The Latest from TechCrunch

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• Nokia Lumia 900 Review: This One’s A No-Brainer
• Surviving The Scramble For San Francisco Office Space
• Riding The Third Wave of TV Transformation
• The Post-PC Enterprise
• The Mobile Paradox
• The Cloud Will Kill The Resume, And That’s a Good Thing
• FCC Wants To Fine Google $25K For WiFi Investigation Delays
• How I Got Ripped At 500 Startups
• Google Finally Gets Right To Gmail Trademark In Germany
• It’s Not A Bubble, It’s Valleywood
• Court Rules Software Not Protected By Fed Crime Laws, Overturns Conviction of Goldman Engineer
• Cloud Communications And The Future of Marketing In The Post-PC World
• Is Direct Selling The Next Driver Of Startup Commerce Companies?
• The New Grabio Lets You Grab Classified Deals On The Go
• The 5 Most Over-Hyped “Future of TV” Topics
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• Apps Have Got Your Back
• Gillmor Gang: Moe, Larry, and Curly

Nokia Lumia 900 Review: This One’s A No-Brainer Posted: 15 Apr 2012 09:23 AM PDT Short Version Guys, this one’s such a no brainer that I shouldn’t even have to lay it all out. But I will. The Nokia Lumia 900 is an excellent handset, comes packed with a fresh new operating system in the form of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and thanks to a nifty AT&T bill credit from Nokia, you can essentially get this $100 LTE-equipped phone for free until the 21st. Repeat: for free. Like I said, this one’s a no brainer. Features: 4.3-inch 480×800 AMOLED display AT&T 4G LTE Windows Phone 7.5 Mango 1.4GHz single-core processor 8MP rear camera (720p video capture) 1MP front camera MSRP: $100 on-contract (or free through April 21) Pros: Beautiful unibody polycarbonate casing (matte) Well-built and premium feeling in the hand Windows Phone is a refreshing joy to use Cons: Poor color reproduction on the camera The display is a bit pixelated If thin and light is your thing, this may feel clunky Long Version Hardware/Design: The hardware on the Lumia 900 is top-notch. Nokia truly stepped it up, which says quite a bit considering that well-built hardware is one of the Finnish company’s fortes. The weight distribution is balanced, which allows the Lumia 900 to stand up on its own should you place it on the table. It has rounded edges along the side, with a flat top and bottom. The matte finish feels great in the hand, and Nokia actually built the phone with blue and black materials so even a deep scratch shouldn’t leave an ugly mark. The volume, camera, and lock buttons on my review unit felt a bit loose in their sockets, but I’m fairly certain that’s my only complaint. Micro USB is square on the top of the phone, and it always bothers me when phone makers get in the way of playing games while plugged in (battery suffers most during gaming, so we plug a lot as we play at home), but at least the design is beautiful. The battery isn’t removable, but battery life is better than expected on this little smurf so I don’t see it as a huge setback. To be honest, the phone is a bit bulkier than most of its competition but I see this as a good thing. It’s not cumbersome by any means, and actually feels a bit more expensive than an LG Spectrum or any other super light, super thin phone. Software: I’ve got a thing for Windows Phone. I’m honestly not sure where it came from — I’ve never been a huge Microsoft user — but I feel lucky to have seen the light. Now, there are inherent cons that come along with Windows Phone, for now. For example, you won’t find as many apps on the Marketplace as you would on Android or iOS (though that number is growing, and Microsoft is banking on quality over quantity). Another issue is locked-down specs, which happen to be just a bit outdated, that Windows Phone partners must abide by. One of those — the worst one, I feel — is a 480×800 display resolution, which bums me out on a 4.3-inch screen. But, Microsoft is adding more high-res options with the launch of Apollo, though that won’t help you much with the Lumia 900. But back to the point. The baked-in features of Windows Phone are excellent. Threaded messaging is far and away my favorite, as it lets you conduct conversations with friends over a variety of formats (Facebook chat, text, Windows Live messenger) all from one unified stream. Local Scout, powered by Bing, is a welcome alternative to Yelp, and the People and Me hubs make me actually enjoy social networking. Of course, there’s still work to be done here, but if you haven’t given Windows Phone a chance I highly recommend checking out this emulator on your phone and seeing if you perchance have a crush on the new kid on the block. Nokia also added some smart software to the phone including a contacts transfer app, which will help you transition from Android, iOS or BlackBerry. Camera: Now for a little bad news, if I may. I love the UI of the camera app, to be sure, but the actual images produced by the Lumia 900 camera aren’t all that great. Here’s what I’m noticing: When you open up the camera and look through the viewfinder, everything looks beautiful. Whatever you see in the viewfinder is almost identical to what you’re seeing in real life, in front of the lens. But once you snap the picture, the image produced instantly changes color. This happens most frequently on Auto, and adjusting the settings based on your environment will help this. But the fact of the matter is, we take pictures quickly on our phones and don’t often want to mess around with settings unless we have the time. (None of us have the time.) Furthermore, some settings don’t quite match up with what you’d expect. White Balance in particular was a bit janky. That said, I wish color reproduction were a bit better. On the other hand, I do like the physical shutter button on the side of the phone. It lets you half-press to focus, just as you would on an SLR, and then full-press to capture. Video recording was smooth and I have no real complaints there. Display: Here’s the thing with this display. It’s the same exact size and resolution as the Galaxy S II (though the Lumia has an AMOLED display as opposed to a Super AMOLED Plus display), which was considered a beast for the past year. With the Galaxy S III on the horizon and 720p displays flooding the market, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend this phone to anyone who’s recently upgraded to a new super phone. In tech, it’s very difficult to go backwards. At the same time, upgraders coming off of a one- to two-year-old phone shouldn’t have too much of a problem unless you’re really keen on display issues. Graphic artists and designers, for example, will surely notice the pixelated resolution. And Windows Phone only compounds that. It’s heavy on images, even on the home screen, and white text on a black background makes the resolution look even choppier. However, one important win for the Lumia 900 display is its ClearBlack technology. I was able to use the phone in bright, direct sunlight (with my sunglasses on, mind you) and had absolutely no problem viewing everything on the display. I think this is a pretty big deal, since every phone I’ve ever used becomes really difficult to view in sunlight. Performance: It’s tough to measure the Lumia 900 against Android phones or the iPhone simply because any of the benchmarking we’d do would be irrelevant anyways — they’re different platforms. But I will tell you this: The Lumia 900, and specifically Windows Phone, is snappier than any Android phone I’ve ever played with. Granted, animations and transitions are a half a second longer than they are on Android, but they’re beautiful and as a whole, the OS never shows any sort of lag. Pair that kind of speed with a little 4G LTE radio, and the Lumia 900 surely won’t disappoint in the performance department. I’m also a big fan of the IE9 mobile browser in this bad boy. It’s quick like lightning, as proven by its BrowserMark score of 28769. Battery: Battery life on the Lumia 900 is actually quite impressive. In real-world scenarios the phone lasts through the entire day, even with 4G on the entire time. It seems like phone makers are finally figuring out what it takes to make 4G viable in the battery department, and we’re glad to see it. As far as official testing goes, the Lumia 900 lasted a full five hours. Our testing includes a non-stop Google Image search — the phone never sleeps or rests from 100 percent green to death. At any point I can make a call, play a game, or browse the web, all of which I did with the Lumia. To give you a little context, the Droid 4 only hung in there for three hours and forty-five minutes while the Droid RAZR Maxx (Motorola’s battery beast) stayed with me for a staggering eight hours and fifteen minutes. Head-To-Head With The Lumia 800 and iPhone 4S: Check out our thoughts on this match-up here. Hands-On Video: Initial Impressions Conclusion My editors always tell me to close these reviews with a definitive stance, as I should, but this phone makes it difficult. I wouldn’t, and couldn’t, tell a smartphone enthusiast who’s been using a Galaxy Nexus or iPhone 4S to upgrade to this, simply because it wouldn’t be an upgrade. You’d notice the camera issues right off the bat, and the screen would probably bug you. But this doesn’t make the Lumia 900 a bad phone at all. It’s a great phone. Nokia kicks ass at call reception, and while the specs are a bit outdated, hardware is beautiful and sturdy. As I said before, anyone coming off of a phone over a year old would be lucky to own a Lumia 900. Especially for free. Check out all of our Lumia 900 review posts here.

Surviving The Scramble For San Francisco Office Space Posted: 15 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT Editor’s note: Jon Sterling has been in the real estate business since 2002. Follow him on Twitter @mistersterling. The residential real estate bubble isn't the only real estate challenge facing startups in Silicon Valley. Office space within the city limits is becoming more scarce by the day as tech companies continue their aggressive growth. Relief is on the way, but it isn't an instant solution. The San Francisco Giants announced a $1.6 billion plan last week that would add 1000 rental units and 1.7 million feet of office space in the 27 acres that is currently being used as their parking lot. That's wonderful, but construction won't begin until 2015 and the estimated completion date is 2021. Most of the large-scale new construction projects are happening in Mission Bay. There are only a few physical spaces where large office projects could be built in San Francisco without displacing something else, and they sell for a premium. Many of those lots are located in Mission Bay, Dogpatch, and the Central Waterfront. New construction will ease the pressure, but it's not going to happen fast enough to satisfy the current demand. Because the city is surrounded by water on three sides and the citizens are very protective of their open spaces, new development will likely require the "Manhattanization" of the city.  New construction will go upward instead of outward, and the density will increase. New high-rise office buildings are a good solution to the city's growing needs, but they won't be built fast enough to help with the current shortage of space. The result? Higher prices for everyone for the short-term. What about the piers? The aging piers along the waterfront are largely under-utilized and could alleviate some pain if they were made available to companies who need space. Last fall, the tenants at Pier 38 (Automattic, Dogpatch Labs, and True Ventures, among others) were evicted when the Port of San Francisco deemed the property unsafe and issued a condemnation order.  The piers are ideal candidates for redevelopment efforts, and the America's Cup deal is a step in the right direction. Some ambitious action from those who occupy powerful political offices (hint, hint) would help the entire startup ecosystem. Companies looking for space on the Peninsula are having a tough time as well.  For example, tech startups in downtown Mountain View are being forced into storefront retail space because of the lack of inventory.  Retail space is much more expensive than traditional office space.  If a company has to spend an exorbitant amount of money on office space, that eats away at the amount of money they can use to hire talented employees. Good news! The "sharing economy" is helping create some efficiency in the market. The movement still isn't a large enough part of the market to be significant, but it's gaining traction. The explosion of shared office environments, like LiquidSpace and Loose Cubes is helping with the short-term crunch, and it remains to be seen whether or not they will be long-term players. If you're in the market for space, find a commercial leasing agent who works in the areas that interest you. Commercial real estate is a different monster than residential real estate, and many of the available spaces won't be advertised online. Walk the area and call any agents you find with "For Lease" signs posted. Those are the agents who will know about office space that's not being advertised and space that will available soon. Make friends with those agents. Consider short-term or temporary space if you can't find a suitable location.  Start by checking with the companies who are in the news for signing big leases. They won't fill all of their new space from day one, and may be interested in sub-leasing some of it. Places like Rocketspace and NextSpace are good short-term solutions if they have enough space for you. And if you get desperate, you can go with the "rent a mansion" solution. There is no magic bullet or perfect solution for the commercial real estate situation in Silicon Valley.  Like any market, real estate fluctuates based on supply and demand. Like any market, the early movers win. So get moving. [image of Getaround office via flickr/Getaround.]

Riding The Third Wave of TV Transformation Posted: 15 Apr 2012 08:50 AM PDT Eric Elia (@ericelia) is a member of the founding team at Brightcove, and is currently the vice president of TV solutions. Brightcove, a video and app solutions provider, went public on Feb. 17 on the NASDAQ and now trades with a market cap of $509.3 million. When we started Brightcove seven years ago, we expected a five-to-10-year transformation period until we reached a world of purely Internet-based, on-demand TV, motion pictures and "long tail" content. Sometimes it's hard to see change happen when we are in the middle of it, but amazing to look back and see just how far we've come. I look at the past seven years as driven by three waves of innovation. The first wave of TV transformation was the "Hey kids, let's put on a show," period of experimentation and naiveté. Return on investment wasn't that important yet. In fact it wasn't really possible. Audiences were too small and monetization infrastructure was not robust enough. It was in these early days when an innovator like Kenny Miller (of MTV Networks, at the time), could take a risk and learn from it, and another cable programming exec would ask in a meeting, "Do you think people really want to watch video over the Internet?" Flash video changed everything. No special plug-ins. Designers could stop building those horrible pop-up video ghettos and begin to integrate video seamlessly into the rest of their user experiences. We did our share of MTV Overdrive-style players at Brightcove, but knew that contextual video like this would change everything. The second wave was about mainstreaming the video pilot project into the primary digital business. Video teams were born. Monetization and measurement became important, as they should for any legitimate business. In particular, the advertising business matured quickly. We were delighted to see the ecosystem grow and innovation come by working with our friends at companies like FreeWheel, Tremor Video, TubeMogul and YuMe. The same execs (literally) who asked if people really wanted to watch video over the Internet were now talking about mid-roll, companions and VAST. We're now in the middle of the third wave of TV Transformation. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to Netflix, LoveFilm, Vudu, Apple and Amazon for making it okay to put a price tag next to a video (or a smorgasbord of videos as the case may be). And thanks to Apple again for the iPad, which changed everything. Beginning last year we saw a surge of interest in two things – premium, pay-based content and multi-screen experiences. Smart TVs and the great Roku platform showed up on everyone's radars. I think there's a Netflix-of-[pick a nation] site either live or launching in dozens of countries. The opportunity and consumer expectations have never been greater, the technical challenges and fragmentation never more formidable. Underneath the hood this means: Smart video players that must detect the device the viewer is on and serve an appropriate experience (monetized and measured, of course). Digital rights management (DRM) software, for better or worse. Many hope that movies and TV follow music to a world of no DRM, as creating less friction for consumers is generally good for business. For now, though, it's up to companies like Brightcove, and our partners and competitors, to make content security as seamless as possible from an end user perspective, as well as for for video publishers. There's a lot of pain involved with end-to-end DRM – from encoding and ingestion to license serving. Extensibility. Xbox 720? Roku 3? The 2013 Smart TV platforms? We pray these are backward compatible. It's impossible to future-proof every solution, but important to stay nimble. That means picking the right platforms and the right technology partners. DIY is a myth. If you are a media company building all your own technology, you are kidding yourself. Somewhere in your technology stack you start using third-party stuff. Where do you draw that line? The decision isn't build vs. buy, but how to keep pace. If we are in year seven of a 10-year transformation, what do the next three years hold? I think we can all start to glimpse the future now, but it's going to be fun to see which winners emerge. Here are some of the tensions I think we'll see resolved over the next few years. Dumb TV vs. Smart TV Let's face it; the iPad is more a small TV than a big phone. If you've been to a trade event in the past year you've seen the numbers. People love watching TV on their iPads. At Brightcove, we've seen a steady increase in video consumption on the iPad in the last year. There has been a lot of criticism of Smart TV user experiences; and while things are improving, the experience of searching, browsing and interacting with media user interfaces is just better on smartphones and the iPad. One possible way this plays out is for these devices to be used for what they are good at, and throw your video up to your TV via AirPlay, Wi-Fi Direct and similar technologies. TV Everywhere buffet vs. a la carte consumption For people who watch a lot of TV, the cable and satellite industry's TV Everywhere initiative is a great value. Sign in with your existing pay TV credentials to watch what you already pay for, on what devices you want. There have been a lot of business hang-ups stalling the rollout of TV Everywhere, but things seem to be accelerating finally. On the other hand, I'm pretty excited to have just bought a current Mad Men season pass off of iTunes. HD. No commercials. Portability. OTT buffet vs. a la carte consumption This is the year we'll start to see a lot of competition for Netflix in the U.S. The patterns we've observed in music will start to emerge in video, with the video equivalents of Rdio and MOG coming to life. Viewers will be able to buy single episodes, full seasons and custom programming packages from a variety of retailers. Fragmentation vs. standards It appears that technologies such as HTML5, H.264 and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) are becoming relatively standardized, even on some stalwart smart TV platforms. But there's always change on the horizon. MPEG-Dash? H.265? Do Android tablets become popular this year? Next year? The pace of change seems to be increasing. The next few years will see dramatic shifts in how viewers find and watch movies and TV shows, and how video publishers pay for and distribute their programming.

The Post-PC Enterprise Posted: 15 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT Editor’s note: Aaron Levie is CEO of Box. Follow him on Twitter @levie. In 1997, Larry Ellison had a vision for a new paradigm of computing which he called the Network Computer (NC). The idea was simple: a group of partners would build devices and services that leveraged the power of the Internet to compete against the growing Windows monopoly. Ellison believed that the computer in the client/server era had evolved into too complex a machine for most tasks. With the NC, the 'heavy' computation of software and infrastructure would be abstracted from the actual device and delivered instead to thinner terminals via the web, thus radically simplifying access and enabling all new applications and mobility. But the NC never made it mainstream. Microsoft and its allies had already amassed considerable power, and the cost of personal computers was dropping rapidly, making them even more attractive and ubiquitous. Furthermore, many of the applications were too immature to compete with the desktop software experience at the time; and few people, as it turned out, wanted to buy a device championed by Oracle. The NC fell short on execution, but Ellison was right about the vision: "It’s the first step beyond personal computing, to universal computing." In many ways, he was the first to glimpse a future resembling the post-PC world we are rapidly moving towards today. 15 years later, it is Apple that has brought its version of this vision to life. And Apple's rising tide – already 172 million devices strong, sold in the last year alone – has in turn given rise to a massive, vibrant ecosystem: companies generating hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in value in under a few years, revolutionizing industries like gaming, social networking, entertainment and communications in the process. Then of course there's Instagram.  All proving that value created in this mobile and Post-PC world will rival traditional computing categories. But the post-PC transformation isn't limited to the consumer landscape. In the enterprise, we're transitioning to a way of working that is far more fluid, boundary-less and social. And mobile pushes computing to the cloud and rewrites all applications in its wake. Those who saw it coming (Oracle) and those who initially resisted its arrival (Microsoft) have equally been taken by surprise by the power and speed of the post-PC shift within today's enterprises, and it's creating one of the biggest opportunities ever. Why the change is so profound We recently met with the IT leadership team of a fairly conservative 50,000-person organization where all the participants all had iPads. No big surprise there. But the apps they were using were radically different from what you would have found in their organization only a few years back – a mix of apps from a new set of vendors that together supplant the traditional Microsoft Office stack. Post-PC devices are driving enterprises to rethink their entire IT architecture, thanks to a wildly unpredictable and improbable chain reaction set off by a new consumer device from Apple.  For the first time in decades, CIOs have the opportunity – and necessity – to completely re-imagine and rebuild their technology strategy from the ground up. Catalyzing this change is the fact that the technology switching costs are often less than the price of maintaining existing solutions. A shipment of 1,000 new iPads requires applications to run on these devices – and choosing all-new applications and vendors is generally cheaper than the service fees, infrastructure, and operational costs of legacy software. And thus, the Post-PC era drives the final nail in the coffin of the traditional enterprise software hegemony. Microsoft, in particular, built up a practical monopoly that lasted nearly twenty years, and forced an entire industry to conform to its way of seeing the world.  Yet this arrangement served its benefactor far more than the ecosystem, as the Redmond giant built up leadership positions across nearly every application category. In the Post-PC era, businesses will shift from deploying and managing end-to-end enterprise solutions from a single vendor, to consuming apps a la carte both as individuals and en masse. But which apps and vendors will help define this new world? What's coming won't look like what came before Change always begins incrementally at first. Predicting specifically what will happen in the next year or two is a far more realistic undertaking than anticipating where we'll be in a decade. In shifting from one technology generation to the next, we minimize disruption by porting the old way of doing things to newer mediums or channels. Not until the new model settles in do we see the real results that rise from these foundational shifts. Mobility is such a foundational shift, and it's still very, very early. Even when the Microsofts and Oracles of the world relent and build applications for post-PC devices, these apps will carry much of the DNA of their desktop predecessors. We can imagine that each of the enterprise mainstays – ERP, HR management, supply chain, business intelligence, and office productivity – will be painstakingly moved to mobile. But that's just the first phase. Emerging CRM startups like Base will challenge longstanding assumptions about where and how you manage customer interactions. Data visualization software like Roambi will make business analytics more valuable by making it available everywhere. Entire industries are already being transformed: mobile healthcare apps will enable cutting-edge health outcomes, and construction sites will eventually be transformed by apps like PlanGrid.  Companies like CloudOn and Onlive aim to virtualize applications that we never imagined would be available outside the office walls. Evernote's 20+ million users already make it one of the most popular independent productivity software apps of all time, whose value is dramatically amplified by this revolution.  In a mobile and Post-PC world, the very definition of the office suite is transformed. And with this transformation, much of the $288B spent annually on enterprise software is up for grabs.  The post-PC era is about no longer being anchored to a handful of solutions in the PC paradigm. Instead, we're moving to a world where we mix and match best-of-breed solutions. This means more competition and choice, which means new opportunities for startups, which should mean more innovation for customers. As soon as individual workers look to the App Store for an immediate solution to their problem instead of calling IT (who in turn calls a vendor) you can tell things will never be the same. In many ways, the enterprise software shift mirrors that of the media and cable companies fighting for relevance in a world moving to digital content (HT @hamburger). If users and enterprises can select apps that are decoupled from an entire suite, we might find they'd use a completely different set of technology, just as many consumers would only subscribe to HBO or Showtime if given the option. Of course, every benefit brings a new and unique challenge. In a world where users bring their own devices into the workplace, connect to any network, and use a mix of apps, managing and securing business information becomes an incredibly important and incredibly challenging undertaking. Similarly, how do we get disparate companies to build apps that work together, instead of spawning more data silos?  And as we move away from large purchases of suites from a single provider, what is the new business model that connects vendors with customers (both end users and IT departments) with minimal friction? And then there's the inherent fragmentation of devices and platforms that defines the post-PC era. Android, iOS, and Windows 7 and 8 all have different languages and frameworks, UI patterns, and marketplaces. The fate of mobile HTML5 is still indeterminate. Fragmentation and sprawl of apps and data is now the norm. And while this fragmentation is creating headaches for businesses and vendors alike, it's also opening a window for the next generation of enterprise software leaders to emerge and redefine markets before the industry settles into this new paradigm. It would appear that Larry Ellison's vision for the NC was right all along, just 15 years early. Welcome to the post-PC enterprise.

The Mobile Paradox Posted: 15 Apr 2012 03:00 AM PDT Editor's note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch. Follow him on Twitter @kteare. Google's stock declined by over 4% yesterday. Many have put this down to the company's decision to create a non-voting class of stock as part of a control-retention exercise as the founders sell shares. But more is going on here. In the same week as Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion as part of its efforts to be more relevant on the growing mobile Platform, Google, for the second quarter in succession, suffered a decline in "Cost Per Click" rates that is in large part attributable to the shift in traffic from the desktop/laptop to the mobile platform. I wrote about this last quarter. I also posted on my personal blog in between quarters. I believe what we are seeing here is the start of a secular trend that represents nothing less than the end of the web 2.0 era where we all consumed services through a browser on a computer. Replacing that era is a new, app-based, message-centric mobile Internet. In this new era the essential unit of advertising (a page based ad, whether text, display or anything else) is simply the wrong monetization vehicle. Something new has to emerge. It is worth examining the earnings call in detail because these points were clearly articulated on the call by all Google executives. Patrick Pichette, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Google, speaking on the company's quarterly conference call this week, said the following: “Aggregate cost-per-click growth was down 12% and down 6% quarter-over-quarter." The statement represented the only negative on the call which had generally reported a very strong financial quarter. Pichette was compelled to explain: "So given the recent trends in CPCs and clicks, allow me to spend a bit of time today addressing this. The most important thing for you to understand is that our business is healthy. We believe that shifts in CPC and paid clicks taken independently really do not reflect the fundamental health of our business." What? This was a huge quarter and the CFO is almost pleading with the listening analysts to believe that Google has a healthy business. A cynic would quickly draw the conclusion that there is smoke here, and so – most likely a fire. So Pichette explained more: "Now allow me some details on this. In general, we attribute these trends to a combination of really 5 core factors. Those include FX, and then there’s 3 mix effects. For example, the mobile versus tablet versus desktop shifts, emerging markets versus developed markets shifts and even the basics of google.com versus our network. And then finally, ads quality changes which is also a huge factor." "Many in the financial community have tried to isolate or often I hear pick one of these among these factors as the primary driver for CPC or click trends. Some even say it’s about — all about mobile. Others suggest that it indicates weakness in demand for Google advertising. Well, on the latter point, I want to be very clear that that’s not the case." On the latter point indeed. What about the former point? Let's repeat it: ". Some even say it’s about — all about mobile."  Count me in the camp of the "some". I don't say this in any negative or gloating spirit. But isn't it obvious? As Android, iPhone and other mobile platforms grow we are moving away from the page based Internet. The new Internet is app centric and often message-centric. The number of users engaged in this app-centric and message-centric Internet is both huge and their use is growing. People used Instagram for images, not Flickr or Picasa. They use Foursquare for checkins not Facebook. And they do so in large numbers and they do it a lot. In this world, page-based ads, interstitials, pop-ups; pop-under; pop-over; and most of the other web era advertising units make absolutely no sense. And this is irrespective of whether they are text ads or display ads. Sure some will attract clicks, but for the most part they are ignored or worse still hated. And advertises will not see the ROI in being in the mobile world using those methods. Being a web-era company, heavily invested in a web-centric content and application ecosystem is becoming a liability. Facebook is challenged by this shift – hence Instagram; Google is also challenged by it. Yahoo has effectively been killed by it. Listening analysts on the call didn't miss the opportunity to focus on this point. At about the 35 minute mark on the call Mark Mahaney from CitiGroup asked: "And then just real quickly on the mobile CPC issue. Can you just comment again on over time, over what period of time you would expect mobile and desktop CPCs to merge or do you think that’s a realistic expectation? What would cause that to happen or not?" Pichette answered: "Think of it as so much upside for us because essentially mobile is exploding in query growth and the formats themselves are just adapting already a lot and from a relatively crude base to so much more in the future. So that you’re absolutely right that right now, they don’t monetize as well because we’re kind of in what search used to be in 2002, 2003, 2004. So as these formats kind of continue to get better and better, we’d expect much better performance on them." Larry Page, possibly perturbed by that answer, intervened: "This is Larry. I’ll add something, Mark. I think the mobile CPCs — I mean, people always spend their most effort on the major — whatever the major source of traffic or revenue is, and those are growing really quickly, albeit currently, obviously, there’s more on desktop. … The fact that you spend most of your money locally, I think that over time that may actually reverse and the CPCs action may get better. But I think we’re very bullish about that. We’re making a lot of investments in that area, in things like Offers and so on and Wallet. And we’re very, very excited about the potential there, and also Click-to-Call and other things that we do." The final question on the call at about 58 minutes was asked by Anthony Di Clemente from Barclay's: “Just one question for Nikesh or whomever wants to answer it. It seems like even though as you’re shifting to mobile, you have this presumably double-digit pricing step down for CPCs. But in the Display world, certainly, that pricing difference could be even more dramatic. In some cases, by half or 2/3. Prices getting cut on that shift to mobile. And so you guys at Google have the unique ability to compare and contrast the difference in price between like Search and Display and how the two are monetizing relative to desktop. And so any color on that comparison would be appreciated because I think there are folks out there that have a view that actually Search, core Search, monetizes better on that shift to mobile than Display does, and I would love to just understand that better." Nikesh Arora, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer responded: "Yes, I mean, I guess — let me try to just explain to it from the advertiser perspective. So what we’re striving towards is advertisers are interested in ROI. Advertisers actually are not interested in whether they’re on the mobile product, the Display product, the Search product on the Web or the Search product on mobile. So what we are fast converging towards is we’re basically sitting down and understanding ROI targets of our advertisers. And then we have immense amounts of inventory at our behest, whether it’s mobile inventory, on Display or Search or desktop inventory or even inventory to our network. And what we are trying to work towards is being able to dynamically allocate across these various products, what allows them to get the maximum ROI.  … In the long-term, we think mobile will monetize better. And we usually don’t see the difference happening on Display and Search as you alluded to. Larry, you want to add something?" I will leave it to the reader to draw your own conclusions here. But one thing is for sure. Something big and dramatic is happening. Expect a lot more movement in the mobile space as the desktop giants get a better sense of the issues. And as for that Facebook acquisition of Instagram, it may not impact the real threat that mobile represents to Facebook – the threat of falling monetization due to the impracticality of delivering ads derived from the web era to a mobile audience. [image via 3 Gazet]

The Cloud Will Kill The Resume, And That’s a Good Thing Posted: 15 Apr 2012 12:01 AM PDT Editor’s note: Chris Rickborn is the COO and co-founder of Unrabble, a hiring software solution for small- to medium-sized businesses, especially startups. You can follow Unrabble at @unrabble. I was recently going through an old banker's box that I packed up years ago while I was cleaning out my office. There was a Palm Pilot, a mini cassette recorder, and even a stack of floppy disks. It was like a time capsule of obsolete technology. All I needed were a few Polaroid pictures and a beeper to make my time travel complete. In one of the file folders, I found about a dozen resumes that I had wanted to keep and in another there was a bunch of printed product brochures from various vendors. Every gadget I found in that box had evolved or been replaced by some new innovation. Even the non-gadgets like printed product brochures have been replaced by websites that can present information in much richer context. Only the folder of resumes stood out as the unchanged medium. It baffles me how the lifecycle of so many products and business processes can be extremely short and are so easily disrupted by innovation, yet an individual's resume is still a one or two page document.  It's still typed out in the same format it was 30 years ago and then printed, emailed or uploaded. Maybe the answer is that the change is actually underway but we just don't realize it's happening. The reality is that the cloud is killing the resume and, for the most part, it's going unnoticed.  As more and more of us place our trust in cloud-based services to manage our lives or interact via social media, that information will ultimately be cultivated and harnessed to replace your resume. There's no doubt that prospective employers compare the information on your current resume to all the other facts about you floating in the cloud, just as it's inevitable that your resume will ultimately be replaced by an online profile.  Sites like LinkedIn, BeKnown and BranchOut are already way down that path of on-line profiles that connect you to job opportunities without requiring a paper resume to start, while sites like About.me seem to be going for the cover letter. Meanwhile, Vizualize.me and Re.vu offer infographic-style representations of your career biography. Shifting from a traditional resume to an on-line profile presents a huge opportunity for improving the hiring process for both the candidate and employer. Candidates can provide a much more comprehensive view of their skills, potential and accomplishments while employers can avoid getting swayed by clever resume writing or overlook qualified candidates in a haze of sameness. Profiles represent a massive gain in connecting the right candidates to employers in ways that could have never happened with a traditional resume. The resume of the future should enable candidates to tell their story without the limitations of a plain text document. Profiles will be an interactive experience with rich content that should adapt and dynamically direct viewers to relevant skills, strengths and accomplishments based on the viewers needs.  Candidates should be able to control access to their information and analyze how visitors interact with their profile the same way traffic is analyzed on a website. The resume of the future should also be a connection point between company and candidate that will greatly reduce the manual burden of pre-screening.  Interactive profiles should facilitate communication and collaboration between hiring manager, candidate and other stakeholders so that hiring decisions can be made quickly and effectively. But before you throw resumes into the shredder, there are big challenges to overcome such as privacy and basic behavioral change.  I was recently helping a friend review job applicants through LinkedIn and noticed that almost every applicant still attached a resume.  If you have a profile on LinkedIn, why would you attach a resume?  In many cases, the information in the resume was much more in-depth than what was on the candidate's profile. I think this indicates a few realities.  First, candidates still want to customize their resume for each job opportunity. Second, candidates are reluctant to put all of their career details in a public profile where they might lose control of the information. And third, most employers still require a resume. Otherwise, their legacy hiring process just breaks down. According to USA Today, nearly 35 percent of resumes contain blatant lies about education, experience or the skills to perform a specific job. That's why online profiles are better. It's much harder for candidates to stretch the truth in an on-line profile because they risk getting caught whereas a resume is only between candidate and employer. Being more open and honest in an on-line profile that is shared privately with a prospective employer is certainly the way forward. But there are more reasons why the cloud offers greater advantages over a traditional paper resume, such as: 1) Facilitates better collaboration.  Instead of scribbling notes on a paper resume, and asking colleagues to review a stack of resumes, the cloud offers colleagues the opportunity to discretely rate and review candidates on-line after they've submitted an on-line application for a job opening. The ratings and reviews gathered through on-line collaboration can give employers a much better consensus of how strong or weak each candidate is. 2) Follows you, wherever you go.  A stack of paper resumes sitting on your office desk with notes scribbled on them to indicate the best candidates isn't going to help much when you're on the road traveling or working from home. With the cloud, wherever you have an Internet connection, you have instant access to a "central repository" of on-line job applications, as well as the notes you've added into an on-line comments field. 3) Greater cost efficiencies.  The cost and time-saving benefits of a cloud computing solution far outweighs the current hiring process that has one hand tied behind its back because of the paper resume. Taking the hiring process to the cloud and allowing candidates to apply for jobs with on-line profiles can transform the speed and efficiency of the hiring process. The profiles can be reviewed, shared and rated with far greater ease, thereby dramatically decreasing the amount of time it takes to hire qualified candidates. These are just a few of the reasons why the cloud will kill the traditional resume. There's no doubt that killing the text-based resume will generate a huge opportunity for improving the hiring process for both the candidate and employer.  But just like everything else in that dusty old banker's box, the resume served us well in its heyday. And now it's time to move on. [image via flickr/bpsusf]

FCC Wants To Fine Google $25K For WiFi Investigation Delays Posted: 14 Apr 2012 07:03 PM PDT In its investigation of whether Google’s Street View cars illegally collected personal data from WiFi networks, the Federal Communications Commission has reached a decision that seems like a mix of good news and bad news for the search giant. The good news: The FCC did not fine Google for violating electronic eavesdropping laws. Instead, it concluded that there was no precedent for the commissions’ enforcement of the law in connection with WiFi networks. The FCC also noted that, according to the available evidence, Google only collected data from unecrypted WiFi networks, not encrypted ones, and that it never accessed or used the data. The bad news (which, given the size of the fine, isn’t too bad at all): The FCC is proposing to fine the company $25,000 because it “deliberately impeded and delayed the investigation” — specifically, it says that for several months, Google did not provide emails that the FCC requested or identify the engineer who authorized the data collection. “Google’s level of cooperation with this investigation fell well short of what we expect and require,” the commissions said. Google can appeal the fine before it becomes final. A company spokesperson sent me the following statement: “We worked in good faith to answer the FCC’s questions throughout the inquiry, and we’re pleased that they have concluded that we complied with the law.” You can read a PDF of the FCC’s (long, somewhat redacted) decision here. [image via flickr/Tim Pritlove]

How I Got Ripped At 500 Startups Posted: 14 Apr 2012 05:30 PM PDT Editor’s note: Dick Talens is one of the founders of Fitocracy and an amateur competitive bodybuilder. Follow him on Twitter @DickTalens. Little sleep, lots of stress, free food at all hours, and Paul Singh constantly try to booze you under the table. Sounds like the old college days when you tried to rush for Sigma Chi, doesn't it? But nope. That describes life at 500 Startups. For a former fat kid like me, it's an environment where I can accidentally gain 15 lbs in the blink of an eye.  Put a pizza or a tray of doughnuts in front of me and I will devour the goodies without a second thought.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), being the co-founder of a fitness startup does not afford me this pleasure. I'm sure you've heard it before – the myth that losing weight is impossible for the busy entrepreneur.  As a veteran dieter, amateur bodybuilder, and nutritional coach, I knew that this was wrong, and decided to prove it. My time in 500 Startups' 4-month program turned out to be the perfect case study to show that you can still play beer pong with Dave McClure and discover your abs. Exercise I skipped cardio Herein lies the greatest irony: in the office, we endlessly obsess over ROI; in the gym, however, we pound away on the treadmill for hours and hours (probably while thinking about none other than ROI). What most entrepreneurs don’t realize is that cardio is the very last thing that’s going to yield an appreciable return.  Think about how many lines of code you could have written instead of all that time on the hamster wheel! Weight loss comes from nothing more than a caloric deficit.  You can either create a caloric deficit through diet, or additional exercise.  I chose the former.  In other words, would you rather gruel through 30 minutes on the treadmill (which may actually leave you hungrier afterwards) or skip the equivalent of four Oreos per day? I focused on strength training Instead, my time at the gym consisted of 45 minutes/session, 3 times a week, performing only 5 exercises.  These exercises hit every single muscle group in the body.  By tracking my workouts and making sure that I increased the weight or reps that I performed each week, I ensured that I was constantly building muscle. This was great, as lean tissue burns more calories pound for pound than fat does, even while sitting all day. Below is an outline of what my routine looked like: Monday (40 minutes) – 3 sets of barbell squats 2 sets of stiff legged deadlifts Wednesday (45 minutes) – 3 sets of dumbbell bench press 2 sets of incline dumbbell bench press Friday (45 minutes) – 3 sets of deadlifts 2 sets of chin-ups 2 sets of barbell rows (Each session also included 15 minutes of light warm up sets) Creating a caloric deficit through cardio, instead of diet and additional muscle, is like flipping burgers to pay for a developer, when you already know how to code.  You'll also notice that I did no abdominal work, which is another low ROI exercise.  Abs already get stronger from deadlifts and squats, and it's fat loss which gets them "defined". Diet I counted calories At the end of the day, weight loss is determined by burning more calories throughout a day than you consume.  This is the most important determinant of weight loss.  I consumed 11 times my bodyweight in calories (a good starting point for an otherwise sedentary individual), which came out to 2000 calories/day. I tracked my calories on an online calorie tracker like FitDay.com.  I did have some other tricks up my sleeve, however. I only ate lunch and dinner Breakfast? No thanks. "But you'll be mentally lethargic!" is what you're probably thinking right now.  That's a myth.  The truth is, I've never been a breakfast person.  In fact, on days that I would eat breakfast, I often felt hungrier by the time lunch rolled around. I soon discovered the Leangains method, which entails skipping breakfast (a huge time saver) and consuming all of my day's calories from lunch and dinner.  Many Leangains practitioners also report an increase in concentration and energy once they get used to breakfast skipping. I ate lots of protein and skipped the other free snacks While I avoided breakfast, I did not avoid protein.  In fact, I ate a lot of it, to the tune one gram per pound of bodyweight (180g for me). Eating protein kept me fuller for a longer period of time.  When free food rolled around the 500 Startups office, I only consumed the protein portions of those foods.  This kept my overall calorie intake lower while still being able to dine on Dave McClure's tab.  From geeking out on recent nutrition studies, I knew that more protein in place of carbohydrates was beneficial in decreasing fat and increasing muscle. I developed food staples Since I aimed for 2,000 calories/day, I simply sourced meals that contained 1,000 calories each and ate them repeatedly for lunch and dinner.  One of those was a large plate of beef and vegetables from a Mongolian barbeque restaurant.  Another go-to was a foot-long Subway sandwich with double meat and baked chips.  These were extremely large, filling meals that left even a bottomless pit like me extremely satiated. I restricted alcohol choices, not quantity I limited my beverage of choice to liquor and diet soda with the occasional light beer, but I drank as much as I wanted. You see, alcohol's fattening reputation is misleading. Alcohol in itself does not contain many calories (less than 60 calories per drink). When people talk about getting fat from college late-night partying, they conveniently forget about the Big Mac and fries they ate afterwards (as well as the not-so-attractive girl they brought home). It's the sugary drink mixes and after party binge food that contain lots of calories, not alcohol.  I used this handy guide to determine my alcohol choices, and paid no attention to quantity. Taking all of this into account, here is what my typical Friday looked like: 9-10am – Gym 10-12pm – Work/Meetings Lunch – Footlong from Subway, chips, free food from 500 Startups. 12:30-8pm – Work/Meetings Dinner – Large plate of barbeque beef with unlimited veggies 8:30-10pm – Work/Meetings 10pm – Party with the 500 crew.  Anywhere from 5-15 drinks. I used the schedule above to achieve the results below. If it seems a little too simple, that's because weight loss is just that – simple. There is no magic pill, no special trick.  The only secret is making sure that everything you do has high fitness ROI. What I'm about to tell you is very powerful: Not only is weight loss possible with a hectic schedule, but it's actually easier. Think about it. The more free time a dieter has on his/her hands, the more time he/she has to actually obsess over food. It's why people eat when they're bored. Thinking about dieting all the time ironically makes the process an uncomfortable, miserable one. Develop a plan with high ROI, stick to it, and then don't think about it.  Take advantage of the fact that you're too busy focusing on your work to focus on the tire that's on your waist.

Google Finally Gets Right To Gmail Trademark In Germany Posted: 14 Apr 2012 04:06 PM PDT When Google launched Gmail in Germany in 2005, it was quickly barred from using the Gmail name for its email product there. German entrepreneur Daniel Giersch, after all, had registered the ‘G-mail’ trademark (short for Giersch mail) for his physical and electronic mail service in Germany in 2000, long before Google had even announced its own service. Instead of ‘Gmail,’ German Internet users who wanted to use Gmail had to go to googlemail.com. Google tried to appeal this decision, but ran out of legal options in 2007, after Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market rejected its appeal. For a long time, it seemed like that was the end of the story, but last week Google quietly settled its dispute with Giersch. According to Germany’s GoogleWatchBlog, the gmail.de domain and the Gmail trademark were transferred to Google on April 13. Neither Google nor Giersch have commented on whether money was exchanged in this transfer, though it seems unlikely that Giersch would have just transferred the domain to Google without some compensation. In 2006, Giersch claimed that Google had offered him $250,000 for the German trademark rights to the Gmail name. It’s not clear if Google will now change the official address of its email service in Germany to Gmail.de. It’s worth noting, though, that German Gmail users were already able to use @gmail.com and @googlemail.com interchangeably. After a similar trademark dispute in England was settled, though, Google quickly made this switch. There, the company also offered its users the option to change their existing email addresses from @googlemail.com to @gmail.com.

It’s Not A Bubble, It’s Valleywood Posted: 14 Apr 2012 03:30 PM PDT Editor’s note: Bob Buch is a two-time startup founder, was VP of Business Development at Digg, then at AOL, and is now working on founding his next business. Follow him on Twitter @bobbuch. There is a certain type of company that can only exist in Silicon Valley. People outside of the Valley scratch their heads at how a company with no revenue and no apparent business model can be called successful, much less be worth $1 billion. But maybe the problem is that we're mis-categorizing Internet and mobile products as businesses in the first place. What if we looked at them as TV shows instead – where success and failure is determined by ratings not revenue? Isn't Instagram closer to American Idol than it is to Oracle? It entertains millions of us for a few minutes every day – maybe that's enough. Perhaps the Valley is pioneering a new business model, one where revenue isn't the goal but where distribution and engagement are paramount. The titans of new media have a distribution channel that's always hungry for more entertainment. They need to feed the beast – and they can't innovate fast enough. They need to rely on the Pinterests, the Instagrams and the Paths to give them the entertaining new hangouts for their audiences. Big companies aren't known for their ability to innovate, and certainly not as effectively and nimbly as startups That doesn't stop them from trying, but frankly my advice to them is to give up on innovation (Google+, ahem). Focus on your strengths – monetization and distribution — and outsource your weaknesses. Be more like a big movie studio. They don't make The Blair Witch Project, they make $700 million budget James Cameron action movies that are filmed on the moon and in the burning core of the Earth. So translation to Google – keep going on the self-driving car and the augmented reality glasses, nobody else has the balls or the cash to do that anyway. And see if you can get James Cameron involved somehow. What big new media companies do well is sell advertising. So think of them as a TV network – NBC doesn't make shows, they buy them and sell ads around them. You have relationships with the distribution channel, so you get the entertainment in front of the eyeballs, and then you sell it to big megabrands. Little production companies can't do this, and neither can a little photo-sharing startup. When I was at Digg, we were lucky to even see a seven-figure RFP come through the door from a big brand, much less win it, and we had an audience of 40 million people. At AOL, it was just a given that we were getting a piece of it – when you're a top five Internet property, the advertisers have to spend there if they want to reach enough people. The big companies should stick to monetization and distribution, and let the Instagrams focus on building the cool stuff. This isn't to say that all Internet startups should take this path. At Digg, we grew so big, so fast, that we aspired to be a network ourselves. If you're going to turn the corner from TV show to network, you've got to have your own ad product. Our idea for this was DiggAds – ads that behave like news stories and could be voted upon. We had aspirations that these ads would be the answer to the online news industry's monetization woes. We were off to a good start; the ads were extraordinarily successful – so much so that you can see echoes of them in Twitter's Promoted Tweets and Facebook's Sponsored Stories. Despite our early success with DiggAds, Digg failed to become a studio ultimately because people stopped watching the show – we didn't build a network so all our bets were on a single show. Welcome to Valleywood where talented creative people can come up with a crazy idea that no big company would ever take a flyer on, and getting rewarded if it becomes a hit. I think we should encourage this model – maybe even have ways for the big companies to participate without having to purchase the entire company. Maybe startups will form themselves into labs and crank out multiple products, build up followings, and then license them off to big companies. Maybe incubators like Y Combinator and Techstars will become the mini-majors or the great independent production companies.

Court Rules Software Not Protected By Fed Crime Laws, Overturns Conviction of Goldman Engineer Posted: 14 Apr 2012 02:30 PM PDT Before leaving Goldman Sachs to earn a millionaire's salary with Chicago High Frequency Trading (HFT) startup Teza Technologies, Sergey Aleynikov made one last transaction. At 5:20pm on his last day, just before his going-away party, Aleynikov uploaded 500,000 lines of encrypted source code from the Wall Street firm’s proprietary HFT system to a server located in Germany. Following the clandestine upload, Aleynikov deleted the encryption program, wiped his command history, and headed to the party. Although Aleynikov later managed to download the source code to his home computer in New Jersey before flying to Chicago, he was apprehended by the FBI while returning through Newark Liberty International Airport. But after his conviction at trial and imprisonment during the appeals process (his dual US-Russian citizenship presented a flight risk), Aleynikov is now a free man. The reasons why touch the entire software industry. The appellate court for the Second Circuit released an opinion on Thursday finding that the HFT source code did not fit within the scope of the National Stolen Property Act ("NSPA"), which makes it a crime to transport or transmit stolen goods, wares, or merchandise. The court concluded that Aleynikov did not steal physical “goods” per se, but rather, software code which was "purely intangible property embodied in a purely intangible format." Because the statute was interpreted to apply only to physical goods, the court declined to "stretch or update statutory words of plain and ordinary meaning in order to better accommodate the digital age." Nor could Aleynikov be punished under the Economic Espionage Act ("EEA"), the court concluded, because the HFT source code was not a product that was "produced for" or "placed in" interstate commerce, as required under the EEA. Goldman Sachs planned to keep the HFT source code secret, having no intention to sell or license it to anyone in the market. The appellate court's decision overturns Aleynikov’s conviction, which had sentenced him to eight years in prison, followed by a three year supervised release, and a $12,500 fine. Contrary to some previous coverage, the court's decision is focused not on whether software code is property capable of being stolen, but instead, on the specific scope of the NSPA and the EEA as enacted by Congress. The impact is smaller than it might have first appeared. In fact, the decision is based on a careful consideration of prior legal precedent, the precise language of each law, relevant legislative history, and the well-reasoned principle that courts should favor narrow interpretations of criminal laws that are ambiguous. But the decision is nonetheless a setback for businesses hoping to protect intellectual property trade secrets. Since the court concluded that the NSPA does not apply to "intangible" intellectual property, insiders may now have less to fear by stealing proprietary software. This reality will not be lost on unscrupulous employees: although Aleynikov clearly stole valuable proprietary software from Goldman, he was able to escape conviction by uploading the information to a remote server (rather than downloading and storing the code on a physical device, such as a flash drive). Moreover, as proprietary software is increasingly integrated into business methods, the incentives and opportunities for theft will grow. The impact could be especially large for technology companies that develop and market software as their primary product. In particular, software-based trade secrets that are not actually designed for licensing or sale in the open market (like Goldman's HFT system) will be especially vulnerable. Companies concerned about intellectual property trade secrets should therefore begin monitoring HTTPS transfers on their servers, paying special attention to any instances of large amounts of data leaving their network. The court recognizes this negative impact. As argued by Justice Calabresi, who concurred in the opinion (although somewhat reluctantly it seems), courts should consider the actual "mischief" that a law is designed to address when interpreting its context and meaning. As Calabresi acknowledges, "[I]t is hard for me to conclude that Congress, in this law, actually meant to exempt the kind of behavior in which Aleynikov engaged…I wish to express the hope that Congress will return to the issue and state, in appropriate language, what I believe they meant to make criminal in the EEA." Critics of the decision will also point out that regardless of the form in which the source code was taken, the substance and economic value of the software remained the same, so too then should the criminal nature of the act. Yet the court's technical legal analysis resulted in a different outcome. It goes to show, small distinctions can make a big difference. From a larger policy perspective, when courts justifiably refuse to broaden the reach of federal statutes, Congress must step in to state the law more clearly. That's especially true in the area of software, where laws remain generally antiquated and unclear as a result. In the meantime, businesses will have to find concrete ways to protect their intangible property. [Image via Dealbreaker.com]

Cloud Communications And The Future of Marketing In The Post-PC World Posted: 14 Apr 2012 02:00 PM PDT Editor’s note: Dan Kaplan does Product Marketing for Twilio, which is hosting a conference on cloud communications in October. Follow him on Twitter @dankaplan. If you are a marketer who has spent the last 10 years mastering the art of capturing and converting customers on the desktop web, the rapid rise of smartphones and the iPad might make you nervous. You’ve built businesses on paid search, written essays about optimizing lead forms and studied the ever-changing subtleties of SEO. Using cookies that follow us around the web, you've turned display advertising into a performance medium. But just as you were beginning to wrap your heads around the whole social thing, along come the iPhone, Android and the iPad and with them a whole new reality: the post-PC world. The post-PC world is radically different from the world in which most marketers honed their skills. Here, horizontal keyword search is losing ground to vertical-specific apps like Yelp and Hipmunk and a stream of recommendations from Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and maybe Path. Along its frontiers, touch- and voice-driven interfaces write most of the laws. This landscape is unfriendly to lead forms. It rejects traditional tactics like SEM and SEO. In the post-PC world, the marketing methods of the last decade will be on their way out the window. Marketers and businesses that can’t adapt will be on their way out the door. But there is good news for those ready, willing and able to evolve: Post-PC consumers – like generations of consumers before us – will still want ways to entertain our senses, engage our imaginations and stimulate our minds. The future of marketing in the post-PC world is not about showing up high in search results. It is about reputation and spontaneous discovery. It is about weaving yourself into the feed. This is an evolution of what is known these days as inbound marketing. It involves creating awesome content that makes you relevant and then leveraging your overall awesomeness to establish a relationship with your target customers and maintain it over the years. When you do it right, your customers want to find you. They need to find you. Your existence delights them because you are exactly what they were looking for – whether they knew what they were looking for or not. But post-PC consumers are not patient. When we want to engage with your business, we expect you to respond in an instant, on the communications channels we prefer to use. Responding to our emails in a few hours or days just ain't gonna cut it: depending on our demographics, we are either overloaded with email or hardly use email at all. But we do consume almost every text message (SMS) that we receive. When we're in info-gathering, entertainment or transaction mode, we tap on links that seem enticing and follow push notifications into our favorite mobile apps. And if your business offers a frictionless way to contact you, many of us will even call. This is where cloud communications comes in. Cloud communications democratizes telecom, making it easy for anyone with access to programming chops to create applications that historically required tons of expensive telecom hardware, big contracts with telecom carriers and a slew of esoteric telecom skills. Cloud communications abstracts these challenges away, making things like interactive voice response, automated outbound dialing, two-way SMS, text-to-speech and even mobile VoIP as simple to implement as a few lines of code. In practice, this means embedding SMS tools into your CRM, email software or whatever else you want to use. It means using call tracking to gather metrics on phone calls or sending voice and text messages to notify sales reps about new leads in real-time. It means creating “tap-to-call” capabilities that instantly connect smartphone or iPad users via VoIP to your sales or support agents with a tap on a link in a mobile app or an ad. And for these agents, it means taking calls straight from an iPad – not locked down in some office or call center, but anywhere that wireless internet can go. If what you're selling is weaksauce and your content is boring, you will find the post-PC era to be a cold, cold world. But if you can produce products that incite our passions and generate content that resonates through an ever-more-insane degree of noise, you'll have a shot at becoming part of our feeds. If you do these things while creating new ways to engage us when and where we want to be engaged, the future will be yours. So what are you waiting for? The latest iPad is selling like crazy and it's time to think different. The post-PC world is almost here.

Is Direct Selling The Next Driver Of Startup Commerce Companies? Posted: 14 Apr 2012 12:59 PM PDT Editor’s note: Jeremy Liew is a managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Follow him on Twitter @jeremysliew. The April 5 edition of The Wall Street Journal had two articles about direct selling. One notes that the key driver of Coty’s takeover attempt of Avon is the ability to move additional product through Avon’s dominant direct sales channel in Brazil. Avon’s door-to-door sales force in Brazil has given it a leading role in the country. Rivals who sell through traditional stores — such as L’Oréal and Procter & Gamble — have struggled for as much traction. Coty Chairman Bart Becht said in an interview he would like to use Avon’s direct-sales channel to push his company’s lower-end, mass-market brands such as Adidas and Playboy colognes. The company’s main business is designer and celebrity fragrances. “A key win for Coty is to get into Brazil,” Mr. Becht said. “Door-to-door is a key way of getting into the market.” The second article is about Tupperware’s direct sales efforts in Latin America, also with a focus on cosmetics. Tupperware Brands Corp., the maker of plastic food containers, has a surprising path to sales in Latin America: perfume and skin cream. After realizing about a decade ago that consumers in the region spent more than 20 times on beauty products than they did on containers for leftovers, Tupperware altered its strategy. In 2005, it bought six beauty brands, spending $557 million. Since then, the beauty business has quietly grown to account for 26% of Tupperware’s total revenue. In 2011, Tupperware’s revenue totaled $2.6 billion. Sales for South America increased 50%, largely driven by Brazil. And about half of Tupperware’s $711 million in sales in Latin America came from the beauty products category. As my partner Bipul Sinha noted in a post last year, direct selling is one of the most interesting opportunities in commerce in the time of social. Direct selling is being invigorated right now, not just in Latin America, but also in the US, due to three key reasons. The first is the economy. In this slow economy, people are more willing to supplement their income (and seek alternative career paths) than they have been over the last few decades. Direct sales is one of the most attractive and accessible ways for people to supplement their income. The last golden age of direct sales was during a period when women had few traditional career path options. As more women found success in the mainstream economy, the labor pool available to direct sales diminished. In this slow recovery, with unemployment still high, more people are willing to explore direct sales. The second is the birth of social media. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and even email help all of us maintain our weak social ties as well as our strong ones. According to the Washington Post: The average Facebook user has 245 friends. But the average friend on Facebook has 359 friends. … One thing to note ahead of the Timeline switch: Users can reach an average of 150,000 other people through friends of friends, When you add Twitter and Facebook, that is a tremendous reach for an average person. Direct selling is all about selling through your network – friends and friends of friends. The social networks make this whole network far more visible, and accessible, than ever before. The third reason is tablets and the internet. These devices, combined with lightweight SaaS ERP, CRM and SFA software, dramatically improve the productivity of direct sales reps. In the old days, a direct sales rep would call on the people that they remembered to call on, host a party when they got around to it, and had to have physical samples, or page through catalogues, to show what they had in stock. They took orders on handwritten forms and faxed them in to the main office. And making repeat sales meant going back to each customer in person. Today, a sales rep can get prompted on their iPad with who they should be calling on. Perhaps because the prospect has shown a propensity to “like” other similar products, perhaps because they clicked through on a FB post, or perhaps because it’s been two months since they last bought something. They can manage their activity to industry best practices, making sure that they are splitting their time appropriately between calling on new customers and servicing existing ones. They have an infinite catalogue, with video and color photos from multiple angles for each item, available on their tablets. They can take orders on the spot, swiping a credit card through a dongle. And happy customers can self-serve and place new orders directly on a website, without the sales rep having to go back to see them in person. This is a massive increase in productivity. We’re starting to see a new generation of direct selling companies emerge, including companies like Thirty One Gifts, Stella and Dot, Chloe and Isabel, Gigi Hill, Miche Bags. and J Hilburn. At Lightspeed, we’re tremendously excited about the opportunity to build very big commerce companies in this space. What next generation direct selling companies have I missed from this list?

The New Grabio Lets You Grab Classified Deals On The Go Posted: 14 Apr 2012 12:54 PM PDT Grabio has been around for about a year but they’ve recently updated the app and added a number of features. What does it do? Essentially it’s a mobile Craigslist with notifications and location-based searches for classified listings. You can enter any neighborhood, do a quick search, and pick up a broken girls bicycle seat or a gently used full body cast for a few bucks. Pretty slick, eh? Founded by Horatiu Boeriu and Chris Popa, both currently living in Chicago, the company is bootstrapped and went through a number of iterations before it settled on its current incarnation. At launch they saw 5,000 users, although that number is creeping up. There are a few similar services out there, most notably EggDrop and Zaarly, but Grabio uses a location aware API notifies you when you’re near deals. “The secret here is that compared to others, we don’t constantly track your position,” said Boeriu. “We use a cool API from Apple that tells us when you moved without actively tracking your GPS.” The app also includes user profiles, mobile payments, and reputation based user rating and following. Listings are free, although if you use the Grabio credit card payment system the seller pays a 6% fee. “In the near future, we will also work with local businesses to provide them targeted leads at a predefined cost,” said Boeriu. Future improvements will include a geo-fencing feature that will notify users when they come into a certain area featuring a hot sale. Imagine being able to know when you can get a box of zwieback or 500 partially-inflated weather balloons for fifty percent off and you see the real value proposition. Product Page

The 5 Most Over-Hyped “Future of TV” Topics Posted: 14 Apr 2012 12:21 PM PDT Editor’s note: Jeremy Toeman is a founder of Dijit Media, a startup whose vision is to create the ultimate "hyperpersonalised social TV guide" mobile experience. Jeremy has over 11 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, social TV and consumer technology working with companies like Sling Media, Mediabolic, Boxee, Clicker, VUDU, and more. Follow him on Twitter @jtoeman. From some of the chatter out there, it seems like the prerequisites to have “deep knowledge” about the TV industry is to have ever watched TV.  Yes, that sounds pretty cynical, but I see post after post espousing wisdom on topics that are so misguided it makes my head shake – involuntarily.  While everyone is certainly entitled to their opinions, there’s just something to be said for a little research, a little fact checking, and deep diving with industry experts.  I think the “future of TV” industry at large would benefit greatly from a little more of the above, and a little less jumping on bandwagons. Accordingly, here are the 5 topics I see on practically a daily basis that are just plain tired, and should be put to rest. 1. The Future of TV is about Voice Control and Gestures In the future, you’ll tell your TV to change to channel 702, ask it when the next Tom Cruise movie is on, and wave your hand to change the channel.  Really?  This is exciting?  First, when it comes to gestures, the *best case scenario* is using gestures for the most simple of functionality, such as channel/volume adjustments.  What’s the “when’s the next Tom Cruise movie on?” gesture (protip: you jump on your couch).  It’s a model that works great for games, and not much else. And as far as talking to your TV, whether it’s Jack Donaghy’s awesome voice-controlled TV for Kabletown, or this funny commercial, it’s clearly an easy topic to play around with: But is there value in it? Some, definitely.  I do not, in any way, question the fact that a well-executed voice interface to change channels, perform searches, etc, sounds great.  But is that really revolutionary?  Considering that TV watching is primarily done with a second screen (iPad, smart phone, etc) in hand these days, the ability to search without using the awful on-screen interfaces as provided by set-top box makers has already improved dramatically.  Searching for show listings, actors, etc, using a dedicated app or even just google is a marked improvement.  I don’t consider a voice-enabled search “revolutionary” at this stage. 2. The Future of TV is all about Social TV Literally every “big” show event these days has a followup about how it’s the most gigantic moment in the history of #SocialTV ever.  Well, considering this is a fairly new thing, and more people are still signing up to services like Twitter and trying out Social TV apps, that shouldn’t be much of a surprise now, should it?  Of course Game of Thrones broke records, just like how the American Idol season finale will later this year.  As will the Olympics, then next year’s Superbowl.  But here’s the thing: other than huge events, app makers and broadcasters alike are still trying to figure out what Social TV really means. It’s clearly not about check-ins, that’s very 2011 thinking.  And it’s not going to be about measuring real-time tweets (hello West Coast, sorry, your Tweets just don’t count), which is very 2012 thinking.  There’s something happening in the “engagement with TV” space, but it’s probably a much richer experience than what we’re talking about.  Oh, and so we don’t forget to address it – nothing, not a single thing, in the field of social/real-time engagement works particularly well when it comes to “catch up” TV.  Which there will remain plenty of for years and years to come. 3. The Future of TV is all about Cord Cutters Auntie May just cancelled cable and bought a Roku, what the what?  Cable is doomed, it’s like newspapers and the music industry.  Slow down folks, not so fast.  First and foremost, not a single report from any credible source has ever painted a picture that cord cutting is having, nor will have, any impact on the industry.  At an average price of $80/month, cable (and satellite and telco, but I’ll just say cable from this point forward – less typing), is about the best deal in entertainment you can find on a dollars/hour basis.  Most Roku, WDTV, and Apple TV owners still have a paid cable service, as do most Netflix and Hulu subscribers. Additionally, the reason TV != music is about distribution and lockup agreements.  Sure, artists had labels, and labels distributed their music via CDs to retail stores, and there are a lot of analogies to the TV industry.  Except for the lockups, bundles, affiliates, and a dozen or so other participants in the TV production-to-consumption cycle.  TV shows can’t start their own distribution service – because 90% of TV shows are made by the folks who own the distribution side.  And the networks can’t just go direct to consumers, they’d sacrifice huge amounts of money to do so.  Like billions huge.  And for what?  To directly engage with (read: provide customer service for) people who get pissy if their DVR cuts off the end credits one time on a show they don’t even care about. Yeah, sounds great. This is highly related to Death Topic 5 below, so more in a moment. 4. The Future of TV is all about Apps Just imagine a world where instead of browsing channels or searching for things, you can download apps for it all.  ABC? App. NBC? App. Fox? App. Bravo? Part of that NBC App (or maybe it’s own). TBS? App. SyFy? Same as Bravo, maybe.  How about the shows themselves?  Where’s Seinfeld?  Could be it’s own app!  Or, since TBC has syndication rights (well, some of them), it’ll be in their app.  And I’m sure NBC still owns some rights too, so maybe there instead.  Or possibly it’ll get split up amongst each of the stakeholders, on a per-season basis.  This is the future, and it’s awesome. If awesome means terrible. As I’ve said before, TV isn’t about work, it isn’t about search, it isn’t about finding things and effort - it’s about escape. TV should not work like the Web nor like my smart phone any more than my microwave should work like my smart phone.  Yes, we could use some better paradigms for discovering content, and integrating with second screen apps sounds like a good idea in many ways.  But that doesn’t mean I want an app per channel, show, network, etc. 5. The Future of TV is the Death of the Television Industry As We Know It As I wrote above, TV is dying, it just must be dying!  The kids are watching lots of videos on the YouTubes, and since the Internet by definition is disruptive, it must impact TV.  After all, the TV services business is a $200+ billion dollar a year industry, and if you factor in manufacturing, production, distribution, and other related costs, it easily scales past $500 billion.  And this still doesn’t account for the internal marketplaces within each of the players.  That’s a lot of money for the Internet to kick the snot out of and hand over to the engineers in Silicon Valley! Well, what if it doesn’t?  What if all the brains and the coding and the apps and the investments can’t topple this old school, well-loaded, not technically unsophisticated industry?  What if instead of disruption, the contributions of the Internet and the tech sector simply contribute to more growth?  After all, that’s what happened with cable in the first place, then VCR, then DVD, …  Sure, some of the deal-making might change, and we should expect to see the players evolve, grow, and of course fade.  Netflix is larger than any US cable operator, maybe they’ll take one of them out?  Or maybe the cable companies will expand into competitive regions?  Maybe the Xbox will be the next generation of set top boxes, with no need for truckrolls?  Lots of potential, lots of Internet contribution, but dying?  I doubt it. In conclusion… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not all doom and gloom for speculation.  I love some good speculation.  But the above topics are worn thin, dried out, and only mildly less entertaining to read about than tech bloggers getting into spats with each other. There’s a ton of innovation on the second screen that goes far beyond Social TV.  Future TV interfaces are coming and changing, and Voice Control will play a role, but what else should we expect?  There’s no real evidence that cord cutting is happening, and sure, it might come, but as with all things, it’ll either be massively slower or faster than all typical predictions, so let’s move past that point.  What else is out there?

Too Cold For Coachella? Watch Couchella On YouTube Posted: 14 Apr 2012 11:37 AM PDT It is freaking cold here in Indio California, so cold that half of the folks in the house I’m staying with for the weekend left the Coachella music festival last night around 9pm. Even though I stayed until midnight (made it to Swedish House Mafia, yesss!), I ended up buying an ugly $60 Coachella hoodie to not freeze my buns off. A LOT of people now own this hoodie, I think we should totally pass it on to our kids. In lieu of watching Coachella live, my de facto PGA Villa roommates — who have paid hundreds of dollars for their VIP tickets mind you — have been instead addicted to the livestream on YouTube, sitting in front of our fireplace at home until the wee hours of the night. Brave New Musical Festival world we live in. This is actually the second year that YouTube has livestreamed the festival, and as I attest to above people, like normal people, are watching it. I don’t know how much State Farm Insurance is paying to Coachella or YouTube for the sponsorship, but it is seriously money well spent. So if you’re into it, you can run your own Couchella through midnight Sunday, April 15, getting your fill of live Radiohead, Miike Snow, Andrew Bird, Florence + The Machine, Bon Iver, Gotye and more on the humble website. I mean, that’s what we’re doing. One of these days YouTube/Google is going to pull in the SuperBowl and/or the World Cup and change the game for online video. Until then, baby steps. You can watch the livestream here.

Apps Have Got Your Back Posted: 14 Apr 2012 10:47 AM PDT Who needs governments? The ongoing trend toward mobile, social and crowdsourcing apps have led to a wealth of new community-based resources that support or supplant traditional civic and government services. Think Kickstarter instead of the NEA or Canada Council. Or consider the new Circle of 6 app, which is intended to help prevent violence before it happens, by letting users reach out to friends when dicey situations arise, instead of calling 911 after they get out of hand. Circle of 6 is the brainchild of health educator Deb Levine and anti-violence activist Nancy Schwartzman, who have found that it’s often easier for people to reach out for help via a screen, and that it’s important for groups of friends to offer concrete strategies for supporting each other. It’s already won the White House’s Apps Against Abuse challenge, and racked up tens of thousands of iPhone downloads. “We are working to get the app in the hands of Android users as soon as possible,” says lead developer Christine Corbett Moran (an astrophysicist with a double-major Physics/CS degree from MIT, who develops apps in her copious spare time.) Apps like Circle of 6 are the thin edge of a really interesting wedge. In the rich world, apps that obviate or replace the need to call in the authorities are merely useful; but in the developing world, where competent authorities are much poorer and more thinly stretched, such services are far more disruptive. Community-sourcing apps won’t replace government services that already exist, at least not anytime soon. But where those don’t exist at all, these new services can be downright revolutionary. Some concrete examples: I Paid A Bribe (which I’ve written about before) helps Indian communities fight the scourge of corruption. Ushahidi maps crises where governments are too poor or paralyzed to do so themselves. A few years ago I helped build the EpiCollect app for Imperial College London, which anyone can use to collect, store, and map their own data; veterinarians used it to track the spread of diseases in East Africa. Ulwazi collects “community memories” — ie cultural knowledge — in South Africa. Esoko helps African agribusiness entrepeneurs share and gather data that is tracked by government statisticians in the First World, but not necessarily by theirs. As smartphones continue their relentless conquest of the planet — in particular, as the price of a decent Android phone drops below $100, and more than 50% of the poor world has access to one, a mark that I expect will be passed in the next few years — these kinds of community-sourcing apps will grow ever more important. In the same way that the developing world bypassed wired phones and jumped straight into mobile, they may bypass certain forms of top-down hierarchical government services in favor of crowdsourced resources and resilient communities. (More on that last concept in my forthcoming interview with John Robb.) That’s going to have some very interesting ramifications … and I predict that some startups that target this shift ahead of the curve will ultimately make a killing. Image: Circle of 6 app

Gillmor Gang: Moe, Larry, and Curly Posted: 14 Apr 2012 10:00 AM PDT The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — have a lot to work with this week: Instagram, a Google+ redesign, and Ann Romney joining Twitter. But if Larry is Larry, who are Moe and Curly? @dbfarber makes a good case for Twitter owning the realtime media; if you make it on Twitter, you can make it anywhere. We don’t know Moe’s business model, but who cares. That leaves Zuckerberg as Curly, the intellectual whose empire keeps growing no matter what mistakes he seems to make. In fact, those mistakes usually turn out to be ephemeral. Lose trust with overwhelming growth, buy the most phatic startup and its 30 million users. Facebook is betting only a few will bolt, and where are they gonna go anyway? The Three Stooges are beating each other up, but what they’re really doing is keeping Microsoft boxed out of the social party. Nyuk nyuck nyuck. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @dbfarber, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

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