The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- The Only Reason Companies Delete Emails Is To Destroy Evidence
- YC-Backed SendHub Lets Businesses Text Their Customers, And Teachers Text For Free
- Minority-Focused NewME Accelerator Announces Second Class of Startups
- Should Mark Zuckerberg Think Twice About Establishing A Dynasty?
- Agencies Show Their Age On Mobile
- Big Cuts at Airy Labs, Ex-Employees Blame Management
- Four Mistakes Publishers Make When Bringing Content to Tablets
- Where The Ladies At? Pinterest. 2 Million Daily Facebook Users, 97% Of Fans Are Women
- Moshi Monster Madness (In Which I Get A Snookums Tattoo)
- Is Facebook Finally Going To Do Something Interesting?
- Gillmor Gang 02.10.12 (TCTV)
| The Only Reason Companies Delete Emails Is To Destroy Evidence Posted: 12 Feb 2012 08:14 AM PST  The News Corp. phone-hacking scandal continues to spiral out of control, sweeping up more and more of the companies employees and executives. In the UK, 8 people were arrested, including five News Corp journalists, in the broadening scandal, which may embroil deputy COO James Murdoch—Rupert’s son and heir-apparent. A paper copy of a deleted email found in a crate ties James Murdoch directly to the events under investigation, which involved the routine and illegal hacking of phone voicemails on behalf of a News Corp publication. This email evidence would never have been found if it wasn’t printed out because News Corp, like many corporations, regularly deletes archived emails. It is standard practice, but the technical reasons given for deleting emails are usually not the real reason they are eliminated. The only real reason to destroy old emails is to avoid liability and future lawsuits. Reading the account in the New York Times about this newly discovered email from former News of the World editor Colin Myler to James Murdoch, which dates back to 2008, you get a sense it wasn’t meant to be found.
Companies know that incriminating evidence always exists in emails because emails document the conversations and decision-making that goes on in all organizations. But they need a justification other than “We don’t want to get caught.” So that’s how you get corporate doublespeak like “e-mail stabilization and modernization” programs, with its vague suggestion that there is a technical reason to delete old emails, as if a company’s entire email system might crash under the weight of old emails stored on a server. Let’s just be clear here. By putting in place policies to routinely delete old email archives, companies are protecting themselves from future incrimination. And News Corp isn’t the only company that does this, by any means. It’s a preventative measure. But it only works if they destroy any incriminating emails before they are caught. Once an investigation starts and the prospect of subpoenas arise, destroying emails is no longer a legal option. In this case, that may come back to bite News Corp.
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| YC-Backed SendHub Lets Businesses Text Their Customers, And Teachers Text For Free Posted: 12 Feb 2012 08:00 AM PST  Y Combinator and Start Fund-backed startup SendHub, which offers a simple SMS solution for businesses, is killing it…and it never “officially” launched. Instead, the company soft-launched a couple of months ago with zero fanfare, and already has several hundred customers, 40% of which are active monthly users, sending some 30,000 SMS text messages per month. Although generating revenue through its premium services for businesses, SendHub is also making teachers’ lives easier, by providing them with free tools to communicate with students and parents via SMS. The big draw for SendHub has nothing to do with buzzwords (aren’t you sick of local, social, photo-sharing apps, anyway?), and everything to do with building something people actually need: an affordable, easy-to-use alternative to today’s business-focused messaging platforms. In January, the startup grew its user base by 3x, and so far this month, it’s grown another 45%. Built on top of Twilio’s scalable voice platform, SendHub lets businesses communicate with their customers via text messages sent via the web interface or from any mobile phone. To begin receiving these messages, customers text to join using a keyword the business chooses. When signing up for an account, SendHub users are given a ten-digit number, so the messages they send look as if they’re local, even if they’re not. This could be helpful for larger corporations who want to manage the messaging campaigns for their local outlets, for example, or even for politicians, who want to appear as if they’re doing grassroots campaigning from right down the street. The texts themselves include a link to a mobile-optimized website, where the recipients can rate the message by voting it up or down or blocking the sender entirely. These analytics help the business (or politician, or teacher, or non-profit, etc.) determine which of their SMS efforts are better received than others. In a couple of weeks, the analytics program will be upgraded to also include stats on delivery, click-throughs, blocks, and more. Around the same time, the mobile-optimized website will include social sharing buttons, so a business can spread its message even further through the recipients’ circle of friends. Oh, and the the best part? SendHub is a freemium service. The original idea for the company was to build a communication system for co-founder Garrett Johnson’s nephew’s school in Tampa, Florida. The school is using it now, as are hundreds of other businesses and organizations, including Florida State University’s athletics program, which is the school Johnson attended for his undergrad degree prior to Oxford. There he met co-founder John Fallone, also now an FSU grad. The third co-founder, Ash Rust, met Johnson while at Oxford, and worked as the Director of Ranking at Klout before joining SendHub. For teachers, the free level of the service should always meet their needs, as it provides access to 150 contacts (3 groups of 50) and is capped at 1,000 messages per month. Paid levels providing unlimited messaging are available for $10, $50, and $150 per month, with access to 1,000 contacts, 100,000 contacts, or 250,000 contacts, respectively. Solving a real-world business need, while helping teachers, too – what’s better than that? Explains Johnson, “It’s really tough to build a platform specifically for education, because the question becomes ‘how do you make it sustainable?’” “But the same pain point teachers have, small businesses have, churches have, non-profits have…If we can solve a general pain point, it will benefit teachers, and disproportionally benefit low-income, minority communities for whom access to computers is limited. But they all have cellphones and everyone can get a text message.” SendHub has raised roughly $300,000 from Y Combinator, StartFund, Howard Lindzon and Tom McInerney. The company plans to launch an iPhone app in early March, with other platforms to follow.
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| Minority-Focused NewME Accelerator Announces Second Class of Startups Posted: 11 Feb 2012 07:36 PM PST  NewME Accelerator, the incubator launched last year to support minority entrepreneurs, just announced its latest group of startups. In her blog post about the new class (NewME’s second), founder and CEO Angel Benton also talks about the success rate of the first group of NewME alums — 60 percent of them have raised money, adding up to a little more than $500,000 in total funding. For the current class, Benton says NewME received more than 300 applications. This year’s program will be based in the Hub San Francisco co-working space. Participants in the 12-week program don’t receive funding from NewME, but they get to live and work with a community of entrepreneurs, and they also receive mentorship and access to services from NewME partners. (Last month, the program added Andreessen Horowitz as a partner and sponsor.) In exchange, NewME takes a 4 percent stake in the company. Even though the second session is just about to start, NewME is already accepting applications for the next class, which starts in August. While most of the promotion around NewME has focused on African-American entrepreneurs, the program is also interested in companies with founders and CEOs from other underrepresented minorities, namely those who are women or Latinos. Here are the new companies (the descriptions come from NewME): The Modul.us Butlr Ubi Video AgLocal Helpr Kairos (still in private testing) pictureMENU (still in private testing)
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| Should Mark Zuckerberg Think Twice About Establishing A Dynasty? Posted: 11 Feb 2012 04:52 PM PST  Editor’s note: Charley Moore is a lawyer and the founder of online legal service Rocket Lawyer. Congratulations Facebook! You have made history and changed the world. So, here are some thoughts from one of your biggest fans. Like the rest of the planet, I love Facebook and use it every day. So, there may never be a better time than now, when things are going really well, to add a dose of humility and perspective to the Facebook conversation. Remember the movie Gladiator? Commodus, the bad son, murdered his aging father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, preventing him from passing the empire down to his adopted good son, Maximus. Thus, instead of carrying on a centuries old tradition of merit-based succession, power passed to an unworthy blood relative and corruption followed. What does this have to do with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg? Well, according to the $5 billion IPO filing, legal documents give him absolute control over the post-IPO company, even beyond the grave, just like a Roman emperor. That kind of power can have unintended consequences. The story of Facebook's spectacularly successful founder serves as a blueprint for others who hope to create corporate dynasties. Still, both he and those who seek to emulate him would be wise to take the counsel of history and establish at least a minimally representative corporate governance structure that includes one or more independent board members. How did governance get to this point? Facebook came of age after Google's founders obtained super majority control at IPO, followed by LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga (and more). In its early days, Sean Parker, a serial entrepreneur (Napster, Plaxo) who played an important early role as a confidante to Mr. Zuckerberg, helped convince him of the importance of founders maintaining control. As such, the Facebook founder has long dominated his board of directors, appointing three out of five seats. Now, Facebook takes the founder-control trend to the extreme. By converting his shares into a class of super-voting stock at IPO, and designating Facebook as a "controlled company," Zuckerberg will not only control 57.1% of the vote, but will also have the legal right to name 100% of the board of directors. He can also designate whomever he chooses as the successor to his corporate authority. The unintended consequence of such absolute control may be the opposite of what Zuckerberg hopes. It isn't a stretch to believe that he genuinely wants control in order to keep the business focused on the long-term social mission he described in his letter to shareholders, rather than the short-term gains often demanded by financial managers. What may happen instead is that the post-IPO business finds itself subject to whimsical decision-making and vulnerable to the inevitable securities lawsuits. When founder-controlled companies sell shares to the public, they should plan for the possibility of the emperor at some point "having no clothes." Eventually, even the best founders can lose their mojo, or appoint a successor who proves unequal to the task. This is when having independent views and fiduciaries can help shield the business from liability and guide it to a better place, even without legal control. Of course, founder-controlled companies are often extraordinarily successful. In the United States, the founding family is an influential investor in more than one-third of the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies. Founding family owned companies tend to do well because of the long-term influence, interest, and investment of owners who are motivated by mission, not just by financial gain. For example, Ford Motor Company has managed to sustain a profitable founding family business since Henry Ford incorporated it in 1903. Since 1956, the Ford family has wielded at least 40% of the company's voting rights by setting up a system to ensure that only family members can own Class B stock. The family's voting power includes the exclusive right to approve a merger, sale, or liquidation of the company. In their desire to control but not stifle the business, the Fords enlisted qualified advisers, including original counsel Clifford Longley, investor Goldman Sachs, and independent directors. And it worked; Ford has survived multiple recessions, including the most recent economic downturn. Ford was the only American carmaker that didn't need a government bailout. Mr. Zuckerberg has so far made a different choice about the governance of Facebook. While appointing Sheryl Sandberg as a strong #2 has been brilliant, what will he do when she moves on? He and his heirs can exercise more corporate power post-IPO than when it was private. Opting to function as a "controlled company," Facebook will be exempt from the customary stock exchange corporate governance rules that apply to the vast majority of public companies. From the Facebook prospectus (S-1):
Instead of a nominating committee for directors, all directors will be selected, removed and replaced by Mr. Zuckerberg, who is also imbued with the power to unilaterally choose a successor.
While Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt at Google also maintain control, with So, if you are a company founder, and you single-mindedly want to make your business a founder-controlled dynasty, Facebook is your blueprint. If, on the other hand, your goals include protecting the durability of the company you founded, even when you and your heirs may no longer project the visionary qualities that you do today, you should: 1) empower your company's non-founder shareholders to elect at least 1 independent director; and 2) commit to a succession plan that is not hereditary by default. Eva Arevuo also contributed to this article.
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| Agencies Show Their Age On Mobile Posted: 11 Feb 2012 03:26 PM PST  Editor’s note: David Hewitt is VP, global mobile practice lead at digital agency SapientNitro. Mobile strategy is about more than just phones. Mobile platforms and engagement strategies in our digitally enabled world need to support all marketing initiatives, both offline and online, and be truly multi-channel. Mobile maturity is one area, however, where brands and agencies are playing catch-up with consumer demand. A siloed approach to mobile has been commonplace over the past couple of years. Many agencies have supplemented traditional creative with mobile ads that lack a larger strategy, subbing out app development that offers no real value and failing to thoughtfully consider the best platforms and devices for mobile campaigns. For example, Shazam recently made a splash by enabling second screen synchronization with the Super Bowl broadcast, and the company says it saw record engagement during the game. Unfortunately, problems arose because not all hub pages were optimized and users had to complete Bud Light's age verification screen on a screen that was not touch-friendly. Considering the large number of iPhones participating, it should have also linked straight to the promoted song on iTunes, instead of emailing it a day later. It's likely that there was a lot of user drop-off, especially given the three-step process. Missed opportunities like this will become less common over the next year as brands and agencies fight to stay ahead of the curve, proving 2012 will be a game-changer for mobile. This shift to a more optimized mobile experience is not merely because the industry is a year older, but because enough agency and brand leadership are seeing a critical mass of mobile and multi-channel initiatives bear fruit. Marketers are realizing the growing risk of doing nothing. This year, the market demands a more entrepreneurial mindset. Mobile is not just the hot topic of the moment — it's the future. Embracing this reality requires a shift in thinking and many brands still do not have a mobile or encompassing digital strategy in place. Moreover, many agencies are still growing a set of basic mobile capabilities. Creating both smartphone and tablet-optimized experiences, along with the increasing need to pick platforms and develop apps, is becoming the norm. Last but not least, 2012 is begging for brands to truly integrate mobile with commerce and CRM programs, and create new integrated experiences for in-store, at home and on-the-go. While 2012 brings a new confidence to place bigger investment bets in mobile, here are some tips and trends to consider:
Various agencies and brands sit in very different places across the mobile and multi-channel maturity curve. In 2012, those that don’t figure out mobile will really start to show their declining relevancy to today’s consumer.
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| Big Cuts at Airy Labs, Ex-Employees Blame Management Posted: 11 Feb 2012 02:24 PM PST  Airy Labs, an educational gaming startup backed by Google Ventures and others, has eliminated the vast majority of its 20-person staff, leaving only a skeleton crew to keep the company going. That’s what I’ve been told by former employees, and when you bring up the “team” page of the Airy Labs website, you now get a 404 error message. (There’s still a link from the jobs page.) When I contacted founder and CEO Andrew Hsu, he acknowledged that there have been cuts, saying, “We’re a young company and we tried some early experiments… some worked and some didn’t, so now we’re focusing a smaller team on the areas that worked.” Airy Labs develops learning games for smartphones. Like many startups, the company began with lots of promise, particularly in Hsu himself. He’s someone for whom the word “prodigy” seems inadequate — according to the company biography, at the age of 16 he graduated from the University of Washington with three bachelor of science degrees, and at 19 he was a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in neuroscience at Stanford. That’s when he left to start Airy. Hsu received a Thiel Fellowship, which is the “20 Under 20″ program started by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel to encourage students to drop out (or at least take a break) from college and create companies instead. For a while, Hsu looked like the program’s biggest success story, since he was the first to raise venture funding, specifically from Google, Foundation Capital, and Playdom founder Rick Thompson. (I notified the Thiel Fellowship about this post and asked if they wanted to comment, but I did not receive a response.) The former employees I spoke to offered their version of what went wrong — an account that may, of course, be colored by their current negativity towards the company. Despite his credentials, they place the blame for Airy Labs’ problems squarely on Hsu and his family. For one thing, they say Andrew Hsu wasn’t the only one running the company. Instead, they claim that his father David Hsu was the real boss (he was described to the team as the chief strategist and later as the COO). His mother was also involved in management, and his younger brother was often around too. The family usually holed up in one office that was inaccessible to employees. There was even an email address for reaching all three adults: x@airylabs.com. The former employees say it was surprising to find a traditional family-run business beneath the veneer of a venture-backed startup, especially since the family relationship was never explicitly disclosed — they had to piece it together from inference, based on hints like Andrew Hsu’s YouTube videos. They have other complaints. 9am to 6pm were declared “library” hours in the office, when employees were supposed to communicate via instant messaging and emails rather than talking out loud. A promised break period wasn’t consistently honored. At the end of every day, some team members were required to have individual debriefings with either David or Andrew Hsu, which would keep people in the office until 9 or 10pm or later. They were regularly expected to work six- or seven-day weeks. Individually, these practices might not seem entirely unreasonable at a hard-driving startup, but the former employees say that collectively, this made for a micromanaged, overworked staff. Late last year, the team rebelled, demanding more reasonable hours, and the Hsus gave in. However, some team members were told that the new, laxer rules did not apply to them. They also describe Airy as a paranoid, secretive environment. They say the Hsus refused to commit anything to writing, and would become angry if anyone complained via email (rather than verbally). Employees were warned against socializing or discussing their compensation with other members of the team. At the same time, office life was obsessively documented in photos, a practice that extended to people interviewing for jobs. And things got worse after a negative review of the company was posted on Glassdoor — at that point, lectures about loyalty became common, and employees were told not to speak to anyone who had left the company. Speaking of Glassdoor, the anonymous employee reviews on the site support the broad strokes of the account I heard. One review is positive, the other five all focus on a single theme — bad management. One reviewer said the management team “reminded me of my parents.” In some ways, that was positive, as there were “random bouts of affection.” But in many ways, it was not:
Worst of all from a business perspective, the former employees say there was no clear vision, no sense of how the company was going to achieve its goal (described on the site as “creating the next generation of social learning games for kids”). For one thing, Airy didn’t have a full-time game designer for several months last fall. Although the company released seven games in relatively quick succession during that period (some of them, like Mini Catch, achieved high rankings in the Apple App Store), productivity since then has slowed as everyone devoted their energy to a big product, one that has yet to launch and whose goals were constantly shifting. The former employees say these shifts weren’t brought on by brilliant new ideas, but instead by Andrew Hsu’s desire to chase the latest trends. While this was going on, they say Hsu promised more funding was coming, in the form of a Series A. (At this point, Airy Labs had raised $1.5 million.) He was hiring aggressively, growing the company to 20 people and saying that it would soon be 40. However, that Series A still hasn’t materialized, and the company wasn’t earning much revenue, having released the games for free and only introducing in-app purchases several months later. Eventually, employees were told that investors had become concerned about the business, so the team would have to take a pay cut. Some employees quit then, and soon after, others were laid off or told to take an unpaid vacation. Now, the former employees say the only people left are an engineer, two artists, an administrator/executive assistant, and Andrew Hsu. Desks in the big Palo Alto office are being rented out to other companies. (Hsu also sent out messages to Stanford email lists looking for tenants.) I provided Hsu with a summary of this article, and he responded with the following statement:
Looking back on the experience, the former employees say they are most disappointed to have given so much time and energy to the Airy Labs vision, when they’re now convinced the executives had no idea how to make that vision a reality, and no desire to recruit more experienced advisors. “Andrew said he was fully committed to that vision,” one says. “I hope that’s true. I hope they succeed. I hope they build back up.”
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| Four Mistakes Publishers Make When Bringing Content to Tablets Posted: 11 Feb 2012 01:00 PM PST  Editor’s note: Mitch Lazar is the CEO of news reader startup Taptu. He was the founder or co-founder of CNN.com, CNN Mobile, and Cartoon Network Mobile. Many revolutions have been televised, but the publishing revolution has already become digitized, and now, mobilized. There's no doubt that the second half of 2011 was a difficult period for newspaper and magazine publishers. An Audit Bureau of Circulations report revealed that single-copy sales of consumer magazines dropped by nearly 10 percent in a year, while the five magazines with the highest newsstand sales all reported sharp declines as well. Most importantly, the fall in sales has hit revenues, making it more important than ever for publishing businesses to rapidly modernize their trade. As readers move toward tablets and mobile phones, there's no question that these new reading devices will dictate the success and failure of the media industry. Successful publishers will be able to reincarnate their digital content onto these gadgets. So why are so many publishers stumbling in their mobile strategy? From over committing to a multitude of mobile platforms, to underwhelming app experiences, we're seeing a lot of mistakes that should not be repeated: 1. Trying and failing to reinvent the wheel. Many big and small publishers have top-notch tech teams and significant resources, but often fall into the trap of believing that only the teams inside their own building can create the best platforms and experiences. Not true. Partnerships are the prime way big and small media companies can succeed in building their audiences in the new media world. Small startups are creating amazing technology that can help publishers grow their distribution plans. By tapping into these talented, focused teams, the publishing world can quickly distribute content in a compelling and engaging way using tomorrow's trends, not yesterday's opportunities. Don't reinvent the wheel, because by the time you do, a new wheel will already be in motion. 2. Getting left out of the mix. If you think about it, listening to music on the radio or going clubbing exposes you to great new tunes you may not have discovered. Thanks to DJs, and discovery services, we all find new music we love and want to share. This curation and sharing experience has now come to the world of digital publishing. Modern social news aggregators are essentially content DJs that deliver awesome content to consumers through a fun and easy experience, whether that be via flicking, tapping or flipping a device screen. Publishers that are getting this right are experiencing booms in their digital readership solely due to the fact that new discovery tools and networks like Facebook and Twitter turn on new readers to great recommended content. News needs distribution. In the old days, publishers put their newspapers under the door of every hotel room, at the front door of many homes or at the street corner. Today success is determined by how well publishers join and participate in social media and the news revolution. Discovery services like news readers can help. Sadly, some publishers have avoided these discovery tools. They've wanted their content to only live in their controlled spaces, or have channels that include only their sourced and created content. But consumers are demanding more. Through news readers, they are browsing and uncovering new content and sources they never knew existed by taking advantage of search technologies that create serendipity for discovery, sharing and recommendations. News reader users are building streams of curated topics across genres and receiving a plethora of content from editors across publications. Take the Super Bowl, for example. In days gone by, you had to hunt and peck your way through each editorial version of ESPN, CNNSI or Yahoo Sports. Now, you can DJ your own news mix to see what sports editors and the social crowd are saying about every aspect of the Super Bowl, making the user experience engaging, time saving, and far and away supreme to traditional news searches. When users like what they see, they share stories with their friends, families and followers—proving themselves a key ingredient for successful distribution. In the end, news readers and other discovery services drive more people back to media destinations where the cash register rings. 3. Ignoring brand potential. Big branded publishers have an amazing treasure trove of content at their fingertips from many different brands or labels. They create enormous amounts of content every day. In fact, some of the largest media companies have several amazing newspapers or magazines in their stable, but many have not ventured into mixing and mashing content from their various publications into a new and exciting branded experience. In this fast changing digital landscape, the time is ripe to test the waters for launching new aggregated services. The cost is not great and the upside can be very rewarding. It puts a spin on traditional distribution, and focusing on one deep vertical with existing brands lets publishers try new distribution strategies without cannibalizing their existing audiences and revenue. Take Glo from MSN, for example. In collaboration with Hachette Filipacci Media and BermanBraun, they built a top lifestyle destination for women with a brilliant mix of aggregated media from across their stables of content. Using existing content from their print worlds, they created a new avenue for digital audiences to consume their great content, while taking advantage of an opportunity to build a new business at a relatively low cost. 4. Searching in the wrong places. Distribution and discovery of publisher content used to take place primarily in traditional search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing with traditional investments in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that led users seeking one particular query to discover content from another related outlet. Content tagged a certain way shows higher up in the algorithmic search results, prompting users to click on it and publishers to receive the benefit of picking up greater share of audiences when SEO is done right. It's a type of free advertising publishers and media owners have used in their distribution plans. However, news readers like Taptu, Flipboard, Pulse and Zite are demonstrating the modern form of SEO, where users discover and share stories that have the perfect context and relevance to each user. While reading a stream of content, people are exposed to related stories or served up other similar stories from a variety of publishers, leading users to share, tweet or follow links back to large media and publishers. So, for example, if a user searches 'NFL mock draft 2012,' they will instantly find a variety of new sources that have become experts on the topic like Walter Football. Walter who? Yes, Walter Football. Welcome to the new world of mobile search. In speaking with more than 100 digital publishers across the world, the consistent thing we hear is, "We know mobile is critical, but going mobile is easier said than done." Hopefully the publishing industry can learn from what I see every day and take simple, cost-effective steps towards winning in mobile without letting history repeat itself.
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| Where The Ladies At? Pinterest. 2 Million Daily Facebook Users, 97% Of Fans Are Women Posted: 11 Feb 2012 12:25 PM PST  OMG. Pinterest now has over 10.4 million registered users, 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users, and 2 million daily Facebook users, according to Inside Network’s AppData tracking service. With gorgeous photography, and links to shopping sites, Pinterest is becoming an obsession for flocks of women. And they’re not afraid to show it, I mean, Like it. AppData and Facebook’s advertising tool show that over 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. The stunningly feminine fan base could be a telling proxy for Pinterest’s actual user base, which totals over 10.4 million considering that’s how many users follow the official “Pinterest” account. Even though it was co-founded by three men, the site’s not shy about courting women. It’s About page describes that “People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.” Sure, dudes can do all those things too, but they’re probably not addicted to pinning tuxedos and power tools like women pin brides dresses and bundt cakes. Pinterest’s easy-to-use Pin It bookmarklet and the joy of curation is keeping ladies and gentlemen engaged. Over 1/5 of its fast-growing Facebook-connected monthly user count use Pinterest each day. At the start of 2012 the daily user count was just 810,000, but now its at 2 million according to AppData. This week comScore said Pinterest hit 10 million U.S. monthly unique visitors faster than any independent site in history. There are so many beautiful things to share, and they don’t deserve to slip into obscurity at the bottom of our Twitter feeds and Facebook profiles. Pinterest gives people the chance to say “I love this, and not just today. This helps define me.” [Image Credit: Married To The Sea]
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| Moshi Monster Madness (In Which I Get A Snookums Tattoo) Posted: 11 Feb 2012 11:29 AM PST  It’s February, which means Toy Fair in New York City. Every year, Mind Candy CEO Michael Acton Smith comes to town to peddle his little monsters. Those would be Moshi Monsters, one of the largest social game sites for kids 6 to 11, with 10 million monthly visitors. It’s huge in the UK, and this year Smith is going to make a major push into the U.S. And it’s not just online. Moshi Monsters are finding their way into all sorts of kids merchandise, including collectible toy figurines (more than 20 million sold in the UK alone last year), plush dolls, games, the No. 1 kids magazine in the UK, mobile apps, and even temporary tattoos. While we were talking about his plans in the video above, Smith put one of the tattoos of the Snookums “moshling” character on my arm. My kids were pretty impressed when I showed it to them. Last year, Smith’s goal was to sell $100 million worth of Moshi Monster merchandise, and he exceeded that goal, selling $105 million worth directly and through licensees. Mind Candy’s revenues was a portion of that, but it is profitable with 100 employees and Smith says revenues “tripled” last year. He is constantly pushing the brand into new areas, including Moshi TV, which is like a YouTube for Kids with a mix of original and curated programming. If you haven’t heard of Moshi Monsters yet, you will. The toys will be in Walmart, JC Penny and pretty much everywhere else this year.
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| Is Facebook Finally Going To Do Something Interesting? Posted: 11 Feb 2012 10:11 AM PST  I can think of few subjects less interesting than Facebook’s forthcoming IPO. There, I said it. I honestly don’t get what the big deal is. So a few thousand people will finally liquidize their locked-up wealth, and the hoi polloi will at last be able to buy Facebook shares. Stop the presses! (It won’t meaningfully affect their ability to buy other companies; they already have $4 billion in cash on hand, and I seriously doubt they have any multibillion dollar acquisitions in mind.) I guess if you measure innovation by keeping financial score, this seems exciting, but if you measure by, you know, actual innovation, this is a total nonevent. However. All the IPO furore has introduced one interesting data point: Mark Zuckerberg’s S-1 letter, which includes the unexpectedly striking–daring, even–paragraphs
Whoa. Now, I’m on record as a pretty harsh critic of Facebook. Not because I think they’re evil, but because everything they do has always seemed mediocre, homogenizing, and painfully, painfully dull. (With the sole exception of Timeline, which is interesting in that it introduces long-term context to a previously transient medium, but not exactly world-changing.) To quote, er, myself:
There’s nothing mediocre about what Zuckerberg wrote above. It’s downright inspirational. He’s talking about his intent to actually change the way the whole world works, using Facebook as a lever. But how, exactly? I mean, full marks for bold words, but there’s still a vast uncrossed chasm between idea and execution, and the road to hell remains paved with good intentions. His letter also includes a bunch of boilerplate crap about creating a “more open culture” through the magic of “people sharing more”, but come on. First, there’s a massive wall of diminishing returns there: as people share more, the value and importance of what we share decreases. First we get used to sharing online at all; then we start sharing what’s important to us; then we wind up dumping our entire Spotify playlist on our friends. Second, that sits more than a little uncomfortably with the fact that the only people to date who actually have changed the world in an important way using Facebook as a lever, the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring, were people who had to keep their identities and locations secret; had they followed Facebook’s “share more!” ethos, they would have failed and been tortured to death. So that’s awkward. No, if Zuckerberg really wants to change the way the world works, he’s going to have to introduce something entirely new. Like what? you inquire. Funny you should ask: I happen to have a couple of ideas. They’re wild speculation, of course — but I think they at least give an idea of the order of magnitude of innovation that’s required here. 1. Online Parliaments This is the most obvious, and the best fit. Right now Facebook is mostly about social groups, ie people you know. But what if they expanded their remit to organizations? And I mean any scale of organization, ranging from your local arts centre to, say, the Republican Party. Sure, they can and do already have Facebook Pages, but what if their members could use Facebook to hold binding votes for their representatives? Conversely, what if those organizations could raise money from their members directly via Facebook (in exchange for a 5% fee, of course) — and then the Facebook-voted representatives could decide what to do with those funds? That would introduce a Facebook aspect like a mega-Kickstarter, which would be significant in and of itself…
…but more importantly, it would introduce Facebook into the political sphere. Aside from the money machine it would become for every political party, an elected representative of, say, twenty million verified Facebook users — “Ladies and gentlemen, the junior senator from Reddit!” — would be a major political figure, regardless of their pedigree or location, if only for the size of their pulpit. It could even be a step towards direct online democracy, a la John Brunner’s prophetic The Shockwave Rider. There would obviously be technical challenges: verifying the electoral registers, a reliable and secure voting system, some protections against fraud, etc. But they seem surmountable. 2. Eyes On The Sky This one’s a little crazier: what if Facebook built a mechanism for protest? I don’t mean the Occupy movement. I mean a means for people to indicate that authority is being abused or corrupted. That petty thugs prevent people from taking pictures from a public walkway, even though they have every right to do so. When innocent people are victimized by police brutality. When bureaucrats in developing nations have to be bribed to do their jobs. Right now there’s usually no recourse for abuse of authority, except for
What if Facebook provided such a recourse? A universal complaints department, if you will, one that uses their extraordinary reach as both searchlight and spotlight. That’s not as awkward a fit as it first sounds. After all, the fight against fraud and corruption is one of transparency — indeed, the world’s primary anti-corruption organization is called Transparency International — and I think we can all agree Facebook is all about transparency. If you go back and read Zuckerberg’s words, you’ll find they actually fit this notion pretty well. What else might Facebook do to truly change the way the world works? Heck, I don’t have even half of the answers. Chime in with your own suggestions in the comments. But what’s clear to me, at least, is that if Mark Zuckerberg actually wants to put his money where his mouth his, he needs to do something new. “More of the same” won’t even come close to cutting it.
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| Posted: 11 Feb 2012 10:00 AM PST  The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — took a leisurely stroll on a late winter Friday afternoon. The subjects: Path and the Address Book, SuperBowl dynamics, and 21st Century Fox, aka the new television/social media hybrid model. It may seem like all stories are self-referential in this time of trending to zero barrier to entry, but as with many realtime transitions, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees until you get enough altitude. With 98 million simulsharing social media out of 119 million in realtime, the uber address book that’s being built will absorb all the big players including Facebook and Twitter. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @borthwick, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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