The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Club W Hits $1 Million In Annualized Revenue In 12 Weeks
- Hotfile is Out Cold, But Google’s DMCA Safe Harbor Debate Is Heating Up
- Sean Parker And Shawn Fanning’s New Social Video Startup Airtime Staffs Up For Launch
- Amid Privacy Concerns, Apple Has Started Rejecting Apps That Access UDIDs
- Redpoint eVentures Avoids The “Helicopter VC” Approach In Brazil, Announces New Investment
- Jobs’ Rejection Of TV Designs “Isn’t A Huge Deal” Says Former Apple Engineer
- You Say “SoLoMo,” I Say, “I Hate My Life”
- “Screenshots Of Despair” Reveals The New Human Condition
- Instagram Unveils A Sign-Up Page For Android Users, Still No Launch Date
- Why IT Professionals Aren’t Monogamous
- The Rise Of The Explainer Video
- One Screen To Rule Them All
- All The World’s A Game
- Gillmor Gang: Resisting the Obvious
| Club W Hits $1 Million In Annualized Revenue In 12 Weeks Posted: 25 Mar 2012 07:47 AM PDT  If you love old Vitamin W as much as I do, you’ll be pleased to note that folks who are disrupting the staid old wine industry are doing well. Case in point: Club W just announced they’re on track to sell $1 million worth of wine this year, based on current annualized revenue. They also saw 11,000 unique visitors and 73,000 page views – acceptable numbers for a new business. The company has 10 full-time employees. Geoff McFarlane, Xander Oxman, and Mark Lynn founded the company three months ago and things are going strong. The service works by assessing your likes and dislikes and then offering wines that match your palate. Man cannot live on Thunderbird and Boone’s alone, however, so they also bring in a number of counselors to help you choose new wines.
A Club W experience delivers 3 bottles a month for $39 and shipping is free. As a member you can choose from these 12 bottles and add to the 3 bottle minimum for a mere $13 a bottle. Additional bottles ship free. A Club W Experience is commitment free and guaranteed to make you happy. Cancel or skip a shipment any time. Don't like something? We'll send you a replacement or a refund. Club W also includes QR codes on each bottle that offer special tasting notes when scanned and prices are generally below retail, including shipping. Whether the site is for the connoisseur or not is an interesting question, but experience goods are all about how the end consumer feels about the product after purchase. Wine is obviously the ultimate expression of the commercial curatorial instinct and by reducing the friction between buyer and seller – and by assuring the buyer that the wine won’t taste like lighter fluid – goes a long way towards a sale. The site is obviously up against some heavy hitters, including Wine.com, Wine.Woot, and the elfin Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library. However, by taking a page from other viral sales sites, the company seems to offer a considerably more targeted offering thanks to the taste assessment system and rugged, handsome curators shot in grainy black-and-white. As for me, I’ll stick to the curators who populate my local watering hole: around the back of the local movie theatre. They know where to get the cheapest Four Loko.
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| Hotfile is Out Cold, But Google’s DMCA Safe Harbor Debate Is Heating Up Posted: 25 Mar 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Google recently threw down in the ongoing legal battle between the MPAA and Hotfile with amicus curiae panache. But Google wouldn't file an amicus brief from the kindness of its algorithmic heart. Larger issues are at play – namely, safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). As Google’s counsel stated on Friday, "Google's aim in seeking to participate in this case is to underscore the importance of the Court's decision to a wide array of legitimate and socially beneficial Internet services, and to the overall climate of free expression online." The stakes are absolutely huge, both for Google and the Internet as a whole. The DMCA safe harbor protections enabled Google to successfully defend a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed by Viacom against YouTube in 2007 (although the case is still on appeal). The safe harbor provisions have also been used by Amazon, eBay, Photobucket, Veoh, and MP3tunes to defeat otherwise crippling lawsuits. Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia likewise rely on the safe harbor provisions to protect their everyday operations. Without the DMCA safe harbors, the Internet would look entirely different. Here’s a more detailed look at the legal issues in play. For those of you who need some background, the DMCA was passed in 1998 before the bubble burst. The law criminalized circumvention of digital rights management technology but also limited the liability of ISPs for copyright infringement. The so-called DMCA safe harbors were designed to address the concern that online communication and commerce would be chilled if ISPs were held subject to potentially expansive infringement liability for material that their users posted, stored, transmitted, or made available for viewing. Contrary to popular belief, however, Google is not Hotfile's tag-team legal wrestling partner. Google doesn't really care what happens to Hotfile. Google just wants to spread the precedential seeds of recent cases (including Viacom v. YouTube) to the Eleventh Circuit, which has yet to interpret the DMCA safe harbor provisions. Frankly, Hotfile is out cold. Google acknowledges that in order to receive protection under the DMCA safe harbor, "a service provider must meet certain threshold conditions for eligibility, including the adoption and implementation of a repeat-infringer policy, and must designate an agent to receive notifications of claimed infringement from copyright owners." For Hotfile, their efforts in this regard were too little, too late. First, Hotfile failed to register and disclose a DMCA agent until May 2010 (15 months after launch) and was, according to the MPAA, still technically in violation of this provision as of 3/5/2012. As explained in Google's brief, "the agent's role is to facilitate the notice-and-takedown regime at the heart of the safe harbor … by expeditiously removing or disabling access to the material that is claimed to be infringing." Hotfile's complete lack of a designated agent for this purpose (at least initially) may disqualify it from safe harbor protection altogether. Second, Hotfile did not reasonably implement a repeat-infringer policy until after the MPAA filed suit. Although key facts were redacted in the public version of the MPAA's motion for summary judgment, the evidence seems fairly strong that Hotfile did not have in place any system to track repeat infringers – which would make it fairly impossible to implement a meaningful repeat-infringer policy. This is not to say that Hotfile has an affirmative duty to monitor its services for infringing activity, but it does suggest that Hotfile didn't really have a repeat-infringer policy at all, or at least didn't have one until the lawsuit. But what happens to Hotfile is not really important to Google anyway. What matters is how the Eleventh Circuit interprets DMCA section 512(c)(1)(A), which can be used to disqualify an ISP from safe harbor protection. This section provides that no safe harbor protection is available to an ISP that acquires "actual knowledge" that particular material stored on its system is infringing, or becomes "aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent," but then fails to act expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material in question – this is the infamous notice-and-takedown procedure. To make matters more complicated (and also more interesting), section 512(c)(3)(B)(i) provides that a notification from a copyright owner that fails to comply substantially with the DMCA takedown notice requirements shall not be considered in determining whether an ISP has "actual knowledge" or is "aware of facts or circumstances" from which infringing activity is apparent. So we have two issues: First, what exactly constitutes knowledge that would disqualify an otherwise eligible service provider from safe harbor protection; Second, what exactly constitutes substantial compliance with the DMCA takedown notice requirements. These issues are at the heart of Google's amicus brief. Google cites Viacom v. YouTube to argue that the phrases "actual knowledge" and "facts or circumstances" indicating infringement are extremely specific. In Google's interpretation of the law, these phrases actually describe "knowledge of specific and identifiable infringements of particular individual items. Mere knowledge of the prevalence of such activity in general is not enough." So if you run a website and you have knowledge that infringing activity is taking place in general, that's fine. You're good, as long as you don't have specific knowledge that a particular item of intellectual property belonging to a specific copyright owner has been infringed. Moreover, in addressing the MPAA's claims that Hotfile turned a blind eye to red flags of obvious infringement, Google points to relevant legal authority affirming that those flags "must be brightly red indeed – and waiving blatantly in the provider's face." The infringement "must be apparent from even a brief and casual viewing." Google then takes it one step further, citing a case holding that "if any investigation is required to determine whether material is infringing, then those facts and circumstances are not red-flags." The logic is this: according to the legislative history, Congress recognized the fact that websites permitting users to contribute their own content often contain infringing items. This was common knowledge at the time. But if the DMCA safe harbor protects only those ISPs that do not have even this common knowledge, it would protect no one at all because everyone knows, generally at least, that infringement is taking place. The DMCA would then totally fail in its stated goal of "ensuring that the variety and quality of services on the Internet would continue to expand." Congress therefore placed the burden of policing copyright infringement on the copyright owners themselves (i.e., through the notice-and-takedown procedure) – which makes sense since they are in the best position to determine whether infringement is actually taking place and because they have the greatest incentive to do so. As to the issue of compliance with takedown notice requirements, Google cites voluminous case law to argue that a copyright owner must "provide the specific location of the allegedly infringing works in each instance for the notice to be effective." As a result, notices that do not identify the specific location of the alleged infringement are not sufficient to confer actual knowledge on the ISP. This is a critical point, because it's directly relevant to the question of whether an ISP has the "actual" or "red-flag awareness" that would disqualify it from safe harbor protection based on previous takedown notices it has received. Google does an excellent job of raising the bar for copyright owners who wish to protect their material through the notice-and-takedown procedure. And that’s the key point: If Google can shift the burden of policing copyright infringement to the copyright owners, and further make this burden somewhat onerous, then in the long run Google wins and Hollywood loses. Practically speaking, it would also be a win for the free flow of content across the Internet, for better or for worse. But we're not done. The MPAA makes one last argument, namely, that if Hotfile intentionally< induced infringement, then it should not be eligible for safe harbor protection. That’s because "inducement liability" is based on active bad faith while the DMCA safe harbor protections are meant to protect only good faith conduct aimed at operating legitimate Internet businesses. This is essentially the rule articulated in MGM Studios v. Grokster – that inducement liability arises from providing a service with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright. The MPAA argues that inducement liability arises from an ISP's culpable intent – not from its storage services – while the DMCA safe harbor only protects against liability that arises from storage. Google rejects this argument by claiming that the DMCA safe harbor is so broad that it bars liability for all direct, vicarious, and contributory infringement claims that arise from storage services offered by an ISP, which include any "automated process for allowing replication, transmittal, and display of user-submitted materials covered by the storage provision." Google contends that inducement is simply one form of contributory infringement and is therefore covered by the DMCA safe harbor. But then Google seems to back-pedal somewhat by arguing that "the court should hold simply that whether a service provider is eligible for DMCA safe-harbor protection is distinct from whether it is liable for inducement under Grokster." That seems to leave unanswered the question of whether eligibility under the DMCA safe harbor can be used as a shield to guard against inducement liability; my initial sense is that it cannot, since Google acknowledges that each analysis should be distinct. But at the same time, it's evident that each analysis will likely depend on common or interrelated facts – so it's somewhat of a gray area that results from the interplay of the statutory DMCA safe harbor carve out and the judge-made inducement infringement standards articulated in Grokster. Legal arguments aside, Google's amicus brief underscores the historic importance of the Hotfile lawsuit in particular and IP litigation in general. These legal battles will ultimately define the flow of revenue streams across the internet and will have a deciding impact on the course of innovation in internet services. Competition and innovation will always create winners and losers. In the new digital millennium, Google has been winning so far, but that could change if the legal landscape is altered significantly. In the meantime, Google is doing what it can to draw that landscape favorably, while simultaneously preparing its appellate defense in Viacom v. YouTube.
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| Sean Parker And Shawn Fanning’s New Social Video Startup Airtime Staffs Up For Launch Posted: 25 Mar 2012 04:18 AM PDT  A few weeks ago at SXSW, Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning briefly mentioned — during a talk about another company they co-founded, Napster — that they were working on a new social video startup called Airtime. Now it looks like the company is gearing up for launch. Airtime now has a website and a Facebook sign-up button for early access. And it is hiring. The jobs listed on the homepage are all engineering positions — yet one more testament, if one was needed, of the big drive right now to look for good technical talent (and, as some believe, the lack of it on the ground). The positions Airtime is looking to fill are software engineer, web UI engineer, test engineer and operations engineer. “Our small team shares a passion for using the latest video technology to bring people together,” the company writes. But there is still precious little info on the site about what Airtime will actually do. Is the illustration on the homepage, designed by employee Shyama Golden, a clue? There we have a command control center, like those set up to manage air traffic or the landing of NASA shuttles, with the screens at the rows of seats filled with videos of people, with another video of people on the big screen up above. Then, on the left, a listing of “live” and “next” with percentages underneath each… and another column with “good” and “great” with more percentages. Perhaps some kind of mass, user-generated kind of broadcasting network where people vote on the quality of the content? Back in October, the Fanning and Parker said the effort was inspired by Chatroulette but hinted that it would be engineered to be viral from the get go, unlike Chatroulette, which grew fast and picked up a lot of iffy user-generated content in the process. “[Chatroulette] was just scratching the surface of what it could be—a universal host that is introducing people, smashing people together,” said Fanning at the time. Although the company is using Facebook as its initial sign-up point for now, it looks like it is building this very much as something that is almost the anti-Facebook: “Facebook is about identity, the people you already know," Parker said back in October. "It has little to do with people you don't know." Airtime’s investors, who have so far put in $8.3 million into the effort, include a pretty stellar list of backers, with the celeb sparks that could give a mass-market consumer play just the kind of attention it needs to succeed. It includes the Founders Fund, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Ashton Kutcher, will.i.am, Scott Braun, and TechCrunch’s founder Michael Arrington.
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| Amid Privacy Concerns, Apple Has Started Rejecting Apps That Access UDIDs Posted: 24 Mar 2012 08:24 PM PDT  Amid extra scrutiny from Congress around privacy issues, Apple this week has started rejecting apps that access UDIDs, or identification numbers that are unique to every iPhone and iPad. Apple had already given developers a heads-up about the change more than six months ago when it said in some iOS documentation that it was going to deprecate UDIDs. But it looks like Apple is moving ahead of schedule with pressure from lawmakers and the media. It can take more than a year to deprecate features because developers need time to adjust and change their apps. A few weeks ago, some of the bigger mobile-social developers told me that Apple had reached out and warned them to move away from UDIDs. But this is the first time Apple has issued outright rejections for using UDIDs. “Everyone’s scrambling to get something into place,” said Victor Rubba, chief executive of Fluik, a Canadian developer that makes games like Office Jerk and Plumber Crack. “We’re trying to be proactive and we’ve already moved to an alternative scheme.” Rubba said he isn’t sending any updates until he sees how the situation shakes out in the next few days. For those unaware, the UDID is an alphanumeric string that is unique to each Apple device. It’s currently used by mobile ad networks, game networks, analytics providers, developers and app testing systems, like TestFlight, for example. Playhaven, which helps developers monetize more than 1,200 games across iOS and Android, said several of its customers had been rejected in the last week. The company’s chief executive Andy Yang says that developers should try and stay as flexible as possible by supporting multiple ID systems until there’s a clear replacement. “This is definitely happening,” Yang said. “In the next month or two, this is going to have an impact on all ad networks and apps using advertising. Everybody’s trying to make their own choices about what to use instead.” At least one of the apps that faced issues a week ago came from a publicly-traded, multibillion dollar company, I confirmed. But they declined to be named so as not to jeopardize their relationship with Apple. So here’s what I’m hearing. Two of the 10 review teams started doing blanket rejections of apps that access UDIDs this week. Next week, that will rise to four the ten teams, and keep escalating until all 10 teams are turning down apps that are still using UDIDs. This is a big deal because mobile ad networks use these ID numbers to make their advertising better targeted. Using UDIDs, mobile ad networks can track consumers from app to app to understand more about ads they respond to and apps they use most often. “The UDID is essential for managing the conversion loop,” said Jim Payne, who runs a real-time bidding platform for mobile ads called MoPub and was early at leading mobile advertising network AdMob before it sold to Google for $750 million. “All the performance dollars that are spent on mobile are going to impacted by this not being there.” At the same time, however, there are very real privacy risks tied to the widespread use of UDIDs. They’re more sensitive than cookies on the web because they can’t be cleared or deleted. And they’re tied to the most personal of devices — the phones we carry with us everywhere. Apple has been facing pressure from lawmakers in the last week about how apps can share consumer data without their knowledge. Two U.S. House Representatives Henry Waxman and G. K. Butterfield sent letters to 34 iOS developers a few days ago asking about how they collect and use consumer data. It’s still not obvious what developers will use instead. Some companies turned to the Wi-fi MAC Address, or media access control address, but it has a lot of the same privacy flaws that the UDID did. Another company Appsfire is behind an open-source solution called OpenUDID, that it hopes developers will adopt instead. Yang and others are seeing a few developers get through approval process if they ask users for permissions first before storing their UDIDs. If so, this mirrors the approach that Facebook and Google Android take in making developers show a permissions dialog to consumers when they first install the app. However, Yang’s not so sure that this is a good user experience or that enough consumers will say yes to make this strategy effective. “I just don’t think the opt-in rate will be that high,” he said. “It feels like a Band-Aid solution for now.”
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| Redpoint eVentures Avoids The “Helicopter VC” Approach In Brazil, Announces New Investment Posted: 24 Mar 2012 07:00 PM PDT  Earlier this month, Redpoint Ventures and BV Capital’s eVentures announced the formation of a new, joint firm in Brazil — called, somewhat predictably, Redpoint eVentures. Managing director Yann de Vries and founding partner Anderson Thees were in the Bay Area this week, so I had a quick talk with them about their plans. Brazil’s startup ecosystem is taking off, but until now, Thees said VC firms have fallen into two camps. On the one hand, you have small, local firms, and on the other hand, you have “helicopter VCs” who have offices in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, and make their investments from afar. Redpoint eVentures, on the other hand, has the resources of an international firm, but Thees is also “Brazilian born and raised,” and both he and de Vries are based out of Sao Paolo. “We do have a local presence and dedicated partners, but at the same time we do bring a very integrated and a global network,” Thees said. International firms will probably find the “high-pedigree Brazilians who studied at Stanford or [Harvard Business School] and know the lingo,” de Vries said, but Redpoint eVentures’ local connections will help it find entrepreneurs outside that circle. He also touched on one aspect of the global strategy that I wasn’t expecting — in addition to connecting Brazilian startups with international partners and customers, the firm is also looking for ideas that it can bring back to Brazil. So if there’s a new product that seems to be taking off in China, and it seems like it would also work in Brazil, Redpoint eVentures might put together a startup to pursue the idea locally. The firm has announced four investments — Viajanet, Grupo Xango, Shoes 4 You, and 55Social. Thees and de Vries told me they have since made a fifth investment, in yet-to-be-launched jewelry site Sophie & Juliete.
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| Jobs’ Rejection Of TV Designs “Isn’t A Huge Deal” Says Former Apple Engineer Posted: 24 Mar 2012 06:03 PM PDT  It’s a sin I know almost too well as a blogger. It’s slow going for news on a Friday night and the pageview gods send you a reprieve in the form of a tweet. A former Apple engineer is berating the company’s design ethic in the post-Jobs era in less than 140 characters? Score! Suddenly one story becomes another story then another story then another story then another story. Until it’s a crisis! ZOMG! Apple is over! The company is finished! Interested in the actual story, I talked with former Apple TV engineer Mike Margolis about the tweet that launched a thousand blog posts. So here’s what he said on Twitter.
Here are his thoughts with far more context:
Margolis adds that he no longer owns any Apple stock and hasn’t been employed by the company since 2008.
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| You Say “SoLoMo,” I Say, “I Hate My Life” Posted: 24 Mar 2012 05:30 PM PDT  Working in tech does weird things to your vocabulary. Five years ago, if you’d told me that I’d become someone who talks about whether they have the “bandwidth” to get something done or promising to “ping” you later, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here I am, finding the bandwidth to ping people — like it or not, you adopt the language of the people around you. Still, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. And for me, the phrase SoLoMo (short for social-local-mobile, if you’re lucky enough to have never heard it) crosses that line and outrages all decency and common sense. When it first popped up, I assumed it was the latest feeble attempt to make “Socio Loco” take off and would die in a few weeks. But no, it seems to be catching on, and it’s even crept into a couple of TechCrunch headlines. Why do I hate it so much? For one thing, it just sounds so ridiculous. “Soe-low-moe.” Wait, what? I’m convinced that the only way to say “SoLoMo” with a straight face is to literally stop thinking about the syllables coming out of your mouth or keyboard. Or perhaps you’ve heard it so often that you’ve become desensitized, which is basically the same thing. I was also going to argue that it doesn’t mean anything, but that’s not entirely true. For example, blogger and analyst Greg Sterling defined it for Mashable as a more “mobile-centric” version of hyperlocal search, with “greater local precision”: “It's about getting nearby information on demand, wherever you may be.” A little vague, but okay, it’s a definition. What I object to, really, is the way everyone is seizing on the term as a way to automatically hype up an app as innovative and exciting, in the same way that “cloud” was slapped on everything a couple of years ago. Are you about to release the millionth local deals app? Call it SoLoMo! What about a reviews app? Do the same! An app that lets you find which of your friends are friending the friends of friends around you? Come on baby, do the SoLoMotion!!! And I’m worried about what could happen if the reign of SoLoMo continues. In a few months, new startups will feel obligated to describe themselves this way, no matter what they actually do. “Oh, you’ve got a mobile social app? That’s so lame, bro. Don’t you know SoLoMo is where it’s at?” Welcome to the brave new world of buzzword inflation.
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| “Screenshots Of Despair” Reveals The New Human Condition Posted: 24 Mar 2012 04:52 PM PDT  More and more of us are spending more and more of our time staring at screens; And it’s amazing how emotional we’ve started to get about pixels. I’m pretty sure the last thing I see before I die will be one of those blasted spinning rainbow cursor balls. And I’m not alone (good call on the Morrissey, guys). The latest paean to the increasing power of online graphics, text and symbols is the fascinating Tumblr “Screenshots of Despair,” a site which catalogues and re-contextualizes the sometimes inadvertently depressing images we see online, along the lines of “No one likes this” or “Are you still there?” Inspired by New York Times columnist Rob Walker’s “Gallery of Anonymous Internet Avatars”, Screenshots of Despair creator Josh Kimball views the project as an attempt to capture the current state of the human condition, “I think the screenshots inspire pangs of real isolation. To me, the best of these screenshots are supposed to be practical social media interface elements, but they read as inadvertent commentary on one’s entire existence.” Kimball, who is an executive editor at a trends research firm, thinks the site has caught on because it exemplifies dark nerd humor and creates broader commentary on the meaning of digital connectivity. “Everyone has felt these pangs before,” he says. YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS. ^ See it sort of hurts, don’t it? So chew on that the next time you’re designing one of these screens … And maybe try to phrase things a bit more empathetically?
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| Instagram Unveils A Sign-Up Page For Android Users, Still No Launch Date Posted: 24 Mar 2012 03:55 PM PDT  Instagram has been iPhone-only for so long, and its executives have been so coy about their plans for other platforms, that it can be hard to believe the company will ever release an app for Android. And no, it still hasn’t announced a launch date, but if you’re an Android owner who wants the app, you should go to this page and sign up right now. Earlier this month, when TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis interviewed co-founder Kevin Systrom at South by Southwest, he teased the audience by waving around the Android app on-stage. Apparently it wasn’t ready for a real demo, but he claimed that “in some ways, it’s better than our iOS app.” During the Q&A, Systrom also said the app already has more than 27 million registered users. In other words, Instagram is growing at a crazy clip on the iPhone alone, thank you very much. The new Android sign-up page has literally zero information to add. It just asks, “Want to be first in line for Instagram on Android?” and lets users enter their email address. Still, it’s a sign that the company wants to start building up the Android excitement. And if you sign-up, you’ll probably hear about the app before I do.
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| Why IT Professionals Aren’t Monogamous Posted: 24 Mar 2012 03:12 PM PDT  Editor's Note: Alexander Haislip is a marketing executive with cloud-based server automation startup ScaleXtreme and the author of Essentials of Venture Capital. Follow him on Twitter @ahaislip. Pity the enterprise software conglomerate, its salespeople abandoned at the altar, its customers fleeing from committed relationships. Shed a tear for the server maker, no longer able to lock-in long-term sales, support and service engagements. Their customers are cheating on them with sexy new startups. Today's IT professionals are veritable libertines, swapping services and systems around like priapismic satyrs at a techno-bacchanal. What's worse: management condones this kind of behavior by pouring even more money into IT budgets. I blame easy-on SaaS-ified software, give-it-away mobile apps and no-commitment cloud infrastructure. They've seduced IT professionals with their breezy bohemian attitudes. They've undercut the high moral fiber that the established enterprise vendors have long embodied vis-à-vis mutual commitment and connubial sales agreements. Aspersions, I cast them: Software-as-a-Service We're fortunate that this nasty bit of business hasn't penetrated every aspect of enterprise IT. Its lascivious invitation to IT professionals simply could not be more direct: "pay-as-you-go." How such a slatternly proposition goes unchecked by the authorities, I know not. And the companies engaged in Software-as-a-Service do so without the proper courtship rituals of a well-trained enterprise sales team. It used to be accepted that IT professionals could expect months of meetings, calls and presentations before getting down to business. Yet these Software-as-a-Service companies fully embrace the concept of Quicumque vult, conducting their business with whomsoever should encounter their website. And the awful acronymization! Oh, how they do pronounce it. "SaaS." As though referring to an unmentionable anatomic. Insouciant connotations might have been nipped in the bud by simply rhyming the acronym with "face" or "bouillabaisse." Surely a cunning linguist might have avoided such a gouache double entendre. Meditate on that, Mr. Benioff! Mobile Apps "Why buy the suite when you can get the app for free?" I found myself mortified upon overhearing this utterance escape the lips of a technology executive. But this is the reality of the modern situation. App-makers run rantipole throughout the tech industry, offering quick and easy access to functionality previously reserved for serious software suites. These houri slyphs, by denting their relationship with the wireless carriers, entice users with an experience delivered "right to the palm of their hand," as though enjoining them to some sort of digital onanism. Cloud Computing When you buy a server, you make a commitment to have and to hold that machine until death do you part. How is that not clear? I blame virtualization vendors for encouraging people to think of "instances." It is one thing to keep these dalliances confined within the enterprise, where they may be embraced as a healthy form of digital role-playing. I'm told that there are even illustrated examples of setting up virtualization scenarios such as the "eager applicant" and "naughty nurse," in that excellent reference book The Joy of Server Administration. But to extend virtualization to a shared computing infrastructure where servers are swapped around willy-nilly just isn't right. It's a digital version of the Kerista Commune, a constant key party of computing. A Public Confession I abhor the moral decline in information technology driven by these new movements. I have seen first-hand how they destroy committed, long-term relationships between enterprise software conglomerates and their customers. Sure, there were rocky moments between the betrothed—the service pack, the bug fixes, the integration and training consulting—but leaving was never an option under the old agreement. When you tied the knot with a vendor, you couldn't just unwind it. Yet times change. I'm not proud of it, but I have contributed to the decline. My company's server automation products are delivered as a service and available online. Our mobile app is free to use—even in public. And worst of all, we empower IT professionals to try cloud computing for the first time. I blush just to think of it. I know what we're doing entices IT professionals; good people who have already promised their budgets to legacy software conglomerates. I don't want them to abandon their long-standing commitments, even if their love has cooled. I just want to make our customers happy. Is that so wrong? At least we're honest about who we are. It's not an "A," but our logo does feature a scarlet letter.
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| The Rise Of The Explainer Video Posted: 24 Mar 2012 01:52 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Rico Andrade a former executive producer at Transvideo Studios and Picturelab. Follow him on Twitter @andrade_rico. Two years ago, Jason Kincaid wrote a short but influential post titled "The Underutilized Power Of The Video Demo To Explain What The Hell You Actually Do." He said:
Jason was spot-on with his assessment. Today, a significant number of startup companies rely on a prominent overview video on their home page (you can browse through this compilation to get a sense of how many), and there is an overabundance of companies dedicated to serving the video needs of the tech community. Just look at how companies like Google and Facebook use overview videos as an integral part of their overall marketing strategy. Many individual companies do A/B testing of these specific types of videos on their own home pages, but these numbers are not usually disclosed, and I have yet to see industry-wide studies looking at the effects of these specific videos. However, the effectiveness of product videos in the ecommerce and retail space is well-documented, and the same factors that help these videos sell products seem to apply to promoting websites and apps as well. That was typically our experience at my former employer Transvideo Studios: of the companies that kept track and disclosed the data to us, videos usually improved conversion rates by 15%-75%. Why Video? Conversion rates don't tell the whole story about overview videos. Other reasons to include video are: - Increase press coverage. In Jason's own words:
Not only does it make it more likely you'll get covered, but also that the coverage won't simply be the author's interpretation of your site, but will actually include your video – your own words – to supplement the story. - Help your fans evangelize your product. Video is an extra standalone tool that can be easily shared on Facebook or Twitter. My favorite example of this is Visual.ly – Visual.ly had over 80,000 signups from a video on its LaunchRock page… months before the company actually went live. - Improve the SEO of your site. - Repurpose elsewhere. Videos can be included in email signatures, start off VC pitches, shared by sales team, etc… well beyond your home page. - Buy you time. While "nothing kills a bad product better than good marketing", a video can give users an insight to your product that allows them to both use it more effectively, and understand your larger vision, so that if the product isn't there yet, they know where it is going and don't immediately turn you off. I'm a firm believer that if Color had originally launched with a video that explained its vision a bit better, instead of the employee–made demo they launched with, users might have given them a bit of a chance to improve. Tips on making videos. If you are going to make a video, here a few basic rules to keep in mind:
Remember – the goal is for the user to understand what it is your product does. If you can show your video to a person in your target audience and they can tell you what your product is after watching your video, you're probably in good shape. The harder question to answer is, "How much should we spend on video?", and that's for another time.
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| Posted: 24 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Jay Fulcher is CEO of video technology company Ooyala. He previously contributed a column about “Fear And Loathing In Online Video.” Follow him on Twitter @jbfulcher. While hosting this year's Academy Awards, Billy Crystal cracked, "I prefer the big screen… which is my iPad." The remark was an ironic counterpoint to the evening's theme, "Let's go to the movies," itself a half-hearted attempt to resuscitate flagging U.S. box office sales. On the heels of a year that saw the lowest movie theater attendance in almost two decades, it's clear that the silver screen feels threatened by younger, slimmer screens. Apple's new iPad is shattering sales records and quickly ushering in the post-PC era. The company sold three million tablets in the first weekend they went on sale and may sell as many as 66 million by year's end. Like the iPhone and iPod before it, the iPad is reinventing an entire technology category and bringing it to the masses. It's not surprising that more people are watching more shows and movies on their tablets than ever before. The iPad's slim form factor and large, HD screen make the device perfect for kicking back with the latest episode of "Sharktank." At Ooyala, we've seen this new way of watching online video emerge and evolve over the past 18 months. Our data suggests that explosive tablet sales (fueled largely by Apple's iPad) will increase the share of tablet video viewing by over 500% in the next year alone. Our data also suggests that people are watching more shows, movies and other videos on their iPads during primetime TV hours: a third of daily video plays occur between 7PM and 11PM – hours that could otherwise be spent in front of cable TV or out at the local movie theater. In fact, Americans are now watching more online movies than DVD content. The key takeaway here is clear: Networks, studios and other providers of professional TV and film content need to pay attention to this new screen. Luckily, the rise of tablet video presents significant new opportunities for viewers and publishers. Tablets are personal devices — there's a one-to-one relationship between the screen and viewer. Content owners and advertisers equipped with the right tools can now make better connections with individual viewers than ever before. As a result, there exist new opportunities to engage viewers by delivering not only personalized video content but meaningful advertising less likely to disengage the audience. Personalizing a Netflix account that is shared by a family of four and lives on a big-screen TV is tricky. Personalizing content for a tablet owned by a single person is far more impactful. While smartphones also have a more intimate connection with their owners, added screen real estate makes tablets a strong candidate to lead the way in new TV technology and consumption. Here are just a few examples of how tablets are changing the face of traditional television. Tablet TV Apps — The Team Coco Tablet App delivers second screen content in real time and offers an "all access" look behind the scenes of the Conan O'Brien show. The Turner App delivers exclusive content to engage fans of the show and encourage appointment viewing. Tablet TV is Social TV — The rise of social television has had a huge impact on linear broadcasting. While there are plenty of people liking and tweeting from their phone or laptop, tablets will continue to impact trending topics and industry buzz in the coming years. Social TV app GetGlue also functions as a content discovery engine. When media companies leverage the social graph, they increase organic discovery on leading social networks and gain valuable insights into the habits and tastes of their most loyal viewers. Tablets as Second-Screen Guides — Just as tablets made television content portable and personal, they are also redefining how people discover content. Netflix recently refreshed its iPad app in an effort to make it easier for people to find content. There are a number of established and emerging companies working to resolve the paradox of choice that online video is creating. When nearly everything is available online, how will we decide what to watch? Expect the winners here to offer a visually pleasing, easy to use, data-driven discovery engine. Tablets as Universal Remotes — Tablets have even revolutionized remotes. Apple offers a free remote app for the iPad that lets users control the action from their tablet. Newer companies like Dijit are combining universal remote tablet technology with social content recommendation to deliver a more personalized viewing experience. Tablets are bringing about a big shift in personal computing and creating unique opportunities for media companies to connect with their viewers. Those that profit will leverage video analytics and advanced content recommendation algorithms to deliver personalized viewing experiences across all connected devices. The stakes need not be overstated: By 2015, 100 million Americans will regularly watch premium content on connected devices. While it is true that delivering broadcast-quality tablet video is only a single piece of a larger streaming media puzzle, developing an effective tablet strategy is crucial for content creators and broadcasters as we shift from broadcast to broadband video. The promise of online video lies in its ability to connect viewers with relevant content in ways traditional broadcasting never could. Tablets may not be the biggest screens, but they've brought about big innovations in TV tech.
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| Posted: 24 Mar 2012 11:02 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Tim Chang is a managing director at Mayfield Fund. This is the first in a three-part series about the Quantified Self movement. Follow Tim on Twitter @timechange. As a lifelong gamer, I grew up fascinated with role-playing games, from pen-and-paper fantasy worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, to computer-based RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry. I've spent thousands of hours crafting and "leveling up" dozens of alternate personas, tuning their stats and experience point allocations across various character traits, and charting their virtual careers. I've always loved exploring all the different possible attributes and powers to minimize or maximize, and then mapping out how to achieve the optimal configuration for my style of play. Several years ago I started wondering, "What if real life were the ultimate role-playing game? What character class would I be, and what would my current level be? Which skills would I go deep in and master?" What started out as a fun thought experiment grew into a bit of an obsession — not only in how I approach life personally, but also in my job as a venture capitalist. Having been an early investor in social gaming and backing companies like Playdom, ngmoco, Lumos Labs, and Badgeville, I've witnessed the interplay between "real world" social media and "in game" behaviors generate tremendous value (Playdom was acquired by Disney for $763M, and ngmoco was bought by DeNA for $403M; Lumos Labs and Badgeville continue to grow like weeds). Now Gamification (the application of game mechanics to non-game fields) influences much of my ongoing thinking and investment. I believe we all have a "superpower," no matter how niche or small it may seem. In the game world, we always know precisely what our superpower is and what level it's at, how we're being scored and how each action affects that score. Our superpower is explicitly shown to and valued by other players. In the real world, our talents, tastes, and know-how aren't always evident, yet we spend our lives, often ineffectively, trying to score, balance and demonstrate them. But now we have the technology to bring the scoring, feedback and interactivity of games into our real-world lives. Thank the Quantified Self movement, which centers around gathering as much personal numerical data as possible and analyzing it, for making this possible. Together with the Quantified Self, Gamification will have a huge impact on how we play the "Game of Life." 'If It Ain't Fun, It Don't Count' These days, there's a lot of grassroots buzz and increasing hype around Quantified Self. The problem, though, is that early Quantified Self adopters — like me — are tech-savvy people fascinated with data and new devices. Unlike us, however, the mainstream consumer is never going to go out of her way to adopt all these newfangled sensors simply for the sake of raw data. After all, I could give you a lifetime's worth of granular information about your lipid levels and heartbeat, but so what? If it's presented as just data, you'd say, "That's cool, but what am I supposed to do with it?" As my friend Brett Leve from Summit Series likes to say, "If it ain't fun, it doesn't count." That's where gamification comes in. A game at its basic definition is nothing more than an objective for victory, a score, and a clear set of rules for how players can influence that score. A score of 64 is meaningless, but add a rubric, a goal and clear paths to get there, and you've got a game going. The Seven Deadly Sins But isn't "fun" subjective? Well, yes — different people play each game differently. But there is a unifying framework to understand the core motivations for most people. When I first got into the venture capital business more than a decade ago, I thought that I'd spend my time evaluating disruptive technologies coming out of deep IP research labs. But after lots of time with consumer-facing startups, I came to rely on the framework of the Seven Deadly Sins (7DS) to help me decode what makes a social media app or site addictive. As an example, young males often index highly on Wrath, as they love to compete and rub their wins in each other's faces. As they rack up points and achievements, they climb the leaderboards, which indulges their Pride. Older female players typically seek self-discovery and affinity with others instead of head-to-head competition. They respond to Envy, as well as Greed when presented with the opportunity to collect sets of special items. Now, I'm not suggesting that entrepreneurs go out and build sites that ruthlessly exploit consumers or encourage users to mercilessly prey upon each other. What I'm pointing out is that it's better to understand root motivations (especially for younger users), and be able to reverse engineer them to design engagement loops in your site, app or service. In fact, Gamification platform vendors like Badgeville and Gigya now offer plug-and-play systems to instantly tap into the power of game mechanics for your business. As an example, Shoebacca, an up-and-coming online shoe store, leverages social gamification tools from Gigya to shape desired consumer behavior on their site. As soon as users sign in with their preferred social account, they are instantly awarded with points, badges and social standing with the larger site community as they interact with products and content. By tying gamification with users’ social graphs (their social network friends), shoppers are incentive to compete, share, and essentially "play" with their real friends for social rewards when they make purchases, view pages or drive valuable referral traffic to shocebacca.com. Game on! As users are presented with unique data and scores about themselves along with interesting insights that tell them "here's what will happen to you if you do X, Y, or Z next," life really does start to resemble the immersive and captivating role-playing games that I grew up with. And if this enables each of us to better identify, improve and share our individual superpowers in the real world, while having fun in the process and becoming closer to our ideal selves, then I say: "Game on!"
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| Gillmor Gang: Resisting the Obvious Posted: 24 Mar 2012 10:00 AM PDT  The Gillmor Gang — Dan Farber, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — welcomed CBS News Online editor in chief Dan Farber back to the West Coast and the comfort of the Gang clubhouse. Dan was one of the Gang’s earliest members, gracing the IT Conversations podcast number 2 or 3 or so. Now, as the Web gets overrun by a sea of apps, as @scobleizer autofilters the firehose in realtime, as we go 15 minutes before we realize @jtaschek hasn’t moved a muscle (locked up), as the networks desperately stonewall live to iPad, the Gang feels like fun. I’ve been saying Office is dead for years; it’s blindingly obvious. I like Word, using it to write this post. As we point out, collaboration is almost here as Redmond copies Google and the Sinofski fans in the chat room say social is coming in Office 15. But social is already here, and it’s going to be hard to sell the inevitability of cloud just when it’s already so obvious. I’ve kept the pro-Salesforce chatter (cough) at a low boil for as long as I can. See you on the funway. @stevegillmor, @dbfarber, @stevegillmor, @jtaschek, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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