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Mobile Ad Network Mojiva Reaches 1 Billion Devices

ACMAir — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 19:33:35 +0000

Mobile ad startup Mojiva is the latest startup to start throwing around the word “billion” in its press releases. The company says it now reaches one billion unique devices each month. Of those devices, about 224 million are in the United States, Mojiva says. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, account for 33 million, 10.6 million, and 8.7 million devices, respectively. Overall, Mojiva says it’s serving 45 billion ad requests in 190 countries.(When mobile ad network Millennial Media filed for an IPO last month, it said it reached 200 million unique users worldwide and claimed 40 billion ad impressions per month.) Mojiva CEO Dave Gwozdz said via email that 2011 was a big year for the company. The network saw “roughly 350% growth … in many different areas,” including revenue, ads served, and publishers in the network, he said — and the company’s ad serving business, Mocean Mobile, grew even more quickly. Plus, Mojiva raised a $25 million round in July. When asked about 2012, Gwozdz said that the mobile ad industry as a whole will need to start providing better analytics and optimization, as well as more standards around ad serving counts and ad sizes. As for Mojiva itself, not surprisingly Gwozdz said that it will continue to focus on providing opportunities for its advertisers and publishers. More specifically, he said the company will be trying to expand in China.

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Mobile Ad Network Mojiva Reaches 1 Billion Devices

CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web

Administrator — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:00:33 +0000

We measure every last click when it comes to the Web, but there remains a gulf between online and the real world. Yet the online world increasingly drives behavior offline, especially when it comes to purchasing habits. How many times have you researched something online or on your mobile phone before buying it? Yet when you go to a store to buy it, everything you did online might as well disappear as far as the merchant is concerned. It doesn’t have to be that way. The last mile in local commerce is really only the last few inches between the credit card in your outstretched hand and the card swipe at the register. That terminal is the gateway to the payment network, which today isn’t really connected to the Internet for most practical purposes. The payment networks is archaic and operates based on its own closed standards. But what if it was as easy to connect to the payment network as it is to develop an application on the Web? That is the question a group of former Netscape engineers and executives are trying to answer with a new startup called CardSpring launching in private beta today. Cardspring is creating an application platform that will allow Web and mobile developers to write applications for credit cards and other types of payments. Cardspring attaches itself to the payment network in a secure fashion on one side, and on the other it presents itself as a platform for developers to create payment apps via Web-standard APIs. It is a bridge between the two networks. These applications could include things like electronic coupons, loyalty cards, virtual currencies, or yet-to-be-imagined commerce apps. For example, you could get a $10 off coupon online, enter your credit card number, and then when you go to a store and pay with that card, the payment network would recognize the card and give you the $10 credit. Or you could swipe your card and it could email you the receipt. Or it could check in for you. Swiping the card would trigger an application. What you see is a piece of plastic. What the network sees is an application. If this sounds a little bit like what Groupon, LivingSocial , Foursquare , Square or Google are trying to do, it is because they’ve all been trying to crack this nut in different ways. They all want to close the redemption loop between digital offers and in-store payments. “Groupon threaded the needle with coupons,” says CEO Eckart Walther , but in his eyes daily deals are no more than a “wonderful one-off solution—We are literally inside the payment network.” Walther once ran Netscape’s platform group. He later went to TellMe Networks, Yahoo search, LiveOps, and ended up as an EIR at Accel . The company’s CTO is Jeff Winner , who was the head crypto guy at Netscape. He is helped come up with SSL (the standard security layer in the browser), among other things. Cardspring already raised $10 million from Accel and Greylock in a Series A (Andrew Braccia from Accel and James Slavet from Greylock are the partners on the deal). Other investors include SV Angel (which is a big believer in the Online2Offline trend), Morado Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Maynard Webb’s investment vehicle, WIN. Groupon isn’t the only attempt at a one-off solution. Foursquare links its merchant specials to American Express card purchases , but not every card. Google Wallet is trying to put payment apps into your phone. It’s too fragmented. “Every day, a mini-platform is trying to launch.” he says. Instead, CardSpring is attacking the problem just like you’d expect a bunch of Netscape engineers would: at the network level. “What if we could bring the browser platform to the payment network?’ asks Walther. Try to wrap your brain around that for a second. Your plastic credit card can trigger different applications—coupons, loyalty rewards, reminders, check-ins, you name it. All of it is secure and based on permissions you allowed each application to have (in return for some benefit). “One of the Internet’s fundamental challenges is its inability to effectively capture the economic value it creates for business in the physical world,” notes Braccia. “CardSpring’s platform enables offline stores to easily measure the impact of the web on their business.” There is a huge need for this type of payments platform. Groupon could use it to finally track redemptions of its coupons without having to ship iPads with special software to bars and restaurants. Foursquare could tie it into its specials and actually capture the purchase data and then show that to merchants in their dashboards. So could LivingSocial. And that’s just for starters. Imagine cost-per-action ads where the action is an in-store purchase. The possibilities are endless. Not only that, but any website or mobile app that takes credit card information will now have the opportunity to append data to those purchases, and to read and write data to the payment network. It is not just about moving money, but moving payment-related data. In the end, the data may turn out to be more valuable. The difficult part will be to convince consumers to hand over their credit card numbers in order for these applications to work. To the extent that the initial websites and apps already hold consumers’ credit card information, like Groupon or LivingSocial do, that shouldn’t be an issue. But when unknown sites or businesses start asking for that information, it might not be as forthcoming. Still, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit here and Cardspring brings a clever approach to a difficult problem. It is not asking much of consumers or merchants. They do not need any new technology or fancy NFC-powered phones or terminals. All they need is their credit card. The network will do the rest.

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CardSpring Raises $10 Million To Connect Payments To The Web

The 5 Reasons Why Facebook Is Worth So Much Money

admin2 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:25:12 +0000

How did Facebook become worth so much money that it could file for the biggest IPO in tech history ? By building a highly defensible product, platform, and advertising business on top of brilliant talent and valuable data. It now has several competitive advantages that protect it from disruption and could give it a long life as the primary online identity provider. Here are the 5 components that make Facebook a smart long-term bet for investors, regardless of its exact IPO pricing. Network Effect Displacing Facebook as the mainstream online social network would be next to impossible. It brought authenticated identity to the internet –a crucial utility that compelled users to join. No other service may be able to add on top of Facebook something as valuable as what Facebook added to Myspace, friendster, and other services where you didn’t have to be yourself. Facebook’s ingenius distribution strategy, detailed in The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick , allowed the service to capitalize on this value-add and spread to the farthest reaches of the globe . Eventually the network effect took hold, with Facebook’s ever-growing user base making it ever-more valuable and attractive to new users. And now inertia has set in. Users have invested considerable time into Facebook building their profiles, walls, interest graphs, and most importantly, their social graphs. As Facebook handles a wide range of use cases and a critical mass of any person’s friends already using it, a competing social network can’t just be as good or better, it would need to be massive improvement to lead users astray. The insulation to competition provided by the network effect makes it a safe long-term bet for investors. The News Feed’s EdgeRank Algorithm For five years, Facebook has been collecting data and refining its EdgeRank algorithm , which determines what of all the content your friends share ends up in your news feed, and how prominently. By using Likes, comments, and shares to determine what’s most relevant, Facebook had developed arguably the best automated content curation engine in the world. The news feed also gets to draw on the web’s largest database of photos , and the friend tags they feature which helped Facebook go viral. For new users without tons of data points, Facebook can still predict what they might be interested in seeing. For existing users, especially veterans of the site that actively use its feedback mechanisms, the news feed consistently surfaces relevant content. EdgeRank creates that the highly addicting experience that drives Facebook’s enormous time on site, return visit rate, and engagement. Even if Twitter or Google+ had all the content of Facebook, it could take them years to develop an algorithm that produces such a relevant feed. Talent Mark Zuckerberg sees the future. His product vision allows Facebook to release features that users grow into rather than out of. Zuckerberg has integrated progressive home brewed ideas as well as those that couldn’t reach their full potential when launched elsewhere. He has pushed the service to constantly reinvent itself, allowing it to stay cool and relevant 8 years after launch. Zuck’s dedication to making the world a better place through interconnection and openness has also attracted other visionaries. COO Sheryl Sandberg ‘s efficiency has made the company very profitable, and her willingness to experiment means Facebook will continue to revolutionize advertising through behavioral targeting and social content-infused ads. VP of Product Chris Cox has led Facebook’s social design movement, where 1st and 3rd party products are made to leverage Facebook’s data and community from the start, rather than bolting them on. With the promise of changing the world and a lean, fun-loving company culture, Facebook has been pulling top engineering, product, and business talent away from larger companies like Google that are saddled with product bloat and bureaucracy. It’s also been aggressively acquiring disruptive startups such as Paul Bucheit and Brett Taylor’s FriendFeed , Blake Ross’ Parakey , Sam Lessin’s Drop.io , and Josh Williams’ Gowalla . The rockstar product designers and executives ensures innovation will continue to flow from within Facebook. The IPO will provide Facebook more cash for acquisitions and give its talent the liquidity they deserve . Though there’s always the chance they could cash out and leave, the ability to sell a little stock and upgrade their lifestyle might keep employees happy enough to stick around. The Apps and Games Platform Facebook has created a gaming platform proven to offer viral growth. While the service has curtailed some of loudest viral channels, organic growth opportunities remain and on-site advertising for games has produced high returns on investment for companies like Zynga. Facebook has fostered an enormous community of developers that pay while populating the site with engaging apps and content, and that won’t ever disappear overnight. Facebook games are often infinite building simulations or twitch puzzlers, have long session lengths, and let users make vanity purchases so they can show off while simultaneously hooking them deeper into a game. They readily produce “whales”, or people who spend orders of magnitude more than the average player. Mobile is emerging as a lucrative platform for Apple and Google, and Facebook is just getting started there, but it does have an enormous install base to work from . By attracting developers early with free growth , clamping down once they had invested, and then taxing them 30% through its virtual currency Credits, Facebook has turned its games platform into a consistent money maker . Now some developers are experimenting with digital media sales and rentals , pay-per-view , as well as offering virtual currency microincentives , showing potential for platform monetization beyond games. Ad Targeting Age, gender, current city, hometown, employers, education, friends, interests, and now in-app activity and ecommerce habits. When users share this data with friends, they’re also sharing with Facebook. This gives Facebook possibly the most accurate and robust set of ad targeting data in the world. With both an self-serve tool and ad reps handling premium accounts, Facebook can provide effective advertising solutions to both local business and international brands. Facebook has developed eye-catching ads by combining this targeting with social-content infused ad creative . Viewers see the names and faces of friends who Like an advertised brand. Interactions between their friends and brands, such as Likes, app usage, and checkins, can become the ads themselves through Sponsored Stories. These trump, and are increasingly pulling spend away from more cookie-cutter display and search ads targeted through cookies and keywords. Facebook has only begun to monetize through ads. The sidebars where ads primarily appear have been kept small and unobtrusive. Facebook is now mixing ads back into the web version of the news feed , where they’re sure to be seen between organic social content. Facebook has yet to show ads to its hundreds of millions of daily mobile users, but Sponsored Stories could show up there soon too. Finally, it could one day create an ad network that allows other sites to pay to show logged-in Facebook users the same highly targeted social ads they see on Facebook.com.

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The 5 Reasons Why Facebook Is Worth So Much Money

AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011

blogger — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:54:50 +0000

On the heels of the news that AT&T delivered its best quarter ever in terms of smartphone sales, the communications company and carrier is releasing its quarterly data on the number of AT&T Wi-Fi connections made in Q4 and in 2011 as a whole. AT&T says that it tripled Wi-Fi network traffic in 2011 versus network traffic for 2010. And the network saw a 550 percent increase in monthly Wi-Fi data uploads from mobile devices on the AT&T Wi-Fi network in 2011, driven by increasing use of cloud services. In total, 1.2 billion AT&T Wi-Fi connections were made during 2011, with 486.9 million connections made in the fourth quarter (that’s compared to 301.9 million Wi-Fi connections in Q3 of 2011). And connections more than tripled in the fourth quarter versus 154 million connections made in the fourth quarter 2010. More than three million connections per day to the AT&T Wi-Fi Network by users, exceeding total connections made in the month of December in 2008. Plus, AT&T says that it saw more than 60 percent growth in AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots from 2008 through 2011. The massive growth in Wi-Fi connections is due to the growing number of smartphone and tablet users tapping into AT&T networks at hospitality locations, parks, retail stores, stadiums and enterprise businesses. Hotel locations account for approximately 45 percent of the total AT&T Wi-Fi network traffic. And To date, AT&T has launched free Wi-Fi at 19 park locations in New York City. In 2011, New York City parks visitors made more than 1 million connections to the AT&T Wi-Fi network. AT&T, which offers nearly 30,000 Wi-Fi hot spots and claims to the U.S.’s largest wi-fi network, says most of its smartphone customers get access to the carrier’s Wi-Fi network at no additional cost as part of their plan, and Wi-Fi doesn’t count toward customers’ monthly wireless data usage.

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AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011

Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown

blogger — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:00:14 +0000

The Megaupload troubles make for interesting discussion because there is much to be said on both sides. Whether the illegal aspects of the network “outweigh” the legal aspects is a question that will be discussed for months and perhaps years. But one thing can’t be disputed: after the two-year investigation by the FBI, the site’s takedown was swift and perhaps over-thorough. Thousands and thousands of users who had legitimate and often critical files hosted on the site have been left behind, their legal files hosted on a simple file-hosting service. A coalition of Pirate Party organizations, led by Pirates of Catalonia , are planning to sue the FBI over what they say are “huge personal, economic and image damages to a vast number of people.” The group leading the charge contends that the FBI may have violated Spanish Law, and at any rate, Regardless of ideology, or opinions on the legality or morality of those running Megaupload, actions such as the closure of this service cause huge damage to lawful users of the sites and are unacceptable and disproportionate violations of their rights. Hard words to disagree with, whether you think Megaupload is a patsy being taken to school by IP mongers or a den of thieves getting what was coming to them. Either way, you have to agree that the wholesale takedown of the site harmed a lot of people totally unconnected to the alleged crimes performed by Megaupload. The question of a grace period while the law does its work doesn’t seem to apply here: if, say, a cache of drugs was found in a public storage facility you used, you wouldn’t be surprised if the whole place shut down for a couple days while the law did its work. In this case the takedown may be permanent; having arrested the main actors in the company and seized many of their assets, chances are the site couldn’t be restored to working order without a fair amount of work. Not that that hasn’t happened before: The Pirate Bay relocated some servers last year to an actual secret cave after repeated raids and takedown attempts. And plenty of other favorite targets of law enforcement have proven more tenacious than expected. The point is it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that files hosted on Megaupload will never again be accessible. If they are restored, it will still have been a clumsy and potentially illegal action that made them inaccessible, and the Pirate Parties hope to call out such actions for what they are and perhaps cause authorities to think twice before taking them again.

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Pirate Parties Organizing Lawsuit Against FBI Over Megaupload Takedown

Google+ Now Open To Teens 13 And Up

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:40:57 +0000

Google is opening up its social networking service Google+ to teens as of today, according to a post from Google’s VP, Product Management, Bradley Horowitz. The move puts the network in closer competition with Facebook, which also requires that individuals be at least 13 year old before creating an account. Says Horowitz, everyone who’s old enough for a Google account (13+ in most countries), can now create a Google+ account too. The announcement was made alongside news of a few new safety enhancements to the service specifically for teens, including those that focus on sharing content, hangouts (video chat) and notifications. One of these is a message that appears when a teen tries to share outside of their circle of friends. The message reads: “When you share publicly, people you haven’t added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment.” This seems a little obvious, but given Facebook’s ever-shifting levels of post visibility, it can’t hurt to bang people over the head with the definition of “public.” Google will also place limits on its video chatting feature called Google+ Hangouts when used by teens. If a stranger (someone outside the teens’ circle) joins a hangout, Google will temporarily remove the teen from the hangout by muting the mic and video feed. It’s interesting that it wouldn’t just remove the stranger, or perhaps remove strangers ability to even join hangouts in progress, when posted by teens. But I suppose this move is targeted towards those teens who inadvertently (or naively) make their hangout public instead of private, which could invite in an unwanted element. Notifications are also being restricted, so that only those in teens’ circles can contact them via IM, and blocking is easily accessible. This feature is not all that different than how chat operates by default for adults, to be fair. Any Google+ user can configure which circles are chat-enabled , for example. It should be noted that not all countries have the same age restrictions. In Spain and South Korea, the age limit is 14 and up, while in the Netherlands, it’s 16 and up. Google recently announced that it has now reached 90 million users worldwide . By opening up to teens, it clearly hopes to quickly grow once more. However, we have to point out that, unlike Facebook’s growth back in the day, Google+’s growth is more manufactured than organic. The company has carefully timed its feature releases and integrations with other Google services to provide ongoing boosts to user count numbers which it can then, in turn, proclaim to be “growth.” But in some cases, Google is forcing Google+ upon users – e.g., when a user creates a Google account, they’re given a Plus account , too. No doubt a few weeks after the teen surge, we’ll hear more about how much Google has “grown” yet again. In case you’re wondering, Twitter used to require its users to be 13 and up , too. The current Terms of Service make no mention of an age requirement.

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Google+ Now Open To Teens 13 And Up

(Founder Stories) SoftTech VC’s Clavier: An Investor’s Role Isn’t To Give Orders

vertical8 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:09:39 +0000

SoftTech VC’s , Jeff Clavier has edged his way from a true Silicon Valley outsider (born and raised in France) to the ultimate insider. Since moving to the valley a decade ago, Clavier has launched three funds and invested in more than 100 companies, the likes of which include Mint, FitBit, and Fab,. Not bad for a guy who claims to have jumped “into venture by accident.” Having just raised $55 million for his third fund, which will invest on average “$400,000″ per startup, Clavier sat down with Founder Stories host, Chris Dixon to discuss how he built his business. Clavier tells Dixon by 2004 it had become financially feasible to back “customer internet companies.” He says what used to cost $5-million had been reduced to half-a-million. So, “for three-and-a-half-years I sort of built my dealflow, and sort of my footprint in Silicon Valley by doing angel investments.” While not a major player at the time, he notes, “I was still a VC and I could help entrepreneurs with the financing and figure out how to structure an investment, how to look at term sheets, how to pitch and so on and so forth, and so slowly but surely I sort of built that initial presence in the valley.” Having helped guide the growth of scores companies and learning just as many lessons along the way, Clavier tells Dixon “you can’t have any pride as an investor because you need to be able to help in anything you can.” He concludes, “you are not running the company, you are just supporting it, the point of view is you don’t give orders.” Episode II of this interview is coming up. Past Founder Stories episodes featuring leaders of ZocDoc, TripAdvisor, Charity: Water, Turntable.fm, Bump and many other startups are here .

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(Founder Stories) SoftTech VC’s Clavier: An Investor’s Role Isn’t To Give Orders

SittingAround Launches Service To Help Parents Find & Schedule Trusted Sitters

Achilles — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:15:07 +0000

SittingAround , a new service that allows parents to quickly and more easily find and schedule a babysitter, is launching today. The business is the creation of CEO Erica Zidel, a former management consultant in the Boston area (and mom) and CTO Ted Tieken, who, like Zidel, is a Harvard grad. What’s unique about SittingAround is how it leverages users’ social networking connections – like those on Facebook – in order to build trusted relationships between parents and sitters. If you’ve ever used a traditional childcare-finding service, like Care.com , for example, or even Craigslist, you know the feeling of having to wade through dozens of listings, without really knowing which caregivers are better than others. Who have your friends used? Did they like them? Traditional sites can’t tell you. However, on SittingAround , the site pulls in data from popular social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, to help you immediately see who your friends would use and recommend. “Babysitting is a complex and unique problem. You have a need that is irregular, generally, but you also want a high level of trust,” explains Zidel. “What we do is we allow people to see how they’re connected to each other, including the people in their community, the sitters that they use, and how the sitters are connected to each other, to really pass trust along the social graph. You’re able to form your own network of sitters.” SittingAround, which grew out of an earlier site that helped parents find local babysitting co-ops (parents who trade sitting duties with each other), doesn’t just help you find a sitter – it also helps you schedule them. Using the site’s free tools, parents can send out a single message to their network of sitters when they’re in need. To reach sitters not on SittingAround, the site supports entering email addresses, to save you time. The sitters themselves can also maintain their own schedules on the site with calendars showing their availability, allowing parents to quickly see whether their favorite sitters are free that day or not. While those are the main points, SittingAround has many other notable features that give it a unique edge. For example, it has partnered with a service to provide free background checks to sitters and parents alike, which will help immediately weed out less desirable quotient. (After all, if it’s free, why wouldn’t someone do the background check?) They’re also working on curating daily deals for select areas, to provide a source for “date night deals,” which could help SittingAround expand from just a care-finding resource to an entire “night out” planning tool. For now, SittingAround is a freemium service. For $15/year, you can eliminate ads and have access to priority support. But the business model is still in the experimental phase. SittingAround’s initial product, a babysitting coop, now has 3,000 families in 6 countries trading care with each other. The sitter-finding aspect to the service, meanwhile, is launching now in New York, Boston, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago and Seattle, where it has a waitlist in over 1,000 sitters. While not officially live in other locations yet, the Sitter Marketplace is open and available for anyone interested to sign up. The service will launch both a mobile web version and mobile apps (Android first) in early 2012. The company is currently in due diligence with angels in the Boston area, while raising a $600,000 round of funding with a targeted close in February.

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SittingAround Launches Service To Help Parents Find & Schedule Trusted Sitters

Lookout’s New App Visualizes Mobile Security Threats As They Are Detected Around The World

A D M I N — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:00:24 +0000

Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is debuting a new Android app that lets you see mobile threats as they are detected around the world. Launched from Lookout Labs, the new app basically visualizes what’s happening in the mobile landscape and also shares details on top weekly threats & distribution of malware vs. spyware. For background, Lookout’s web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and most recently iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer’s phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer. Lookout collects data from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The network includes more than one million apps and 15 million user devices worldwide. With the Lookout Mobile Threat Tracker, you can now see the thousands of threats that Lookout identifies and catches every day via the network. Within the Mobile Threat Tracker you can quickly see the top three trending threats. For example, if you tap on the name in the app, you can learn more about each threat. For example, this week’s top threat, RuPaidMarket masquerades as a useful app, but actually sends premium SMS messages without allowing you to opt out, or letting you know that you will be charged. The data is updated hourly so you can see mobile threats appear and disappear overtime.The app shows the top three mobile threats for the past week are RuPaidMarket, Legacy and Depositmobi. And the current distribution of malware vs. spyware is 60 percent malware and 40 percent spyware. While the app may not be one for a daily check, the newest Lookout offering could be a useful way to routinely see what the possible threats are for your Android phone at any given time. Lookout predicts that malware, spyware and other mobile security risks will only increase in 2012, so users will have to be more vigilant about protecting their smartphones in the coming year.

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Lookout’s New App Visualizes Mobile Security Threats As They Are Detected Around The World

New Trademarkia Feature Exposes Biggest Trademark Bullies; Apple, Zynga Among Top Five

kram412 — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:00:21 +0000

For a long time, it was easy to search for patents on the Web , but trademarks? Not so much. Thanks to startups like TechCrunch 50 grad Trademarkia , anyone can now do a simple keyword search and pick through each and every U.S. trademark filed since 1870 — if your heart so desires, of course. If trademark search seems a bit obscure, that’s because it is. But for big companies and startups alike, trademark registration is important for protecting their brand. What’s more, the ability to search by company, theme, product category, or even filing attorney for any and all things trademark can be a big timesaver. It’s also a great resource for research, for those getting ready to file a trademark, or for product and brand logo designers looking to see what’s out there (or who may be infringing). Then, with Trademarkia, users can even register trademarks directly with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for about $160. As a result, Trademarkia has been seeing some traction over the last year, as it’s nearing $50 million in sales, 3 million pageviews (and 1.5 million uniques) per month — its users filed over 10,000 trademarks last year. Last month, Josh wrote about the startup’s new sound trademarking service , which collects the USPTO’s bevy of sound marks (including digitizing the many old analog sound trademarks) to let users listen to existing trademarks — and apply for their own. Looking to continue building out a suite of services around their flagship trademark search functionality, the Silicon Valley-based company is today launching a new feature that intends to, among other things, expose the aggressive tactics of the world’s trademark bullies — in other words, pull back the curtain on the big companies that routinely go after smaller companies for alleged use and misuse of their trademarked brands and products. (Alleged being the key word here.) This new feature lets users search the USPTO’s database of trademark oppositions by year, category, the biggest bullies, victims, and “hecklers,” the latter of which includes those companies that file extended oppositions to trademark applications to slow down the review/approval process. Interestingly, according to the USPTO’s data , Kellogg North America is the top “Trademark Bully” for 2011, with The Lance Armstrong Foundation, Apple, Zynga, and ski and snowboard maker, K-2, rounding out the top five. Mark Zuckerberg’s legal team ranks in at number eight. Granted, trademark bullying has been around for years, but it’s been difficult to see which companies are the biggest offenders — and the biggest losers. In 2010, the USPTO embarked on an effort to curb trademark bullying, and asked practicing trademark attorneys, trademark-owners, and others “about their experiences with litigation tactics”, according to IPB . This resulted in the organization attempting to better track trademark opposition, which Trademarkia has made universally available (and searchable) today. Obviously, for companies, policing one’s trademarks is essential to ensuring that no one (or no entity) is infringing on their valuable intellectual property. However, it’s been difficult to find out which companies are just standing up for their rights and which companies are actively bullying. Trademarkia’s searchable database goes some of the way towards improving this, letting users view plaintiffs and defendants within each category, and to quickly browse prosecution history and trademark details. This allows users to get a better sense of the bullies vs fair opposition problem, and more easily make ourselves aware of when Facebook sues a company because they have “book” in their name or “face” — or Apple claims it owns “Pad” or bullying users of “app” and “pod” — for example. (And, in its defense, Facebook has often found itself on the victim’s end as well.) Certainly, these examples draw attention to the question of whether or not a company can own a word, and of course Apple and Facebook are hardly the only ones. The Lance Armstrong Foundation has repeatedly attempted to block use of the word “strong” by other companies, for instance. Obviously, without a lot of attention from the press or other avenues, it’s difficult for small businesses opposed by the Goliaths to do anything but give in — or hire a better legal team. Trademarkia CEO Raj Abhyanker says that he thinks that the legal outcomes of these many trademark cases can have an impact on stock prices, future product launches, and even domain ownership. To give users a better sense of the results of trademark litigation, Trademarkia’s listings include angry faces for an active bullying attempt, a sad face meaning the “little guy” lost, while a smiley face means the victim prevailed. Obviously, users should be careful here — as it’s not always that simple. Lastly, for companies looking to protect their existing trademarks, the startup’s service also offers a free 30-day tracker, which lists all new trademark applications filed within the last 30 days. Users can also sign up to receive automatic alerts (through an email notification) for trademark applications submitted that have similar keywords. It’s a wild and wooly world out there in trademark land, and hopefully Trademarkia’s new features will help bring some clarity and accountability to the process. Bullies: You’re on notice.

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New Trademarkia Feature Exposes Biggest Trademark Bullies; Apple, Zynga Among Top Five