The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Socialize Makes Any App Social, Already Reaches 10M End Users
- Flurry Revamps Its Free Mobile App Analytics With Custom Tracking, Alerts
- Kickstarter: Help Fund A Film On The Story Of Social Media
- Virginia Is For TechCrunchers: DC, Norfolk, and Richmond, Here We Come
- Learning To Code Apps? Programr, The Codecademy For Higher-Level Languages, Adds Support For Android
- Fab Expands Into Beauty Products; Partners With Glamour Magazine For New Pop-Up Shop
- Tradyo Wants To Take On Craigslist With Mobile, Social Classifieds App
- Now You Know: Hotels Inject Banner Ads Into The Wi-Fi They Charge You For
- Better Late Than Never: RIM Preps Refreshed PlayBook With 4G
- Amazon S3: 905 Billion Objects Stored, 1 Billion Added Each Day
- HTC’s Rough Q1: Profits Down 70% Over Last Year, Revenue Dips 35%
- Do We Even Need NFC For Mobile Payments? PayPal, Google Weigh In (Video)
- Arianna Huffington No Longer Runs The Aol Tech Sites
- Seven
- Nonprofit “Digital Public Library Of America” To Launch In April 2013
- Nextpeer Pledges To Make Any Mobile Game As Social As OMGPOP’s “Draw Something”
- VCs: Secondary Funding Markets Are A Double-Edged Sword
- Wingsplay Pays Influencers To Spread Viral Videos, Runs Campaigns For NBC And Oxygen
- Twitter Puts Its Foot Down, Takes Five Biggest Spammers To Federal Court
- Wipe It! Security Hole In Facebook Mobile Apps Threatens Jailbroken / Stolen Phones
| Socialize Makes Any App Social, Already Reaches 10M End Users Posted: 06 Apr 2012 09:46 AM PDT  Socialize, the new platform that allows mobile developers to instantly add social features to their apps, has come a long way since its November launch of its Social Action Bar. Apparently, developers are giving this one a shot…in droves. 5,500 developers have downloaded the mobile toolkit to date, with 562 apps in testing and 150 apps which have gone live with integrations. (Here are a few). The startup is also now reaching over 10 million end users, up from 3.7 million in November. And its user base is doubling monthly, the company says. According to CEO Daniel Odio, via new downloads, the SDK now reaches 2 million end users (that is, users who download Socialize-infused apps). However, the majority of that 10 million figure comes via the company’s AppMakr channel. For background, Socialize actually grew out of the app-making service AppMakr, which had previously built apps for brands like Disney, The Washington Post, Newsweek and Politico. It later rebranded as Socialize with a focus on the social app SDK. Since then, AppMakr has served as sort of a testing ground for the new offerings, and was already reaching 3.7 million end users via the Socialize beta at the time of the Socialize Action Bar SDK public launch. Since then, the startup has been focused on boosting installs and impressions in apps running Socialize, and is helping developers bring in new users to their apps through the social actions of app users. As users comment, like, and share from within the app, they’re essentially serving as the app’s marketers. The company recently showcased a few success stories on its blog, where app makers were reporting increases in impressions and revenue. One, a finance app for the Spanish stock market, saw impressions go up 316%, and revenue up 257%. A couple of others, one a couponing app, another a fitness app, saw impressions increase by 120% and 103%, respectively. Socialize bootstrapped itself by selling a mobile consulting company called PointAbout to fund some of its growth, and currently has $1.5 million in angel funding to help it along. Now, with Apple’s phasing out of the UDID (the unique device identifier used for user tracking), the company hopes more developers will become interested in its service, which provides insight into user activity surrounding social actions – likes, comments, and shares. Developers can download the SDK for iOS or Android here.
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| Flurry Revamps Its Free Mobile App Analytics With Custom Tracking, Alerts Posted: 06 Apr 2012 09:13 AM PDT  Even though San Francisco-based Flurry hardly makes any direct revenue from its mobile app analytics, the product has become so widely used that one out of every three iOS apps and one out of every four Android ones downloaded from Google’s Android app store includes it. Now the company is overhauling its analytics product by adding custom dashboards, alerts and funnel analysis. In plain English, that makes it easier for companies to follow the metrics that matter most to them, whether that’s user retention after three or seven days or the number of users who complete a transaction. If you look at the example custom dashboard, it shows “rolling retention” or how long an app keeps users after the day they download it. Alerts can ping a mobile app maker if their usage spikes or suddenly declines, for example. Mobile app publishers can get these alerts by e-mail once a day. If they have several alerts set up, they’re all compiled into a single e-mail. Then funnel analysis is super key for any sophisticated mobile app makerthat wants to understand if users are doing exactly what they want them to in the app. Are they buying virtual currency? Are they getting to Level 20 in a game? Flurry offers two types of funnels: one for tracking “in-app” events and one for tracking “cross-app” events. The latter is key because many developers with more than one app cross-promote users from one title into another. This is important in the gaming category as players sometimes get bored of one title, so developers need to coax them into playing other titles to keep them as a customer. Flurry competes with a host of other analytics providers like Apsalar, Localytics and Kontagent. But since Flurry was the earliest to market in 2008, it has the widest reach as it’s included in 170,000 apps. The company sees about 500 million unique smartphones or tablets per month, tracks 300 billion data transactions per month and sees 1.2 billion sessions per day. It’s in 18 of the 25 Top Grossing Apps in the iTunes store. And the growth is just continuing. Flurry has added about 35,000 apps from 10,000 companies since December. The number of sessions it tracks per day has jumped by 50 percent over the last three months. To be fair though, the other analytics providers have their own specialties. Kontagent, for example, has a long history in social gaming metrics that it brings over to mobile and Apsalar has a veteran team that’s done behavioral targeting and analytics in previous companies. But Flurry’s free analytics product has put some downward pricing pressure on the rest of the market. Even though analytics isn’t a core part of Flurry’s revenue stream, it has been a key part of the company’s business strategy. Analytics gives Flurry a relationship with thousands of developers that it can upsell to other advertising products like incentivized video clips, installs or targeted advertising. “We get a lot of good will from the developer community,” said Peter Farago, Flurry’s vice president of marketing. “And the data set that we build up has other benefits in helping us create new products.” Flurry has raised more than $25 million to date in three venture rounds led by Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and InterWest Partners.
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| Kickstarter: Help Fund A Film On The Story Of Social Media Posted: 06 Apr 2012 08:46 AM PDT  SoMe is a film about the rise (and fall?) of social media. Produced by web rabble-rouser and satirist, Loren Feldman, the film will feature Feldman’s signature puppet act (it will be cool, I promise) and interviews with and segments about web luminaries like: Julia Allison, Michael Arrington, Steve Ballmer, Henry Blodget, Chris Brogan, Robert Bruce, Paul Carr, Pete Cashmore, Brian Clark, Ron Conway, Henry Copland, Jay Cuthrell, Mike Daisey, Barry Diller, Jack Dorsey, Dan Farber, Steve Gillmor, Paul Graham, MC Hammer, Shel Israel, Andrew Jecklin, Steve Jobs, Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Loic LeMeur, Jakob Lodwick Feldman is an experienced film producer and comedian and he knows where all the bodies are buried so it may be a good time when it all comes together. He’s asking for $50,000 to fund the project and he’s already hit $5,000 or so with six days left. Here’s hoping he resurrects the Hendrickson puppet.
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| Virginia Is For TechCrunchers: DC, Norfolk, and Richmond, Here We Come Posted: 06 Apr 2012 08:21 AM PDT  Just a reminder: starting April 9 TechCrunch will be hitting Virginia for a barnstorming tour of three cities – DC on Monday, Norfolk on Tuesday, and Richmond on Wednesday. You should have already RSVPed (did you?), you should have already picked out what you’re going to wear (did you?), and you should have your pitch ready (do you?). As a special bonus, DC meet-up folks will get to meet our new co-editor, Eric Eldon, who is coming in from San Francisco and who will be in Virginia with us that evening. It will be, as they say in Virginia, a hoot. Thanks to all those who helped out in organizing this and a huge thank you to our sponsors. We’re really looking forward to this opportunity to meet with you guys in the tech corridor. Feeling left out? Fear not. We’ll be hitting other cities this summer. Monday, April 9 – DC – RFD – 810 7th St NW – 6pm-10pm (??) – Our first event will be at RFD in NW. These guys have a huge selection of beers on tap and, if we play our cards right, we’ll have a few hours of open bar. If you haven’t RSVPed hop over to Plancast or email me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject “RSVP DC.” Try to include a rough headcount. Sponsors Canvas.co is DC's largest co-working community; designed for creatives, freelancers, independents and start-ups to be an inspiring environment in which to work and collaborate. There are no closed doors here; it's true co-working for community-centric creativity and collaboration. It's more than just space, beyond sharing and no one gets incubated here. Boasting 6,000 square feet of open-space, completely custom designed, from floor to ceiling. We believe that creativity comes from inspiration and that inspiration starts with your surroundings; you won't find any carpets, water-coolers or Ikea here. Create Digital is a privately held Richmond, Va. based social agency that provides community management, web development and digital campaigns for Fortune 500 companies. Since 2010, Create Digital has consistently improved the web presences, customer engagement and online brands of its clients. HomeSnap is the most intuitive real estate app you'll ever use. Simply snap a photo of any home to find out all about it, including its current value, last sale date & price, local schools and more. HomeSnap works for over 90 million homes across the USA. Higher Logic’s mission is to provide your members, constituents, donors and volunteers with innovative ways to think together, share and collaborate. Higher Logic delivers solutions so you can extend your organizational value and attract a new generation of global members and constituents. Tuesday, April 10 – Norfolk – We Are Titans Offices – 259 Granby St 3rd Floor – 6pm-10pm – We will begin the night at the We Are The Titans offices, kindly provided by a team of titans who work there, and the perhaps we can move to another location later. Please RSVP hereor email me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject “RSVP NORFOLK.” Try to include a rough headcount. We are also looking for sponsors, so please let me know in a separate, non RSVP email if you’re interested. Here’s a little bit about our first Norfolk sponsor: We Are Titans is a product development shop that helps startups and established businesses worldwide build custom web and mobile applications. We have a track record of turning great ideas into profitable and effective products, and we’re big on candid communication over intimidating geek speak.Headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, our team looks forward to talking with you about your project, and how The Titan Way can help bring the right product to reality, while saving you time and money. Wednesday, April 11 – Richmond – SnagAJob HQ – 6pm-10pm – 4851 Lake Brook Dr – Finally, we’ll meet in Glen Allen, outside of Richmond, for our final meet-up. Thanks to SnagAJob for donating a space with a bar and some booze. We’re still looking for Richmond sponsors as well, so please email me directly. RSVP hereor email me at john@techcrunch.com with the subject “RSVP RICHMOND.” Try to include a rough headcount. Here’s a bit about our first Richmond sponsor: Snagajob, the largest hourly employment network for job seekers and employers, is the only company to provide both sourcing and talent management solutions to the hourly industry. With more than 30 million registered job seekers and the leading hourly-focused talent management system, Snagajob has been fulfilling the dreams of hourly workers and those who employ them since 2000. Headquartered in Richmond, Va., Snagajob has been named the No. 1 Best Small Company to Work for in America by the Great Place to Work Institute. To find out more, visit snagajob.com and www.snagajob.com/employer-solutions.
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| Learning To Code Apps? Programr, The Codecademy For Higher-Level Languages, Adds Support For Android Posted: 06 Apr 2012 08:00 AM PDT  Programr, an online lab for learning to code – yep, sort of like Codecademy, but for higher-level languages, has just introduced Android coding support. With the added option, aspiring student developers can create Android apps right in the browser. When the project is complete the apps can be downloaded into APK format, then loaded up on your Android devices, shared with friends or sent off to the And, says company co-founder Rajesh Moorjani, the startup is working on doing the same for iOS apps next. For a little background, Programr is a new entry in the “learn to code online” space, which has seen growing interest over the past several months, thanks in part, to Codecademy’s “Code Year” initiative which saw some 100,000 users sign up in just 48 hours of going live. This year, everyone wants to learn to code, it seems. Programr isn’t as n00b-friendly as Codecademy, however – it’s more of a complement to that service. Where the latter is really about teaching you to code, Programr is like an online practice ground for creating projects, sharing them with friends, participating in contests, and taking online IT classes. Programmers can even earn points in the contests that allow them to gain free entry to the online classes (normally $30). There’s also more of a focus on higher-level languages at Programr. Over the past month, the company has added support for new languages including console (C++, C#, Java, Objective-C), web (PHP, Javascript, JQuery, Java Server Pages, AJAX), rich media (Flex, Processing), desktop (Java Swing), and database (SQL, SQLite). Others on the site include Ruby, Python, VB, AJAX, Flex, Flash, and more. The startup is also working with regional coding clubs to provide access to its online labs. For example, it recently teamed up with CoderDojo, a club created by Xing co-founder Bill Liao and James Whelton to offer them a co-branded online lab. And Programr is making code widgets available to book publishers in order to make their code listings in their digital books interactive – these “live code listings” can then be run within the book with just a click. With the newly launched Android support, developers can create their mobile apps online and view in them in a web-based emulator. Besides games with a fast refresh rate, says Moorjani, there’s not a limit to the types of Android apps that run on the service. “Students can learn Android coding by checking out the live code of the many Android apps created by other students at Programr. They can tinker with these existing live apps, enhance them by adding features, or then proceed to write their own apps from scratch,” Moorjani explains. “Once created, apps can be shared via a link, embedded in blogs, or then downloaded straight to Android devices.” To create an APK file, the code is compiled online and then a student clicks the “Download APK” button. You can see an example of the Android APK option here. Now the folks over at Programr are working on bringing iOS coding to the browser and adding sophisticated granular debugging support for all apps on its supported platforms. They’re also working on a Facebook app that would allow the site’s daily coding challenges to run right within Facebook itself, where the startup has some 33,000 fans (more than double Codecademy’s at last count, incidentally). Interested student programmers can sign up for Programr here. UPDATE: Looks like we accidentally crashed Programr. Stay tuned.
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| Fab Expands Into Beauty Products; Partners With Glamour Magazine For New Pop-Up Shop Posted: 06 Apr 2012 07:29 AM PDT  Over three million users strong, design-focused flash sales platform Fab is expanding to a new vertical on Monday, with the launch of a beauty-focused pop-up shop in collaboration with Conde Nast glossy Glamour Magazine. As we wrote earlier this year, the fast growing site expanded their product offerings through the launch of the new Fab Shops, which incorporated verticals of Kids, Pets, Food, Fashion and Vintage. Fab co-founder, design guru and chief curator Bradford Shellhammer explains to us that Fab’s mantra is that design lives anywhere in the world at all price points, in all categories. While one wouldn’t necessarily associate beauty products with design, Shellhammer explains that when it comes to packaging and brands, design is a key component to the allure of certain beauty products. The new pop-up shop, which has been curated by Glamour and Fab editors, launches on Monday morning with high-quality make-up, luxurious skincare products, conditioning lip care, aromatic candles and more. Brands featured include Nest Fragrances, Philip B. Botanical Products, Oscar Blandi, Pangea, Demeter, josie maran, and malin + goetz. Fab is pretty stoked that an established media company like Conde Nast is willing to partner with the new guard for e-commerce and curation. Glamour Fashion Development Director Susan Cernek says of the new partnership, “The bulk of our 25,000 comments each month take place within our beauty vertical, so there's a strong community there. Partnering with Fab.com—a site that has an equally robust and engaged community—on a pop-up beauty shop is a natural fit.” Shellhammer adds that beauty will become a more permanent vertical for the site and will be featuring more products soon. Clearly expanding to new verticals are only going to help Fab hit that $100 million in 2012 revenue. As Shellhammer says “there are only so many sofas you want to buy,” and beauty happens to be a vertical that has higher margins. Fab was also featured yesterday in Facebook’s developer spotlight, revealing growth trends for the e-commerce site from Facebook’s social functionality. Fab says it has seen a 100% increase in the referral traffic from Facebook since launching its timeline app. And membership has grown from 1.8 million to more than 3.5 million users (95% increase). While these stats are impressive, it’s important to note that referral traffic could also have been increasing pre-timeline because Fab has been exploding in growth over the past six months.
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| Tradyo Wants To Take On Craigslist With Mobile, Social Classifieds App Posted: 06 Apr 2012 07:27 AM PDT  A number of startups are trying to take on online classifieds giant Craigslist, including Antego, EggDrop, and many others. Tradyo is one of the latest companies to join the group, offering a social, mobile marketplace that allows users to buy and sell items with others around them. The startup's iPhone app allows users to buy and sell used goods in your area in realtime. The app uses GPS to reveal the items available around you, allowing you to sell an item, search your community for cool stuff, and receive push notifications when an item you want gets listed, or when someone wants to buy what you've listed. Tradyo also encourages users to connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts to verify themselves. In addition, Tradyo also offers an in-app instant messaging ability that allows you to see when a buyer or seller has read a message. Finally, if you can’t find what you're looking for on Tradyo, you can set up an alert and Tradyo will notify you when it is available in the marketplace. Similar to the other startups in the space, Tradyo is piggybacking on the idea that smartphones are going to change the way consumers actually use Craigslist. In fact, the startup compares itself to a “StumbleUpon for tangible goods.” The app is currently available for San Francisco and Toronto. Tradyo is a part of Israeli American startup incubator UpWest Labs.
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| Now You Know: Hotels Inject Banner Ads Into The Wi-Fi They Charge You For Posted: 06 Apr 2012 07:22 AM PDT  This story made the rounds a few days ago but I think generally it’s something more people should know. During a visit to the very expensive and not very nice Times Square Marriott, Justin Watt noticed a strange bar at the top of his blog’s home page. He had recently dealt with a PHP hack and so was alert for changes on the site and when he dug further he found some strange Javascript embedded into the page. Noting that nothing changed on his server, he posted on the experience and thought little more about it – until a commenter noted that the behavior he noticed was coming from an RXG A8 or “Revenue Extraction Hotspot Gateway.” In short, this box, which sits between the access point and the Internet, injects ads into Wi-Fi streams. These are the same streams you pay through the nose for at hotels like the Times Square Marriott. Here’s a bit more about this exciting revenue-gathering opportunity. UPDATE – Looks like they pulled the video 15 minutes ago. To be clear, the Marriott charges for the same Wi-Fi they’re injecting with ads. From the website: For a daily rate of 16.95 USD, the following features are available in your guest room: High-speed Internet access Unlimited local phone calls Unlimited long distance calls (within the country), not available in all markets Obviously this kind of garbage isn’t new and this probably isn’t the first time someone experienced this sort of behavior. The trick, now is that the Internet has made this sort of behavior much more noticeable the outrage can spread further than room 1209 of the Times Square Marriott. Arguably, the business of selling Wi-Fi access will shrivel and die as WWAN devices end up in more business folks’ pockets. But until then, can we not be monetized against twice in the same hotel stay?
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| Better Late Than Never: RIM Preps Refreshed PlayBook With 4G Posted: 06 Apr 2012 06:58 AM PDT  The BlackBerry PlayBook is about to get the gift of 4G. That is of course if a random leaked image and FCC documents are believed. And why not? Even though the PlayBook is almost a year old, RIM is actually selling more now than ever. The PlayBook is a fine tablet. The OS is competent and slick. It packs all the standard BlackBerry apps and functions. Much as the iPad is a great iPhone companion, the PlayBook should be the BlackBerry user’s tablet of choice. The PlayBook is a fine tablet now. But it didn’t launch that way. The PlayBook launched last April to rough reviews. Common issues cited were the buggy OS, lack of 3rd party apps, and, strangely, RIM failed to include a calendar, email, and BBM functions. The tablet went nowhere and launched with a thud. It wasn’t until a drastic price cut and the addition of these missing features some seven months post launch that the PlayBook started moving. RIM saw a five fold increase in PlayBook sales last quarter. A 4G PlayBook makes sense in a strange way. RIM built the PlayBook to work tightly with its enterprise platform. In theory the PlayBook should work superior to the iPad in a corporate environment. Since RIM is actually now managing to sell PlayBooks, a 4G version should make traveling shower hook salesmen rather happy, since it can remotely dial the home intranet without relying on WiFi. Sure, these people might want an iPad, but IT departments can buy two PlayBooks for the price of one iPad and these tablets can be managed alongside the company’s existing BlackBerrys. Unfortunately a 4G PlayBook would flop in the consumer market like its WiFi brother. Even if it’s priced aggressively, the PlayBook lacks the sex appeal, and more importantly, the sheer amount of functions found on the iPad. Consumers looking for a cheap tablet will still look at the Kindle Fire or perhaps the rumored Google Nexus Tablet. RIM will likely launch the PlayBook the first week of May at its yearly BlackBerry World conference. The company needs to have a strong showing and a 4G PlayBook shows RIM is at least moving albeit rather slowly. If RIM is to recover, they need to get products on the market in a timely and complete fashion; that’s very clear. However, the company also needs to protect its revenue streams, and refreshing an old tablet with a relatively inexpensive addition like a 4G radio is a smart way to exploit the new demand and those still afflicted with the crackberry addiction.
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| Amazon S3: 905 Billion Objects Stored, 1 Billion Added Each Day Posted: 06 Apr 2012 06:50 AM PDT  Amazon has released some fairly impressive numbers showcasing the growth of Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) over the years. By the end of the first quarter of 2012, there were 905 billion objects stored, and the service routinely handles 650,000 requests per second for those objects, with peaks that go even higher. To put that in perspective, that’s up from 262 billion objects stored just two years ago and up from 762 billion by Q4 2011. Or maybe it’s more impressive when you look further back: 2.9 billion in 2006, for example. And how fast is it growing? Well, says Amazon, every day, over a a billion objects are added. That’s how fast. The S3 object counts grows even when Amazon recently added ways to make it easier for objects to leave, including through object expiration and multi-object deletion. The objects are added via S3 APIs, AWS Import/Export, the AWS Storage Gateway, various backup tools, and through Direct Connect pipes. Note, that the above chart shows Q4 data up until this year, as Amazon only has data up to Q1. So that’s not any sort of slowdown you’re seeing there – by Q4 2012, that number is going to be much, much higher.
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| HTC’s Rough Q1: Profits Down 70% Over Last Year, Revenue Dips 35% Posted: 06 Apr 2012 05:57 AM PDT  HTC released their unaudited Q1 2012 earnings earlier this morning, and the results aren't pretty [PDF]. The Taiwanese company managed to pull down NT$67.8 billion ($2.3 billion) this past quarter, a nearly 35% dip year-over-year. What's more, HTC took an even bigger hit when it came to net income after taxes — in Q1, they only raked in NT$4.4 billion ($149 million), compared to the NT$14.8 billion ($501 million) in profits earned this time last year. Ouch. Just… ouch. HTC has tried to set the bar nice and low with their revenue and sales guidance for the quarter, but now we're getting a look at how rough this past quarter has really been. Back in February, HTC Chief Financial Officer Winston Yung pegged the company's sluggish quarter on increased competition from rivals like Samsung and Apple (a reason they seem to like trotting out often), but he was quick to note that HTC was just as much at fault. "We simply dropped the ball on products in the fourth quarter," Yung said in a February conference call. He also noted that the company’s LTE devices in particular — think the Rezound and the Vivid — didn’t live up to company expectations. The numbers don't look very promising, but the company hasn't exactly been sitting on their laurels this whole time. Not long after the company revealed that they would be refocusing their efforts around a smaller number of "hero" devices in 2012, they officially pulled back the curtains on their impressive new One series devices. After having played with the devices (along with their new American cousin), I get the impression that HTC may not be stuck in this current hole for too much longer. There's no question that HTC has spent a good chunk of 2011 spinning their wheels when it came to innovative design and functionality (did they really need to make 4 variants of the Sensation?), but the One series seems like a breath of fresh air in comparison to the reiterative devices they churned out for a while. Still, while HTC is getting their hardware affairs in order, that competition from Apple and Samsung isn’t going anywhere. With a new iPhone and the Galaxy S III waiting in the wings for their respective debuts later this year, HTC may still have some rough seas ahead of them. At least this time though, they’ll have some hardware that could actually put up a fight.
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| Do We Even Need NFC For Mobile Payments? PayPal, Google Weigh In (Video) Posted: 06 Apr 2012 05:28 AM PDT  If you tried to judge whether NFC mobile payments are ready for prime time — based on the amount of chatter you hear in your newsfeed — you'd think the contactless technology was on the brink of ubiquitous adoption. Nothing could be further from the truth. While it's true there are other applications for NFC (data collection, advertising, check in, etc), according to Forrester, even those methods are still in "trial and discovery" mode. But those concepts are not what I'm talking about here anyway. I'm talking about NFC chips in mobile phones being used for mobile payments. In fact, there are documented sources out there citing that we are four, five, maybe even ten years away from a realistic and entrenched infrastructure that would allow the masses to make face-to-face payments using secure elements embedded in smart cards and mobile phones. Five years. Just think about where you were five years ago. What kind of phone did you have? Where did you work? How did you communicate with others in these days of yore? Seriously, what has changed for you in that time? What has changed in your environment in that time? Sure, Apple figures into the NFC payments equation as they could stand to uniformly connect the dots for however many new NFC enabled iPhones (and attached iTunes accounts) they might potentially pump out in 2012. That might flood the market more quickly with capable handsets and increase consumer demand for this payment capability — I am not disputing that. But the solution here is more complicated than just dumping a bunch of NFC capable phones into the market. It's all about the merchant infrastructure. It's in their hands. It doesn't matter how many cars you have if there is no highway. For a long time there has been this chicken/egg standoff with regard to payments via NFC capable phones. Will it take a tipping point of NFC chip-laden devices to drive merchants to get terminals (and support payments)…or will there need to be enough terminals first before manufacturers go through the hassle and expense of integrating NFC chips into their phones? It's certainly going to get cheaper and easier for manufactures to get NFC chips into the phones, that is for certain. Technologies like Texas Instruments WiLink 8, among others, stand to make it an easier process for manufacturers. But I think it's still going to take something bigger to force the highway to be built. Back in the day in Japan and Korea, that "thing" that happened was generous government backing (see pg. 40 – 42 of ITIF report) coupled with less carrier competition. For merchants in the west, they won't be as lucky. Plus, there is a force that may have emerged that could require the NFC highway to be built and it’s not going to be a happy ending for merchants because they could be footing the bill for terminals whether they like it or not. We'll come back to that. I've been thinking about this for a long time and there is another question to consider before even contemplating all the hoopla over who will jump first. The question is this: do we even need NFC? Contemplating this 5ish year timeframe along with all the other things involved to get this whole new ecosystem off the ground (merchant purchases of 8 million NFC capable terminals, a fleet of NFC ready phones) makes me wonder less about utility and more about if there is even enough time for NFC to become instantiated in the U.S.A. before other disruptive payments methods and technologies supplant it during its ramp up? The entrenched stakeholders (the card networks and and mobile carriers) would like you to believe that NFC capable phones for payments is an inevitability and a necessity — the evolution of modern payments. The truth? According to Richard Crone, CEO of Crone Consulting LLC, the truth is that NFC payments are actually an outmoded concept that really isn't needed. A remnant of our "offline" past when storing actual card data, in secure element hardware, was actually necessary. It can all happen in the cloud these days.
Payments methods like Square's Card Case, PayPal, Dwolla, Modo Payments, Paydiant, DigiMo and even the Apple Store, to name a few, all store payment credentials in the cloud instead of in hardware. These disruptive systems are essentially trying to change the traditional paradigm for Point Of Sale purchases. You are the POS. But payments via NFC (and payments is the key word here) prolongs the payment card metaphor and attempts to give the incumbents another method to keep control of the current ecosystem. As fast as these incumbents are trying to move, time is not on their side as new innovations pop up all around. These other companies — some big like PayPal and some lean startups, like DigiMo — are attempting to get in place ahead of the NFC highway. Before I start to sound like some kind of anti-NFC extremist, I am aware that some of these services are actually piloting NFC options along side their cloud offerings and many have worked NFC into their strategies as both a preference or a contingency. This is known and I don't blame them. It's not a bad idea from a business perspective as it's still early in this payments future. In any event, I reached out to some experts and posed some questions to each of them. Here are the two questions and here is what they said: Question 1: Question 2: THE RESPONSES Richard Crone – CEO Crone Consulting LLC “You have to remember, all new payment types start with merchant acceptance. Its a two party market: an issuing side and an acquiring side. Nothing will get started unless the merchants decide they are going to accept. And up to this point, merchants have been loath to accept NFC because it goes first and foremost to a higher ‘card not present’ rate. Secondly, they’re not allowed to do pin processing. Thirdly, they can't do "least cost" routing of those transactions toward the lower cost pin/debit networks. And fourth and most importantly, they can't see spending 300 – 500 dollars per lane to upgrade their point of sale for a more expensive tender type.” George Peabody – Director, Emerging Technologies at Mercator Advisory Group “Potentially companies like Square, PayPal and Paydiant. Now, suggesting that Square Card Case is going to work for Walmart or something like it…probably not. That's not going to be the case. In fact in the payments ecosystem, there's another major current that's just really getting going and will probably reach scale about the same time NFC does and that's called EMV.” “It's a card security standard that’s been and being deployed in most other major card markets in the world. You might have heard of Chip and Pin before? That's based on EMV. It’s a smart card that authenticates itself to the payment terminal. Last August, Visa announced that the U.S., which is the largest card market, needs to adopt this standard. What that means Jay, is that every payment terminal — 8 million plus — in the U.S. is going to need to be replaced.” “They’re targeting October 2015 right now. And they are also suggesting that if you are going to replace the terminal anyway then make sure it has a contactless interface to support NFC. So in the next 3 to 5 to 7 year timeframe, we're going to be switching over to smart cards because they are really hard to counterfeit compared to mag stripe. And of course that lays the ground work for smartphone/tablet mediated NFC transactions.” (I had a few additional questions I asked George, for clarification) JD – “Where does the burden lie with replacing existing terminals?” GP – “That's the merchant's burden. Large retailers, the typical replacement cycle is in the 7 year range. Mom and Pop stores can go 10 years or longer.” JD – “Will these EMV cards even have a mag stripe?” GP – “Yes. They will still have mag stripe and even embossing.” JD – “Is the new EMV terminal adoption a mandate or a recommendation?” GP – “It is not a mandate yet, but there will be liability shift for transactions generated via mag stripe card or from a mag stripe only terminal.” JD – “So merchants will be responsible for chargebacks if they don't update their terminals?” GP – “So that's the incentive versus a ‘mandate’. It's a stick, not a carrot.” JD – “Sounds like forcing merchants to me.” Google Spokesperson "It's hard to predict the future, but we feel that NFC is off to a great start and we're seeing studies from some analyst firms such as Juniper predicting 750 million phones by 2016. Either way, we believe NFC is a robust standard that will stand the test of time. And while it may not be the only option for payment, we feel that it will certainly will be one of options consumers can choose as they move beyond plastic cards and towards digital payments with their mobile phones." David Marcus – President of PayPal THE WINNERS AND THE LOSERS But George Peabody revealed the key information in our discussion that got me thinking that whether or not NFC is better or worse or faster or slower or needed or not needed or whatever…it doesn't really matter. The truth is that the big card networks could, by way of liability shift, force NFC into use. They could do this by "unofficially" mandating EMV/Chip and Pin card acceptance and therefore require POS terminal upgrades by merchants (at merchant cost) or otherwise face responsibility for fraudulent charges and chargebacks. NFC could be baked into the equation at this time during that POS upgrade. At last, the chicken/egg scenario for "who is going to pay for the terminals" would be answered and once again the merchants will eat that cost. In this possible future, there are distinct winners and losers. The winners, luckily for you, are consumers. Also, emerging payments companies and the big card networks stand to benefit. When you shop at big merchants in the future, you'll use your NFC phone to pay and you'll like it. When you shop at small merchants you'll get to use your cloud payment app and you'll like it. Either way, you're going to like it. The losers, obviously, would be merchants because of the costs they could incur. And to be clear, for some merchants, we’re talking about millions of dollars in potential terminal upgrade costs. After their initial investment is recouped, I suppose they'll like mobile phones with NFC chips in them as much as any other payment source. I'm not sure it matters to them. But in the short term, it's gonna hurt. This scenario sounds grim for merchants big and small, but it may not be all doom and gloom. Scott Gamble, VP of Digital Solutions at Alliance Data noted to me that merchants have been able to band together to prevent de facto mandates like this before. "Don't consider NFC adoption by merchants a fait accompli” he says. “Until there is a clear value proposition for retailers to make this significant investment, they won't. I also wouldn't necessarily consider a de facto EMV mandate by the payment networks a strong enough motivator. The retail industry is a very strong community that has demonstrated no compunction in protecting their rights through the legal system when faced with unilateral demands by the payments industry. While this all shakes out there is ample time for NFC to be supplanted by alternate technologies."
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| Arianna Huffington No Longer Runs The Aol Tech Sites Posted: 05 Apr 2012 08:04 PM PDT  You know every once in a while you come across news about your company and it turns out your boss is no longer your boss anymore. If you’re me this probably happens to you every three months. Anyways this morning I read in the media that Arianna Huffington (who I think used to be my boss) gained more control within Aol and then subsequently read that actually she had been “demoted.” Okay truth please guys?! Well, because no one ever tells us anything Additionally, divisions of the Huffington Post originally folded into Aol like tech and communications will now be re-instated into the Huffington Post, and the HuffPost property will remain an independent entity within Aol, sort of like the Basque region of Spain. Business Insider says that all the non-HuffPost blogs will now report to a man named Jay Hirsch. While I don’t know any Jay Hirsch, I do know a Jay Kirsch — a non-editorial Aol executive who is the SVP & General Manager of the Autos/ Finance/ Industry/ Jobs/ Real Estate division of Aol and an awesome writer. No really, he is a great writer. Even though Jay is an aforementioned great writer, he will be looking for an Editorial Manager to fill a role under him and deal directly with each individual site, according to sources. Kirsch wouldn’t comment. Hirsch, whoever he is, also wasn’t available for comment. What does this mean for TechCrunch AND YOU? Well I’m assuming we’ll be saying Jay or whoever’s name instead of Arianna’s when we call Aol to change our System Passwords once a quarter. Arianna was rarely involved in our day-to-day anyways (well except for that one time) and now we’ll have no Aol editorial oversight, at least that we know of. AND YOU? Well it probably doesn’t mean very much to you at all.
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| Posted: 05 Apr 2012 07:59 PM PDT  Will Apple make a 7 inch iPad? That’s the question being batted around yet again today. The true answer right now is easy: I don’t know. No one does. Most likely not even Apple. They’re undoubtedly thinking about it. And may even have to make a call soon. But it has probably not been decided just yet. But that’s a lame answer. Let’s sexy it up using history, logic, and common sense. Will Apple make a 7 inch iPad? Yes. This topic came up today because of remarks John Gruber made during a podcast he records on a weekly basis with Dan Benjamin. When Benjamin asked Gruber about the possibility of Apple making a 7 inch tablet, Gruber responded: “Well, I don't know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab. A 7.85 inch iPad that runs at 1024×768. It's just like the regular iPad shrunk down a bit." This should surprise no one. Apple has many prototypes of various devices in different stages of the product lifecycle. They probably have a few other variations of the iPad as well, and they probably have for years (pre-dating the iPhone even). Most prototypes never see the light of day. But I believe this one that Gruber is talking about will. Again, I have no actual inside information here. But just think about it for a second. Apple views the iPad as the future of general computing. They already sell in far greater quantity than Macs (and every other PC). And Apple drops hints from time to time that the category may even eventually be bigger than the crown jewel of their entire kingdom: the iPhone. Apple may or may not be able to take the iPad to such heights with one form factor. But it will be a lot easier if they have two. Apple often starts product lines with the Henry Ford mentality: “You can have any color as long as it’s black.” Mac, MacBook, iMac, iPod, etc. As the product matures, so does the offering. New form factors. New sizes. The one major exception, of course, is the iPhone. It has always had the 3.5 inch screen even as the competition has gone bigger — sometimes ridiculously so. But you can certainly make the argument that the iPhone exception is the right call. A mobile phone has to be portable enough to carry around all the time comfortably. And you want to be able to use it with one hand (thumb reach). And given Apple’s preference towards pixel-perfect design, keeping the screen the same size ensures apps are relatively uniform. The iPad doesn’t have the same constraints. At 9.7 inches, you obviously can’t carry it in your pocket. Nor can you use it with one hand. The proportional design aspect remains true (the iPad ratio exactly doubled the iPhone ratio), but as Gruber points out, a 7.85 inch screen running at the original iPad’s 1024×768 resolution would keep things simple for developers. It could work. And it will. But wait, won’t users have to whittle down their fingers with sandpaper to use a 7 inch screen? Steve Jobs did in fact suggest this a few times. But he said a lot of things. In fact, if you look throughout the history of Apple, you can often predict that Apple is eventually going to do something if Jobs implied in the past that they never would. Look at your iPad right now. There’s plenty of room to shrink things a bit. Apps and their attributes just have to remain basically in proportion. But even at a high level, all of this is too technical. The bottom line is that there isn’t a week that goes by without someone coming up to me and gushing about the iPad, but wishing it was a bit smaller. Not everyone feels this way, of course. And that’s why Apple will keep the 9.7 inch model as well. But there are plenty of folks out there who want a smaller version. The fact of the matter is that the iPad is great at many things and the list is constantly expanding. But it’s not great for holding up for prolonged periods of time in certain settings. This is problematic for say, reading in bed. It’s not that it’s too heavy, it’s not. But the large size does make it a bit clunky at times. A 7 inch iPad would be perfect in many of those situations. Of course, that alone would not be enough for Apple to do the smaller iPad. But like the iPod mini (and nano), Apple understands the mentality that smaller is often better in the eyes of many. The mini and nano eventually became far more popular than the original iPod. (Some) options are important. None more so than pricing options. The Kindle Fire has a 7-inch screen. It’s $199. By most accounts, it’s pretty poor when compared to the iPad. But that isn’t stopping millions of people from buying them. $199 to $499 (the entry-level new iPad) is a big jump. Even $199 to $399 (the iPad 2′s new price) is a big jump. If Apple can sell the iPad 2 at $399 with a healthy margin, imagine what they could do with a smaller-screen iPad? I wouldn’t rule out $299. Paying $199 for a 7 inch Kindle Fire versus $299 for a 7.85 inch iPad would be a significantly harder call for many consumers. For many others, it would be an obvious one: get the iPad. Also consider the forthcoming Google-branded tablet. While few details are known about it, everything leaking out suggests a very competitive price compared to the Kindle Fire, and as such, likely a similar form factor. In the two years since the iPad first launch, everyone has tried and failed to compete directly against Apple. The only avenue getting any traction is this smaller and cheaper Kindle Fire. And it’s only getting some traction because it’s a space where Apple is simply not competing. Yet. Consider the 11-inch MacBook Air versus the 13-inch MacBook Air. I’ve had both models. The reality is that they’re not all that different. The 11 is (obviously) smaller and lighter, but the 13 is pretty damn small and light compared to just about any other notebook ever created. Still, Apple offers both. Consider also the MacBook Pro line: 13 inch. 15 inch. 17 inch. The reality again is they’re not all that much different on a macro level. But Apple still offers all of them. You could certainly argue that a 7 inch iPad versus a 9 inch iPad is a more meaningful difference since you have to be holding it all the time to use it. You’ll notice it more. Some people will prefer one size. Some will prefer the other. In some cases, it will depend on the circumstance. Plenty of folks will probably buy both. A 7 inch for the kids, a 9 inch for the grownups, for example. Or maybe a 9 inch for work and a 7 inch for home. I also suspect that like the difference in laptop sizes, the smaller iPad would come less juiced-up in the spec category. Since the spec is dead, Apple probably won’t play this up much, but to keep costs down, maybe the smaller iPad would have a last-generation chip. Or maybe it would have a slightly less powerful one than the current generation 9 inch iPad. Maybe it would also have less storage. Or maybe the high range of the storage options would simply be less. Apple will clearly soon move to a 128 GB option for the 9 inch iPad and drop the 16 GB option. Maybe a 7 inch iPad would start at 16 GB and only give the option to go up to 64 GB. Maybe the 7 inch would have slightly less battery life due to less physical space for a battery. Or maybe it would be the same because the smaller screen would draw less power. Lots of possibilities. The point is, I suspect that with the 7 inch iPad, Apple would vary more than just the screen size. It would be the most important difference, but not the only one. And it would result in Apple selling a ton of both models. And it would drive even more revenue and profit Apple’s way while keeping their rivals at bay. I’m basically writing this post so that when Apple does release a 7 inch iPad at some point in the future, I can point back here and say “I told you so”. Cause I did. The option is just sitting on the table waiting for Apple to pounce. This is about the future of computing. It’s about expanding the brand. It’s about securing the stake. It makes sense. It will happen.
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| Nonprofit “Digital Public Library Of America” To Launch In April 2013 Posted: 05 Apr 2012 06:30 PM PDT  The Google Books project (just today pared down a bit) always impressed me with its sheer scope. Offering modern e-books is all well and good, but that’s more of a business problem. It’s the scanning and free availability of thousands upon thousands of old books that struck me as a worthwhile endeavor. But publishers and booksellers have been wary of the service, knowing that Google is a fan of free, and their scan-first, ask-permission-later strategy caused some consternation as well. And while access to all that knowledge is appreciated, it is lost on no one that the data is in the hands of a for-profit company. Enter the Digital Public Library of America, which aims to create a similar catalog of works, but both more comprehensive and unimpeded by commercial motives. It’s been in the works for a while, but it seems it may finally launch as early as a year from now. The news comes from Robert Darnton, Harvard University librarian and member of the DPLA’s steering committee, who at a recent event made a serious promise that the project would launch in April of 2013. There’s a lot of work to be done if that’s true: the project aims to unify such disparate sources as the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, various academic collections, and presumably any other collection that would be meaningful to include. And they have yet to even decide such issues as how near to the present their catalog will come. There is an ongoing dispute regarding so-called “orphan works” and other questions of copyright, and the problem is far from trivial. Darnton suggests a rolling off-limits period, perhaps between five and ten years before the present, from which no books would be added to the collection. But outside that limit (and yearly, as a new publication year is added to the archive), works would be added on an opt-out basis — the same basis that caused so much anger when Google did it, scanning thousands of works whose copyright information they had not ascertained. In fact, during the Q&A period following Darnton’s talk, the man who led the Authors Guild suit against Google, Nick Taylor, asked whether any authors had been consulted in the planning of this potentially precedent-setting policy. Darnton replied that authors as a “sector” had not been consulted, but that many of the people on the steering committee were authors themselves and sympathized with the needs of that particular set. We’re still in the early stages of this archival process; even the Internet Archive and Google’s massive book collection are, in some ways, rather crude first steps. The DPLA is ambitious and may face serious obstacles, but it’s to be expected when they’re making it up as they go along.
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| Nextpeer Pledges To Make Any Mobile Game As Social As OMGPOP’s “Draw Something” Posted: 05 Apr 2012 06:25 PM PDT  There were plenty of other Pictionary-like games in the iTunes app store before OMGPOP’s Draw Something. But the secret ingredient behind Draw Something’s runaway success was its very social, asynchronous gameplay. Most independent game designers don’t necessarily have the extra manpower to build an engine that supports this. That’s where an Israeli startup called Nextpeer comes in. It’s kind of like the next generation of OpenFeint, a mobile-social gaming network that was acquired by Japanese gaming giant GREE for $104 million last year. Game designers can integrate Nextpeer’s SDK to let their players compete against each other. Up until now, Nextpeer only supported synchronous gameplay, meaning that players had to be available at the same time. That approach is more challenging because it can be hard to match players at the exact right time. But now Nextpeer is offering an asynchronous mode, which means that players can finish a round whenever they have a spare moment. That’s the secret sauce that has made games like Zynga’s Words With Friends and then Draw Something insanely viral. In Draw Something, even if you couldn’t compete against a friend at the exact same time, you could see a replay of them guessing your drawing as a recording was played for them. That still created the feeling that you were playing against them in real-time. Game designers who use Nextpeer can enable the same thing as the company can record one player’s turn and replay it later for a friend or competitor. The company has a few example games out at the moment including Safari Party by PIXOWL, which is a Match-4 game, or PeterPog by GeoloPigs. These titles use Nextpeer to power social tournaments and offer real-time chat. Since launching at the end of last year, Nextpeer SDK has racked up 20 member apps which collectively have more than 5 million downloads. Its games have 400,000 monthly actives. This is a start. With asynchronous mode, the company should be able to pick up the pace to compete with far better funded competitors like DeNA’s Mobage platform and GREE’s up coming global gaming network. (But it’s worth noting that GREE’s platform offer features like social leaderboards, not the intensive real-time tournaments that Nextpeer supports.) Nextpeer will end up having a mixed business model. Part of its revenue will come from a virtual currency that’s layered across all of its games. When players compete in a multiplayer tournament, they put up a little bit of their own virtual currency as a bet. Whoever wins takes the entire pool of coins. If a player runs out of coins, they can always buy more. Nextpeer splits the revenues with the developer after the platform’s take and they haven’t disclosed the share. On Android, this currency will be usable across all games. On iOS, it will only be usable in the game that you bought it from to be compliant with Apple’s rules. Nextpeer also plans to earn revenue from promoting and distributing games in its network. The company has raised an angel round of undisclosed size and is planning to open an office in the San Francisco Bay Area soon.
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| VCs: Secondary Funding Markets Are A Double-Edged Sword Posted: 05 Apr 2012 06:06 PM PDT 
In a panel discussion held last night by Wealthfront at the Rosewood Hotel, the longtime Silicon Valley dealmaking hotspot, VC heavyweights Sameer Gandhi of Accel Partners, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital, and Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital discussed the upsides and downsides of this seemingly unstoppable trend. Robert Scoble was in attendance, and he captured the entire panel in the video embedded above — the panel starts talking secondary markets at the 47:00 minute mark. Sarah Lacy was also in the house, and you can check out her take on the evening’s discussion here at PandoDaily. To me, these were the most interesting bits: According to Accel’s Gandhi, sites such as SecondMarket aren’t really as big on the radar of major VCs like him. The fact that founders are now getting cash outs before a proper exit (typically a sale or an IPO) is one of the most interesting things that’s happening now. “All the late-growth equity rounds are with some degree of liquidity, or a massive amount of liquidity. They’re not all primary capital. So that [earlier situation] of founder liquidity waiting for the IPO, that’s sort of a nonexistent factor,” he said. “That’s the more interesting part of secondaries than any of the organized, SecondMarket things, which in our case are total non-factors.” Sequoia’s Doug Leone was quick to pipe up that he welcomes founders cashing out before the larger exit, since it gives them a reward for building a lucrative company up until that point and some degree of personal security — and, perhaps, the ability to continue to run the company while avoiding the dreaded burn out. “If you’re a young CEO and entrepreneur, and you own 30 percent of the company, and you can sell five percent or ten percent and put, say, $22 million in the bank and be safe, then go for it. I think that’s a good thing. Now, you do have to worry about [regulatory] things, the 409A. But somebody taking money out of the company, especially a growing company, is a good thing.” There is a downside to this general “new new” funding environment of founder cash-outs, however. Leone went on: “Where we get offended is when a venture firm comes in to a company that has no revenue model, no revenues, and bribes a CEO and says, ‘We want to be your series A investor.’ Imagine this. Series A, and they haven’t done anything. And $2 million goes in [the founder's] pocket. That is a bad part of the secondary market that we hate to see.” Bill Gurley of Benchmark also brought up how for companies, opening up themselves to secondary investors can be more trouble than it’s worth from an organizational perspective. Secondary liquidity is positive, he said, only “as long as it’s organized and controlled. But the problem is those markets actually can create disorganization, because they allow shares to flow down into the hands of people you don’t know. And you get many of the downsides of being public with less control over them. It creates a lot of risk, and a lot of 409A problems, and a lot of headaches. Don’t take my word for it — talk to the CEOs of the companies that have been exposed to it.”
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| Wingsplay Pays Influencers To Spread Viral Videos, Runs Campaigns For NBC And Oxygen Posted: 05 Apr 2012 05:19 PM PDT  If a business creates a fun, potentially viral video, what’s the best way to convince people to share it? Wingsplay has a straightforward idea: Pay them. So advertisers pay Wingsplay to promote videos that they want to go viral. “Influencers” with accounts on Wingsplay then visit the site to watch the videos. If they like one, they can post a link to the video on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog, along with a personal message and the “#viralad” hashtag (to comply with the FTC’s disclosure requirements, and also so you’re not deceiving your friends). Then the influencers are paid based on every “seed” view of the video that they generate. Now, paying people to promote things on social networks isn’t entirely new. But unlike Adly, Wingsplay is all about video content, and it’s more focused on influencers than celebrities — in other words, you don’t need to have a big name to participate, just a network of friends who or followers who are likely to repost the content that you share. Founder Olivier Lasry says the average Wingsplay influencer has 1,000 Facebook friends and the same number on connections through Twitter True Reach. (For example, I’m no Charlie Sheen, but Wingsplay says I could earn $2,880 per month from my Twitter account. Big time!) Lasry says Wingsplay has already completed its first two campaigns — one for NBC promoting the trailer for its show Awake and one for Oxygen promoting its show Brooklyn 11223. In those campaigns, Wingsplay estimates it generated 3.2 free video views for every paid view. “They honestly exceeded our expectations,” Lasry says. “We did not expect to have as high viral action rates for trailers.” Fifty-four percent of those views came via Facebook, compared to 37 percent on blogs and 9 percent on Twitter. Only 26 percent of Wingsplay members participated in one of those two campaigns, which may mean (as Lasry argues) that they’re only sharing videos that they genuinely like, rather than sharing anything and everything for the money. An average user who participated in the campaign made $50, Lasry says.
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| Twitter Puts Its Foot Down, Takes Five Biggest Spammers To Federal Court Posted: 05 Apr 2012 04:20 PM PDT  A warning: You can only spam Twitter so much before it brings in the law. As Twitter grows — the company now claims to have 140 million active users — naturally, it’s become an attractive target for spammers, which have collectively made their drek a familiar part of the social network’s user experience. Now Twitter is officially putting its foot down and enlisting the help of the federal courts, filing a suit in San Francisco today against its five most aggressive spammers. In pursuing legal action, Twitter said in a statement on its blog, it believes it’s going “straight to the source”.
So, not only is Twitter pursuing legal action, it’s using other tools at its disposal to silence the peanut gallery, launching anti-spam measures that, among other things, specifically target @mention spam. Twitter also said that it has been using its link shortener, a.k.a. “t.co” to analyze data on spammy content and its origins, and give it the kabosh. Obviously, spam has become a real problem on Twitter, and its taking legal action definitely functions as a clear signal that the company is taking the problem seriously. Nothing like “federal courts” to drive home the point. As Twitter users know, spammy followers are a routine occurrence, like those one-link spam tweets that end up in your “mentions” tab, for example. Twitter does implement sweeps to reduce the overall reach and tally of these spam accounts — one of the reasons we see our follower numbers periodically drop. Of course, this is not a problem they can fight alone. The company is also asking users to help police its network, and users can find out how to report and block spammers here. Will be updating.
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| Wipe It! Security Hole In Facebook Mobile Apps Threatens Jailbroken / Stolen Phones Posted: 05 Apr 2012 03:31 PM PDT  There’s panic about a security hole in Facebook’s iOS and Android apps that surfaced this week, but the threat of identity theft is being blown out of proportion. You only need to worry if your phone is actually stolen, and even then a hacker would need it to be jailbroken, use tools like iExplore, or they’d have to take the device apart. Once a hacker has full physical access to your phone, you have a lot more than Facebook to worry about, as the thief could steal your contacts, cookies, and access all your apps if the phone was unlocked. Really, this security hole highlights the new dangers of having your phone stolen. Owners should make sure they have a remote wipe solution ready to nuke all their data or else things could get ugly quick. So here’s what happened. Developer Gareth Wright published a blog post this week stating that there’s some ways for hackers to read the .plist file of a user’s Facebook for iOS or Android app that contains the app’s access token, full oAuth key and secret. With that a hacker could log into your Facebook account and act as you, as well as log into third-party apps that rely on Facebook’s identity platform. However, experts tell me that details of the post were inaccurate or misleading, namely because Wright didn’t specify that he was using jailbroken devices. The .plist can only be accessed by the Facebook app itself, and not by someone else unless a phone is jailbroken or rooted, or if the flash memory is physically unsoldered from the device. Sure, jailbreaking gives you deep access to your mobile’s hardware as well as the ability to install blackmarket apps, but it also disables critical security measures. Also, if someone has full physical access to your phone, tools like iExplore and others can help them surmount most any security feature. Facebook has released the following statement on the issue:
This is one of those largely theoretical security flaws that makes headlines occasionally. Yes, watch out for plugging your jailbroken phone into a stranger’s stereo dock or USB cable, but really, don’t lose your phone and then not wipe it. Protect yourself by setting up remote wipe through Find My Phone for iOS or Exchange for Android. Then if you get off the train or stumble home from a drunken night to find your phone missing, wipe it first, and cry/search/buy a new one later.
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