The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Marketing Lessons Startups Need to Learn from Google’s Project Glass Concept Video
- Newspaper Attacks UK Government For Its ‘Closeness’ To Google
- SpaceX’s Historic Launch Aborted Less Than A Second Prior To Launch
- Hyperlinks Are Dumb And Bleeding Money; How To Ensure Yours Aren’t
- Personalization Is Not A Feature
- Real Tech Alert: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 Ready For Takeoff To International Space Station
- ClarityRay Battles Ad Blockers With $500K In Funding
- Study: Twitter Sentiment Mirrored Facebook’s Stock Price Today
- Facebook Reveals How Much Stock Each Bank Got, Morgan Stanley Nabbed $6 Billion Worth
- David Kirkpatrick On What The ‘Facebook Effect’ Could Be Post-IPO [TCTV]
- GameStop To Sell SIM Cards
- These 3D Printer Trading Cards Are What Kids Will Swap In The Future
- Facebook’s Acquisition of Karma Brings Mobile Commerce, App Monetization Prowess
- Bankers Got Too Aggressive With Pricing Facebook As They Struggled To Keep Shares Above $38
- Gillmor Gang Live 05.18.12 (TCTV)
- Facebook IPO Day: The Scene At NASDAQ in NYC’s Times Square [TCTV]
- TC/Gadgets Webcast: The Avengers, Nerf, And Kickstarter Tips
- China’s Tencent To Restructure Into Six Groups, Here’s Why
- Microsoft Announces Its Back-To-School Promotion: Buy A PC, Get A Free Xbox
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| Marketing Lessons Startups Need to Learn from Google’s Project Glass Concept Video Posted: 19 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics and blogger at QuickSprout.com. You may have seen it by now…Google's concept video about its new Project Glass. These glasses will do what your smart phone will do only without having to hold anything…you actually see your options at the side of your view. You can get directions, send and receive texts, make calls, schedule tasks and even share your view with another person. It's a really exciting idea…especially if you love technology. But the actual product is easily years out from becoming a reality. Was Google wise to release an idea so early? And should startups do the same? Concept videos give you constructive criticismAt this stage Project Glass is nothing but a video…and may not be a reality for a long time. Augmented reality experts point out that there are huge hurdles the Google has to overcome. So why did Google unveil so early? It all boils down to the fact that they wanted feedback on the product. Google wanted to learn the good and bad things people had to say about the glasses. The video currently has gotten over 15 million views which suggests that there is a lot of curiosity in the product… but not necessarily interested buyers. It's just like when Drew Houston released his Dropbox video. There was no coding…just a screen cast of how Dropbox would work.
While Dropbox was certainly fishing for feedback on how to improve its product more importantly it was looking for how many people would adopt and use it.
But more importantly, there were thousands of people who signed up to be notified for the release of the actual product on the first day of the video's release. And then thousands more after that. Clearly Drew learned that there was a huge need out there that DropBox could fulfill. Concept videos gauge interestYou'll more than likely get in-depth comments from the innovators and early adopters. While the input from the first group is critical for building a better product…hearing from the second group is critical to knowing if you are creating a product that will have mass adoption. But don't get discouraged if you only hear from the first group during the first round of your prototype video. While keeping costs low, make the suggested changes from the first group to the product and then release a second video. However, if you don't hear from the second group the second time around…then you may have a product that nobody wants. Concept videos build your brandAnother reason for doing a concept video is to make your company look like it's a company that is on the cutting edge and is doing cool things in secret. The concept video is a powerful marketing strategy for companies that have long production time tables between products…like cars or iPads. Apple will release concept videos like this one on the iPad 3 that keep people in anticipation of the real product. Otherwise they may fade into the background and no longer seem like the cool technology company it is. This is also why Google released their concept video. Remember, however, that this strategy doesn't always work with small businesses. It's a lot more risky for a startup to engage in a concept video if the technology is years out from entering the market. The startup without an established reputation or brand is better off just building a superior product behind closed doors. A concept video that gets a poor reception could easily sink their reputation. When should a startup use a concept video?A concept video is a great idea for a startup when two conditions are met:
So how do you create a successful concept video? Here are some tips. Involve the viewersIn my opinion the genius of the Google Glasses concept video was in that it shows you exactly what the product could do for you by putting the viewer into the lead role of the video.
From the start of the video the camera moves around like it is you looking out from these glasses.
This is a great example of allowing someone to demo a product without actually having the product! Highlight the benefits of the featuresThe basic purpose of a concept video is to show potential users how its features will make the life of the user better. This means you have to give examples of ways your product can make the user smarter, more efficient or happier.
The DropBox video gave tons of examples on stuff people could store. But then it went on to give scenarios of how DropBox could be used to solve common storage problems people have. Isolate the new featuresIf you have an existing product like the iPad…then how can a concept video help you? In this case most people will be familiar with the general features of the product. What Apple's concept video needed to do was show off the new features.
This could be done without any narration as the action communicated clearly what a person could do with new features like connecting two iPads together, a holograph display of movies and an augmented reality keyboard. Tell a storyAnother reason the Google video was a success is that it told a story. It was a simple story of a day in someone's life. It showed him eating breakfast, trying to catch the subway, meeting a friend for coffee and playing the ukulele for his girlfriend…and how Google Glasses was involved the whole time.
That narrative…and how seamless Google Glasses fit into that narrative…keeps you glued to the screen! It's critical to understand that your product must fit seamlessly into the story. If it feels crammed or out of place then this approach won't work. Create a mechanism to capture leadsFinally, if you are going to create a concept video then you need to create a way to capture the leads that you generate, which usually involves driving them to a unique landing page…
This is what I think was Google's biggest failure. They missed…and are missing…an opportunity to capture something like 14 million possible leads of interest. If anything by capturing leads with a basic field that allows someone to join a list of updates on Project Glass will help them to see how many potential customers there are, which would give you quantifiable data to determine if it will be a profitable market. For the startup who doesn't have the financial resources that a Google has, this is an absolute must. Create a mechanism to capture an email address. Final thoughtsThe concept video is a wonderful marketing tool on some many levels. However, it may not be the best approach for every startup. You need to evaluate your needs, your resources and what you are trying to accomplishing before jumping in with both feet. However, if and when you do decide, I truly believe that it's a great way to help you save money and reputation…leading to a killer product in the end! What other advantages are there to using a concept video?
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| Newspaper Attacks UK Government For Its ‘Closeness’ To Google Posted: 19 May 2012 06:39 AM PDT  UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail, has decided to raise the issue of Google’s influence on the UK government, after uncovering the fact that Conservative Party ministers have held meetings with Google an average of once a month since the General Election two years ago. There have been 23 meetings between Tory ministers and Google since June 2010, with Prime Minister David Cameron meeting Google three times and George Osborne – who as Chancellor of the Exchequer is supposed to meet with business leaders – four times in two years. The story needs to be a seen in a wider context. The Conservatives have recently come under fire for having too close a relationship to another powerful entity, News Corporation (as did the Labour party during its tenure). A huge inquiry into Press standards has in large part focused on the ties between Rupert Murdoch's media giant and the Conservatives. But what the report buries way down in the article, is the number of times the newspaper itself has met with the Government. A Google spokesperson told us: “It’s absolutely right that governments speak with companies about issues that affect their citizens. The British Government makes the list of those meetings publicly available – including the Daily Mail's 34 meetings over the same period.” In other words, the Daily Mail has met with the Government almost one and a half times a month (on average) since they entered office – that’s quite a bit more than Google has. It’s likely those were high-level meetings, not editorial ones. That said, the issue does raise the question of Google’s closeness to the UK government and its ability to grab the ear of the Government on a number of topics. It’s the kind of access a lot of companies would be envious of. Culture minister Ed Vaizey has met the firm seven times. Culture Secretary boss Jeremy Hunt has held four meetings. In David Cameron’s first months as party leader in 2006 and 2007 (though not yet Prime Minister), he spoke to the annual Google Zeitgeist conference. Three senior figures have moved between the Tories and Google in the last few years. Rachel Whetstone is Global head of communications and public policy at Google and is married to David Cameron’s former chief of staff, Steve Hilton. Naomi Gummer was formerly adviser to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, but is now a public policy adviser to Google. Amy Fisher Was a press officer for Google, and is now a special adviser to the Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman. On Hilton, the right wing Daily Mail newspaper has rarely missed an opportunity to attack his more radical attempts to shake up government thinking about technology and its effect on society. But it’s more likely that the Conservatives – in part driven by Hilton’s thinking – have realised that the world has moved away from the green-screen, big-IT projects which used to fill the coffers of the likes of EDS and others, towards embracing a more open standards approach. On the ground this has fed into attempts to open up government data, and led also the innovative project known as Gov.uk, which is taking a startup approach to government online, employing many of the UK’s best engineers and tech stars. It’s also quite something to see a sentence describing Hilton as the “shaven-headed son of Hungarian immigrants” – a phrase which betrays the Mail’s antipathy to alternative thinking. In March it was announced that Mr. Hilton was going to take an academic post at Stanford University in California to be near his wife who works at Google. He plans to return next year, though it’s not yet clear whether he will re-join the government. Of course, back in the real world, these West Wing-like moves of advisers between big business and governments go on literally all the time. We don’t currently have the equivalent figures for meetings with Microsoft or Cisco, or Facebook, IBM or other companies, but I’d be amazed if there were not similar factoids waiting to scurry forth if someone someone decided to lift a few rocks. Indeed, Microsoft, Cisco and many other large tech companies have appeared several times at the government’s ‘Tech City’ meetings. So quite why the Daily Mail has decided to home in on this issue is a little bit of a mystery. It may be that the story was placed as an attack by the Labour Party. Their health IT scheme to store patients' records failed spectacularly just before they left office, so they would have smarted at the suggestion by Cameron that a company like Google could probably do a better job. The newspaper quotes Helen Goodman, Labour's media spokesman, who says “Of course it is important for ministers to listen to business, but a meeting with Google every month does look like the sort of privileged access that small businesses can only dream of.” Unfortunately, she neglects to mention the numerous tiny tech startups that have been invited to Number 10 Downing Street over the last couple of years as part of the government’s Tech City initiative, and its purchase of an entire building – Campus London – in East London which is housing small tech startups that have have nothing to do with Google. (As disclosure, I’m co-founder of a co-working space that’s a tenant in that building, but frankly, I’d point this out even if it wasn’t). Then again, Google doesn’t help its own cause. In Europe it does not have a great record on tax. As Goodman points out: “Ministers must disclose what they discussed. Did they challenge Google over their repellent tax avoidance, which was uncovered by the Daily Mail?” It’s here that criticism could land a big punch. Google has been oft criticised for paying tax on less than a quarter of its UK income. In 2010 it generated £2.1 billion in the UK but with its international operations based Ireland, where corporation tax is much lower than the UK, it escapes a great deal of tax. And Google hasn’t always helped its own cause. Last month Google executive Naomi Gummer, until recently a Conservative minister’s political adviser, caused a furore in the press when she implied (not unreasonably?) that it was the job of parents to stop children seeing adult content online, not Internet companies. Currently a debate rages in the UK about creating an ‘off switch’ at ISP level to block porn, allowing parents baffled by content settings or Net Nanny software to simply order a ‘clean’ version of the Internet direct from their ISP. A Conservative Party spokesman told the Mail: “All these meetings have been properly declared and it is normal for relevant ministers to meet with a company of this size.” Ultimately the Mail’s story does raise questions of perceptions over-all but as a major UK tech player, it would be extremely odd for it not to meet with whoever was in power fairly regularly. Neither Facebook not Twitter, for instance, have anything like the huge engineering bases and offices Google has in the UK. Do we want our politicians to remain in a worldview of tech dominated by the desktop and ‘licenses’ or one where developers, startups and apps can thrive? I’d hazard not.
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| SpaceX’s Historic Launch Aborted Less Than A Second Prior To Launch Posted: 19 May 2012 05:31 AM PDT  “Entering terminal count autosequence. 60 seconds to engine fire. #DragonLaunch,” tweeted Elon Musk as his space company was less than a minute away from it’s historic flight. But the launch didn’t happen. Nothing happened as longtime NASA commentator George Diller counted down the seconds, “3..2..1……We’ve had a cutoff. Liftoff did not occur.” Musk tweeted 11 minutes later at 5:06am EDT, “Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days.” The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was literally a half second away from launching. NASA is still inspecting the engine but early reports, tweeted by both Musk and NASA, state that the chamber pressure on engine 5 was abnormally high, causing the rocket’s on-board computer to abort the launch. SpaceX was on the cusp of making history and becoming the first privately owned institution to dock a capsule with the International Space Station. Only governments, the US, Russia and Japan, have so far accomplished this task. SpaceX is hoping to take over the transport duties from NASA starting first with cargo but eventually shuttling personnel between terra firma and the ISS. This isn’t SpaceX’s first space rodeo. The company has been launching its Falcon rockets since 2006 although the first flight of a Falcon 1 failed a few seconds in. The rocket on the launchpad today, a Falcon 9, saw a successful first flight in 2010. Today’s launch, while cut short, will likely (hopefully) just be a footnote in SpaceX history. The company is set to try again in the coming days. The next launch attempt will come on May 22 but it could be pushed to May 23 according to some reports.
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| Hyperlinks Are Dumb And Bleeding Money; How To Ensure Yours Aren’t Posted: 19 May 2012 02:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Oliver Roup is the founder and CEO of VigLink, a service that makes it easier to use affiliate programs on your blog or website. When an email hits our inbox, we know not only who it's from but their entire web imprint. LinkedIn can point out the profile of the woman you interviewed for a sales role last week and the gentleman you spoke with earlier in the year at a conference. And rest assured that the dining room set you checked out over the weekend at CrateAndBarrel.com will haunt your online experience for the forseeable future. Data — its collection and manipulation at scale — has revolutionized how we interact online. Homepages, banner advertisements and what we see in our Facebook timeline are all tailored-to-fit the reader, and we don't give it a second thought. But the hyperlink, the key feature that distinguishes hypertext from text has remained largely unchanged since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. Websites generally, and search and online advertising specifically, would be barely recognizable today by their younger selves. But hyperlinks — their structure, how they're authored and how we use and track them — have barely changed in 20 years. Consider:
Hyperlinks, in many ways, are dumb. And as a result, harming your user experience and potentially bleeding money from your company — when they could be a tool for better engagement, increased revenue, and deeper analytics. Now, there are a cluster of companies innovating by recognizing the power of the link — Omniture, Vibrant Media and Yieldbot, to name a few. But, this isn't a problem companies can hold off on thinking about until the perfect tech pops up to solve it. There was a time when SEO was considered a "pro-tip" — a way for startups to get ahead of the game. Today, it's standard best practice — and companies that don't think strategically about the way search engines view their sites are at a strong disadvantage. Hyperlink optimization is similar. While link optimization might be a "pro-tip" now, it won't be for much longer. Companies that aren't thinking strategically about link placement, closely tracking results, and taking subsequent action, will find the companies that ARE doing these things at an advantage. The most critical areas to spend time on are tracking outbound hyperlinks, building a linking strategy, and refining it based on results. Let's briefly dive into each. Track your Outbound HyperlinksThe first step to optimizing a site's outbound traffic is to understand what that traffic looks like. Where do visitors go when they leave your site? What do they do on those other sites? While there is still a lot of room for growth within the outbound analytics space, Omniture (paid) and Google Analytics (free — but requires a modification to the standard Analytics code you add to your site) both offer tools to help you understand what happens when a reader leaves your site. VigLink (disclosure: I am the CEO there) also offers an outbound analytics suite as part of its content monetization solution. Build a Hyperlinking StrategyWhat do you want your outbound hyperlinks to do for you? Do you want them to earn you revenue? Do you want them to serve an SEO purpose? Be purely informational? Should they be scarce (keeping readers on your site)? Or abundant (allowing readers to exit as it is helpful)? Once you've answered these questions, you'll have a plan for when your team includes a hyperlink, and when it does not — opening up opportunities for a better reader experience, and deeper engagement. Refine, Refine, RefineCombine a plan with data to track that plan's performance and you've got a gold mine on your hands. Notice a link that is never clicked and your plan requires that links must be useful to readers? Take it out. Or, a heavy percentage of links pointing to non-eCommerce properties, and your goal is monetization? Incorporate fewer links to those non-commercial sites. Refining your hyperlinks will improve reader engagement and overall site performance. Do It, and Make the Web BetterHyperlinks should make the web better — more connected, easier to navigate, and intelligent. Hyperlinks should make your site better — more actionable, insightful and profitable. Today, hyperlinks are falling short. They're static and largely untracked. Sometimes useful — but often not. As the web becomes ever more crowded, and an organization's site optimization toolkit begins to produce diminishing returns, the hyperlink is obvious low hanging fruit. What that means to site owners:
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| Personalization Is Not A Feature Posted: 18 May 2012 11:00 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Scott Brave is the CTO and co-founder, Baynote. We've all watched from the sidelines as companies have come out in a burst of glory, and then, two years later, spent their venture capital, lost their user base, and failed to monetize. This begs the question – what are the factors that drive a company's survival, differentiate it, and ultimately make it a winner? In today's online world, personalization is increasingly making or breaking companies. The companies that win are the ones making personalization a key company value – not just a feature. In the early days of the web, consumers were happy just to gain access to information. However, as technology became more sophisticated, and as more consumers and companies came online, we quickly moved out of the access age and into a state of information overload, often leaving consumers frustrated and confused. Companies that helped consumers cut through the clutter to reveal relevant information had a critical and sustainable competitive advantage in their respective areas. The concept of relevance is critical to the success of Google, for example. Personalization is not new. Popularized by Amazon and Netflix more than a decade ago, personalization is the practice of tailoring information to people based on what they are looking for, what they have found interesting in the past, what their friends have engaged with, or based on explicit inputs like their interests. Personalization has gotten a lot of positive attention recently because it can be used to great effect to organize the web's information overflow into relevant, meaningful experiences. Winning companies approach personalization as a core value of how they do business – a "customer-centric" philosophy – rather than an add-on "feature." As proof, here are some examples of companies that have built their businesses around personalization and the competition that they left in their wake. News: Flipboard vs. Yahoo! NewsIn 2001, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! News, providing a repository for news articles that became the first-ever most-emailed page on the web. However, Yahoo! News neglected to treat personalization as a core value – and in so doing missed out on the opportunity to tap into the social graph of personal information to personalize and curate content for users based on their interests. With Yahoo! treating personalization as a feature and not a core value, by 2010, consumers moved on to new, more personalized content curation services that were specifically designed for consuming media. One example of such a personalized news source is Flipboard, which works across Apple devices, and allows users to “flip” through their social networking feeds and feeds from partner websites to find the news articles that are most interesting to them. Within a year of its founding, Flipboard had amassed a $200 million valuation. Today, the company's valuation and user base continues to skyrocket, while Yahoo!'s continues to hemorrhage. Flipboard won because it applied personalization to consumer choice for news articles that other news providers hadn't accounted for, sparking the beginning of the content curation boom. Interestingly, Yahoo! recently announced plans to eliminate many of its online properties in order to focus on its most popular ones and make the content on those sites personalized to the user. It seems Yahoo! has finally caught on to the fact that users like personalized content and will engage with brands and services that provide content tailored to their interests. Music: Pandora vs. Internet radioThis example seems counter-intuitive – wouldn't people want to listen to their favorite radio station online? This just never took off. Why? Internet radio contained way too much content – it wasn't focused or specific enough. Consumers had to work too hard to find the music they liked. Once consumers were introduced to a better way to curate and listen to music, they were never going back. When Pandora allowed users to input their music preferences through both explicit selections and implicit actions to help shape their content stream, it changed the listening experience. Pandora made listening to music online personal. After Pandora, just listening to the radio online seemed like a waste of time. Dining: Alfred (Google) vs. OpentableOpenTable provides a free service that lets users make reservations online. The company first came on the scene in 1998, and has steadily built up its business – today over 25,000 restaurants are signed up with the service. While OpenTable provides restaurant recommendations along the side of the screen based on location, it is a feature rather than being core to the experience. Alfred, on the other hand, is a mobile app developed by Clever Sense (purchased by Google in December) that delivers dining recommendations based exclusively on your inputs and your Facebook check-ins and profile. By offering recommendations for restaurants that are personalized to consumer's inputs and behavior Google could become a leading provider of time-critical dining data, and a big player in the multi-billion dollar restaurant industry. These examples have all shown how companies that embrace personalization as a core value, and not just a feature can win. In today's consumer-driven society companies that don't pay attention to what people want most at any given moment risk losing significant market share to competitors that have built a culture around delighting customers with a highly personalized experience at every turn.
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| Real Tech Alert: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 Ready For Takeoff To International Space Station Posted: 18 May 2012 10:41 PM PDT  Watch live streaming video from spaceflightnow at livestream.com SpaceX, the private space exploration company founded by PalPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk, is ready to boldly go where no private company has legitimately attempted to go before: The International Space Station. (Live video of the rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida is embedded above.) In just a few hours at 1:55am Pacific Time (which is 4:55am Eastern time) Saturday morning, SpaceX will attempt to make the first ever privately-funded launch to head to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch will be made with its Falcon 9 rocket, which is set to deploy its Dragon capsule. As SpaceFlightNow has very clearly reported, this is a risky and unique proposition in many ways:
Obviously it is a super ambitious and expensive endeavor, but the SpaceX company is very keen to remind people that this is still an experiment. After all, this is the first time that a non-government US entity has made a move to land on the International Space Station. As SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceFlight Now: “We know this has been touted as a huge mission. We keep trying to say it’s a test. Nonetheless, it’s a big job.” The company has repeatedly emphasized to the press that this is “just a test flight.” Indeed, it is possible that we could watch the Falcon 9 go down in flames. But of course, the smart people at SpaceX have clearly taken great care to make sure that is not the case here on Saturday’s launch. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see to be sure — and the high stakes are a part of the excitement of it all. In a slightly larger lens, there is the hope that some of the newly-minted Facebook affiliated folks who acquired millions on Friday will opt to invest in projects that are nearly as interesting as Elon Musk’s endeavors. One can dream, at least.
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| ClarityRay Battles Ad Blockers With $500K In Funding Posted: 18 May 2012 07:06 PM PDT  Some of you are probably reading this post with ad blocker right now — and to be honest, I don’t blame you. Sure, there’s the occasional amusing or genuinely useful ad, but not terribly often, so why not install a plugin and avoid the whole mess? Of course, those ads make money, so if ad blockers become widespread enough, it could be a real problem for online publishers (who have enough problems already). Israeli startup ClarityRay says it’s not something looming in the misty future — it’s happening now, and it’s only going to get worse. In a recent study (download PDF), the company claims to have looked at “over 100 million impressions across several top-tier publishers in the US and Europe” finding that 9.26 percent of all impressions were blocked. The likelihood that someone is using an ad blocker varies significantly by browser — Firefox users are the most likely to use a blocker, followed by Safari (the desktop version) and then Chrome. The report goes on:
The company’s logic, at least as presented here, didn’t quite convince me that ad blocking will double, but I’m not debating the larger points. Naturally, ClarityRay is offering a solution. “We believe ad-blocking today is a lot like how pirate MP3s were before iTunes: they point to a valid consumer need, but do so in an unsustainable manner business wise,” says co-founder and CEO Ido Yablonka. In other words, Yablonka wants to provide an alternative that addresses the complaints of the “ad intolerant” while allowing publishers to make money. To that end, the company offers two complementary products — one that bypasses ad blockers, and another that allows publishers to offer subscriptions for an ad-free version of the site. So if you’ve installed and ad blocker and you visit a ClarityRay customer, you’ll still see a single ad, Yablonka says. Don’t want to see it? Then pay. At the same time, Yablonka acknowledges that each publisher has its own audience and its own needs, and he says ClarityRay customizes the program for customer based on crowd analysis. Even though the company hasn’t received much coverage from the press, Yablonka says it’s already live with several large publishers, totaling 2 million unique monthly visitors. (I asked him to point me to a customer site that we can see the technology in action, and I’ll update if he does.) ClarityRay has also raised $500,000 in funding from Saar Wilf who sold his company Fraud Sciences to eBay for $169 million, and is now serving as the company’s chairman.
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| Study: Twitter Sentiment Mirrored Facebook’s Stock Price Today Posted: 18 May 2012 04:48 PM PDT  Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions. Turns out, the ups and downs of how Twitter’s users felt about the stock pretty much mirrored the price of Facebook’s stock as the day progressed. Basically, DataSift notes, every time the volume of negative chatter on Twitter increased, Facebook’s stock price dropped within 20 minutes. “So if people had traded based on signals today to buy/sell Facebook stock,” the company told us,”they might have done quite well.” To create this graph, DataSift recorded 95,019 interactions from 58,665 authors over a period of 6 hours. Most interactions, of course, took place right during the early hours after Facebook’s stock started trading (and took an immediate dive from $42 closer to $38). The company also saw a second and much smaller uptick in interactions toward the end of the day as well. For the most part, of course, this is just a fun exercise in tracking Twitter data. It’s worth noting, though, that quite a few recent studies that looked into the connection between Twitter posts and stock prices found that there is at least a slight correlation between Twitter sentiment and volume and stock prices. You can find a bit more of DataSift’s data, which also takes a closer look at the total volume of posts about the Facebook IPO, here.
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| Facebook Reveals How Much Stock Each Bank Got, Morgan Stanley Nabbed $6 Billion Worth Posted: 18 May 2012 03:28 PM PDT  Just after the markets closed on its first day of public trading, Facebook amended its S-1 with a complete prospectus detailing how much stock each underwriter got to sell. Morgan Stanley, the lead-left bank, received 162.1 million shares ($6.15 billion worth) followed by J.P. Morgan with 84.8 million ($3.22 billion), and Goldman Sachs pulled down 63.1 million shares ($2.4 billion). E*Trade and Itaú got the short end of the stick, receiving just $80 million in stock. That’s less than any of the other underwriters despite being listed in the middle of the pack in the previous versions of the prospectus. But none of the banks made too much on the Facebook stock. FB shares closed just $0.23 above its IPO price this morning. That means Facebook maximized the amount it raised in the offering, but its underwriters didn’t receive the massive cash windfall many expected.
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| David Kirkpatrick On What The ‘Facebook Effect’ Could Be Post-IPO [TCTV] Posted: 18 May 2012 03:27 PM PDT  While Mark Zuckerberg rang in Facebook’s first day as a publicly traded company back in Silicon Valley, TechCrunch TV was in New York City to report on the scene from the NASDAQ stock market’s Marketsite building in Times Square. The opening bell and initial trades were a bit anti-climactic in person, as we’ve written — NASDAQ is a digital exchange after all, so there’s not too much to see visually. But it was a great opportunity to check out the NASDAQ “floor” in person, and talk all things Facebook with David Kirkpatrick, the NYC-based founder of Techonomy, Fortune Magazine alum, and bestselling author of the book “The Facebook Effect — The Inside Story Of The Company That Is Connecting The World.” You can watch our whole chat with Kirkpatrick at the NASDAQ Marketsite in the video embedded above, which I’d recommend because he gives a pretty compelling interview. Below I’ve included a few of his insights, just to whet your appetite (and perhaps inspire you to endure all 30 seconds of that pre-roll video ad): Why it seems like everyone has come down with Facebook IPO fever: “People are realizing the extent to which technology is changing everything in modern society, and Facebook is kind of the most prominent symbol of that. I think that’s one of the reasons why this is so obsessively watched.” A chicken in every pot, a Facebook stock in every portfolio? It could happen: “There may be a surprising number of new investors who buy shares in Facebook and were not stock investors previously. Whether that might make them more willing to buy other kinds of stocks, I don’t know. Frankly I doubt it. But I think that a lot of ordinary people who are likely to buy Facebook stock are people who are going to do it because they love Facebook so much. And they’re not just Americans, they’re people all over the world. …The thing about Facebook is it has more passionate users than any product I’ve ever heard of. And that is an odd thing for a public company, and it could mean it’s a very widely held stock.” Why Zuck stayed home in California: “I think it was in order to symbolically say, things aren’t going to be that different we’re going to stick to our knitting. That’s why they had a hackathon last night. It was very symbolically chosen… it’s the same thing as wearing the hoodie to the investor presentation.” How Facebook’s IPO could finally make jeans and hoodies acceptable in business, once and for all: “I think business in general is stuffy, and slow-moving, and needs a jolt of Red Bull, really. I don’t know why businesspeople always have to wear suits — it’s stupid, it’s idiotic, it doesn’t even look good, and it’s not very contemporary. …If Facebook continues to retain this degree of prominence in the market economy, I think it will begin to have an influence that the CEO of that company doesn’t wear a suit.”
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 02:39 PM PDT  GameStop is hurting. Same store sales fell 5%-11% and revenue was down 17% to $2 billion. Profit fell to $72.5 million. Arguably, those are still huge numbers and presumably a new console refresh should push the company out of the doldrums. But what the company has just launched – a new MVNO called GameStop Mobile – is almost inexplicable. GameStop Mobile is, in short, an unlimited voice with limited data offering for $55 a month (down to $20 a month for pay-as-you-go plans.) GameStop is just selling SIM cards and service and is running on AT&T’s network with some notable dead spots. The stores actually do take trade-in electronics so, potentially, the company could begin selling unlocked GSM phones to customers who come in for games. Because of the intended audience – kids and the adults who bring them as well as a few die-hards who aren’t yet into PC gaming – it makes some sense for this service to exist. The synergy also opens AT&T to new markets and, more important, places GameStop right at the nexus of mobile and gaming – a place it absolutely needs to be once future consoles stop accepting optical media. However, with revenue down and hard-core gamers moving to services like Origin and Steam, there is little impetus for folks to trek out to the local GameStop for titles. Here’s hoping this latest attempt at monetizing the audience works as well as their midnight launches of Diablo III.
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| These 3D Printer Trading Cards Are What Kids Will Swap In The Future Posted: 18 May 2012 02:03 PM PDT  While, arguably, you’re not going to convince many kids to give up their Topps or Pokemon cards for these things, it’s nice to know they exist. They’re 3D Printer trading cards featuring some of the best 3D printers in the world. You got your Makerbot Replicator, your UP! Printer, and your Printrbot Plus. You got stats on there, a little trivia, some pricing information and then you can trade with your friends (“Awwww man, I need that Reprap clone!”) You can check them all out here or see them in person at Maker Faire in SF this week. Sadly, they’re not actually printing these things but if they did I’d totally buy a pack. The impetus? They came to creator Shawn Wallace in a dream: I had a dream that I found a box of 3D Printer Trading cards from 2012 at the Seekonk Speedway Flea Market. When I awoke I realized that might be a good way to introduce some of the 3D printer makers who will be exhibiting at the Maker Faire Bay Area next week. I'll be posting these all week in no particular order; collect them all!
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| Facebook’s Acquisition of Karma Brings Mobile Commerce, App Monetization Prowess Posted: 18 May 2012 01:32 PM PDT  Facebook has just acquired mobile commerce startup Karma, which makes apps for gifting friends and family. The terms of the deal are undisclosed but 16 employees of the startup will be joining Facebook. The purchase will help Facebook build up monetization prowess on mobile platforms — an area that it had said it’s admittedly weak in. The price was not disclosed. With the deal, Facebook gets two extremely experienced leaders in building and monetizing mobile apps. Karma’s chief executive Lee Linden and its co-founder Ben Lewis were behind Tapjoy, a company that became a huge force in distributing and making money from mobile games. Both he and Lewis were product managers at Google and Microsoft. Linden and Lewis have known each other since they were kids and have been building companies together for a couple years. Note: This was a real product acquisition, not a lower-priced, talent-based one. Karma had done one venture round with Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Felicis Ventures and the CrunchFund. The sense that we’re hearing from social product industry sources is that Karma will get Facebook’s 901 million users at its feet and more power behind building partnerships with other brands. It’s not clear whether Karma will be left alone to run autonomously like Instagram or whether it will become a Facebook-branded product. Last year, Facebook acquired an early group messaging app called Beluga and turned it into Facebook Messenger. This acquisition makes sense for a couple of reasons. Facebook needs all the help it can get in making its mobile platform produce revenue. Linden and Lewis built Tapjoy into what became a $100 million annual runrate business for app distribution and monetization. Now they’ve turned their attention toward mobile commerce. Facebook hasn’t figured out how to make money from mobile apps quite yet. It’s starting to show sponsored stories in the mobile news feed, but it doesn’t have that many opportunities to make payments revenue from third-party mobile developers because it’s blocked from taking a revenue share on iOS. Android offers some possibilities but it’s quite complicated to build a rival app ecosystem like Amazon has done over the past few years with the Kindle. Facebook has tried its hand at gifting before, although it was the virtual kind. It abandoned its gifts store in favor of working on a more broad-based virtual currency offering called Credits that would power purchases of virtual gifts and goods from other developers. It also has tried direct commerce with its Groupon competitor Deals, but obviously that is a very expensive model to operate and scale if you look at Groupon’s margins. But the physical good gifting that Karma specialized in could be a perfect fit. Facebook already knows who your friends, when they have birthdays, and their interests. It could suggest gifts to give and who to give them too, let users pay with their credit card or credits, and take a healthy cut. We had heard a few weeks ago that Lewis was considering taking personal time to travel the world and step down from running Karma with Linden, but apparently we were wrong. He is definitely joining Facebook with the rest of the team. Facebook said in a statement: "We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma's passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook's platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.” Karma also had a post on its own blog:
In addition, TechCrunch interviewed Karma co-founder Lee Linden at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas back in March. You can watch a video of that interview, and see him walk us through a demonstration of the Karma app in person, in the clip embedded below:
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| Bankers Got Too Aggressive With Pricing Facebook As They Struggled To Keep Shares Above $38 Posted: 18 May 2012 01:31 PM PDT  The underwriters of Facebook’s $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company’s shares above last night’s final price of $38 a share. Shares closed at $38.23 today. Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal have been putting in buy orders to keep its price afloat. For Facebook itself, it’s actually a great outcome as the company didn’t leave any money on the table. But bankers on the wealth-management side of the underwriters are sure to be unhappy. Plus, the company’s tepid premiere is killing the performance of tech stocks across the board. Basically, what we hear is that the underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, got too pushy in the final days before the IPO about pricing. Earlier this month, the company was slated to open at a $28 to 35 price range, but that range was pushed up to $34 to 38 a share. Then Facebook priced at the very high end at $38 last night. “The only thing keeping it at $38 are support mechanisms,” a source tells us. “There just wasn’t the institutional investor demand that people thought there would be.” They added that about 20 percent of buying orders seem to be coming from retail investors (e.g. regular people), which is “unprecedented.” Reuters estimates that the lead underwriter Morgan Stanley theoretically could have spent up to $2 billion to prop up the stock, if you look at volumes in the last 20 minutes of trading when Facebook was close to breaking under. Because prices are being held up to avoid a negative finish, shares might dip lower into early next week. Already, we’re seeing the impact on other stocks across the board. Zynga is down 13.4 percent to $7.16. LinkedIn is down 5.9 percent to $99.02. “They’re all in the shitter because now they look expensive since Facebook didn’t go anywhere,” we’re told. From Facebook’s perspective, the company shouldn’t care. The company and its early shareholders raised $16 billion at the very best price they could, leaving no money on the table for the underwriters’ wealthy clients to scoop up and sell for a quick profit. Bill Gurley, who is a general partner at Benchmark Capital (which has a take in Facebook through the company’s acquisition of FriendFeed), said that the price was spot on in a tweet. “This is way better than retail investors buying in an an inflated “pop” price,” he tweeted. Gurley bets that underwriters who propped up the stock will probably make a profit. Plus, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has warned investors that he won’t be concerned with short-term fluctuations in the stock. From the very beginning, he has said that Facebook was originally not meant to be a company. He even said today before the market opened, “Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here's the thing: our mission isn't to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”
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| Gillmor Gang Live 05.18.12 (TCTV) Posted: 18 May 2012 01:04 PM PDT |
| Facebook IPO Day: The Scene At NASDAQ in NYC’s Times Square [TCTV] Posted: 18 May 2012 11:56 AM PDT  In case there was any confusion after Facebook’s eight years in business and its recent geographic expansions, it was cleared up today: Facebook’s home and heart lies in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch TV saw that first-hand this morning at NASDAQ’s Marketsite in New York City’s Times Square. We were on hand there for the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, but as expected, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took advantage of the option to ring it remotely from his company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters. NASDAQ is a fully digital stock exchange, unlike for example the New York Stock Exchange, so it doesn’t have a physical trading floor and the bell-ringing is really just a ceremonial gesture. Nevertheless, there were throngs of reporters, some die-hard Facebook fans, and a few bewildered-looking tourists gathered in Times Square around the NASDAQ Marketsite to see the action. An Eerily Quiet Times SquareBut as you can see in the video embedded above, that “action” was negligible. NASDAQ played a short, two- to three-minute simulcast of Zuckerberg before and during the ringing of the bell on massive television screens, but there was no sound from the event piped into Times Square — so for the duration of the broadcast the crowd fell eerily silent, just watching the screen together. There was a brief countdown shown, but no one called out the numbers or anything. New Year’s Eve it was not. My colleague Anthony Ha found the scene at Facebook’s headquarters this morning to be “underwhelming,” but from where I stood it looked like a downright rager compared to the environment in NYC. In fact, I’m pretty sure this was one of the only occasions I’ll be able to say with near certainty that Menlo Park, California was a louder and more bustling place than Times Square. The Power Shift From Wall Street To Silicon Valley?Someone could easily see the whole event as a let down, but after thinking about it a bit I actually feel like it was the opposite. The scene at NASDAQ today strikes me as just the latest sign of an ongoing shift in power from the finance industry to the technology industry — from the proverbial Wall Street to the proverbial Silicon Valley. Now, I don’t mean that literally, of course. We all live digitally these days, so power is by no means not actually moving geographically from East to West (or even being centered in the United States at all.) But it is a palpable shift in mentality. So for those of us who work and live in and around the tech industry, the silence in Times Square this morning represents something very exciting indeed.
~The Best Of TechCrunch’s Facebook IPO Coverage~ Video & Photos: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Rings In The NASDAQ Bell No IPO Pop Here: Facebook Trades Slightly Higher At Around $40 Facebook's Key Executives And Shareholders: What Is Everyone Worth? Zuckerberg Receives Hoodie, Says "Our Mission Isn't To Be A Public Company" In Pre-IPO Remarks How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button Zynga Shares Go On Wild Ride During Facebook IPO — Big Fall, Then Recovery Facebook Says Haters Gonna Hate, Likers Gonna Like
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| TC/Gadgets Webcast: The Avengers, Nerf, And Kickstarter Tips Posted: 18 May 2012 11:52 AM PDT  Is The Avengers worth your money? Do the disc-blasting Nerf guns leave a welt? How do you pull a Pebble and rein in $3 million on Kickstarter? In this week’s TC/Gadgets webcast, we answer all this and more. John and Matt argue over the value in one of this summer’s tent pole movies, The Avengers. John finds it boring, while Matt thinks “it’s fun for everyone.” And while I can’t say I’ll be buying a ticket to The Avengers any time soon, I can say with great certainty that I’ll be at one of the opening day showings of Prometheus. Who doesn’t love space, right? The gang also discusses Nerf’s disc-blasting guns, and how they may or may not be used at this weekend’s Disrupt Hackathon. Last year we saw a raucous group of hackers start an all-out war with bungee darts. None of the TC editorial staff was injured (nor were the hackers), but this year we’ll at least have some Nerf Vortex and Vulcan guns slung over our shoulders. You know… Just in case. In the words of the recent Game Of Thrones trailers, “War is coming.” Finally, but likely most importantly, Matt, Chris, John and I offer up some tips as to what we cover on Kickstarter. Matt is done with iPad cases, and though I echo the sentiment, I’ll probably be more willing to make exceptions than he. John prefers the “little tweaks” to things we already use and enjoy, like the automatic bike light that knows when you’re moving. I encourage a strong video, as marketing is a huge driver of any business. But the geeky stuff has its place too — Chris thoroughly enjoyed the electron microscope project that significantly reduced the cost of looking at really, really tiny things.
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| China’s Tencent To Restructure Into Six Groups, Here’s Why Posted: 18 May 2012 11:49 AM PDT  China’s Internet juggernaut Tencent announced today that it would undergo a restructuring of its business units into six groups. Ren Yuxin was also named as the new chief operating officer and will head up the media and social-networking groups. The six groups include: TEG – Technology & Engineering Group, comprised of Tencent Research and operating divisions. SNG – Social Networking Group, comprised of its Internet business lines and some divisions from Tencent Research. CDG – Corp. Development Group, formed by Tencent Guangdong R&D Center and its corporate development arm. IEG – Interactive Entertainment Group, original Interactive Entertainment service. MIG – Mobile Internet Group, made up of wireless services and some divisions from Tencent Research. OMG – Online Media Group, namely its portal business. The most profitable Chinese Internet company and its red scarf clad penguin mascot, has been growing into quite the force by competing with other Chinese Internet companies on many fronts like portal business (rivals with Sina, Sohu and NetEase), online games (Sohu, NetEase and Shanda), social networking service (Sina, Renren), software and anti-virus services (Qihoo 360), online video (Qiyi, Sohu Video), eCommerce (Taobao), travel booking (Ctrip), online payment (Alipay) and search (Baidu and Sogou). Just to name a few. In the firm's freshly released Q1 2012 financial results, the company turned a profit of US $470.6 million on revenue of 1.53 billion, a 2.8% increase from this time last year. All of its major offerings are still seeing big growth, for example, its instant messaging system QQ now boasts 751.9 million accounts, up 11.5% YOY. Both QZone and Pengyou.com, Tencent's approach to social networking to date claims 576.7 million and 214.5 million users respectively, up 9.7% since last quarter and a stunning 30.2% YOY. And the Shenzhen-based company's profit-making businesses including QQ Game Open Platform, Internet value-added service, wireless Internet value-added service as well as online advertising business all pulled off decent growth in the past quarter. However, there's always more than meets the eye. For starters, Tencent's investment spree last year hasn't brought on too much revenue, for example, it still lags behind Alibaba/Taobao on the eCommerce front in spite of all its recent acquisitions. Starting last year, Tencent invested in a handful of eCommerce services, like Gaopeng (think Groupon), China's Zappos OKBuy.com, the Chinese OTA elong.com, diamond dealer kela.cn, 3C etailer 51buy.com and so forth, with elong.com being the only one turning a profit. Furthermore, Sina Weibo, which is like a Chinese mix of Facebook and Twitter, is posing a real threat to Tencent’s dominance in social networking. Just like Tencent built its empire on QQ, Sina has been working relentlessly on Weibo to reinvent itself from the traditional online media company to the leading social media outlet by adding a swath of innovations to the platform like Weibo Open Platform, Enterprise Weibo, Weibo gaming center and so on. At the same time, Tencent's search effort Soso has been long-rumored to be facing serious downsizing, which shows that a company that seems as strong as Tencent can still have weaknesses. Soso hasn’t had any major breakthroughs since its inception six years ago. It currently accounts for 1.5% of China's search market in the first quarter of this year, according to a report by Beijing-based market researcher iResearch. Tencent should be wary of the rise of its peers and an organizational restructure might help it be more responsive to market change and be nimble in execution.
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| Microsoft Announces Its Back-To-School Promotion: Buy A PC, Get A Free Xbox Posted: 18 May 2012 11:20 AM PDT  Microsoft, just like Apple, usually runs a major back-to-school promotion every summer that is meant to give students (and their parents) some extra incentives to buy a new computer. The company’s just-announced back-to-school deal for the U.S. and Canada is pretty much the same as last year’s. A year ago, Microsoft gave students who bought a new PC and Xbox 360 and this year it’s doing exactly the same. There are some differences to last year’s program, though. This time around, Microsoft isn’t just partnering with Best Buy in the U.S., but also with Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect and NewEgg.com (its own Microsoft stores, of course, will also honor this promotion. In Canada, students can buy their PCs from Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source. The program is scheduled to start on May 20 in the U.S and May 18 in Canada. To be eligible, students need to buy a Windows PC worth at least $699 ($599 in Canada). Apple vs. MicrosoftApple also used free products like an iPod touch as an incentive for shoppers. Last year, however, it switched to handing out $100 gift cards to its digital stores instead. Apple usually announces its annual back-to-school promotion in June. By the end of last year’s summer promotions, some analysts noted that Apple handily beat Microsoft 8 to 2, with around 80% of incoming students opting for Macs instead of a Windows machine. This year, Microsoft hopes that Ultrabooks like the Samsung Series 5 ULTRA and the Dell XPS 13 will make students think twice about buying a Mac.
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| DIY Doorbell Will Send Pictures Of Your Guests To Your iPhone Posted: 18 May 2012 11:12 AM PDT  Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter. This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience. The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to. When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in. It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project.
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