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KPCB’s Chi-Hua Chien: The Next Wave Of Tech Disruption Will Hit Commerce

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:51:01 +0000

Technology has helped to level the playing field across a wide range of industries, letting more individuals come to the table in fields such as publishing, entertainment and, of course, building web startups. And according to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers partner Chi-Hua Chien , the next space ripe for a big tech-powered wave of democratization is commerce. In an on-stage conversation with David Kirkpatrick at the TechCrunch NYC Disrupt conference Wednesday afternoon, Chien explained how tech has helped flatten a number of previously stratified spaces. The mid- to late-90′s saw the democratization of information — companies such as Google made data available to everyone, no matter where or who they were. After that came the democratization of distribution, with services such as Twitter and Facebook allowing anyone to broadcast their content and potentially attract an audience. The democratization of computing has occurred as well, with billions of people in the world now having access to computers because of the availability of low-cost mobile devices. Up next? The world of shopping and selling. “We’re now entering an era around the democratization of commerce,” Chien said. The past, he said, has been about “mass aggregation,” with companies such as Safeway and Wal-Mart rising to the top of the commerce space by simply being the best at aggregating a suite of products into one space. These big companies also built up their own brand names to make shoppers feel secure in buying things from them. Today, though, we are starting to “see an unwinding of aggregation of commerce as technology starts to disrupt” the industry, Chien said. “If you think about what a Wal-Mart does, it aggregates credibility and inventory,” Chien said. Credibility is the Wal-Mart brand name, and the inventory is simply products and storage. Today, credibility can be established by smaller players via social media, and real estate and inventory can be outsourced much easier. Chien pointed to two Kleiner Perkins portfolio companies to illustrate this movement: Square , which he said is democratizing becoming a merchant, and Zaarly for democratizing the ability to do a particular job. In a short conversation off-stage, he told me that Gumroad is also one of the Kleiner-backed startups that is leading the way toward big commerce disruption. Looking at Kleiner Perkins itself, Chien not surprisingly declined from discussing the lawsuit filed by investment partner Ellen Pao (the news of which TechCrunch was the first to break yesterday) during his fireside chat. But, he did shed some light on the firm’s larger strategy, in particular its increasing focus on making digital investments, after a few years of being more well-known for making moves in the green tech space. “In the last five years, [Kleiner has] added four investing partners focusing on consumer digital,” Chien said.

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KPCB’s Chi-Hua Chien: The Next Wave Of Tech Disruption Will Hit Commerce

HP: 27,000 Job Cuts To Save Up To $3.5B By 2014, Q2 Sales Down 3% To $30.7B

user — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:14:18 +0000

A mixed bag of news for HP today: it has posted Q2 sales that have just edged out analyst expectations, but it has also confirmed 27,000 job cuts that should save the company between $3 billion and $3.5 billion by 2014. The company is a tech behemoth: it employs 350,000 people worldwide, before these cuts were announced. This means the cuts are equivalent to about 8 percent of its workforce. The cuts fall squarely in the middle of the estimates that were reported in past weeks, with CEO Meg Whitman reportedly planning to cut between 25,000 and 30,000 jobs — news that investors seemed to actually find encouraging with the stock price rising on the news. That seems to be the case here, too: the combination of okay results plus a concerted plan for cutting costs has sent the stock up in after-hours trading . HP says that it will be offering voluntary retirement to employees, so the exact number of actual layoffs has yet to be determined. The money that it saves will be re-invested across the whole of the company. It also plans to take a pre-tax charge of $1.7 billion in FY 2012 as a result, with additional pre-tax charges As a result of this restructuring, HP expects to record a pre-tax charge of approximately $1.7 billion in fiscal 2012 that will be included in its GAAP financial results for that period. Through fiscal 2014, HP expects to record additional pre-tax charges approximating $1.8 billion that will be included in its GAAP financial results for the relevant periods. As for earnings, these were down by thee percent to $30.7 billion — but still beat average analyst expectations of $29.92 billion. Earnings per share were also down 21 percent to $0.98, with analysts expecting EPA of $0.91. As a point of comparison in demonstrating the drop in HP’s fortunes, EPS for the same quarter last year was $5.24. In an internal memo , Whitman outlined the strategic direction that HP wants each division to take going forward. Read the full details here . Before today, the company had been slowly changing the course of its ship. In March, the company announced an “ organizational realignment ” in which it started to consolidate some of its hardware assets. Its Imaging and Printing Group were merged with its Personal Systems Group to create a new Printing and Personal Systems Group that is now led by Todd Bradley , who had been heading up the PSG since 2005. Last week HP said that it would be giving shareholders a dividend of 13.2 cents per share. This will be the third divided that HP has paid out in FY2012. The company has 2 billion shares of common stock outstanding. As AllThingsD pointed out earlier today, one big focus for the company is in its regional operations — specifically Europe. Some 37 percent of its revenues come from that part of the world — around $11 billion for this last quarter — and given the economic problems in Europe at the moment this means HP is the most exposed of the tech companies in the region. (We have more detail on one of HP’s European-focused operations, Autonomy, here .) Shares in the company were down nearly 5 percent before the release was announced. Full layoffs release below. PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – May 23, 2012) – HP (NYSE: HPQ ) today outlined plans for a multi-year productivity initiative designed to simplify business processes, advance innovation and deliver better results for customers, employees and shareholders. The restructuring is expected to generate annualized savings in the range of $3.0 to $3.5 billion exiting fiscal year 2014, of which the majority will be reinvested back into the company. Enabling investments in people, processes and technology will allow HP to accomplish the restructuring effort and to generate the savings. These moves are expected to yield significant improvements in efficiency and customer service during the next several years. HP expects to use the savings to boost investment in innovation around its three areas of strategic focus: cloud, big data and security, as well as in other segments that offer attractive growth potential. As part of the restructuring, HP expects approximately 27,000 employees to exit the company, or 8.0% of its workforce as of Oct. 31, 2011, by the end of fiscal year 2014. The company is offering an early retirement program, so the total number of employees affected will be impacted by the number of employees that participate in the early retirement plan. Workforce reduction plans will vary by country, based on local legal requirements and consultation with works councils and employee representatives, as appropriate. In addition to these restructuring actions, HP expects to achieve additional savings from non-headcount cost reductions, including supply chain optimization, SKU and platform rationalization, go-to-market strategy simplification and business process improvement. “These initiatives build upon our recent organizational realignment, and will further streamline our operations, improve our processes, and remove complexity from our business,” said Meg Whitman , HP president and chief executive officer. “While some of these actions are difficult because they involve the loss of jobs, they are necessary to improve execution and to fund the long term health of the company. We are setting HP on a path to extend our global leadership and deliver the greatest value to customers and shareholders.” HP expects to reinvest savings in each of its business segments to strengthen their ability to stay ahead of customer expectations and capitalize on growing market trends. HP will invest in research and development to drive innovation and differentiation across its core printing and personal systems businesses, as well as emerging areas. It will also invest in marketing, sales productivity and tools that simplify the customer experience and make it easier to do business with HP. Services will invest in accelerating service capabilities in the high client value areas of cloud, security and information analytics by enhancing HP intellectual property. Services will also strengthen its industry orientation and continue to differentiate its service offerings through quality and innovation delivered to clients. Combined, these activities are expected to shift the portfolio to a more profitable mix of higher-growth services. Additional work in lean process methodologies is expected to better serve clients and increase overall efficiencies. Software will invest to speed development in the areas of security, big data and the management of application lifecycle and infrastructure solutions, both on premise and in the cloud. It will also further leverage the capabilities of Autonomy and Vertica across the entire HP portfolio. Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking will invest to accelerate its research and development activities to extend its leading portfolio of servers, storage and networking. Together these assets create a Converged Infrastructure which is the foundation for top client initiatives such as cloud , virtualization , big data analytics , legacy modernization and social media. As a result of this restructuring, HP expects to record a pre-tax charge of approximately $1.7 billion in fiscal 2012 that will be included in its GAAP financial results for that period. Through fiscal 2014, HP expects to record additional pre-tax charges approximating $1.8 billion that will be included in its GAAP financial results for the appropriate periods.

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HP: 27,000 Job Cuts To Save Up To $3.5B By 2014, Q2 Sales Down 3% To $30.7B

The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

vertical8 — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:02:35 +0000

This afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, our own Josh Constine sat down with David Kirkpatrick , author of “The Facebook Effect,” to discuss what they thought about the future of the newly IPO’ed social network. Specifically, the two focused on the potential for Facebook’s advertising platform, its competitive advantages over incumbents and competitors, and its potential acquisition targets which could help its platform expand. What’s Facebook’s Post-IPO Strategy? Josh started off by asking Kirkpatrick what he thought was the most important thing Facebook should do going forward. David responded that Facebook shouldn’t do anything differently, even going so far as to say that doing so would be the “most perilous mistake they could make.” However, in terms of how the IPO could potentially affect the company’s focus, and specifically CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on product, was the fact that Zuckerberg now has to “sell a lot of ads.” As a public company, analysts will be making quarterly earnings projections, and Zuckerberg will have to waste a lot of time thinking about that, said Kirkpatrick. Whether Zuckerberg likes it or not, he will have to think about money now, Kirkpatrick lamented, a role that the CEO had historically dedicated to COO Sheryl Sandberg . However, Josh pointed out that shift may not be a bad thing — Zuckerberg hasn’t “applied his big brain to monetization yet,” he noted. Facebook’s Uber-Precise Ad Targeting The two then moved onto sharing their thoughts about the Facebook advertising platform, which had Josh asking what Kirkpatrick thought Facebook had done that was really special in ads. Responded the author, “to create an environment which can be so accurately targeted for advertising is an innovation in itself.” He added that it’s also effectively an unmonetized innovation at this time, and he’s confident that there’s a lot of revenue opportunity there in the future, too. Kirkpatrick said that he felt that even something as simple as putting an ad in your News Feed was an innovation. How Facebook Will Get To Be Worth More Than $100B In discussing new monetization streams for the network, the potential for an offsite ad network that could one day rival Google’s AdSense was huge. There are already 9 million businesses and advertisers on the Facebook ad platform today, said Kirkpatrick. But highly targeted ads – the kind you would see on Facebook itself – could potentially freak people out when they showed up on the wider Internet, Josh pointed out. Kirkpatrick agreed to a point, but said that most people, including the average Facebook user, don’t seem to really care. There’s a tidal wave of “anti-targeting mindset,” especially in Europe, said Kirkpatrick, but it seemed to be mostly among the press, the government, and the “influentials” (which he dubbed the “punditocracy”). “A lot don’t understand Facebook or advertising that well,” he said of this group, painting them with a rather large brush. Kirkpatrick also said that not only does the average Facebook user not care about ads, in some of Facebook’s largest markets, it’s not a concern at all. Indonesia, for example – Facebook’s fourth largest country – has no issue with Facebook’s advertising. Who Should Facebook Buy Finally, in terms of what companies Facebook should acquire next, both agreed that moving into physical payments would make sense for the company. As for the recent Instagram and Karma acquisitions, Kirkpatrick called them “unexpected and surprising,” saying that they’re really app related, which he thought was odd. “What’s really important for Facebook is being a platform,” he said. He thought the biggest investments would be to “augment their platform capabilities, not their app capabilities.” But he concluded that some things, like photos, may be so important to the platform that they felt they needed to spend a billion dollars on it. “Tumblr is an interesting company for Facebook to think about,” Kirkpatrick stated. He also thought that Facebook couldn’t help but be obsessing over Pinterest right now, but Josh vehemently disagreed. Instead, Josh’s picks were some sort of peer-to-peer payments company like Venmo, and an offsite ad network technology that would give Facebook the ability to scrape data from websites outside its walled garden to let Facebook serve relevant ads to visitors who aren’t logged in.

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The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

About.me Releases Public API, SDK At Disrupt, Now Integrates With Reputation, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred And Showyou

Budowniczy425 — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:00:44 +0000

About.Me is set to get a bit more social. The AOL-owned property just released a public API and SDK into the wild in partnership with Reputation.com, Smarterer, Forkly, Kred and Showyou. While the online profile site already worked with most popular social platforms, today’s announcement is huge for both about.me and their legions of users. Plus, for attendees of Disrupt NYC this week, the company is celebrating the news by having a professional photographer on hand to help create free killer profile pics. Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. About.me collects a user’s various online identifies and puts them in a single (and beautiful) location. Think of it a splash page for your identity online. Instead of directing people to various locations like LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram, the idea is to just send them to your about.me page, which neatly collates the rest of your accounts. Here’s mine . I think it’s lovely and only took about five minutes to make. Today’s news makes the first time that about.me has opened up for outside development. Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young launched the company in 2010, which was then acquired by AOL, TechCrunch’s parent company, a mere four days later . Since then, the company had reserved its API for internal use only. The company foresees its API to be used as an alternative to the traditionally painful task of creating user profiles. For example, if a particular service implements this system, with just one click, the profile will be created automatically from pulling the info from about.me. With the SDK, platforms can add their badge to about.me’s profile pages. As about.me’s Ryan Fuiji explained to me at Disrupt, Smarterer, a launch partner, will integrate test scores on the about.me badge and Kred will display their influence data as well. But there’s still a fundamental problem with the gorgeous about.me layouts: A lot of potential users might not have access to a high-quality user profile images. I only have the one. Thankfully it shows my good side. However, for attendees of Disrupt NYC 2012, about.me is here to help. The company hired a professional photographer that will be around the show Monday through Wednesday. Stop by and get a great looking pic for your about.me profile page.

Personalization Is Not A Feature

bestcbstore — Sat, 19 May 2012 11:00:56 +0000

Editor’s note: Scott Brave is the CTO and co-founder, Baynote . We’ve all watched from the sidelines as companies have come out in a burst of glory, and then, two years later, spent their venture capital, lost their user base, and failed to monetize. This begs the question – what are the factors that drive a company’s survival, differentiate it, and ultimately make it a winner? In today’s online world, personalization is increasingly making or breaking companies. The companies that win are the ones making personalization a key company value – not just a feature. In the early days of the web, consumers were happy just to gain access to information. However, as technology became more sophisticated, and as more consumers and companies came online, we quickly moved out of the access age and into a state of information overload, often leaving consumers frustrated and confused. Companies that helped consumers cut through the clutter to reveal relevant information had a critical and sustainable competitive advantage in their respective areas. The concept of relevance is critical to the success of Google, for example. Personalization is not new. Popularized by Amazon and Netflix more than a decade ago, personalization is the practice of tailoring information to people based on what they are looking for, what they have found interesting in the past, what their friends have engaged with, or based on explicit inputs like their interests. Personalization has gotten a lot of positive attention recently because it can be used to great effect to organize the web’s information overflow into relevant, meaningful experiences. Winning companies approach personalization as a core value of how they do business – a “customer-centric” philosophy – rather than an add-on “feature.” As proof, here are some examples of companies that have built their businesses around personalization and the competition that they left in their wake. News: Flipboard vs. Yahoo! News In 2001, Yahoo! launched Yahoo! News , providing a repository for news articles that became the first-ever most-emailed page on the web. However, Yahoo! News neglected to treat personalization as a core value – and in so doing missed out on the opportunity to tap into the social graph of personal information to personalize and curate content for users based on their interests. With Yahoo! treating personalization as a feature and not a core value, by 2010, consumers moved on to new, more personalized content curation services that were specifically designed for consuming media. One example of such a personalized news source is Flipboard , which works across Apple devices, and allows users to “flip” through their social networking feeds and feeds from partner websites to find the news articles that are most interesting to them. Within a year of its founding, Flipboard had amassed a $200 million valuation. Today, the company’s valuation and user base continues to skyrocket, while Yahoo!’s continues to hemorrhage. Flipboard won because it applied personalization to consumer choice for news articles that other news providers hadn’t accounted for, sparking the beginning of the content curation boom. Interestingly, Yahoo! recently announced plans to eliminate many of its online properties in order to focus on its most popular ones and make the content on those sites personalized to the user. It seems Yahoo! has finally caught on to the fact that users like personalized content and will engage with brands and services that provide content tailored to their interests. Music: Pandora vs. Internet radio This example seems counter-intuitive – wouldn’t people want to listen to their favorite radio station online? This just never took off. Why? Internet radio contained way too much content – it wasn’t focused or specific enough. Consumers had to work too hard to find the music they liked. Once consumers were introduced to a better way to curate and listen to music, they were never going back. When Pandora allowed users to input their music preferences through both explicit selections and implicit actions to help shape their content stream, it changed the listening experience. Pandora made listening to music online personal. After Pandora, just listening to the radio online seemed like a waste of time. Dining: Alfred (Google) vs. Opentable OpenTable provides a free service that lets users make reservations online. The company first came on the scene in 1998, and has steadily built up its business – today over 25,000 restaurants are signed up with the service. While OpenTable provides restaurant recommendations along the side of the screen based on location, it is a feature rather than being core to the experience. Alfred, on the other hand, is a mobile app developed by Clever Sense (purchased by Google in December) that delivers dining recommendations based exclusively on your inputs and your Facebook check-ins and profile. By offering recommendations for restaurants that are personalized to consumer’s inputs and behavior Google could become a leading provider of time-critical dining data, and a big player in the multi-billion dollar restaurant industry. These examples have all shown how companies that embrace personalization as a core value, and not just a feature can win. In today’s consumer-driven society companies that don’t pay attention to what people want most at any given moment risk losing significant market share to competitors that have built a culture around delighting customers with a highly personalized experience at every turn.

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Personalization Is Not A Feature

Real Tech Alert: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 Ready For Takeoff To International Space Station

blogger — Sat, 19 May 2012 10:41:42 +0000

Watch live streaming video from spaceflightnow at livestream.com SpaceX , the private space exploration company founded by PalPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk , is ready to boldly go where no private company has legitimately attempted to go before: The International Space Station . (Live video of the rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida is embedded above.) In just a few hours at 1:55am Pacific Time (which is 4:55am Eastern time) Saturday morning, SpaceX will attempt to make the first ever privately-funded launch to head to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch will be made with its Falcon 9 rocket, which is set to deploy its Dragon capsule . As SpaceFlightNow has very clearly reported , this is a risky and unique proposition in many ways: “SpaceX aims to launch its privately-built Dragon capsule Saturday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, fly the craft to the International Space Station, and deftly approach the complex for astronauts to grab the free-flying satellite with a robot arm. It is the first time a private company has attempted such a feat.” Obviously it is a super ambitious and expensive endeavor, but the SpaceX company is very keen to remind people that this is still an experiment. After all, this is the first time that a non-government US entity has made a move to land on the International Space Station . As SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceFlight Now: “We know this has been touted as a huge mission. We keep trying to say it’s a test. Nonetheless, it’s a big job.” The company has repeatedly emphasized to the press that this is “just a test flight.” Indeed, it is possible that we could watch the Falcon 9 go down in flames. But of course, the smart people at SpaceX have clearly taken great care to make sure that is not the case here on Saturday’s launch. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see to be sure — and the high stakes are a part of the excitement of it all. In a slightly larger lens, there is the hope that some of the newly-minted Facebook affiliated folks who acquired millions on Friday will opt to invest in projects that are nearly as interesting as Elon Musk’s endeavors. One can dream, at least.

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Real Tech Alert: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Falcon 9 Ready For Takeoff To International Space Station

The Google AdSense Killer And 3 Other Ways Facebook Could Make A Lot More Money

admin2 — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:11:49 +0000

Tiny sidebar and news feed ads aren’t going to cut it. If Facebook wants to live up to a $104 billion valuation it will need bold new revenue streams. An offsite ad network, big glossy news feed ads, or and payments for physical goods are a few ways it could boost its average revenue per user far beyond the puny $4.34 a year it earns today. Facebook has a tough decision to make now that’s going public . It will have to strike a new balance between the good of its users, advertisers, app developers, and investors. If it refuses to explore new business models, its share price could sink. But if it strays too far in favor of making money, Facebook could lose its addictiveness and the faith of its users. Here’s the four aces Mark Zuckerberg could have up his sleeve. The AdSense Killer Most ads suck because most advertisers don’t know much about who you are. But Facebook does. What if any website could use everything Facebook knows about you to show you ads you’d want to click? Well, those sites would pay Facebook a lot of money. They also might use Facebook to replace Google AdSense, the current leader amongst ad networks, which analyzes a site and automatically displays relevant ads. Facebook’s ad network essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions. Facebook has denied this product is in the works whenever it’s been asked, but last week it revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its user while they’re outside of Facebook.com. There’d be little reason to do this if something wasn’t in the works. The march across the web of its other social plugins such as the Like button have also paved the way for an ad network plugin. It might need to develop or acquire a company with expertise in analyzing site content so it could serve somewhat relevant ads to site visitors who aren’t logged in to Facebook. The biggest obstacle, and likely the reason Facebook hasn’t already launched an offsite ad network, is that the world might not be ready. People are already skittish about Facebook using all their personal data to target them with ads when they’re on its site. Even though Facebook wouldn’t technically be “tracking” user web browsing history to power ad targeting, seeing offsite ads targeted from their onsite data might cause some people to have an all-out privacy meltdown. But if it worked, the ad network could double or triple Facebook’s ad revenue. PayBook Facebook has its own virtual currency called Credits that’s typically used to let gamers make in-game purchases like powerups, clothing for their characters, and of course, cows for their farms. Users buy the Credits for $0.10 each, and when they spend them Facebook gives 70% to the game’s developer and keeps the other 30%. These in-game payments are a healthy business for Facebook, and they’ve made game developers like Zynga rich because creating and selling virtual goods is cheap. The problem is that the 30% tax is too high to for people to sell physical goods for Credits. And while Apple also charges 30% to sell music, games, and in-app purchases through iTunes and its App Store, it has a tight grip on the digital media market. Facebook allows media sales with Credits, but only a few developers and content producers are experimenting with it as the tax is prohibitive. But if Facebook wanted to get serious about making money on payments, it could reduce its 30% tax for digital media and physical goods . In fact, its S-1 filing to IPO noted that “In the future, if we extend Payments outside of games, the percentage fee we receive from developers may vary.” That could turn Facebook into a competitor to Amazon for the huge market of physical goods, and pit it against Apple, Google, and Amazon for selling music, films, and more. The real power of Facebook Payments comes in its tie in with Facebook Connect. Together they could one day let you make a purchase and fill in your shipping info anywhere on the web with just a click or two. Before privacy fear-mongers in the media and congress made Facebook retreat, the social network briefly allowed apps to ask for your home address , aka your shipping address. Eventually Facebook will bring this back. Then this frictionless purchase system could increase conversion rates for ecommerce stores enough that they’d gladly implement Facebook Payments and Connet… Charging For Apps For Your Identity There were over 550,000 apps and integrated websites on the Facebook platform as of a few years ago. Many rely on Facebook’s identity system to replace or provide an easier alternative to signing up for an app-specific account complete with another password to remember and profile to fill out. This service saves app developers from having to build their own identity system, and primes users for social sharing that can drive crucial referral traffic to apps. Could Facebook convince some of the developers to pay either a subscription or per-user fee? Yes, but the price would have to be steep to make it a serious revenue stream. If it got 300,000 apps paying $100 a month each it’d still only be make $360 million a year. $100 a month could be a bargain for popular apps, but it might discourage smaller developers from signing on. Meanwhile a per user fee would disincentivize growth, and force apps that suddenly get popular to abandon Facebook’s identity platform. Charging for identity has potential, but it could also backfire and send developers fleeing to Twitter and Google’s free identity systems. That’s a huge problem because Facebook relies on third-party apps to contribute content to its news feed which Facebook monetizes with ads. So instead I think Facebook’s best bet to boost revenue in the short-term is… Big, Glossy News Feed Ads Advertisers don’t want to have their message crammed into the little sidebar ad boxes. And while they’re happy to have their ads made social as Sponsored Stories and injected into the news feed everyone reads, they also want less subtle marketing options. Facebook is trying to be flexible with the launch of Reach Generator and the big logout page ad unit , but advertisers want a louder marketing channel within the core Facebook experience. But beyond advertisers and investors looking to make a quick buck, nobody wants to see more ads on Facebook. So the trick is for Facebook to make ads seem like content instead. Content we actually want to consume. Tiny boxes don’t do that, but large, high-impact full screen or near-full screen ads could. Flipboard and some other mobile apps have been experimenting with these big, glossy ad formats in their mobile apps. Imagine scrolling down your news feed on the web or mobile and when you got to where there’d be a “More” button or fold (if Facebook didn’t have infinite scrolling), you’d see a large or full-screen ad. You could scroll right over it, or Facebook could make it snap into place for a second before you were free to move on. These ads could be clicked to open an advertiser’s presence on Facebook such as their Page or App, or to open the buyer’s website. Facebook could even require the ads to be social, essentially creating a glossy Sponsored Story format that could only reach you if you Liked the advertiser’s Page or your friends had interacted with or Liked the brand. As Facebook’s user base is quickly shifting to mobile where it only shows a few Sponsored Stories ads a day rather than multiple ads per page on the web, glossy ads could let Facebook make more money on mobile without having to show ads too frequently. Users might complain at first, and it could make people slightly less likely to visit the news feed. Still, Facebook could watch the data and manage rate limits to show these glossy ads only occasionally, and less often to users who immediately leave the site or app when they see them. The fact is that Facebook is responsible to its outside shareholders, even if they don’t have enough voting rights to forcibly change the company’s course. If investors are smart, they won’t grumble if Facebook doesn’t immediately flood the site and the rest of the web with ads, payments, and subscription fees. Facebook got us all to connect. Now its biggest challenge is to remain cool while making more money. If Facebook expands its revenue streams slow and steady, it will have an ocean of users to draw from for years to come. – More Big Facebook News Facebook Will Have The Biggest Tech IPO Ever, Raising $16 Billion With $38 Share Price Here’s What Could Kill Facebook Zuckerberg Will Ring In Facebook IPO From Menlo Park HQ On Friday

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The Google AdSense Killer And 3 Other Ways Facebook Could Make A Lot More Money

HP’s Stock Price Is Climbing Amid Massive Layoff Rumors

bestcbstore — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:03:20 +0000

HP is reportedly going to be announcing massive layoffs next Wednesday. Conflicting reports state somewhere between 25K and 30K jobs, between 7% and 8% of HP’s global workforce, could be eliminated in an effort to absorb losses from decreasing demand for the company’s products and services. The cuts could happen over the next year, rather than a mass layoff, according to AllThingsD who also state that the total number is still undecided. Wall Street is reacting positively to the news. HP’s stock price dropped shortly after the news but quickly recovered and started climbing with word of the restructuring. During the writing of this post, the stock price dropped slightly but is still up for the day. If true, this is the latest of new CEO Meg Whitman’s drastic changes within HP. When she took over for Leo Apotheker, she nearly immediately announced that HP would not spin-off its PC division, the Personal Systems Group, as Apotheker once considered. Instead, Whitman’s team combined the PSG with the profitable Imaging and Printing Group. The layoffs will reportedly be announced alongside HP’s quarterly earnings. Whitman will, at least per AllThingsD, deem the layoffs as necessary to make much-needed investments. Rather than just cutting people, the company will cut its workforce and then reinvest across the company. This comes as HP is struggling to regain its dominant position in the PC and services world. While still on top per the numbers , competitors, including Apple, are racing forward with hot products. This is something that Whitman previously acknowledged to the company, predicting that Apple might surpass HP this year, but 2013 will be the year HP employees can once again celebrate — except for the 30K about to get pink slipped.

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HP’s Stock Price Is Climbing Amid Massive Layoff Rumors

Americans Now Spend More Time On Facebook Mobile Than Its Website

blogger — Sat, 12 May 2012 11:46:07 +0000

All those minutes reading your news feed in bed, messaging friends over lunch, and browsing photos on the bus really add up. Time spent on Facebook’s mobile site and apps per month (441 minutes) has finally surpassed usage of its classic website (391 minutes) — for Americans who use both Facebook interfaces according to the latest report from comScore . And that’s actually a big problem for the social network. Facebook usually shows four to seven ads per page on its website, but only a few ads per day in its mobile news feed. That means it makes a lot less money when you visit from your little devices. In fact, this week Facebook had to warn potential investors in its IPO that the more people who access it from mobile instead of the web, the worse its business is doing. Can Facebook get away with showing more ads on mobile without turning us off? Way back when Facebook launched in 2004 it was just a website, and it hardly showed ads at all. Over the years it launched a special mobile website called m.facebook.com, and apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and just about any device you can think of. At first these smaller interfaces were just a way to glimpse Facebook while away from home. But as our phones grew more powerful and Facebook’s apps got better, we could help but friend, chat, and Like no matter where we were. Now there’s 78 million Americans age eighteen and older who use Facebook mobile, and they spend 7.3 hours per month there on average, compared to the total 160 million Americans who use Facebook and spend an average of 6.5 hours on its website per month. That’s a big shift from when the web was king. Facebook realized it had to start making money on mobile, but people hate traditional mobile ads. CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t want annoying banners that took up most of your Facebook screen. so Facebook’s solution was mobile Sponsored Stories –stories in your news feed that could appear there anyway, but that companies pay to have appear more prominently and frequently. First showing up in March, these ads are marked “Sponsored, and could be about a friend Liking a company’s Page, a game your friend started playing, or a post by a Page you already Like. Seeing them occasionally isn’t bad, but if Facebook shows too many it could make people angry and less likely to visit. Now Facebook must walk the tightrope. Inject too many ads in the mobile news feed and people will stop visiting, inject too few and it will lose money. No pressure, there’s just a half a billion mobile users watching.

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Americans Now Spend More Time On Facebook Mobile Than Its Website

iOS 6 “Sundance” And The Sunsetting Of Google Maps

jos — Sat, 12 May 2012 02:56:23 +0000

For Google Maps, winter is coming. Potentially. As you’ve undoubtedly seen by now, with the upcoming iOS 6 software, Apple intends to replace the Google Maps aspect of their default Maps application with their own, in-house version. Mark Gurman of 9to5 Mac was the first to report this news , and dives into more of the detail behind it, including the 3D aspect. John Paczkowski of AllThingsD confirmed the change. And after talking to my own source, I can beat the dead horse in confirming the switch. I’ve also heard a little bit more. First of all, iOS 6, which is expected to be shown off in developer preview form at WWDC in June, is internally codenamed “Sundance”. Second, while Paczkowski’s source said the new maps functionality will “blow your head off”, I’ve been told that’s a bit of hyperbole (you think?). Specifically, while the 3D functionality is cool, it’s also not something people are going to use regularly. Think of it like Google Street View — cool, but how often do you actually use it when compared to the regular Google Maps product? (Having said that, I still expect Apple’s 3D maps to be cooler than Google Street View.) More interesting to me is the implication of this switch. Let’s assume that alongside this change, Apple will also be replacing the default hooks in the iOS SDK that currently use Google Maps. This is a big deal for third party developers. While some choose to use other maps APIs (like Bing Maps, for example), the vast majority go with Google Maps because it’s baked right in and easy to hook up. If that changes… Consider Foursquare. They recently made headlines when they switched away from Google Maps on their website. At the same time, they made a point of saying they weren’t switching away from Google Maps on their mobile applications (where maps are obviously the most important). Why not? Again, because Google Maps are standard in both the iOS and Android SDKs. More importantly, unlike with the web, developers aren’t charged to use these maps on mobile. At least not yet. Google recently made the change to start charging high volume customers of the Google Maps API on the web. Hence, the Foursquare switch, and several others larger customers are now either switching or considering switching. My guess would be that because of iOS, Apple may be the largest user of the Google Maps API right now. It’s not clear if Google charges Apple for this or not. Or if they’re about to start, as they have with other third-parties. But it doesn’t matter. Apple can afford any charge Google throws their way, and would undoubtedly pay it if they thought it was worth it to ensure iOS remains the best mobile platform out there. This move away from Google Maps is more about controlling essential technology, as John Gruber points out today. But the side effect of such a switch could seriously harm Google Maps as the de-facto mapping service. Again, because of their very nature, maps are most vital for mobile usage. And if Apple not only pulls iOS out, but takes millions of developers with them, Google Maps could suddenly go from behemoth to vulnerable. (Which makes their decision to start charging large customers all the more dumbfounding — this cannot be a huge source of revenue for Google, no matter the scale.) Of course, Apple will have to ensure that their mapping product is flawless, or developers will choose to go with Google Maps anyway (assuming that’s still an option — even if it’s slightly more complicated). But given what’s now leaking out about the product, it would seem that after years of work, Apple is finally ready to take on the mapping challenge. And this may be even more problematic for Google than it seems on the surface. As a quick aside, while there’s not much other iOS 6 information floating around out there right now, there have been whispers backing up Gruber’s assertion that Siri APIs are another possibility. There have also been whispers about Siri for iPad finally coming. Specifically, I’ve been led to believe it’s more of a UI issue than anything else. After all, Apple is using the technology for the Dictation functionality found on the new iPad. They’ve just been working on what Siri for iPad will look like , I’ve been led to believe. As we’ve seen the past few days, new iCloud functionality should be a key part of iOS 6 as well. And more deep ties into the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion should be revealed. There is also some chatter about iTunes 11. It has been a not-so-well-kept secret that Apple has been trying to completely re-write the software for a long time. There have been several false starts and scrapping of projects. It’s believed (but far from confirmed) that Apple may be zeroing in on the major revamp they’re after. And a part of that may be both Apple and the labels warming to a full-on Spotify competitor… Pure speculation at this point, but fun speculation. Update : To back-up the “Sundance” information, Nima Moayedi reminds us that Apple has a history of codenaming iOS builds after ski resorts. Sure enough … [image: 20th Century Fox]

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iOS 6 “Sundance” And The Sunsetting Of Google Maps