 countries in Europe — a footprint that Vitruvian’s managing partner Mike Risman says makes it the “world’s biggest takeaway e-commerce provider.” The FT cites figures from Experian Hitwise that say Just-Eat gets more hits than Domino’s and Pizza Hut.
That expansion will likely be the in form of entirely new operations but also acquisitions, something the company has already been active in doing, the company buying up Alloresto in France in February.
“This new investment will help our continued expansion. Takeaway e-commerce has massive growth potential,” said Klaus Nyengaard, the Copenhagen-based CEO who has been with the company since 2008 (it was originally founded in Denmark in 2000).

If a lot of e-commerce is about sorting out the logistics that makes it happen (for examples look at companies like Amazon, Ebay and KupiVIP — and more recently Uber, which may, longer term, try to use its network for more than just a car service), then Just-Eat is in a strong position for growth. The company says that it already covers 25,000 take-out restaurants in that 13-country footprint, and it sends out 100,000 meals per day.

The company says that it generates more than $750 million in revenue annually at the moment, but its own margins on that are pretty thin and shows why the company needs scale. Last year when it reported $500 million in sales generation, its own revenue bookings were only $10 million. Extrapolating from that, revenues for the $750-million year will be only $15 million unless there are better economies at scale or other efficiencies — and it appears that this is the case: the FT story notes that Just-Eat is projecting an annual run-rate of £60 million ($98 million) for this year. The company takes an 11 percent commission on all orders placed through the site, and says it has a 40 percent pretax profit margin in its most developed markets like the UK and Denmark, and less so in markets where it is still building itself up.

Vitruvian’s venture and private-equity activities focus on middle-market buyouts, growth buyouts and growth capital investments in Europe. The investment it’s making in Just-Eat is coming out of its inaugural fund of €925 million ($1.23 billion), which has also included investments in a variety of businesses in the tech/media/telecoms sectors as well as others. They include Tinopolis, Callcredit, Inspired Gaming, Openbet, Unicom, IMD, College Group, Flexpay and Healthcare at Home.

Source:http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/30/just-eat-just-raised-another-64m-from-vitruvian-index-greylock-for-online-food-ordering/

Microsoft Makes $300M Investment In New Barnes & Noble Subsidiary To Battle With Amazon And Apple In E-books

Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.
It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.
The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or even sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is currently built on a forked version of Google’s Android platform.
The new company, referred to for the moment as Newco, will contain B&N’s digital business, as well as its College division. While Microsoft will take 17.6 percent, B&N will own 82.4 percent of the venture.
This is a key way of getting more content on to the Microsoft platform — specifically e-books content to ensure that its Windows 8 tablets will be able to compete not only against the best-selling iPad but also the Kindle Fire from Amazon, along with the rest of the company’s e-readers. The Kindle Fire has stolen a march among Android tablet makers and part of the compelling offer is not only the low price ($199) but also the fact that it contains so much content, including seamless access to all of Amazon’s e-book offerings.
This is also a progression — a very big one — of the funding etudes that Microsoft has been making to developers to make sure they are making apps for the Windows Phone platform, a way of getting more content on its platforms, which, it can be argued, may have come too late to the market. The first product to come out of the door? A Nook application for Windows 8, the companies say.
And given that education has been one of Apple’s bigger pushes this year, and the obvious and close links between education and e-reading, it’s not too surprising to see that B&N has also put its College division into this subsidiary. Microsoft, too, has been courting the education market — making its biggest-ever cloud-services deal in the education sector. Nevertheless they have a long road ahead of them. In January, Apple noted that there were already 20,000 educational apps for iOS and that there were already 1.5 million devices deployed in schools, numbers that will inevitably have grown in the last 4-5 months with the launch of the new iPad and numerous initiatives to spread the tablet in the educational sector.
And there is a legal twist to the deal, too: the two companies say they have definitely sorted out their patent litigation now: “Moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products,” the two write in the release below. If Microsoft doesn’t use this as an opportunity of possibly persuading B&N to swap over to Windows 8 for a version of the Nook, it will also give it a very interesting inroad into developing more for Android.
As for B&N and the future of these products… this deal looks like it could potentially pave the way for B&N to spin off this business into its own standalone operation, if not into the waiting arms of Microsoft itself — long speculated to be looking at ways of gaining a stronger foothold in the area of mobile devices to better implement its bigger strategy. The idea of a subsidiary was something that B&N had first floated back in January, when it noted that it was weighing up how best to separate its digital business to “maximize shareholder value.”
There are many more questions — such as what this could mean for the company’s broader strategy for growing the market for the Nook (international being a key push that the company has yet to make, apart from some baby steps); and how well, exactly, those products are doing for the company: IDC puts the Nook’s share of the tablet market at just 3.5 percent.
The company is holding a conference call on the deal later today and we’ll update as we learn more.
Full press release below.

New York, NY and Redmond, WA (April 30, 2012) – Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the formation of a strategic partnership in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which will build upon the history of strong innovation in digital reading technologies from both companies. The partnership will accelerate the transition to e-reading, which is revolutionizing the way people consume, create, share and enjoy digital content.
The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.
One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.
The inclusion of Barnes & Noble’s College business is an important component of Newco’s strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble’s industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.
“The formation of Newco and our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments,” said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Microsoft’s investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business.”
“The shift to digital is putting the world’s libraries and newsstands in the palm of every person’s hand, and is the beginning of a journey that will impact how people read, interact with, and enjoy new forms of content,” said Andy Lees, President at Microsoft. “Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We’re at the cusp of a revolution in reading.”
Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products. This paves the way for both companies to collaborate and reach a broader set of customers.
Newco,
On January 5, Barnes & Noble announced that it was exploring the strategic separation of its digital business in order to maximize shareholder value. Barnes & Noble is actively engaged in the formation of Newco, which will include Barnes & Noble’s digital and College businesses. The company intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of Newco may occur. There can be no assurance that the review will result in a strategic separation or the creation of a stand-alone public company, and there is no set timetable for this review. Barnes & Noble does not intend to comment further regarding the review unless and until a decision is made.
Additional information will be contained in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Barnes & Noble.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/30/microsoft-barnes-noble-partner-up-to-do-battle-with-amazon-and-apple-in-e-books/