Mark Pincus On Zynga’s Facebook Addiction: “We’ve Never Thought Of It In Terms Of Attachment (Or Detachment)”

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus took the stage today at D10, and of course because Facebook is all people can talk about after its IPO two weeks ago, he got asked and asked and asked again about Zynga’s “attachment to Facebook.”
“Zynga is very tied to Facebook,” Kara Swisher brought up immediately, describing the two stocks as “tethered together.” Indeed, Zynga makes up 15% of Facebook’s revenue, and Facebook makes up most of Zynga’s.
“They’re really important not just to us.” Pincus said, “Facebook is providing a new part of [the ecosystem's] stack, there is now a social stack and an app stack.” Pincus went on to describe the social graph as “magical” but expressed concern at Facebook’s pace of innovation on mobile, “On the web they’ve been really important with regards to distribution.”
Pincus called out for more mobile discovery options, and referred to Android and iOS as platforms that held just as much importance for the future of Zynga. “Discovery and the return path to apps still needs innovation on mobile,” he emphasized.
In order to address the lack of a unified place to discover apps of mobile, Pincus brought up that Zynga had aspirations to become this platform, aiding third parties in the distribution of social games, an ambition that Swisher compared to that of Xbox Live. But it’s sort of tough to become a platform while you’re still addicted to another.
Because Pincus didn’t clearly address how its reliance on Facebook for its primary revenue was being dealt with strategically inside Zynga, The Verge’s Josh Topolsky asked the CEO again about Facebook during Q&A, “How are you going to get detached from Facebook?” Topolsky said, “What is your actual strategy for being a business on your own?”
“We’ve never thought in terms of attachment or detachment,” Pincus responded, “We have a 90 to 10m rule, which means that if a platform can bring us 10m DAUs in 90 days then we invest at scale. Facebook met that rule and Android and iOS have the potential, he said.
“I think of it like the evolution of TV.” Pincus explained. “People wanted to watch TV but our desire to watch TV wasn’t created by the networks, it was a relationship between us and content. People have a latent interest in playing independent of the platform and we are willing go anywhere.”

11:13 by Robert dawne · 0

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.

10:09 by Robert dawne · 0

RIM CEO: We’re Not Leaving the Consumer Business

ORLANDO — Thorsten Heins, the CEO of Research In Motion, today clarified comments he made weeks ago about RIM refocusing on the enterprise market, saying the company was not leaving the consumer business behind.
Heins said what he meant was the company needed to eliminate some services the company was doing in-house, and instead achieve those consumer-based goals with partnerships rather than going it alone. While enterprise is still RIM’s core strength, Heins said the company would continue to market and sell devices and services to the consumer segment.
Heins also unequivocally contradicted reports that RIM was abandoning physical keyboards on phones, a traditional RIM strength. Saying BlackBerrys had the best physical keyboards on the planet, Heins 100% confirmed there will be a BlackBerry 10 device with a keyboard when the new platform debuts this fall.
He wouldn’t say whether or not there would be a new tablet when BlackBerry 10 devices arrive, but he did say that if RIM creates a new tablet, it would be marketed to enterprise customers first, with a consumer play later, if at all. Broadly, Heins sees tablets as an “on-ramp” to mobile computing.
Heins also spoke about his philosophies and RIM’s approach to the market.
“We spend a lot of time on who are we mostly talking to, who is the target customer,” he said. “The common denominator with all our customers is that they are striving to succeed.”
Heins said “success” didn’t necessarily mean in business. It could also be personal, but the main challenge that they all have is managing their relationships.

“What do I need to succeed?” Heins said RIM’s customers are asking. “How do I manage all these connections and communications channels? I’m creating them with relationships, but i’m now subject to them as well.”
To Heins, the answer to those questions is BlackBerry 10. Heins emphasized the benefits and abilities the new OS, which has “real-time” multitasking, with apps that don’t stop or pause when they’re in the background.
Between now and then, though, Heins provided little guidance for customers. He said RIM would continue to develop and support BlackBerry 7 (the OS on current RIM devices, except the PlayBook tablet), but he was unspecific when asked about what sort of upgrade path there might be for BB7 customers.
What do you think of Heins’s comments? Is it the right strategy, or does it need adjustment? Have your say in the comments.

12:37 by Robert dawne · 0

Yahoo Escalates Patent War With Facebook

Yahoo just took its war of lawsuits with Facebook to the next level, adding two more patent-infringement claims to the 10 it filed for back in March.
The company also accused Facebook of not having a good-faith belief in the counterclaim it filed almost a month ago.
“Today Yahoo! filed additional claims against Facebook in U.S. District Court related to two additional patents on which Facebook infringes,” Yahoo said in an emailed statement.
“As we have stated previously, Yahoo!’s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.”
In the face of the new claims, Facebook was more succinct: “We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions,” a Facebook spokesperson said, also in an emailed statement. “We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”
With the “erratic” dig, Facebook seems to be depicting Yahoo as the tech-company equivalent of a crotchety old man. Considering Yahoo specifically calls out Facebook for using recently acquired patents as the basis of its lawsuit — even though some of the patents in Yahoo’s claim were acquired as well — the image may well stick.

A quick recap: Shortly after appointing former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as CEO, Yahoo warned Facebook that the social network was infringing on its intellectual property — specifically, 10 patents that relate to Internet technologies.
It then went ahead and sued Facebook a few weeks later, becoming something of a tech-industry pariah in the process.
Facebook, rather than try to end the suit with a quick settlement, set out to arm itself for a retaliatory strike. The social network quickly acquired many patents from both IBM and Microsoft. Facebook also countersued Yahoo — saying that it, too, was guilty of patent infringement.
The whole affair would be funny if it wasn’t a symptom of a wider, all-out patent war. In the last year we’ve seen Apple, Google, Microsoft and a host of others sue the pants of each other, and a company that barely does anything can claim to hold a patent on the web itself.
So this latest salvo in the Facebook-Yahoo patent war likely won’t be the last. What’s your take on the ongoing dispute? Sound off in the comments.

10:32 by Robert dawne · 2

Sony Shakes Things Up Under New CEO, Reorganizes For The Post-PC Era

Sony enters a new era April 1st. On that day Kazuo Hirai will replace Sir Howard Stringer as Sony’s president and CEO. The challenges ahead are massive; Sony is facing a financial and organizational calamity. Sony is simply too big and has fallen too far and Hirai is tasked to bring Sony back to glory.
Sony just announced a new corporate organization that shows drastic change is underway. Under this strategy, dubbed One Sony, separate Sony divisions will share management, hopefully streamlining decisions and creating a more unified end-user experience that better utilizes Sony’s content offering. Sony under Stringer was an unwieldy multi-headed beast. Hirai is clearly trying to tighten the reins. It just might work and it has to work.
Prior to Stringer, Sony was led by Nobuyuki Idei who started feeding the hungry Sony machine. Under his watch Sony established Sony BMG Music Entertainment and purchased Hollywood’s Metro-Goldwyn Mayer studio in 2005. He entered into the joint mobile-phone venture with Ericsson. He was also the Sony exec that green-lighted the loveable, but still a bit strange, Aibo robotic dog.
Stringer was left with a bit of mess when he took over in the summer of 2005. At that time Sony was far from being just a consumer electronic company and majorly involved in nearly ever aspect of media creation and distribution. Now, in 2012, Sony’s once-mainstay TV division is drowning in red ink, the company just dissolved its partnership with Ericsson, and there is little, if any, compelling reason for a consumer to use one of Sony’s many media distribution platforms over Netflix, iTunes or Amazon.
Sony is simply not built for the current consumer electronics game. We’re entering into the age of digital appliances, a post-PC era if you will, and 15 years ago Sony would have been the top player. But now, in 2012, Apple and Samsung are the big kids on the playground; Sony is hiding under the slide doing his homework.
The PlayStation happens to be the one bright spot in Sony’s recent history. Sony’s incoming CEO, Kazuo, led that division for the last 5 years. There is hope, Sony fans.
Under the One Sony structure, Sony sees digital imaging, gaming and mobile devices to be the three cornerstones of its electronic business. Hirai himself will be in charge of Sony’s troubled HDTV division. The company will still pursue the medical technology field but what was separate medical-related divisions within Sony will be consolidated into one unit. Perhaps most promising though, Sony is appointing Kunimasas Suzuki, currently Executive Deputy President of Consumer Products. & Services Group, to be the officer in charge of unifying Sony products and creating a better user experience across the company’s entire product and network service line — something the company desperately needs. He is also in charge of Sony’s mobile business, showing that Hirai understands that going forward user experiences start in the mobile sector.
Sony of old is long gone. Sony will never be the same nimble company again. However, with the proper structure and leadership Sony might once again regain its swagger. Sony was once the shining example of user experience and hardware design done right. Sony needs to find its soul. If any company can properly battle Apple in the arena of consumer electronics, it’s Sony. After all, it’s Sony that Apple and Steve Jobs were aiming to dethrone 15 years ago.

09:18 by iliot Atlas · 0

DIY SEO Startup BrandYourself Has Nearly 6,000 Sign-Ups

BrandYourself made the famous startup pivot earlier this month, and now it’s sharing some data about the initial results.
The company started out as a way for people to control the impression they made online, both through search results and on social networks. It even recommended articles that you could read and share in your chosen subject area. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron says his team eventually realized that the approach was “too much,” and that “the one BIG thing people loved about us was helping them improve their search results.”
So the new version of BrandYourself pares away all the other features, focusing exclusively on your personal search results. In both cases, BrandYourself pitches itself as a more affordable, DIY alternative to a service like Reputation.com. Instead of hiring someone to improve your results and paying them thousands of dollars, you can just log in to the BrandYourself dashboard, submit the links that you want to show up more prominently in your results, and get recommendations on how to improve their placement (for example, it recommended that I connect my personal website to a BrandYourself profile page, and also include my name in the text of the website). BrandYourself also tracks whenever the rankings change. You can get free recommendations on three links — after that you have to pay for premium membership, with pricing that starts at $9.99 per month.
Ambron says the new version of BrandYourself launched on March 8, and that 5,870 people have signed up since then. And of those sign-ups, 154 of them became paying members.
Oh, and this isn’t a business win, but it’s nice recognition: BrandYourself won the Best Bootstrapped Startup award at the South by Southwest Startup Accelerator earlier this week.

11:30 by Robert dawne · 1

Microsoft Adds Former Symantec CEO And IBM Exec John Thompson To Board

Microsoft has added a new board member today—John W. Thompson, the chief executive officer of Virtual Instruments and former chairman and CEO of Symantec. This brings Microsoft’s board’s size to 10 members.
Thompson currently serves as CEO of Virtual Instruments, which offers products that ensure the performance and availability of applications deployed in virtualized and private cloud computing environments. Thompson also served as chairman and CEO of Symantec from 1999 to 2009, where he grew revenues from $600 million to over $6 billion. He stepped down as CEO of Symantec in 2009, and stepped down from Symantec’s board of directors in 2011.
Previously, Thompson held a number of executive positions at IBM, including sales, marketing, software development and general manager of IBM Americas. Thompson was also reportedly being considered as Commerce Secretary under the Obama Administration.
“John has extraordinary technology and business expertise, and we are delighted that he is joining Microsoft’s board of directors,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman.
In addition to Thompson, Microsoft’s board of directors consists of Gates, CEO Steve Ballmer; Dina Dublon, former chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase; Raymond Gilmartin, former chairman, president and CEO of Merck & Co. Inc.; Netflix founder and CEO Reed Hastings; Dr. Maria M. Klawe, president, Harvey Mudd College; David F. Marquardt, general partner at August Capital; Charles H. Noski, vice chairman of Bank of America Corp.; and Dr. Helmut G. W. Panke, former chairman of the board of management at BMW AG.
Symantec has had a complex relationship with Microsoft over the past, which makes Thompson’s appointment interesting. As described by ZDNet in 2007, Thompson has previously described Microsoft as a partner, ally and competitor to Symantec.

10:30 by Robert dawne · 0