The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Hulu, Colbert, And The Recentralization Of Video On The Web
- Adobe Taps PlaySpan To Power Payments For AIR Developer Platform Shibuya
- Foxconn’s suppliers denies iPad delay rumors (big surprise)
- HomeAway Buys Up BedAndBreakfast.com
- Socialtext 4.0 Launches With Groups, Better Search, And Activity Stream Filtering
- India’s Twitter SMS GupShup Gets An App Store
- Idealab Spin-off Perfect Market Raises $6 Million From Tribune Company, Others
- Messaging Security Company Cloudmark Raises $23 Million From Nokia, Others
- Omniture, Facebook Expand Social Media Marketing Partnership
- Augmented Reality App Layar Returns To The App Store
- Skype App Hits Ovi Store, And Potentially 200 Million Nokia Handsets Next
- Mobile Boarding Passes Take Off With 1200% Usage Increase In 2009
- Microsoft’s Project Natal Is Hot. Like Pong Hot
- Silicon Valley Delegation To Go To D.C. To Rally Support For Startup Visa Act
- Google Backs Its Boy, HTC, In The Apple Lawsuit Ring
- The TiVo Premiere Has Landed: New Remotes, Wi-Fi Connectors, and DVRs
- Google Handing Out Free Nexus Ones And Droids To Top Android Devs
- G.ho.st’s Web-Based Operating System To Shut Down March 15
- Citysearch Upgrades Its iPhone App With Twitter Reviews And “Shake For Offers”
- Surprised? Canada Takes Gold In The Race For Most Olympics-Related Google Queries
- Head Of Affiliate Network Leaves Google, Joins Behavioral Marketing Firm
- Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image
- Amazingly, DVD Commentary Helped Give Roger Ebert His Voice Back
- Foursquare, Baby, Foursquare.
- ‘Boobie’ App Slips Past Apple’s Sex Ban, Scores $10,000 In A Week (Then Gets Pulled)
| Hulu, Colbert, And The Recentralization Of Video On The Web Posted: 03 Mar 2010 08:01 AM PST
When Hulu first launched, it was supposed to be the media industry’s answer to YouTube: a place where shows and movies from TV would find an audience online and make advertising money directly for the media companies backing it instead of sharing any of that video ad money with YouTube. All that professional quality video from NBC, Fox, and Comedy Central brought in a huge audience, helping Hulu grow into the second largest video site online with more than 1 billion video views a month. Well, that formula is great for Hulu, but it isn’t working for one of its biggest media partners. Yesterday, Viacom decided to pull two of the top shows from Hulu: Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. Both were regularly among the most popular shows on Hulu, which is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. When Hulu first convinced Viacom to allow it to distribute Colbert and The Daily Show back in June, 2008, it was seen as a major milestone for the young video service. Just like on TV, the majority of video viewership on the Web is driven by hits. The Comedy Central shows were big hits for Hulu, as evidenced by Hulu’s blog post practically begging Viacom not to leave. But Viacom decided that Hulu needed Colbert and Jon Stewart more than they needed Hulu. Clips from the shows will still be availble for free online on TheDailyShow.com and ColbertNation, where Viacom controls and sells all the video ad inventory through its own sales force. The Comedy Central shows are not going behind some sort of Murdochian paywall. They are still embeddable and shareable across the Web, but with Comedy Central’s garish video player and its ads. When you have hit shows, people will find them even if they are not on Hulu or YouTube. Viacom made the calculation that it can make more money by recentralizing distribution of its hit shows on its own sites than allowing them to be streamed on Hulu. Why should they split video ad revenues with Hulu when they can have it all themselves. As Andrew Barron in an insightful post
Hulu is good for shows that can’t attract a big enough audience to their own sites, but there is too much money left on the table by splitting ad revenues for the hits. If this trend continues, with media partners pulling their best content from Hulu once it becomes self-sustaining, that could turn into a long-term problem for Hulu. It’s also bad for consumers, who don’t want to have all of their videos in one or two places rather than have to jump from ColbertNation to TheDailyShow.com to HBO.com to CBS.com and so on. The economic incentive is too great for media properties to centralize their videos on their own sites. But to consumers, this recentralization looks more like fragmentation and opens up the opportunity for someone else (Steve Jobs, Brian Roberts?) to once again bring it all together in one place. It is clear that consumers don’t want to hunt across the Web for all their shows, but the economics of video advertising are dictating otherwise.
     
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| Adobe Taps PlaySpan To Power Payments For AIR Developer Platform Shibuya Posted: 03 Mar 2010 07:57 AM PST
In private beta, Shibuya allows Adobe developers to monetize their Adobe AIR applications through a try-and-buy mechanism, and allows developers to upload and sell their applications on the Adobe AIR Marketplace. To enable micro-payments via PlaySpan, developers can add a few lines of provisioning code, set the price and trial period, and then publish the application with the payments technology. Developers will also receive reports, analytics, and automatic settlements on a monthly basis. The Adobe Air Marketplace allows consumers to try paid applications on for free. If they like the application they can purchase it using a credit card, PayPal, an Ultimate Game Card or over 85 other global payment methods provided by PlaySpan. The micropayments startup has been securing key partnerships, and a deal with Adobe only validates its place as a player in the micropayments space. In December, PlaySpan revealed some telling numbers about the strength of the virtual goods space, reporting that over $30 million was spent on virtual gifts over the holiday season. Last year, PlaySpan acquired micro-transaction app developer Spare Change, which powered micropayments across 700 social networking apps on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.      
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| Foxconn’s suppliers denies iPad delay rumors (big surprise) Posted: 03 Mar 2010 07:33 AM PST  There's been some unfounded rumors swirling around the Internet water cooler the last few days that Apple's initial shipment of iPads will only be around 300,000. That's far less than the expected numbers of 600,000-700,000, which would no doubt cause fanboy riots and shenanigans at Apple Stores nationwide. John called BS on these rumors a few days back and now Foxconn's suppliers has done the same.
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| HomeAway Buys Up BedAndBreakfast.com Posted: 03 Mar 2010 06:10 AM PST
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but BedAndBreakfast.com will continue to operate as a separate site from HomeAway. Austin, TX.-based BedandBreakfast.com lists more than 10,000 B&Bs across 100 countries. HomeAway, which is also based in Austin, was valued at $1.15 billion back in 2008 when the company raised a massive round of $250 million. The site has acquired at least twelve vacation home rental sites, including Homelidays, VRBO, VacationRentals.com, Abritel.fr and OwnersDirect.co.uk. Rumors were recently swirling about a possible IPO for HomeAway, but the company was quick to dismiss the possibility of a public offering this year. HomeAway also aired a SuperBowl commercial in January, which proved to be popular amongst viewers.      
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| Socialtext 4.0 Launches With Groups, Better Search, And Activity Stream Filtering Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:58 AM PST
There are a plethora of enterprise friendly collaboration platforms to choose from these days, with Yammer, Salesforce, Jive, Bantam Live, Socialcast, and others all vying for marketshare. All of the offerings are compelling but now more than ever, the startups and companies that develop these platforms are facing pressure to make their offerings the most appealing and feature-rich. Today, Socialtext, the developer of an enterprise social software platform built around microblogging, is rolling out a more powerful version, called Socialtext 4.0, of its collaboration applications. One of the features users were asking for was the ability to create groups within their Socialtext applications. So now, you can create collaborative groups within your Socialtext app, that comes with a group home page including an activity stream of group member updates, a dedicated microblogging channel, and one or more workspaces. Collaborative Groups can be synced with other groups and can also be configured for privacy needs. A group can be listed, with its membership designated as either “request-to-join” or open. Alternatively, a group can be unlisted, which makes it completely private. Users can now view the activity streams of any group that they belong too and can also filter the stream, by individual, the people you follow or see the stream of all the employees in the company. Users can also choose to publish their “Signals,” which are the Twitter-like short message sent on Socialtext, to one group or all the groups they belong to. And, Socialtext has enhances search in the this new version, providing users the ability to browse and search messages sent by employees in a company. You can also filter your search by group or topic and see threaded conversations. As with many mircoblogging networks, you can now hover over a person’s avatar to see their presence, which lets teammates know who is reachable at a given moment. Socialtext 4.0 is available on all of Socialtext’s deployment options, including its on-site managed appliance, desktop application,, mobile apps and web-based product. Socialtext’s collaboration tool has a freemium model and a paid service. Socialtext’s offering is compelling for many businesses because of its on-premise offerings that provides security options unavailable in its cloud-based competitors. But as many companies are increasingly comfortable with placing their business operations and communication in the cloud, its wise for Socialtext to build out its platform to offer more functionality.      
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| India’s Twitter SMS GupShup Gets An App Store Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:57 AM PST
Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup (spawned from Webaroo) serves 26 million users across India. The startup has seen rapid growth in users primarily due to the immense popularity of mobile devices in India. According to the startup, there are 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users. With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off. SMS GupShup currently processes over 480 million messages a month and accounts for 5 percent of all texts sent within India. Called AppShup, the app store allows developers to use the platform’s API to create and connect their apps to the GupShup stream, allowing developers make small SMS applications and widgets. App Shup pre-enables carrier approval processes, hoping to make the process of submitting apps easier for developers. Currently, AppShup is integrated with the Indian carriers – allowing SMS services for Indian mobile subscribers. The startup says they are conducting discussions with carriers in other countries to expand the program. Close to 100 SMS apps are already available including Tic Tac Toe, Cricket Quiz, and Word Jumble. For now, most of the apps appear to be free. Releasing an API and launching an App Store makes sense for SMS GupShup. The mobile social network has been growing fast and developing an ecosystem around its platform is the next step for development. The startup has even attracted the attention of leaders in the space, like Facebook. Last year, Facebook partnered with SMS GupShup to power and deliver its users’ status updates via text messages. Additionally, SMS GupShup has an advertising strategy. Over 100 advertisers currently run on the network including local insurance provider ICICI Lombard and international brands like Puma, Microsoft and Cadbury. India is a huge market for social networks, with Facebook, Orkut and even Twitter vying for a share of the growing number of web users who are increasingly flocking to social networks in their day-to-day routines. But clearly, SMS GupShup has tapped into the mobile side of social networks and is seeing success from this in India. It should be interesting to see if the service can develop the vibrant ecosystem Twitter has produced with its third party apps and API.      
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| Idealab Spin-off Perfect Market Raises $6 Million From Tribune Company, Others Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:48 AM PST
Just to be clear, that’s the media giant that owns newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune alongside a number of television and radio stations and a range of online properties. Perfect Market says it will use the funds to expand its efforts to market and deploy its solution to publishers of newspapers, magazines and websites. Existing investors Trinity Ventures, Rustic Canyon Partners and Idealab also participated in this round. The company’s initial financing round totaled $15.6 million and was closed in July 2008. I failed to find out when or how big the Series B round was. Frankly, I’m also having a tough time figuring out what the company offers exactly, but here’s the pitch from their website:
Sounds like they’re up against Google and a plethora of other companies in this field. Tribune Company has apparently been using the solutions developed by Perfect Market, which was incubated by Idealab, on several of its web properties in 2009. Clearly, the media company appears to believe in the startup’s potential to compete in a crowded market: aside from the investment, Dan Kazan, Tribune's Senior Vice President of Corporate Development, has joined the company's Board of Directors.      
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| Messaging Security Company Cloudmark Raises $23 Million From Nokia, Others Posted: 03 Mar 2010 05:19 AM PST
Existing investors Ignition Partners and Industry Ventures also participated in the round, which is the first financing Cloudmark has closed since 2004, when it raised $11 million from multiple VC firms. The new funding is said to have been used to assist in Cloudmark’s acquisition of former rival Bizanga. Cloudmark’s specializes in spam, phishing and virus protection software for wired and wireless networks. The company, founded in 2001, claims to currently protect over one billion inboxes in over 190 countries around the world. Cloudmark says it counts over 100 of the world’s largest service providers, including more than 75 percent of all major service providers in the United States and Japan, among its customers. On its impressive client reference list: Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, EarthLink, Swisscom, Tele2, XS4ALL (KPN), as well as social networking company MySpace. Cloudmark is privately held, is headquartered in San Francisco and boasts offices in London, Tokyo, Beijing and Hong Kong.      
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| Omniture, Facebook Expand Social Media Marketing Partnership Posted: 03 Mar 2010 04:37 AM PST
Initially, Omniture and Facebook will focus on the ability to automate Facebook media buying and access analytics that measure customer engagement on the social networking service, although the two companies indicated that the partnership will expand even more in the future. The closer tie builds on the Facebook (and FB apps) analytics capabilities Omniture announced in May 2009. With the new solution, Omniture customers can now utilize the company’s new SearchCenter Plus product, essentially an enhancement of its search engine marketing management application with new functionality for purchasing Facebook Ads. Omniture customers will thus be able to compare Facebook ad campaign metrics alongside other media channels and increase their ad spend on the social network using tools they’re already familiar with. In addition, Omniture customers can now generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for things like Facebook Pages and applications. Just yesterday, Eric Eldon from InsideFacebook posted a great, detailed article estimating Facebook’s current and future revenue run rate, projecting that the company could be on track to surpass $1.1 billion in 2010 (and could already have topped $700 million last year). Partnerships like the one with Omniture are a great way for Facebook to appease marketers who have to date been hesitant to make a substantial investment in marketing on the social network as long as they have to learn new ways of setting up campaigns and can't effectively track the success of those initiatives.      
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| Augmented Reality App Layar Returns To The App Store Posted: 03 Mar 2010 02:24 AM PST  Augmented reality app Layar hit the App Store in October 2009, only to be withdrawn by the eponymous Dutch developer of the program a month later due to repeated crashes reported by users. It's been quiet since, but an update for the app just popped up on my iPhone, with the concise and crystal clear description: "We're back!".
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| Skype App Hits Ovi Store, And Potentially 200 Million Nokia Handsets Next Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:52 AM PST  Pretty huge news in our book: Skype has published a free mobile application for Symbian in the Ovi Store, basically enabling over 200 million Nokia handset users to easily download the program and start making free Skype-to-Skype calls from their phones. If I were a carrier, I'd probably be feeling rather nervous right now - and / or infuriated. Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform. 
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| Mobile Boarding Passes Take Off With 1200% Usage Increase In 2009 Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:10 AM PST
Alright, lets pat the pockets and run through the mental checklist one last time before security: Passport? Check, front pocket. Headphones? Definitely in your backpack. Boarding pass? Uh oh. Where’d that boarding pass go? Oh, that’s right! It’s on your phone – because you, like a rapidly increasing number of other people, opted to have it sent straight to your handset. Security scans the barcode right off of your handset’s display, and you’re on your way with one less thing to lose. Trinity Mobile, one of the leading companies behind the mobile ticketing push, is today announcing a 1200% year-over-year increase with their mobile boarding pass offerings. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>      
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| Microsoft’s Project Natal Is Hot. Like Pong Hot Posted: 03 Mar 2010 12:09 AM PST
Video games have evolved, but I’ve never quite had that Pong moment again. Until yesterday, that is, when I visited Microsoft and had a chance to try out Project Natal, an add-on device for Xbox that lets users control games by simply moving their body. Just like real life. I assumed Natal would be a lot like the Wii, which uses motion sensors in handheld devices to control gameplay. But the experience is totally different. Natal allows for extremely nuanced movements, even determining via algorithms what you are doing with body parts the camera can’t see (like when your hands go behind your back). And for anyone who’s accidentally and painfully hit a wall or a window playing a strenuous game of Wii Tennis: Natal avoids this problem by keeping you in a zone where your movements are tracked. You just naturally gravitate to the center of the room where your movements get picked up. The game I and others were playing was called Ricochet. You see the back of your blue avatar on the screen (similar to first person shooters). You hit red balls against a group of targets in front of a wall. You can hit the balls, which bounce back towards you after hitting the wall, with your hands or any other body part. Headers, kicks, knees, whatever. You get points for speed and accuracy. You can see a video of Ricochet here. Ricochet is a lot like Pong actually. Not much to it. But it was so damn fun. After I played a game and others took their turn I looked around. Everyone was smiling, and laughing, just like the neighbors back in 1976 while watching us play Pong. And the Microsoft employees were carefully watching us smiling. They looked like they’d seen that reaction before. Forbes Quentin Hardy, sitting next to me, drew the analogy to Pong (and then wrote about it). I wholeheartedly agree. There’s something very special about Natal that goes way beyond what Nintendo did with the Wii. I can’t wait to get my hands on one later this year.      
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| Silicon Valley Delegation To Go To D.C. To Rally Support For Startup Visa Act Posted: 02 Mar 2010 08:08 PM PST
On Thursday 20 or so Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will travel to Washington D.C. to talk with government officials about the Act, introduced last week by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), and drum up more support. Venture capitalist Dave McClure is organizing the trip. The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would create a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000, with $100,000 coming from a qualified U.S. angel or venture investor. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including their children or spouse), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenues, he or she will become a legal resident. What can you do to help? Tweet @2gov supporting #StartupVisa exactly at 10 AM Pacific on Wednesday March 3rd (tomorrow). Your messages will be collected and delivered during the group’s visit to the White House on Thursday. They’re hoping to get 5,000 tweets. I’m pretty sure we can do better than that.      
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| Google Backs Its Boy, HTC, In The Apple Lawsuit Ring Posted: 02 Mar 2010 05:14 PM PST
As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, Apple has filed a lawsuit against device-maker HTC over 20 patents they control. As you might imagine, Google has something to say about it too. “We are not a party to this lawsuit. However, we stand behind our Android operating system and the partners who have helped us to develop it,” a Google spokesperson emailed us. A little odd that Google would proactively send us a statement for something they’re not technically involved in. But, as we’re all well aware, this suit is much more about Google’s Android operating system than HTC. And it seems that Google is well aware of that too. As we noted earlier, the clear focus of the suit centers around the HTC devices that are Android-based, including the Nexus One, the Magic/myTouch 3G, the Dream/G1, the Hero, and the Droid Eris. And in fact, with the Nexus One, Google worked closely with HTC to make the device, and is completely in control of selling it. Still, for whatever reason, Google is not named in the suit — at least not yet. You’ll recall that exactly one month ago, Google decided to turn on multi-touch support for Android users with Nexus Ones. As we noted at the time, Apple was probably not going to be too happy about that. After all, it had been previously reported that the reason Android phones in the U.S. didn’t support multi-touch up until that point was a gentleman’s agreement between Apple and Google when the two were still all buddy-buddy. And now we’re starting to see the fall-out. What’s odd is that these HTC phones have actually supported multi-touch (only one of the many patents Apple is disputing here), but it’s only now after Google just enabled it (specifically pinch-to-zoom) in the software that we’re seeing the lawsuit — of the hardware company involved. Still, this looks to be Apple multi-punching back. And Google doesn’t sound like it will back down. [image: warner brothers pictures]      
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| The TiVo Premiere Has Landed: New Remotes, Wi-Fi Connectors, and DVRs Posted: 02 Mar 2010 04:17 PM PST  Finally. We finally have new TiVo models. The TiVo HD XL launched a long year and half ago and the UI is even older. But that's behind us now, the TiVo Premier is here and it's (nearly) everything we need in a DVR. Everything is different: the hardware, the interface, even the remote. (QWERTY!) With the TiVo Premier comes a new interface that's been designed to present web videos just like live TV. But it's not just web videos. The whole system was reworked to allow users better access to their locally-stored content as well. Premiere's search function queries all sources and will find content whether it's on a web video or live TV. Pandora and FrameChannel join Netflix and YouTube as built-in apps. 
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| Google Handing Out Free Nexus Ones And Droids To Top Android Devs Posted: 02 Mar 2010 04:15 PM PST
In an odd move, Google isn’t actually allowing the developers to pick which device they’re receiving — if you’re in the US, you’ll get a Droid or Nexus One, at random. If you’re in Canada, the EU, Norway, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore, you get a Nexus One. If you’re not in any of those, you don’t get a phone at all (Google explains that the phones aren’t certified in other countries). So why is Google doing this? Android is already having to deal with fragmentation issues, as a large number of users (and developers) have older phones that aren’t running Android 2.0. Now that the Droid, which runs 2.0, comprises a big part of Android’s market share, it’s in Google’s best interest to make sure that Android’s best developers are building software that’s compatible with the latest devices. The free phones also serve as a nice carrot to entice developers to build quality applications. Here’s the Email Google is sending out:
Update:: And here’s a followup statement from Google about the program (it’s real, for those of you who are worried that it’s a scam):
     
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| G.ho.st’s Web-Based Operating System To Shut Down March 15 Posted: 02 Mar 2010 03:47 PM PST
The service launched its beta last summer after years of development, allowing users to store their files in the cloud. Files were accessed through a web-based desktop environment, which also included integrated tools like Zoho for editing documents. Users could also access their files through a mounted virtual drive in Windows or from their mobile phones. Ghost was previously hosted at G.ho.st, which stood for “Global hosted operating system”. The company later moved to the current domain, Ghost.cc, which has the broader tagline, “Cloud Computing”. Here’s the email the company just sent out to users:
Note that the message says “on or around” March 15 — hopefully they mean “no earlier than”, but I’d back up my data as soon as possible. It’s also unclear if Ghost’s unreleased services are being shutdown as well (both “Ghost Enterprise” and “Ghost Business” are marked as Coming soon on the site). I’ve reached out to the company for more details.
     
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| Citysearch Upgrades Its iPhone App With Twitter Reviews And “Shake For Offers” Posted: 02 Mar 2010 01:07 PM PST
Over the weekend, Citysearch pushed out an update to its iPhone app with a much smoother user interface, better local search, and maps are now the default view. I am happy to report that it no longer looks exactly like Yelp’s iPhone app. The improvements should help it close the gap (Yelp is currently the No. 4 free Travel app, while Citysearch is No. 36). In fact, it now does some things Yelp’s app cannot do, the most important of which is that Twitter is baked into it in a very smart way.
Just like on Citysearch’s website, an increasing number of the local listings are associated with what people are saying about those restaurants, bars, and stores on Twitter. In addition to Citysearch user reviews, you can also see recent Tweets about the listings. And the app acts as a limited Twitter client in that you can Tweet out a short review from each profile page. The app prompts you to sign into your Twitter account and autofills a tweet with a link to the Citysearch page of that business. It is still a work in progress though. Right now the Tweets are filled in with an @citysearch handle and thus don’t show up on the Citysearch’s page for that business. By the next update that will change to the @handle of the business, and it the Tweets will start showing up on the Website as well.
Citysearch is building out a directory of business Twitter accounts and is beginning to catch Tweets about its millions of local listings. Within the next few weeks, the Twitter account names will start to become part of teh profile data available to developers via its CityGrid APIs Some other nice touches to the app include a sliding icon menu bar at the top, which let you filter different types of listings (restaurants, salons, shopping, clubs, bars, cafes, arts & entertainment, banks, gas stations, movie theaters, pharmacies, bakeries, attractions, parking, and hotels). And if you shake the iPhone while looking at a listing, an offer might pop up. The “Shake For Offer” feature isn’t as cool as the augmented reality easter egg in Yelp snuck into its iphone app, Here’s a video showing off the features of the new Citysearch iPhone app:
     
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| Surprised? Canada Takes Gold In The Race For Most Olympics-Related Google Queries Posted: 02 Mar 2010 12:53 PM PST
Perhaps more interesting are the events that grabbed the most attention in each country. In the United States, by far the most searches were driven by the tragic death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. Other popular events in the States included the men’s hockey finals and the men’s free skate. Korea’s graph, on the other hand, is absolutely dominated by women’s figure skating, driven by the success of national sensation Kim Yu-Na. You can find graphs from more countries in the Google blog post.
     
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| Head Of Affiliate Network Leaves Google, Joins Behavioral Marketing Firm Posted: 02 Mar 2010 12:39 PM PST
Henger joins Catalina Marketing from Google's Affiliate Network business, originally part of the Google acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 and launched in August of that year. Henger served as a member of the executive team at Performics, an interactive marketing firm specialized in search and affiliate marketing, which was acquired by DoubleClick in 2004, for six years. After the acquisition, Henger played a key role in integrating DoubleClick Performics with Google's Affiliate Network launch. Prior to joining Performics, Henger was Senior Vice President/General Manager at publicly held Emusic.com, (acquired by Vivendi Universal). Previously, he was responsible for all aspects of RollingStone.com including managing sales, technology, marketing and operations for the standalone division. Henger spots a lot of similarities between Catalina Marketing and his previous employer:
Henger will manage the company's in-store network, said to be comprised of 90 million households and 300 million weekly shopper transactions. (Thanks to Affiliate Summit / Flickr for letting us use the picture of Henger)      
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| Toyota Turns To Twitter To Repair Its Image Posted: 02 Mar 2010 12:26 PM PST
Called Toyota Conversations, the site brings together the top stories being Tweeted about Toyota, from news articles to press releases. The site also shows visitors the most popular videos and images being shared about Toyota on Twitter. And the channel includes a Featured Tweets from Toyota’s Twitter account and press room as well as AdTweets, which are Tweetmeme’s retweetable ads for Toyota. You may notice after taking a look at all of the top stories that are being aggregated on the site, that most of the news is positive. That doesn’t seem to match the general tone of the media writing about Toyota, which has been quick to criticize the car company for its manufacturing mistakes. If you take a look at Twitter sentiment app Tweetfeel, the sentiment of Tweets mentioning Toyota lean more negative. Tweetmeme channels can be set up to pick up only certain news sources. It looks like Toyota picked the friendlier ones. That being said, it's definitely interesting to see such a high-profile company taking to Twitter to try to reform its image by engaging directly in a dialogue with consumers. As we’ve seen with the recent Southwest/Kevin Smith incident, Twitter is influencing public relations in unprecedented ways. Now more than ever, brands are flocking to Twitter to not only monitor and track what’s being said about their company on Twitter but to influence and participate in the conversation.
Photo Credit/Flickr/JoelZimmer      
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| Amazingly, DVD Commentary Helped Give Roger Ebert His Voice Back Posted: 02 Mar 2010 11:37 AM PST
If you watch the video at the bottom of this post, it’s pretty remarkable just how much it sounds like Ebert. He has a distinctive voice that a lot of his fans know well thanks to his many years on television reviewing films. You should also watch the longer version of the video here, to compare his new voice to his old one (again, Alex from OS X). So how was a company able to do this for Ebert? That’s maybe the most interesting part. As he explained on his blog a few days ago (Ebert is both a prolific blogger and Twitter user), Ebert stumbled upon a Scottish company called CereProc while surfing the web one day. Their specialty is text-to-speech technology, and Ebert found them because they’ve been recreating the voices of famous people. So Ebert decided to email them. They told him they needed good quality audio — which didn’t seem like a problem because of Ebert’s aforementioned television program. But actually there was a problem. On the show, Ebert was always getting cut-off mid-point, or arguing with people, or there was constantly movie music in the background. Because of these factors, the voice CereProc would have created was less of a regular, casual Ebert, and more of a choppy or enraged one. Ebert humorously notes, “It would seem strange if I said, ‘Let’s have a moment of silence,’ and in the background, you could hear Transformers ripping off the top of the Great Pyramid.” But there was another way. Ebert remembered that he also had recorded a number of DVD audio commentary tracks for many classic films, including Citizen Kane. So he asked the studios he had worked with on those if they had the pure audio tracks — and they did. Warner Bros., Criterion Collection, New Line Cinemas, and 20th Century Fox were all able to dig up recordings of Ebert’s voice. This audio was then sent to CereProc, where the company transcribed all of it so they could find every word they needed. As Ebert notes, they didn’t need a clip of every word he’s ever said, just enough so they could reconstruct how he might say a word. He’ll use a combination of the new voice, which he calls “Roger Jr.,” with his old, trusty OS X Alex voice on Oprah today. Says Ebert:
He continues:
It’s a pretty amazing story about technology.
     
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| Posted: 02 Mar 2010 11:20 AM PST
Foursquare may still be relatively small (around 450,000 users), but wow have they been able to woo certain areas of the mainstream quickly. We already know about the deals with Conde Nast, Marc Jacobs, the New York Times, and others — some of which are pulling in revenue. And then there’s the Bravo deal, which has already included a commercial spot. But now, Foursquare is getting love in the bright lights of Vegas. Yes, the pictures above and below were taken at the Miracle Mile Shops attached to the Planet Hollywood hotel in Las Vegas. As you can see, the huge ads entice users to check-in at the mall. If you do so, they might highlight your check-in, any tips, and even show who the current mayor (the Foursquare user who has checked-in most often) of the mall is prominently. Planet Hollywood was actually one of the first venues to take advantage of the “check-in deals” that Foursquare has been offering for some time now. These deals allow visitors who visit the venue and check-in to get something like a free drink. These ads were apparently done with the help of place-based social media site, LocaModa.
[pics via flickr/dpstyles and twitpic/tristanwalker]      
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| ‘Boobie’ App Slips Past Apple’s Sex Ban, Scores $10,000 In A Week (Then Gets Pulled) Posted: 02 Mar 2010 11:20 AM PST
Before Monday, February 15, when the Apple sex ban started going into effect, Tubes was only pulling in around $30 a day. A day later, that number had more than doubled. As the days passed (and more sexy apps were removed), the application climbed up to a peak of nearly $1,600 a day. And then at 5:30 PM yesterday, Tubes! had its rise to glory cut short.
So how exactly did Tubes! slip through the cracks? The answer is pretty simple: it wasn’t available in the United States. The application was published by iPhone development house Mobile Simplicity, which generally builds more useful apps like CraigsMobileList (a mobile client for the popular classifieds site) and What’s Fresh (which tells you which fruits are in season). Mobile Simplicity built the Tubes! application at the request of a client, but under the condition that the application would not be sold in the United States, because the firm didn’t want the application to be listed alongside its more respectable (ahem) apps. Mobile Simplicity CEO Tony Lombardo says that application finally caught Apple’s attention when it started climbing up the top app charts (he thinks it got as high as #4 overall in Germany). Lombardo actually says he’s okay with the ban, but he does wish there was a way for Apple to allow these apps on the App Store under their own category rather than banning them outright. It’s worth pointing out that in an entirely hypocritical move, Apple has allowed some larger companies like Sports Illustrated and Playboy to keep their sexy apps, which gives them a monopoly on bikinis and cleavage on the App Store. And, as we can see from the chart above, that can translate to quite a bit of money.      
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