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Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Latest from TechCrunch

The Latest from TechCrunch

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It’s A Dark Time To Be A Consumer In The Cloud

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Sky symphony by Kevin Dooley

Ecco Pro, a much beloved outliner and personal information management application for Windows was discontinued about 15 years ago. But you can still download it and run it on Windows 7 today thanks to the efforts of a handful of volunteers. Even though the software isn’t open source a few devotees have continued modding it and keeping it current for modern operating systems. They say that no modern application has yet replicated its functionality.

Another piece of software with longevity is Eudora, which as of 2009 was still in use by Steve Wozniak as per an interview with Lifehacker. Wozniak didn’t say which version he’s using, but since he says it’s been discontinued, I assume he’s using Eudora 6.2.4 or earlier, not the newer Thunderbird based Open Source Edition. I’ve heard of people using versions as old as 3. They say they can still do stuff with it they just can’t do with anything else.

If these were web applications, what are the odds people would still be using them today, more than a decade after they were officially discontinued? And are there any new web applications out today that are so good that 15 years from now users will still be clinging to them?

I bring this up because of an editorial Wozniak wrote this week on the dangers of the cloud. It’s sort of an odd piece. I don’t disagree with Wozniak’s take on “the cloud,” here meaning basically the consumer web, but it seems like the trouble he had was actually with a piece of desktop software. If I understand what Wozniak wrote correctly, BusyCal had problems after Wozniak updated to Mountain Lion and deleted one of his clouds, which happened to be stored in the cloud. Had it been a local calendar could it not too have been corrupted by a system update?

But like I said, I think he’s right. These feel like dark times indeed to be a consumer or an individual professional. If you’re an enterprise with big money to spend you can negotiate your service level agreement and your data storage policies. If you’re an individual, you just accept the TOS or STFU.

Doc Searls has been complaining about this for years, but despite there being a few examples of his “vendor relationship management” idea in the wild, it still feels like vaporware to me.

And even if you find a TOS you agree with, there’s no reason a company can’t go changing it on you. I remember Edward Borasky, a frequent commenter here and at places like ReadWriteWeb, writing that consumers should have the right to know what a company’s business model is. That way you know what they’re going to be doing with your data and make an informed decision about whether you’re going to feed that data into a company. Great idea. Unless the company pivots or sells out.

For a while the mantra was “don’t be a free user.” But sometimes people just won’t take your money. I would have paid money to keep Summify alive. And even if they take your money that’s no guarantee. ReadItLater started out as a paid app, but now it’s called Pocket and it’s a free service and who knows how they’re going to monetize it. Same thing happened with RunKeeper a while back. And ask a Sparrow users how “don’t be a free user” feels now.

Hey, at least those Sparrow users can keep using that app for, hopefully, years to come, just like all those Eudora and Ecco Pro users. Most jilted users aren’t so lucky. In some cases a closed down web app gets open sources, like Ether Pad or Google Wave. But what if the app depends on some other third party cloud service that goes away?

That brings me to another great thought piece on the cloud this week: Paul Miller’s “Desktop 2.0 and the future of the networked operating system. Miller wrote:

For too long, desktop operating systems have skated by on an outdated model of the world. You would configure calendar “syncing,” you’d “upload” your documents, you’d “back up” your files — it’s like talking to the internet was a glorified version of Palm HotSync. The internet native experience in your browser offered a radically different vision where you never needed to “sync” new listings on eBay, where you could “share” a document instead of “send” it, and where your calendar was simply your calendar, not some frozen-in-time, frozen-in-place simulacrum of one.

And that, in a round about way, brings us back to Wozniak’s original problem. The good thing is that frameworks like Meteor, Derby, Flatiron and Realtime may put more of our applications brains back on our desktops (or at least laptops), and store more of our data locally so that, at the very least, we have that handy should a web service croak (no guarantees about how they’re using the data on their end though).

Which brings us in yet another round about back to a question we asked earlier: how much software is getting made that we’ll actually want to use 5, 10, 15 years down the line? James Kwak ruffled some feathers this week when he said that most software, even (especially) expensive enterprise software just isn’t that good. And, well, it isn’t. That’s especially bad news when you have to do a lot of syncing between desktop and cloud and mobile because syncing isn’t a trivial problem. So you end up with things happening like your calendar getting zapped during an OS update or all your notes reverting back to some random point a month ago (that happened to me). And you don’t even know who to blame because you’ve got a whole bunch of apps talking to each other all over the place and no one wants to take responsibility for the free apps they’ve published, let alone some other free app.

It’s too early to say yet whether the frameworks I mentioned, or any other new development tools, will make this situation better or just make things worse. For one thing, you’re still not going to be able to stick to an old version of an app if someone makes a big change — one of the big features of Meteor is the ability of app developers to push changes to the client while the user is using the app.

So what else can we do about it then? Wozniak suggests legislation, and some form of consumer data protection laws are probably needed. It’s going to be tough to make sure these laws aren’t fraught with loopholes that big companies (or companies backed by savvy VCs) can exploit at the expense of boot strappers and dabblers, as has been pointed out by Pete Warden, who knows a thing or two about getting promising experiments shut down. But yeah, something’s gotta be done.

But that only solves one part of the problem. The part where crappy software deletes all your e-mail is harder to fix. Like Kwak says, “How can you write a rule saying that companies have to write good software?” It sounds kind of neat, but I don’t think a law that says companies have to open source discontinued software products and services would work out very well either.

So what CAN be done?

Photo by Kevin Dooley / CC

Web 3.0: The Mobile Era

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT

michael douglas phone

Editor’s note: Jay Jamison is a Partner at BlueRun Ventures where he focuses on early stage mobile and consumer opportunities. You can read more of his analysis on startups and Silicon Valley at his blog jayjamison.com and you can follow him on Twitter at @jay_jamison.

The highest flying of internet high-flyers, Facebook and Zynga, were laid low last week in public markets on weaker than expected guidance on their paths forward. What a difference public market scrutiny and forward-looking forecasts can make. Given the size, scope and importance of these two companies to the broader technology ecosystem, it's worth analyzing what these reports might mean for industry trends.

According to Wall Street analysts, Zynga had a "dreadful" Q2 report. Several negatives converged to deliver an egg, reported the New York Times:

"A critical new game, the Ville, was delayed. Another new game, Mafia Wars II, just was not very good, executives conceded. The heavily hyped Draw Something, acquired in March, proved more fad than enduring classic. Some old standbys also lost some appeal."

Zynga's problems, however, could be characterized as broader than just a weak quarter. Financial analyst, Richard Greenfield of BTIG painted Zynga's issues as more far-reaching, saying, "Right now, everything is going wrong for Zynga. In a rapidly changing Internet landscape that is moving to mobile, it's very hard to have confidence these issues are temporary."

Things weren't much better for Facebook, which was reporting its earnings to the public for the first time. Given the symbiotic partnership between Zynga and Facebook, anyone paying attention knew Zynga's weak results spelled trouble for Facebook. And as expected, Wall Street found Facebook's earnings disappointing.

In coverage, three key themes of concern arose out of Facebook's report. First, user growth is slowing. This is undeniably true: the growth of two key user metrics, Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU), is slowing. It's unclear whether this is a useful concern. If the entire Western world is using Facebook, then Facebook probably is not going to showcase much growth in DAU or MAU until it cracks China. The land has been grabbed.

A second growth concern is revenue. Can Facebook convert all its social engagement into monetization? Facebook clearly has more to prove, but it's a strong start. With a topline of $1.2B for Q2, Facebook beat analyst estimates on revenue. Its 32% Q2 revenue growth was equal to its year-over-year growth in DAUs. This revenue growth map to its DAU growth is where concern centers. On the one hand, having revenue growth equal to DAU growth shows that on a per-user basis, Facebook is monetizing effectively. At the same time, if DAU growth continues to slow, as it inevitably will, the question will be how Facebook can continue to grow it's topline faster than DAU growth. The answer is not yet clear. Expect much hand-wringing here around the answer to this question.

These concerns around growth and revenue point to the third and most significant concern around Facebook (and Zynga): MOBILE. While we've known that mobile is the fastest growing technology wave the world has ever seen, it's been a challenge to frame truly how important, impactful, and disruptive the mobile wave is. Last week's reports from Zynga and Facebook make crystal clear the implications of mobile—two leading innovators and upstarts that basically created and drove the social computing wave are facing questions about their future earning streams on the basis of their execution on mobile.

So the broader story of what's happening in technology is this: Mobile is what's happening.  Here's one shorthand framework for the technology waves over the last roughly 20 years.  Web 1.0 was about web connectivity, the giants of that epoch catalyzed by Netscape were companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Google. Web 2.0 was social, with Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Twitter, and newcomer Quora as the foundational creators of the web's 'social layer.'  The power and impact of the social layer is difficult to overstate—existing industries and corporate giants (to say nothing of several repressive governmental regimes) have faced huge disruption on the basis of these companies.

Now we're entering Web 3.0, which is mobile, and we are in the thick of it.  The Mobile Web 3.0 has elements that build upon prior eras, but it also has several distinct and different elements from what's come before.  Some of these distinct elements of the Mobile Web 3.0 era include:

  • real-time
  • ubiquitous (always connected, always with you)
  • location aware
  • sensors
  • tailored, smaller screen
  • high quality camera and audio

These elements have two key implications for today's leaders and tomorrow's disrupters.

Let's Get Small: Designing for Mobile First.The tailored, smaller screens of the Mobile Web offer new entrants the opportunity to deliver value and experience that differentiates from the existing leaders. Most leading tech companies today, with the exception of Instagram, were created with a PC web-first approach. Designing and building for the PC-centric web services packed increasing amounts of information onto ever growing screen sizes. Take a look at Facebook on your computer's browser—it's like a Bloomberg terminal full of fun—birthdates, events, status updates, advertisements, chatting. It's a cornucopia of information laid out all around the screen.

For any company whose heritage is designing for the PC web, mobile is a big challenge in getting small. Compress a PC-web experience down onto a smartphone screen doesn't work all that well. You may get the users—Facebook certainly has—but it is easy to overwhelm a user with an experience that packs in too much information into too small a screen size.

The challenge of mobile offers new entrants focused on a mobile-first strategy an opportunity to craft and tailor a user experience that is easier to use and enjoy on mobile. Instagram is the poster child example with its mobile-only, photo-centric social service. Rather than pack more information onto a mobile screen, for Instagram a picture was worth a thousand words (and a billion dollars). Instagram's mobile-first, photo-sharing service created an alternative social network, and has since grown to over 80M users and its billion dollar acquisition by Facebook. Other mobile-first social services are following—Foursquare, Path, Foodspotting, Banjo, Pulse, and others—and each has an opportunity, through an approach that focuses on getting small to build a new audience and brand that stand out from the PC-web-based incumbents.

Getting Real: Mobile Will Drive MoreReal-World Commerce

Whether they're a newer mobile-centric startup like a Path or an existing giant like Facebook, the key will be monetizing n a mobile world. Monetizing in mobile will likely evolve in new directions relative to what we've seen in the PC-web. Specifically: monetizing in Mobile is about getting even more real and concrete in the value delivered to customers.

Here's why. In Web 1.0, Google achieved supernova momentum when it introduced its Cost-Per-Click ad model. With a dominatingly high quality search engine for users, Google gained share on search, and in effect knew what people were interested in. This was a break-through for advertisers in terms of measurability. Advertisers could escape the Mad Men world of spending on TV, print, OOH, and banner ads with their fuzzy efficacy and measurability. With Google, advertisers now could place ads in front of people searching on relevant terms. A huge step in terms of measurability, Google's model had the added benefit of only charging when a user clicked on a specific ad. All combined to deliver a vastly more measurable and as such valuable approach to spending ad dollars.

Web 2.0 ushered in the social wave. Facebook now is showing ads of stuff we might like based on the interests we've indicated or based on referrals from friends. This embraces and extends much of the Google model, but provides potentially even more. Facebook knows what we like day to day (Graf Ice Skates, Breaking Bad, Crossfit for me), and what our friends like. Add to this the tremendously detailed demographic data that its users have willingly provided, and the opportunities for advertisers are pretty profound. While Facebook will continue to optimize its appraoch to ads, there should be little question that its current core business of ads is going to continue to grow.

With Mobile Web 3.0, the user experience opens the door for another level of innovation in advertising and promotion. Now technology services have the ability to leverage not just the social graph data from Facebook, but even more real-time / real-world information. Your current location, weather, traffic, local merchants other friends nearby, how often you've been to this specific store or location are available (or will be soon). And this in turn provides a whole new level of commerce opportunities for potential advertisers. Mobile brings advertisers and users closer to being able to close a transaction. It's real-world commerce. Which leads to the question: Why pay for a click when you can get an actual customer? That's the promise of mobile for advertisers, brands and merchants. The opportunity is huge: both in pure dollar size opportunity and for disruption. The internet advertising models of selling clicks to advertisers will need to evolve.

A few companies to watch in this new world are Waze, ShopKick and Foodspotting, to name just a few. Waze, the social mapping and GPS service, provides free turn-by-turn directions with real-time traffic information and routing to over 20m users. With users depending on Waze to help them find the fastest and least congested routes, Waze now shows offers for the cheapest gas prices along the way. Real value for users translates to real commerce for merchants.

ShopKick is a mobile app that gamifies retail shopping. Users who open ShopKick gain rewards for different tasks or quests they complete on ShopKick. What ShopKick is starting to show retailers is that ShopKick tend to spend more money when they're in store, because of the interaction and engagement the ShopKick app can drive while the user is at the point of purchase. Again, real value for users leads to real commerce for merchants.

Open Foodspotting, a visual guide to what's interesting to eat near you, and the app will locate where you are and show you pictures of the best food at restaurants nearby. Over 2m dishes have been submitted to Foodspotting at over half a million restaurants in the US alone. Users can express that they love certain restaurants and dishes. As it has grown its community, Foodspotting can now approach restaurants with promotional offerings for people who are nearby right now, who are fans of their type of food. Real value for users, real commerce for merchants.

So Mobile Web 3.0 is super exciting. But a word of caution: delivering value and driving monetization in the Mobile Web 3.0 era is hard. The answer will not be for web-first properties to scrunch their ad platforms onto mobile. Monetization via mobile advertising will require offerings that do more to close the loop of commerce. Advertisers increasingly will ask of mobile: why buy a click when what I want is a paying customer or user? The services with the best offers here will be big winners in this Mobile Web 3.0.

In Defense Of The High-Frequency Hackers

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 06:00 AM PDT

shanghai-maglev

It’s a potential “doomsday machine.” It’s “quite literally out of control.” Hedge fund managers and Nobel winners say it should be banned. Others insist it should at least be regulated. Its practitioners are “parasites.” Mark Cuban says they are “the ultimate hackers,” who “scared the hell out of me.”

Last week they wiped out $440 million of Knight Capital’s capital. Earlier this year they messed up Facebook’s IPO. A couple of years ago they caused the Dow’s 1,000-point flash crash. And everyone’s horrified by that GIF making the rounds. Yes, it’s the bête noire to end all bête noires; high-frequency trading.

The only problem here is that I don’t really see the problem.

Oh, I’m not saying high-frequency hackers are saints. And the claims that they improve market liquidity don’t seem to hold water. But:

as long as small investors only trade in or out of each position only once a or just a few times a year, [losses due to HFT] are often less than the losses they may have incurred from higher trading commissions as little as 10 years ago.

An apparently damning ZeroHedge interview with a high-frequency trader is defanged at the end by the very same point:

You can mitigate this risk by being patient with your orders. If you enter a limit order and it isn't hit in the first hour, don't impatiently move it. Stand your ground. That way, you can dictate the price you take, even in the midst of all the HFT noise.

So who are high-frequency hackers hurting, exactly? Not Warren Buffett-style buy-and-hold investors:

Most of the vocal critics of HFT are short-term day trading types – why? Because computers are better at arbitraging away the small price differentials those guys live off of. [HFT] does not serve a social benefit, but the people it is taking money from also don’t really serve a social benefit.

argues one MetaFilter contributor, convincingly. And that Knight Capital blowout? Apparently that’s just what you get when you accidentally release your test code into the New York Stock Exchange. Live by the sword, die by the sword:

Still, you have to admire the HFT hackers’ sheer chops. “You always hear about Google programmers being the best in the industry, but I’ve been to a couple Google interviews and turned them down both times because the engineering quality just isn’t there,” claims one HFT programmer. There are even (admittedly somewhat crazed) claims that HFT trading will have spinoff benefits such as fleets of transatlantic drones and neutrino-powered communications. Even if not, though, it’s hard to see how high-frequency traders are anything but paragons of virtue compared to the bankers who were busy packaging collateralized debt obligations back in 2007.

At the end of the day, I subscribe to the quaint notion that companies actually have intrinsic value independent of Wall Street’s daily delusions, and if the latter grows increasingly disjoint from reality, then at fundament that is its problem, not everyone’s. The financial industry seems very fond of the notion that the civilization as we know it would collapse into anarchy without it continuing to mint huge profits from arcane financial convolutions, but I can’t shake the sense that–in the long run–another humbling financial catastrophe might actually be good for us all, since we don’t seem to have learned much of anything from the last one. Even if their critics are right, those hackers might inadvertently being doing us all a huge favor.

Image: Shanghai maglev train speedometer, by yours truly

Business Lessons From Olympic Innovators

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 10:00 PM PDT

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Editor’s note: John Greathouse is a general partner at Rincon Venture Partners and has held a number of senior executive positions with successful startups during the past fifteen years, including Computer Motion, Citrix Online and CallWave which collectively created in excess of $350M in shareholder value. You can follow him @johngreathouse. You can also check his blog for emerging entrepreneurs here.

Successful Olympic athletes share a number of common qualities with entrepreneurs; including boundless energy, uncompromising tenacity and a willingness to innovate. Such innovations include new training routines, inventive diets and novel, gameplay tactics. Entrepreneurs are well served to pay particular attention to two of the most innovative Olympic athletes: Dick Fosbury and David Berkoff, the former of which I discuss in the following 2-minute video.

Not All Flops Are Failures

Dick Fosbury began experimenting with unconventional methods of high jumping as a high school sophomore. Rejecting the straddling approach, which had been the standard for the prior forty years, Dick tweaked the old-fashioned scissor kick, eventually morphing it into a new and unique approach. His controversial technique was eventually dubbed the "Fosbury Flop."

The track and field community initially scorned Mr. Fosbury's approach, labeling it "unsafe" and "too unorthodox" for the average athlete to master. However, after Fosbury set an Olympic record at the 1968 Mexico City games, jumping 7 feet 4.25 inches, track athletes the world over began to co-opt his approach.

The adoption of the Fosbury Flop was rapid. The last high jumper to set a world record using the straddling approach was Vladimir Yashchenko in 1977. As shown in the chart below The Fosbury Flop had become the international standard by the 1980 Olympics.

Inventive Innovations

Inventors generally rely on new solutions, while innovators prefer modifying existing solutions. However, at most startups, competitive advantages are derived from a combination of invention and innovation, as described more fully in Inventor Or Innovator – Which Are You?

Harvard Professor Michael Porter notes in, "What Is Strategy?", that entrepreneurs should strive to create a sustainable competitive advantage by "…performing different activities from rivals' or performing similar activities in different ways" (italics from original text). This is in contrast to the approach taken by most big companies, which often focuses on outperforming the same activities conducted by their rivals. Such innovations represent an opportunity to create a sustainable advantage, at least in the near-term, by changing the rules of the game and executing a pre-existing activity in a new way.

Startups often out-maneuver their larger rivals by changing thekey parameters upon which competition has historically been based. Rather than trying to do the same things better than their competitors, savvy entrepreneurs identify new ways to create and deliver value to their customers, which often result in sustainable competitive advantages.

The Berkoff Blastoff

Fosbury is not alone in his role as an innovative Olympian. Although less renowned than Mr. Fosbury, David Berkoff revolutionized the world of swimming by refining a technique whose origins date back to the 1920s – the dolphin kick.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Berkoff began consistently winning races by dolphin-kicking underwater at the start of each race and after each flip turn, for as much as 35 meters at a time. He quickly went from being a mediocre collegiate swimmer to a world-class champion, winning four Olympic medals in 1988. Not surprisingly, given the media's love of alliteration, his technique was termed the "Berkoff Blastoff."

Looking back on his swimming legacy, Mr. Berkoff confessed, "I probably wouldn’t have made the Olympic team [without the Blastoff]. I probably would have been a good backstroker but not a great one. It was something that really kind of changed the way backstroke was swum."

Berkoff's initial impact was limited to his specialty, the backstroke. However, other competitors soon began utilizing his technique, which caused the International Amateur Swimming Federation to institute a rule precluding underwater swimming beyond 10-meters from the pool walls (later relaxed to 15-meters). The official reason given for this rule change was, "the safety of the athletes."

However, most fans of competitive swimming agree that the real reason for the ruling was the officials' concern that extensive use of the dolphin kick would migrate from backstroke races to breast and butterfly events. Thus, an otherwise non-competitive swimmer could conceivably defeat world-class champions by dolphin kicking the majority of the pool's length. They also feared that competitive swimming would largely become an underwater affair, which would diminish the sport's appeal to mainstream, television audiences.

The controversy surrounding Berkoff’s approach has not abated. Earlier this week, South African swimmer Cameron van der Burgh bragged about using the stroke to win a gold medal. Cameron rationalized his illicit use of the kick to the Sydney Morning Herald, stating, "Everybody does it—well, if not everybody, 99 percent of them. If you're not doing it, you are falling behind and giving yourself a disadvantage."

Immersion Leads To Innovation

An entrepreneur's ability to devise innovations increases exponentially once they enter the market and are forced to fight for their venture's survival. Both Fosbury and Berkoff devised their innovations while immersed in their sport. They did not study the art of jumping or swimming in an attempt to create ideal methodologies. Rather, they activity experimented, with a singular focus on creating new techniques within their mature sports.

According to Mr. Fosbury, “It was not by design at all. It was just simply intuition. It was not based on science or analysis or thought or design. It was all by instinct. It happened one day at a competition. My mind was driving my body to work out the best way to get over the bar.”

As Mr. Berkoff later noted, “It seemed pretty obvious to me that kicking underwater seemed to be a lot faster than swimming on the surface.” It may have seemed obvious in retrospect, but it is worthwhile to note that Mr. Berkoff leveraged the undulating dolphin kick, despite the fact that it had been previously attempted and subsequently abandoned by competitive swimmers nearly 90-years earlier.

Four and two decades later, respectively, the Fosbury Flop and the Berkoff Blastoff are universally accepted as standard methodologies. However, standards never last forever. Even as you read this, there are innovative athletes and entrepreneurs who are devising competitive advantages that will change the rules of the game.

As Marissa Mayer Annoys Investors By Keeping $4.2B In Dividends, YHOO Is Down 5.4%

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 06:30 PM PDT

Yahoo stock after Alibaba dividend announcement

Less than a month after taking over Yahoo, Marissa Mayer is already sending strong signals of leadership to investors. Yet, the announcement of a new financial strategy led to a 5.37 percent downturn of YHOO today as the company played down dividend expectations.

Yahoo filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the strategy review “may lead to a re-evaluation of, or changes to, our current plans.”

In particular, following the announcement in May that Yahoo would sell half of its 40 percent stake in the Chinese company Alibaba for $7.1 billion, investors believed that the after-tax cash proceeds — $4.2 billion — would go back to investors in the form of dividends.

Shareholders rejoiced, but with another CEO came another plan. Mayer has just scrapped the plan of distributing dividends in order to “enhance long-term shareholder value” as she wrote in the SEC filing. According to Reuters, the board of directors still backs Mayer’s long-term plans.

In addition to the new dividend plan, the French news agency AFP reported that the business review could lead to “revaluating or rethinking our current plans, including our company reorganization and our share buyback program”.

Once again, Mayer is borrowing some ideas from Google, her previous company. Google is known for not issuing dividends to its shareholders. By doing that, she gives the impression that she is in charge of Yahoo and ready to take bold decisions. But investors seem to value short-term returns over a long-term vision.

Now, we are left wondering what Yahoo will do with this cash on hand. It could acquire some companies, invest it or keep it for a while.

InsideSales.com Raises $4 Million For Big Data Analytics Sales Force Automation Technology

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 05:33 PM PDT

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InsideSales.com has raised $4 million from Hummer Winblad in a Series A Round that the
company will use to grow its big data analytics sales force automation (SFO) technology. Joining in the round were Josh James, co-founder and former CEO of Omniture.

Mark Gorenberg, managing director, Hummer Winblad, said before the funding, the company was profitable and had not taken any investment. He said the company reminds him of Omniture, which the firm funded under similar circumstances. Omniture was also profitable when it accepted its investment. Omniture was acquired for $1.8 billion in 2009 by Adobe Systems.

InsideSales serves small and medium sized companies. It uses predictive analytics to help serve inside sales professionals. Its algorithms are designed to tell the sales professional who to contact, when to contact and how to tailor the message for the sales target.

The company has increased its employees from 65 to 140 people. In the past several months the company has increased from 600 to 900 customers. It has recently started expanding into the enterprise market by adding customers such as Dell and ADP.

InsideSales is one of a growing number of startups to come out of Utah. The company is based in Provo, also where Qualtrics, the online marketing intelligence company is located. Qualtrics raised $70 million in capital earlier this year from Accel Partners and Seqouia Capital. Omniture was originally from Orem, Utah.

Competitors to InsideSales include Leads360 and Five9.

DMD Panorama Opens API To Power Panoramic Photos In Any App

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:07 PM PDT

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It’s a strange thing to hear from the co-founder and CEO of a photo startup, but DMD Panorama‘s Elie-Gregoire Khoury tells me that panoramic photos will become “a commodity at the end of the day.” That doesn’t mean it’s time to get out of the photo business — instead, Khoury wants to see panoramas become a standard feature in a wide range of websites and apps, the way that regular photos are now.

And if Khoury has his way, that will all happen through DMD’s new API.

Since launching in June 2011 on the iPhone, DMD Panorama has been downloaded 4.5 million times, Khoury says. His aim was to build the fastest, easiest way to take panoramic photos, and he may have succeeded — this Wall Street Journal article, for example, describes the app as “the easiest-to-use panoramic picture app on the iPhone.”

I was definitely impressed when I tried the app out for myself. To take a panoramic picture, you just activate the camera and move the phone sideways, bringing together the yin and yang signs on your screen. The process is only slightly more complicated and time-consuming than taking a normal photo.

DMD Panorama was built by a five-person team in Lebanon. Khoury says the country’s infrastructure presented a few challenges — like only six hours of electricity per day and a 2 gigabyte monthly download cap on the office Internet connection — but the company succeeded in making hit app, and it raised angel funding from investors including early Googler Georges Harik and the Berytech Fund.

Now Khoury is hoping to enlist app developers to use DMD’s free API. Ultimately, Khoury wants DMD to power the photo-taking experience in any app where panoramic photos might be useful — for example, Khoury suggests that DMD could bring panoramic photos into a postcard app, or it could help people take panoramic pictures to show off their homes in rental apps like Airbnb.

Users will need to have DMD Panorama installed in order to take advantage of the integration, but once they do, the goal is to create a seamless experience between DMD and integrated apps. So when using another app, users could hit a “panorama” button (or whatever) at the appropriate moment, which would either open DMD Panorama or prompt them to install it. They take the photo in DMD, then they’re returned to the original app.

Khoury says he’s testing the API out with a few partners before opening it up more broadly, so interested developers should email api (at) DerManDar (dot) com.

The Friday WTF Awards – Oracle Not The Only One Who Deserves Calling Out

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 04:01 PM PDT

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I need to lighten things up a bit with all this Oracle brouhaha.

Oracle acquired Xsigo recently. I wrote about the acquisition and how Oracle will lose as IT gets virtualized. Oracle’s Bob Evans came back with his own special brand of attack. Yesterday I responded with my post: Open? Yeah, Sure. Sorry Oracle, You're Still Full Of It.

Good times!

Last night, Michael Krigsman said in the comments to my post something I take to heart. Here’s what he said:

These kind of backs and forths are a bit silly, but of course there are multiple perspectives here. Still, I like the human drama because that’s what makes enterprise software interesting and accessible to a broader audience. For many people, this stuff is highly arcane, so the human dimension is beneficial even if the substance is a bit… well, like catcalling.

Despite the differences in position, I urge the parties to remain friendly and not resort to personal attacks and innuendo of any kind.

Right on, Mike!

But oh my word, we need some more of this excitement in the enterprise world. And so for that, I thank Bob for busting things out a bit. He said I made baseless claims about the Oracle cloud. I called him the king’s blogger. But Oracle is not the only one doing things that I question. Yes, they’re the worst of the crowd but not the only ones who do things that have me thinking WTF?

The big enterprise guys need more accountability. It is my job to call things out. So, with that in mind, here we go –  The Friday WTF Awards:

  1. SAP – can you please make HANA something the makers of the world can use? You’re a contender to be one of the enterprise giants that leap frogs over the rest. Let’s see some something beautiful that any maker can create with all that data.
  2. OpenStack — let’s be real. You’re an industry coalition. You have lots of developers and they make lots of contributions. They need a bigger voice. Transparency is an issue. We need more light into the workings of the organization.
  3. Stop the madness, IBM. Your PureSystems technology is not a platform as a service. Focus on the real issues your tech solves. Cloudwashing doesn’t look good.
  4. Citrix — where is Cloudstack? Hello? Anyone home?
  5. Amazon Web Services — when will you start talking with the community about your APIs? You could release them under Creative Commons. That would allow for standardization. You blessed Eucalyptus because it is only enterprise focussed but not CloudStack. How come? Is it because they also support service providers who could be AWS competitors?
  6. VMware — lots of rhetoric about the Amazon cloud. No more FUD, please.
  7. EMC — building out a data center with your big storage machines is not cloud. Call it hybrid, label it private – all that is fine. But in the end — you’re selling your customers new storage systems. They’re not elastic. They’re not multi-tenant. It’s just shiny new hardware for the data center.
  8. Microsoft  and the curious case of Office 365. Why not open more APIs?
  9. CA — their FUD about the cloud is deafening.
  10. Infosys – Charges of visa abuse? What’s up with that?
  11. In the spirit of Spinal Tap, this list goes to 11. Cloud Analysts: we need more analysis, not marketing. Let’s see it.

Have a good weekend, folks.

(Image courtesy of WTF with Marc Maron)

BranchOut CEO Rick Marini On Building A Company Atop Facebook’s ‘Shifting Sands’ [TCTV]

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 03:46 PM PDT

Screen shot 2012-08-10 at 3.42.52 PM


BranchOut is known as one of the bigger success stories for startups building on top of Facebook. The company, which makes a professional social network that runs on Facebook, has raised nearly $50 million in venture capital and attracted 30 million users since it was founded back in July 2010. So it was great to have the chance to pull aside BranchOut CEO Rick Marini at the Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp TechCrunch hosted last Friday to hear about the “dos and don’ts” he’s learned along the way.

Watch the video above to see our full interview, and below I’ve excerpted a couple of his insights:

Growth Is Sexy, But Product Is What Counts

One of the major things Marini said he’s learned in building BranchOut is that while the kind of blockbuster growth that Facebook can enable is tempting to constantly position your app to attract new users, it’s important to make sure that your actual product is compelling enough to foster loyalty and a returning audience.

“I think often people think there’s a silver bullet to getting traffic and getting viral. I think what we’ve learned is that there are times when you can get some spike of virality, but if you really want that long-term major user growth its got to start with a good product. So, something that we have at BranchOut [which has grown] from nothing to 30 million users in less than two years, which is great, but then we realized OK, now it’s time not only to get the user acquisition but we’ve got to really enhance the product and get users back every day. Don’t be an episodic utility, be a community. And now we’ve got to make that shift.

I think that it sounds really sexy from the outside when you see our numbers or, you know, companies like us that take off, and people get excited. But if you’re building for the long term, like we are, you’ve gotta have a great product.”

Facebook Isn’t Bedrock — It’s ‘Shifting Sands’

Another lesson the folks at BranchOut have learned is when you build your company on top of Facebook, you have to think about it in a completely different way than you would for a more independently-based company — flexibility is key.

“Facebook innovates so quickly that for my growth team that I have in place [which] focuses on user acquisition and also now more on retention, it’s a different puzzle every day. So think of it, and this is what I tell my guys, think of it when you come in that you’ve got a different puzzle that you need to put together. And all these pieces change every day. And don’t get frustrated by it, look at it as an opportunity and a challenge. Beause most companies aren’t dedicated resources to growth and these analytics and solving this puzzle every day. The ones that do, the ones that can solve that puzzle, those are the ones that we’ve really seen excel.

… I think a lot of off-Facebook properties can build more on bedrock. And I think we are building more on shifting sands. But they’re really lucrative sands if you do well. And you know, for a company like us, for BranchOut, there’s no way we could have signed up 30 million users in two years outside of Facebook. so in spite of the shifting sands and the risks of building on someone else’s platform, the benefits for us are so big.”

Twilio Says It Is The Fastest Growing Short Code Provider In The U.S.

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 03:14 PM PDT

shortcodes_mark

A little over a year ago, cloud communications company Twilio launched Short Codes, dedicated 5 or 6 digit numbers for sending and receiving text messages at volume. Since then, Twilio has become the fastest-growing short code provider and has found surprisingly differing uses for its product.

"People have started using our Short Code product in ways we didn't ever expect," Patrick Malatack, the product manager in charge of Short Codes, tells me.

Malatack says they have seen "dramatic adoption" of the product, as hundreds of Short Codes have been registered in the past year. While hundreds of phone numbers in a year would not be a significant sum, Malatack explains that most companies only have one short code, so the number represents their number of clients. Twilio would not release exact numbers, but said that only a few thousand Short Codes exist, so hundreds is a significant chunk of the market.

Twilio clients include WalMart, which offers special daily discounts to customers vai text messages that they can redeem for a limited time, and the City of Philadelphia, where the police use Short Codes to enable residents to send crime tips vai SMS. Twilio says that since its launch in April, Philadelphians have made texting with Twilio the fastest growing avenue for crime tips.

While mobile short codes have been around for almost a decade, there are only a few thousand in the US. Twilio's main competitor, mBlox, has been in the space for a while, but Malatack says Twilio differentiates itself by trying to "democratize communication" and make Short Codes available to everyone from major corporations to "two guys in a garage" startups.

Members of Malatack's team thought they would see Short Codes used more for coupons and marketing when they launched, but they've seen it adopted much more widely by enterprise (for things like two factor authentication) than they expected.

Malatack says the company is now focused on expanding internationally, as many startups have international customers from day one. He adds that the company thinks it should be as easy to send a text message or make a phone call from country to country as it is to send an international email.

RIM: Layoffs Are Ongoing, Will Not Affect BB10

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:37 PM PDT

sadberry

RIM is about to lay off more employees in an ongoing effort to cut $1 billion by 2013. According to one report, as many as 3,000 RIM staffers could get the boot as soon as next week. However, RIM has not officially confirmed this as of yet.

RIM’s Global Corporate Communications Manager spoke to TechCrunch this afternoon and confirmed there are more layoffs on the horizon. She went on to explain that the company is “moving quickly for the impacted employees.” As RIM communicated earlier, the company plans to eliminate 5,000 positions within the current financial quarter. While RIM hasn’t pointed out affected departments and regions, it seems those working on BlackBerry 10 are safe — well, at least for now.

RIM is seemingly betting it all BlackBerry 10. RIM’s spokesperson indicated today several times that BB10 employees are safe from layoffs. The company already delayed its next-gen mobile platform from later this year to early 2013. The project likely needs all the help it can get.

Prior to cutting 2,000 people in July, RIM employed around 16,000 people worldwide. But now, after concluding this next round of layoffs, RIM will have just around 9,000 — a rather humble amount consider RIM once employed around 20,000 people.

As for IBM buying RIM’s enterprise division, a separate RIM spokesperson indicated that RIM will not comment on rumors and speculation.

The “Leaks” Keep Coming: New Images Reportedly Show New iPhone’s Tiny Dock Connector

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 01:16 PM PDT

newdockconnector

If rumors hold true, Apple should be gearing up to unveil its latest iGadgets in just a few weeks, and it’s no surprise that all sorts of questionable leaks are now worming their way into daylight.

The latest of those purported leaks comes in the form of images obtained by the French site Nowherelse.fr that reportedly depict Apple’s tiny new dock connector next to a USB plug. Got your grains of salt ready?

Good, let’s go.

Right now there are so many numbers floating around that it’s hard to make sense of what’s actually happening. TechCrunch and Reuters independently confirmed that Apple’s new dock connector would have 19 pins, but persistent rumors (along with some snippets of code within iOS 6) point to the existence of a 9-pin connector. Still others have been reporting an 8-pin connection, much like the one seen in these pictures.

So what gives? Who’s right?

At this point, who knows. It’s possible that we’re only seeing one side of the connector, and that a handful of pins live on the other side — whomever took the pictures doesn’t seem to have photographed the opposite end of the connector. Well, that or both sides of the plug are identical. It’s also possible that, as MacRumors’ Arnold Kim puts it on Twitter, the metal edge of the connector could effectively serve as a grounding pin, which pushes the number to nine.

Or, if we start paring down possibilities with Occam’s razor, we could also draw the conclusion that the images are fake and that there are better ways to spend a Friday than wracking our brains over Apple minutiae. Either way, there’s no way to get a full sense of what’s going on here.

For what it’s worth, the design doesn’t actually look too bad — I could conceivably see Apple running with something like this, though I have to wonder how sturdy the inevitably big-to-small dock connector adapter is going to be. In any case, there’s no way in hell that these images aren’t going to be followed up by even more leaks and speculation, so hold on for the ride.

UPDATE: Nowherelse.fr has updated their original post with a bit more information about the mysterious connector. iDownloadBlog‘s Sebastien Page (who in addition to being a nice guy speaks fluent French) offers up the following translation:

"We have obtained new information about this connector. We have indeed learned that it is not equipped with 8 but 16 pins with distinct functions (8 pins on each side), noting that one side would currently have no specific function and might be saved for future use."

Fashion-Focused Startup Polyvore, 17M Monthly Uniques Strong, Opens Up NYC Office

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 12:11 PM PDT

Polyvore NYC office

It’s starting to seem like everyone who got their start in Silicon Valley is putting down an anchor in New York City. Earlier this year Facebook set up an engineering office in Manhattan, then this week Alexia Tsotsis made her move to the Big Apple (miss you!) Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore?

The latest techie to head east is Polyvore, the website that lets people create collages of apparel and accessories using images from any online store. Polyvore today is announcing the opening of its first-ever New York office, in SoHo. The NYC office has a staff of eight to start, while Polyvore’s 40 other employees and its executive team headed up by CEO Jess Lee will remain headquartered in Mountain View, California.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a personal welcome to Polvyore, which is pretty cool:

“By opening an office here, Polyvore is joining the growing group of tech companies who recognize that the benefits of being in New York City are irresistible, regardless of where a startup began.”

Polyvore’s setting up an office in Manhattan makes a ton of sense, since as hard as the San Francisco Bay Area may try, NYC is still the fashion headquarters of the United States (and arguably the world.) I know that Lee and one of her co-founders Pasha Sadri have found themselves spending more and more time in New York as Polyvore has grown, so now they will have somewhere to hang their hats when in town. In a statement, Sadri said: “We’ve come a long way since Polyvore was five people in my living room. Polyvore has always been at the intersection of technology and style, so being in close proximity to the fashion powerhouses of New York was a natural next step.”

And speaking of Polyvore’s growth, the company is also announcing today that it has hit 17 million unique visitors per month. That’s a nice bump up from the last time we checked in with the company in May, when it had 15 million uniques. Here is a video interview from then, in which Lee and Sadri discuss how embracing “the Pinterest effect” has helped them grow the business:

Photo credit of Polyvore NYC office: Patrick Butler

TechCrunch Giveaway: Phosphor Watch And A Free Ticket To Disrupt SF #TCDisrupt

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:56 AM PDT

PHOSPHOR Watches - Cool Digital Watches - E Ink World Time Watch, E Ink Digital Hour Clock Watch, E Ink Digital Calendar Watch & E Ink Ana-Digi Watch

Disrupt SF is right around the corner and is shaping up to be one of the biggest events of the year. We have already announced many speakers which include our very own TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Marissa Mayer, The Honest Company’s Jessica Alba and Brian Lee, super angel Ron Conway, Vinod Khosla, Marc Benioff, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, Path’s Dave Morin, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Kevin Rose, and many others.

Here is another chance for one lucky reader to win a chance to come join us! Not only will the winner receive a free ticket (valued at around $1,995*), but we are also going to give you a free Phosphor watch of your choice. Check them out. The winner can choose any watch on that site. The most expensive is valued at around $250.

So, here we go. If you want a shot at winning, all you have to do is follow the steps below.

1) Become a fan of our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:
- Retweet this post (making sure to include the #TCDisrupt hashtag)
- Or leave us a comment below telling us what your favorite summer song is

The contest will start now and end August 13th at 7:30pm PT. Please only tweet or comment once, or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner once the giveaway is over. Please note the free Disrupt ticket is for one ticket only and does not include airfare or hotel.

*Ticket prices increase to $2,995 on 8/24. More information here.

Report: Nexus 7 Supply Issues Stall Growth

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:50 AM PDT

nexus 7

Google may be taking the ill-conceived Nexus Q back to the drawing board, but the Nexus 7 tablet has been quite a hit since it went on sale a few weeks ago. Since then, though, Google has faced a number of supply issues and the company even suspended sales of the 16GB for a few days to catch up with demand. The latest data from ad network Chitika shows how those supply issues have stalled the growth of Google’s first tablet – at least when measured by web traffic from Nexus 7 owners.

Just a few weeks ago, Chitika reported that the Nexus tablet was on its way to surpass the Kindle Fire in its traffic rankings. By now, the company predicted, the Google tablet was supposed to be ahead of the Fire. Instead, its latest data shows that it’s still trailing Amazon’s tablet by quite a bit. While traffic from the Nexus 7 to Chitika’s network of member sites grew rapidly during the first few weeks after it went on sale, growth stalled over the last three weeks. Chitika reports its tablet data relative to the iPad and the Nexus 7 currently accounts for 0.35 impressions per 100 iPad impressions. That’s virtually unchanged from the 0.3 impressions it reported three weeks ago.

With only a few new Nexus 7 owners surfing the web due to Google’s supply issues, the company’s numbers probably reflect the usage of existing users. ”While the Nexus 7 experienced a huge initial surge in both sales and Web traffic, users don't seem to be surfing as much as one might expect them to.” As the novelty of the device wears off and as the honeymoon phase comes to an end, people simply don’t use it as much as they used to. Now that the Nexus 7 is back on sale, it will be interesting to see if the growth rate picks up again.

Google Updates Its Search Algorithm: Will Start Punishing Sites With Too Many DMCA Takedown Notices

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:41 AM PDT

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Google just announced that, starting next week, its search algorithm will start taking a new signal into account: the number of valid copyright removal notices it receives for a given site. According to Google, “this ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.” The idea here is obviously to punish pirate sites by pushing links to them down on Google’s search results pages and to appease copyright holders who often claim that Google doesn’t do enough to remove links to copyrighted material.

Since it started giving rights owners the ability to report potential copyright infringement in 2009, Google says, it’s been getting “much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online.” Just over the last 30 days, for example, it received copyright removal notices for more than 4.3 million URLs. That’s more than in all of 2009 together. Most of these notices in the last 30 days concerned content owned by RIAA members, followed by Microsoft, a group called Froytal Services Ltd. and NBC Universal.

In its announcement today, Google notes that users can always file “counter notices” when they believe their content was wrongly removed from its index. Google stresses that it won’t actually remove any pages from its search results unless it receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner. Still, chances are that this update will push legitimate links to sites like filestube.com, downloads.nl and isohunt.com to the bottom of Google’s search results pages.

Harvard Researchers Find A Creative Way To Make Incentives Work

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:10 AM PDT

taking-candy-from-a-baby

Incentives are all the rage: employee bonus pay, app badges, student grades, and even lunch with President Obama. Despite their widespread use, most research finds that incentives are terrible at improving performance in the long-run on anything but mindless rote tasks, because the fixation on prizes clouds our creative thinking (video explanation below). However, a new Harvard study of teachers found that a novel approach to incentives could dramatically improve student performance: give teachers a reward upfront and threaten to take it away if performance doesn’t actually improve. Exploiting the so-called “loss-aversion” tendency could open the door to creative incentivizing for software designers and managers.

Harvard University’s Ronald Fryer and his colleagues explain that, in education, pay-for-performance has a dismal record of improving student outcomes. Teachers who were offered sizable bundles of cash (up to $15,000) didn’t fare any better at helping their students than teachers who worked simply out of the goodness of their impoverished hearts. In india, teachers show modest gains the first year incentives, but the effect largely drops off a cliff the next year.

However, humans process loss differently gain. For instance, one study showed that people will pay more than twice as much money to keep a coffee mug they were given beforehand then to acquire it in the first place. The idea behind the “endowment effect“, popularized by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, is that people become psychologically territorial about their own stuff, and begin imagining all the ways they’ll use their new treasure once it’s in their hands. The research has been widely replicated and applied, such as in a Chinese factory to improve worker productivity.

The Harvard school experiment applied the logic in pretty much the same way: teachers were randomly selected to receive a bonus either at the beginning or end of the year; those getting the check up front (the treatment group) had to give it back if student performance didn’t improve as expected. Teachers could earn up to $8,000, depending on the level of improvement. The experimental group was cut a check for the expected amount ($4,000) upfront and had to give back or add to that amount depending on the actual performance at the end of the year.

The results were impressive by education standards: up to 10 percentile points on average (that’s 0.33 standard deviation units, for you statistic nerds).

The research holds exciting possibilities for business. Why not hand out bonus pay at the beginning of the year? Or, maybe give out restaurant discounts for a month, and revoke it if users don’t check-in on Foursquare each time they come.

The possibilities are endless and we’d love to hear your ideas. How do you use incentives in your organization? How could someone use loss-aversion to change the way incentives are given?

A Look Inside Airbnb’s Record Night: 60,000 Guests, 174 Countries, 30 Languages, And 8 Private Islands

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 11:00 AM PDT

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Airbnb, the online marketplace for listing and booking short-term housing accommodations, has been on a roll lately: In June it hit 10 million nights booked, boasting hockey stick-like growth along the way. Well, it had a really big night last Saturday, hitting a new record with more than 60,000 guests booking lodgings through the service. Not only was that five times the number of guests it had a year prior, but a large number of those guests — 75 percent — were using the marketplace for the first time.

Airbnb is using the occasion to highlight the international community it has amassed, along with some of the unique lodgings that it boasts. It noted guests from 174 different countries around the world, including guests from far-off locales like Zimbabwe and Nepal.

Two-thirds of guests were from outside the United States, and speak more than 30 different languages, including Japanese, Arabic, Bengali, Punjabi, Tagalog, Finnish, and Sign Language. Of the international community, France had the most number of guests, with 6,800, as pretty much the entire country goes on vacation during August. Airbnb also saw 800 guests from Brazil and 120 from India.

Not surprisingly, there was a lot of activity in London due to the Summer Olympic Games. Airbnb prepped for this by acquiring UK-based Crashpadder earlier this spring, and had 3,400 guests in London that night. Altogether, Airbnb had guests staying in 500 different cities, including 1,900 in Los Angeles, 300 in Reykjavik, 250 in Rio de Janeiro, and 200 guests in Bali.

The demographics highlight that Airbnb is no longer just about post-grad backpackers using the service, as more than half of guests booking lodging last Saturday were over the age of 30. Almost ten percent (5,500) were over the age of 50, and it even counted 320 that were 70 or older.

That’s also demonstrated in the types of lodgings people are booking. Last Saturday, 1,200 guests stayed in villas, while 10 stayed in castles and eight booked private islands. There were also 120 guests staying in boats, 30 in treehouses, and 15 staying in (shudder) caves.

Airbnb’s record night came after the startup redesigned its website in June, so it looks like that’s going well and isn’t having any adverse effects on bookings. The startup, which is based in San Francisco, has raised about $120 million over the years, and has more than 500 employees worldwide.

Senzari Takes On Pandora With Personalized Radio That Lets You Customize By Popularity, Similarity, Discovery & Tempo

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 10:49 AM PDT

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Senzari, the Pandora competitor backed by $1 million in funding from 500 Startups and others, has just debuted a brand-new recommendation engine called AMP3, which steps up the competition quite a bit between it and other streaming radio providers. The new engine (which we’ll just call “AMP” for short) isn’t like the basic “artist radio” option found in Pandora, or the radio features in other streaming music apps, either. Those, at best, may just include a “more/less like this” slider option for customization purposes. Instead, with AMP, listeners can customize their music by a number of factors, including popularity, tempo, similarity, and discovery.

And, says Senzari, this is just the beginning.

“We looked at solutions for recommendation of music and found that pretty much all were similar to what has been done over the last half a decade or more in music,” says Senzari COO Demian Bellumio. “It started with Pandora with the Music Genome, and the solutions out there are just looking at the music itself…we felt that it was an opportunity to innovate in that space,” he says. Bellumio notes that several technology developments have made this type of deeper customization possible, like the advance of tools that help with the crunching of big data, for example, as well as Facebook’s Open Graph, which offers another source to analyze the meaning and the relationships between data points.

“What we decided to do is build a platform that could connect all those dots and go beyond just creating new set of experiences based on the music, but really understand  how the music qualities, plus the social layer, plus anything else that could give meaning to the music, like context, could all come together,” he says.

The initial version of the recommendation engine, nine months in development, is the first step to achieving that goal of building a truly personalized radio. Today, you can use AMP to say, for instance, that you want to hear songs like Pearl Jam’s slower music, but only less popular songs, and those you probably have not heard. Popularity and discovery are different settings, to be clear – just because music is “popular,” that doesn’t mean you’ve actually heard it. And Senzari knows what you’ve heard, to some extent, by mining your “likes” and those of your friends on Facebook. It also knows things like the age of your friends, location, what apps people use and who you chat with the most in the Senzari Facebook chat sidebar. All these signals combined help to influence its ability to know what you may or may not have yet heard.

Senzari thinks of itself as not a music company, but a technology company which is focused for now on music. But that being said, it has ideas as to how it can take on the  music radio incumbent Pandora. Its “recommendable” catalog encompass some 18-19 million songs (up from 11 million in May) and far more than Pandora’s 900,000. And it’s also targeting worldwide markets, while Pandora remains U.S.-only. Senzari is now available not only in the U.S., but also Spain, Brazil, and just recently, the U.K. It’s rolling out to Italy and parts of Latin America next, and expects to arrive on mobile by October.

In the meantime, users in supported regions can try the new AMP recommendation engine here on the web.

Facedeals: Check-In On Facebook With Facial Recognition. Creepy or Awesome?

Posted: 10 Aug 2012 10:38 AM PDT

facedeals

Now you can check-in to a location on Facebook through facial recognition scanning. The Redpepper ad agency claims to be beta testing a camera on the outside of a “Nashville business” that automatically checks patrons in to a location and offers them deals, after users have given the company access to their Facebook data (note: this was developed independently from Facebook). A video explanation of the technology, Facedeals, is below.

Facebook has come under intense congressional scrutiny for taking steps toward facial recognition, with the purchase of Face.com. However, after only a month, it ceased using the technology to automatically suggest which friends to tag in photos.

As Redpepper explains in a blog post, the alleged technology is done completely through a voluntary app:

The Facedeals app must be authorized via your Facebook account. With your help, the app verifies your most recent photo tags, using those to map the physical appearance of your face. Our custom-developed cameras then simply use this existing data to identify you in the real world. Personalized deals can now be delivered to your Smartphone from all participating locations—all you have to do is show your face.

Redpepper argues that the technology will help both consumers and businesses use the magic of Facebook to more efficiently dole out deals. What do you think? Creepy or awesome?

Our Facebook specialist Josh Constine wanted it be clear that Facedeals is not approved or endorsed by Facebook. It merely uses the social network as an easy way for people to upload photos for Facedeals to do its own facial recognition processing.

In fact, considering the name and coloring, Facedeals could get slapped with a trademark infringement lawsuit. Facebook is trying to downplay its use of facial recog technology, and probably won’t take kindly to this confusion and possibly fear-inducing employment of its platform.
Posted by Ateev at 10:04 PM

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