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The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Mobclix: Android Impressions Grew By 420 Percent In 2010; iPhone Up 347 Percent
- Today Is The Last Day For Crunchie Nominations!
- Theopeninter.net, A Visual Guide To Net Neutrality
- Just In Time To Pig Out For The Holidays, Foodspotting Beta Hits On Android
- The Year In Online Video Deals And What To Expect In 2011
- I Wish You a Merry – and Joyfully Analogue – Christmas
- Take The Red Pill: The Rise Of The Hybrid Startup
- WITN: The Dumbest and Smartest People of 2010, Plus Our Predictions for 2011 (TCTV)
| Mobclix: Android Impressions Grew By 420 Percent In 2010; iPhone Up 347 Percent Posted: 25 Dec 2010 05:59 AM PST
Another interesting trend highlighted by the report is that real-time bidding for mobile ad space is becoming more widely adopted by publishers and developers as the optimal way to fill space. Mobclix says that real time bidding inventory is expected to make up 10% – 15% of total ad buys for 2011. In fact, 50% of all targeted online ad display platforms will be powered through real time platforms by 2015. Mobclix also says that customer retention is 2.7 times better with push-notifications, with apps opened up to 228% more with notifications. Mobclix adds that weekly session times have increased by 103%, according to a survey the company conducted.
In terms of app breakdown, the startup comments that Games are continuing to dominate the mobile app experience, reporting that 70% of the chart-topping applications—in both usage and gross revenue—are games. The average smartphone user spends 2.8 hours per day using applications and 3 in 5 people first turn to an app before searching the web, according to a recent Mobclix survey.
       
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| Today Is The Last Day For Crunchie Nominations! Posted: 24 Dec 2010 03:03 PM PST
Act fast, because at 11:59PM PST on Christmas Eve (tonight) our developer Vineet Thandar is going to flip the switch from his makeshift office in Lake Tahoe and you’ll miss your chance to have a say in who deserves to be celebrated for the best tech accomplishments of 2010. And don’t forget about attending the Awards Ceremony itself, happening at the Palace Of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco on January 21, 2011 at 7:30 pm PST, and the after party at the Exploratorium. Our last batch of tickets sold out almost immediately, so keep a watchful eye out for the next release. See you there!        
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| Theopeninter.net, A Visual Guide To Net Neutrality Posted: 24 Dec 2010 02:02 PM PST
With Theopeninter.net, web designer Michael Ciarlo has given you the holiday gift of being able to explain to the less web savvy members of your friends and family what net neutrality means (simply, and with visuals) and why exactly laymen should care about the FCC’s recent attempts to create “enforcable” Internet regulations. Ciarlo describes the inspiration behind the site as stemming from a conceptual expansion of already existing situations where ISPs exert control over access.
Granted there’s a lot more complexity surrounding the issue than “All ISPs are inherently evil and want to charge you for Skype” Theopeninter.net does, as Reddit commenter lolinyerface (yeah I know) put it, “The job of showing how things we get for free now, could one day be per item additional cost.” Explains Ciarlo:
The ghost of Christmas future, indeed.        
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| Just In Time To Pig Out For The Holidays, Foodspotting Beta Hits On Android Posted: 24 Dec 2010 12:52 PM PST
Yes, the application which allows you to take pictures of your favorite foods and share them with a community of foodies is finally moving beyond the iPhone. When we first wrote about the app last March, people were already asking for an Android version in the comments. But the small team had their hands full developing the iPhone version and working on their website. But this past August, when announcing their new round of seed funding, Foodspotting revealed that work had begun on the Android version. And now here it is. Be warned that it is very much a beta version of the app. As such, they haven’t released it in the Market yet. Instead, you have to turn on the ability to run non-Market apps on your device and visit this link from your Android phone to install it. And while the app is missing some of the functionality of its iPhone sibling (namely much of the in-app social stuff), it looks very nice and fulfills the main purpose of Foodspotting: spotting food. It also brings the ability to syndicate out your food pictures to Twitter, Facebook, and even Foursquare (their newest integration). So when you’re pigging out tonight, if you’re an Android user, now you can show the world too!        
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| The Year In Online Video Deals And What To Expect In 2011 Posted: 24 Dec 2010 12:28 PM PST
Editor's note: Guest author Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of video site WatchMojo. In this post he examines looks back at the online video deals of 2010 and what deals could happen in 2011. You can find his previous guest posts about online video here. With the recent rumor that Google's YouTube unit was looking at acquiring video content company Next New Networks, it's clear that anything can happen in the rapidly growing online video space. While some are shocked to see that Google may cross over and own content, the rumor does sound plausible:
The combination would allow YouTube to fold in Next New Networks and use it as a talent management platform, basically, and give the video aggregation site the ability to create videos if need be. Loaded with nearly $25M in venture financing, it's not quite the initial public offering that some of their investors were hoping for, but let's face it, an exit to Google is nothing to be ashamed of. Close, but no cigar: IPO Talk Will Increase In fact, while you can blame Sarbanes Oxley or a lack of credible initial public offering (IPO) candidates, it is likely that 2011 will come and go with very few, if any, major liquidity events in the public markets for online video startups. As such, the most likely path to liquidity for venture capitalists (VCs) remains mergers and acquisitions (M&A). With VCs having invested in so many online video startups and industry revenues still not matching the lofty expectations that whet VCs appetites in the first place, a lot of boards will cash out in 2011 when buyers come knocking. Only Certainty: Dealmaking Will Continue After many years of expected consolidation, 2010 saw a wave of acquisitions:
Apart from Video Egg's merger with Six Apart which was largely based on the shared VCs doing some financial engineering, with these deals, we saw examples of both vertical and horizontal integration. The terms horizontal integration and vertical integration are used in microeconomics and strategic management, whereby:
Conversely:
Vertical Integration AOL's moves were examples of vertical integration:
These deals have given AOL an end-to-end capability in video. Horizontal Integration Meanwhile, we saw display banner ad networks venture into online video:
In this context, horizontal integration occurred between potential or actual competitors. 2011 Storylines There is nothing to suggest that 2011 will be less busy on the online video deal front. Here are some of the trends I think will drive M&A activity in 2011. Ad Networks Ad networks are rife for consolidation and can be broken up into:
A few firms have footholds in both: Auditude (ad server) also runs Cross Point Media (the ad network), Tremor runs the Acudeo ad server; while some operate under the same moniker (Adap.tv). Some focus just on one space: LiveRail doesn't have buy or sell media, it only offers an ad server. With Jambo in the hands of Undertone and Broadband Enterprises part of Specific Media, expect display banner ad networks (such as Specific Media, Undertone or Tribal Fusion) to acquire video networks or see consolidation within video ad networks and servers. There are no shortage of remaining players: Adap.tv, Auditude/Cross Point Media, Brightroll, Freewheel, LiveRail, Overlay.tv, Panache, Spotxchange, Tidal TV, Video Egg, Yume . . . to name a few, with Tremor becoming a leading IPO candidate. Big Media: A state of inertia We have yet to see traditional media companies with their large purse strings step into the ring. It's only a matter of time though, as Magna's latest figures show that online advertising will overtake newspapers by 2013, though TV advertising will still command the lion’s share of all ad dollars through 2016, with an estimated 40 percent share at that point. Although, by then online video will account for $11.4 billion in global ad spend. Where online video trumps television advertising is in growth rates: online video will grow at an average rate of 19.6% through 2016 (with estimated 50% growth in 2011 alone), versus a 7.5% growth rate for TV advertising. With large media companies hoarding more cash than ever, it's fair to assume that those who attempted to "build" from within and failed will soon shift gears and look to "buy". But the reality is that big media, by and large, still doesn't know what it wants to do in the arena. With Rupert Murdoch divesting from the Web in general and shifting focus from paywalls to iPad publications, it's unlikely that News Corp. will ante up much for online video. How about CBS? With changes at the very top of' management, I also don't see them making too many shifts back into online video. Disney is more focused on gaming than online video. NBC Universal, now in the hands of Comcast, will probably be stuck in integration mode for most of the year. Time Warner seems intent on continuing its TV Everywhere initiative to maintain its margins and offline revenues. Newspaper companies stand the most to benefit from online video, but they will spend the first half of the year wading through the opportunities to understand what strategy and targets will most help their business: technology to serve ads or video content to sell ads against. The Portals and Major Online Companies AOL certainly put itself in an enviable position with a series of moves, though integrating the various moving parts as its dial-up business continues to shrink will remain a challenge. It's now Yahoo!'s turn at bat. With Ross Levinsohn coming on board and being a content guy with a penchant for deal-making, Yahoo! will mimic AOL and get more serious about video, but what they actually do is anybody's guess. They just unveiled their local strategy. Is video next? Don't hold your breath. Microsoft shuttered its Soapbox property and it remains to be determined what it will do in online video. With Redmond admitting it offered Facebook a $15 billion offer and Steve Ballmer courting Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo, I suspect Microsoft has priorities other than video. Meanwhile, with $25 billion in cash and equivalents, Apple can move in multiple directions, namely:
Amazon has its hands in storage (S3) and content delivery (Cloudfront). It's possible it will buy a video player technology to offer end-to-end solutions. There won't be any shortage of likely targets: Ooyala and Brightcove might be too expensive but the list of eager sellers includes bliptv, Kaltura, Feedroom and VMIX. Ooyala and Brightcove will themselves look at tuck-in deals as they ramp up their own growth. Facebook is a major player in online video, peaking at No. 2 in comScore's August video rankings when it surpassed Yahoo! (though Yahoo! regained the No. 2 spot the next month in September). Facebook has a tendency to acquire companies for its people, but like Apple, it could also acquire:
InterActive Corp. (IAC) is sitting on a lot of cash and investing in content creation efforts via Electus and Notional. It would be logical for them to now invest in some kind of distribution play to ensure that their programming is actually seen: potential targets include DailyMotion, Metacafe or Nabbr. It does own Vimeo, but that doesn't offer the kind of reach marketers need. We saw Sony do this via their Grouper acquisition a few years ago, renaming the website Crackle and using it to showcase their programming. While the jury's out on the success of that deal, we might see IAC pull a similar move. Will any of these deals actually happen? Who knows. Predicting this kind of thing is a recipe for failure, but there is an adage that says "buy on the rumor and sell on the news.” With more hype and expectations surrounding online video, the buying will continue.        
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| I Wish You a Merry – and Joyfully Analogue – Christmas Posted: 24 Dec 2010 11:37 AM PST
There are plety of things I love about spending Christmas in the UK – snow, repeats of old TV shows I haven't seen since this time last year, Christmas crackers – but more than all of that, I love the fact that Christmas is one of the last parts of the year that remains mostly analogue. Yes, of course this will be the Christmas of the Kindle and the iPad; and yes, more electronic equipment will probably change hands in the next 24 hours than in the rest of the year combined, but the 25th December is still a day when even those of us who obsess about technology for a living feel a bit tragic when we check our email or log on to Twitter. For most people it's also a time of year when we still generously give and gratefully receive physical gifts, as opposed to virtual ones. More paper books are sold at this time of the year than at any other time – not least because there's something peculiarly joyful about inscribing a heartfelt greeting on a flyleaf and handing over a big block of dead tree to someone you care about. It's something that will never – ever – be replicated by an ebook. DVD sales do pretty well too, and even CDs enjoy a brief reprieve as kids rush to buy gifts for their stubbornly analogue elders. Food too will take a peculiarly untechnological bent for the next couple of days: Christmas is a time for visiting family and eating tried and tested old recipes. No Yelping or Chowhounding required. And don't even think about Foursquaring; everyone knows where you are – you're at home (yours or someone else's), no cutesy, pointless badge required. Finally, Christmas is one day where social networking is absolutely, categorically inferior to the real thing. It's a day for hugging (maybe even poking) real people, exchanging non-pixellated gifts and having real conversations without an emoticon in sight. You’re allowed to send one “Merry Christmas” tweet, but after that, every time you update your status on Christmas day, God kills one of the shepherds. …all of which makes it slightly ironic that I'm sitting here at my keyboard, at 7:30pm (GMT) on Christmas eve, logging into WordPress and writing a blog post for the world's most high profile technology blog. But quotas are quotas, and it at least gives me a long-winded excuse to wish all of TechCrunch's readers – even the freaks and the trolls – a very happy, and very un-digital – Christmas. And if, like me, you find yourself stuck at a keyboard today, I highly recommend this post by Foster Kamer over at Longreads who shares his top five long reads of 2010. I mean, if you're forced to be digital today, you might as well do it old school. Happy Christmas.
       
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| Take The Red Pill: The Rise Of The Hybrid Startup Posted: 24 Dec 2010 10:27 AM PST
Editor’s note: Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin and formerly a co-founder of Plumtree Software. In this guest post he discusses the rise of the hybrid startup: with one foot in the virtual world, and one foot in the real. You can read his previous TechCrunch guest posts here. Several years ago, before Gilt, One King’s Lane and Zulily, I argued that some of the most valuable, disruptive tech startups would be in commerce, not advertising, cutting out the middle man rather than adding another one. It’s fair to say that 2010′s fastest-growing technology companies have largely been examples of this trend. Now there’s a second trend emerging in 2011 that seems at least as important: the hybrid business, with one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. This isn’t the old “clicks-and-mortar” concept from the 1990s, which put web glitter on an old-school business, building Walmart.com for Walmart. A hybrid business is built entirely from scratch, to be innovative in its online technology and its real-world operations. Redfin, for example, is a hybrid business: we couldn’t try to fundamentally change the real estate industry just by building a real estate website, so we also hired a team of our own real estate agents, paid on customer satisfaction rather than commissions, and trained to use technology to make home-buying more transparent. What we’ve learned is that being able to straddle virtual and physical worlds makes us far more powerful than any company confined to one or the other. The Rise of the Hybrids Do these companies seem unglamorous to you? Not to me. It's hard not to be curious and delighted that former Twitter engineer Alex Payne is now co-founding a bank, which promises to be set apart as much by its corporate values and customer service as by its Android app. The reason everyone loves Square is that it involves an actual credit-card reader that you attach to your iPhone, the kind of gizmo that nobody except Steve Jobs or a Chinese manufacturer now considers building. Groupon is outpacing the revenues of local online guides because it has never been too squeamish or standoffish to hire thousands of sales people and copywriters to enroll coffeeshops in its deal-of-the-day promotions. Even Amazon, which hid its telephone number for years to avoid talking to customers, now also has its own trucks that rumble down my street every Wednesday, delivering groceries, headphones, books, toys in reusable tote bags; every time I see one, I think Amazon is more likely to be around in 100 years than any other technology company we know today. We’re used to thinking of competitive advantage coming from a Eureka-innovation like Google’s PageRank, but the most lasting advantage comes from a million incremental improvements in an operationally intensive business. And there are thousands of opportunities to get operationally intensive. The entire real world is being dissected and tagged to become more intelligible to the virtual world: Redfin real estate agents are uploading photos of homes that they tour, banks are accepting images of checks in lieu of deposit slips, and restaurants are adding scannable bar codes to their menus so iPhone users can read more about the wine list. This is how technology will change life at the most intimate, local level. Any Profitable Idea Scales Surowiecki seems to have confused traffic with revenues, and speed with scale: glaciers move ponderously, but they shaped the face of the earth. Even where hybrid companies grow more slowly, venture investors have become increasingly tolerant of longer timeframes for large-scale opportunities, especially now that there is so much late-stage capital to keep everyone happy five years from founding. And good things come to those who wait: Redfin can pay $20 million a year to hundreds of our local real estate agents, so long as we make $30 million from our customers. Once you establish profitable unit economics, you want as many units as you can get, regardless of each unit’s initial cost. Focusing only on the $20 million in costs, not the $10 million in profits, early-stage investors value companies based on the percentage of revenues that fall to the bottom line. But what matters at the end of the day is the total number of dollars on the bottom line. Our attitude about profits should be as simple as Nikita Khrushchev’s when he was asked about the quality of Soviet tanks: “Quantity has a quality all its own.” Go Where Other Technologists Dare Not Tread You see the same attitude in other industries: who in technology wants to work with retail bankers, teachers, doctors, restauranteurs? As a result, hybrid businesses have little or no competition: technology companies want nothing to do with the real world, and real-world companies struggle to develop competitive technology. This divide prevents us from making things fundamentally better, or cheaper. The divide between the virtual and the real also prevents the basic ideology of Silicon Valley from reaching other professions. The Valley’s emphasis on empowering consumers and employees—on innovation, transparency, even idealism —isn’t just good for building software, it’s a universal good. There are thousands of bankers, realtors, doctors and lawyers who would love to practice their craft, but in a company run like Google. Our culture can be Silicon Valley’s second gift to the business world. Data Dominance Because customers meet us exclusively through our website, we also know which customers are the best match for us, before the customer ever meets an agent. This kind of analysis is far more important to us than it is to a purely virtual business: we have to pay for it every time an agent drives out to meet a customer at a house. The rest of the world, with its actual costs rather than just virtual opportunities, needs Silicon Valley's ability to analyze massive data sets more than Silicon Valley does. Customer Value What if someone persuaded Jeff Bezos to skip the warehouses and the delivery trucks, building a purely digital business instead? What if Alex Payne helped start a lead-generation website for Citibank and JPMorgan, rather than his own bank service? What if Groupon decided that the copywriters and salespeople didn't scale, letting local merchants develop their own deals? Margins would certainly be better, and operations would be much simpler, but, as we’ve argued before, Christmas shopping, banking & bargain-hunting would be much worse. There is a similar opportunity in almost every industry: even as we speak, web entrepreneurs are teaming up with doctors to build better hospitals, with scientists to build better drugs, with lawyers to build better firms, with manufacturers to build better factories, with teachers to build better schools. We can make it new everywhere, not just on the web. Photo credit: Warner Brothers        
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| WITN: The Dumbest and Smartest People of 2010, Plus Our Predictions for 2011 (TCTV) Posted: 24 Dec 2010 09:57 AM PST
In this week’s episode Paul and Sarah give their picks for the dumbest and smartest people of 2010, a slam-dunk prediction for 2011 and a Hail Mary prediction for 2011. We know you’ll remind us of the ones we forgot in the comments. The downside of doing a year-end episode is it’s filmed without the help of TCTV’s crack editing team. Forgive a few rough transitions, but we wanted to keep this episode short….well, short for us. We know you people have family to hug, Holiday dinners to eat and presents to unwrap. Video below.        
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Rich media ads have proven to pay more, says Mobclix, highlighting the launch of iAd as a sign that these interactive ad formats are attractive to advertisers. Approximately 37% of impressions on the Mobclix exchange were for Rich Media units, a 115% increase over 2009. 
The 
It was exactly 
Tis the night – or day, if you're in the US – before Christmas – at least for those who live in the majority-Christian bits of the world – and all through the house – or in my case, 
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