vendredi 2 mars 2012
Foursquare’s Inflection Point: People Using The App, But Not Checking In
This year, he said the number of business cards he was handed was “like this,” making a big C-shape with his index finger and thumb. Why the change? “I think we are one of a handful of companies that builds products that would actually encourage people to upgrade their devices,” he said. That’s an important fact to remember as smartphone penetration continues to grow and takeup slows down, specifically in the developed markets where Foursquare has most made its mark.
That growth in reputation has been matched by a growth in Foursquare’s business: the company has tripled its numbers in the last year, going from “around five million” to more than 15 million, Crowley said.
That’s something that is impressing investors, too — with news that Spark Capital is reportedly buying up employee stock. But perhaps more interesting, he says, is that the company is starting to notice a marked change in behavior:
“People are using the app, but they’re not checking in,” he told me. “I asked myself: did we break something? But in fact, it’s because people are using Foursquare to look for where their friends are, to find things, and as a recommendation service. It’s almost like it doesn’t occur to them to check in.”
Crowley compares this to the moment on Twitter in 2009 when the service suddenly shifted gears, and it was not about the number of people tweeting but about how many are reading those tweets.
“When you start, you are so focused on engagement,” he said. “Then you hit this point when you are big enough and say there is something awesome going on anyway. At some point you look and say, oh wow, the consumption model is actually taking off.”
That seems to fit well with Crowley’s vision of how Foursquare is going to grow in the near future.
Some social media sites like Facebook have made a big effort to net in members using whatever means possible — so, for example, you get pared-down Facebook experiences delivered on some of the most basic phones around.
But Foursquare seems to be more interested in behavior than the scale: “We want to change experiences,” he said. The best way to do that, Crowley added, is to use maps, access to GPS and the other sensors you have on smartphones. “We want people to use the stuff we build, and to do that you have to focus on the great things,” he said. “These are not toys; they are big defining features that are changing the tune on location services.”
That has so far taken the company to making apps for most major mobile platforms, and while some of those are seeing especially strong usage in particular markets — BlackBerry usage, he says, is highest in southeast Asia and Brazil — by far the most popular platform is iOS.
But that growth has only partially manifested in staffing: Foursquare has gone from 18 people eight months ago to 100 now, but some big holes remain. There is, for example, only one business development guy in Europe, Omid Ashtari, who apparently currently works out of Soho House in Shoreditch, London. But there are also some key engineers coming on board from Google and other places.
And, that growth is slowly but surely starting to emerge as monetization on the platform, too. Crowley says that so far there are already 750,000 merchants registered on its platform, and most of that growth has been viral, without a sales force driving it.
None of those merchants are being charged “yet”, but he said but he said Foursquare will probably start experimenting later this year with new features that will be charged.
He said he’s confident that there will be a market for this because there are already companies calling up asking what they should be budgeting for the services — even without them launched.
What will those features be? The kinds of tools you are already seeing around retail engagement, but with a Foursquare flavor: “We have enough check-in data to make some amazing stuff,” he said.
It sounds like the data will take the form of a kind of dashboard that would segment customers and popular items. Whether the connection to the Foursquare app makes either that data easier to collect, or more unique than what can already be gathered by the businesses themselves through their loyalty programs, is the big question.
But if it appears that Foursquare is becoming a more commercial network, one thing that Crowley says it won’t be in the near future is a way to pay for things. “It’s not something we are actively working on,” he said. “It’s the bottom of the funnel for us and if we did something it would probably be in partnership.”
That is probably a good thing, given how many other companies are piling in on mobile payments now, not just operators, but credit card companies, startups, and if you believe the WSJ today, big retailers like Target and Walmart.
But as a measure of how far he seems to be from this scene, he is pretty dismissive of NFC — a big topic this last week at MWC — and doesn’t see the point of a phone able to make a transaction if a credit card works just as well. “I prefer to find solutions to actual problems that exist.”
11:27 0
Apple Struggling to Sign Media Companies for Streaming TV Service [REPORT]
Citing unnamed sources, The New York Post says that media companies are unwilling to agree to Apple’s terms over content packages and pricing. “We decide the price, we decide what content” is Apple’s negotiating stance on the matter, says a source.
Little is known about the streaming service itself, which Apple has not confirmed that it is working on. It’s possible Apple is designing a service that would enable owners of iOS and Apple TV devices to purchase subscriptions to individual channels, similar to the way users can purchase subscriptions to newspapers and magazines via the Newsstand. Or Apple could bundle those channels together to create its own cable TV-like group subscription offering.
Currently, Apple allows users to purchase and download individual TV shows and movies through its iTunes Store. A streaming subscription service would accelerate users’ access to video content, and put Apple into more direct competition with the likes of Netflix and Hulu Plus, as well as cable TV providers.
Apple has had great success in cajoling the music industry to agree to licensing options on its terms — both with the iTunes Music Store and the iTunes Match service. The company has long struggled, however, to secure major deals with television and movie studios.
This struggle is not unique to Apple. In the past 12 months, increased competition in the subscription streaming space has shifted power from content distributors (i.e. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus) and to the content owners themselves. The net effect of this battle over content is that securing content deals is more expensive than ever.
Rumors indicate that Apple might be unveiling its next-generation Apple TV along with the iPad 3 at a press event on Mar. 7. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this rumored streaming service at that time.
Apple TV Imagined with Magnificent Curved Screen
Slightly iMac Look
From the front, it looks a bit like a conventional TV or all-in one Mac
Curved screen
But look at it from the side. Ooh-la-la.
Top view of the voluptuous curve
Will this affect the viewing angles from the side?
Imagined Siri implementation
If Siri got to know you well enough, maybe she could suggest a TV show according to the time of day, or maybe even your mood.
FaceTime implementation
Video
chat at the same time you're watching a TV show? Might be occasionally
useful. Take a look at my post written below, for a few opinions and
ideas about this design.
10:17 0
Hackers Will Replace Terrorists as Top Threat, Says FBI
FBI Director Robert Mueller warned a group of cybersecurity experts on Thursday that online attacks will replace terrorism as the most serious threat facing the U.S., according to The Associated Press.
Mueller pressed private businesses and Internet security firms to secure American digital infrastructure from rogue hackers and attacks sponsored by foreign governments.
“We are losing data, we are losing money, we are losing ideas and we are losing innovation,” Mueller said at the RSA Digital Security Conference in San Francisco. “Together we must find a way to stop the bleeding.”
Counterterrorism is still the FBI’s top priority, but the agency is working to better equip itself against online attacks. Trained cyber defense divisions are now in every FBI field office. They’re watching for all kinds of digital crimes — such as mortgage fraud, terrorist recruitment drives and Internet attacks.
Two competing bills both call for beefing up the security of government networks and increasing the amount of cybersecurity information-sharing done between government and private businesses.
The bills differ, however, on whether or not the Department of Homeland Security should be allowed to set cybersecurity standards which private companies must meet. A bill sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), gives that power to the DHS, while the other bill, backed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and five other Republican senators, does not.
10:07 0
Twitter Surrenders One User’s Data to Police Investigation
The district attorney of Suffolk County had subpoenaed Twitter in December, requesting “all available subscriber information” for @p0isAn0N, @OccupyBoston, #BostonPD and #d0xcak. The subpoena also included the name Guido Fawkes, which is associated with the @p0isAn0n account.
On December 28, after the subpoena was issued, @p0isAn0n tweeted: “Haha. Boston PD submitted to Twitter for my information. Lololol? For what? Posting info pulled from public domains? #comeatmebro.”
Twitter spokesman Matt Graves told Boston.com that @p0isAn0n is the only account for which Twitter ultimately provided any information, and he declined to comment when the website asked about how Twitter dealt with the request for information related to the Occupy Boston account.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was among the most public opponents of the subpoena, and it challenged the measure in court. All court proceedings and documents involved in that challenge were sealed.
A judge ruled last week against the challenge and Twitter complied with the decision, according to Boston.com.
“We continue to believe that our client has a constitutional right to speak, and to speak anonymously; and that this administrative subpoena both exceeded the scope of the administrative subpoena statute and infringed our client’s rights under the First Amendment,” ACLU lawyer Peter Krupp said in a statement Thursday. “With the turnover of these documents any subsequent review of these issues will be moot.”
Should Twitter be obligated to hand over information about its users to law enforcement? Do you see such requests as necessary to investigations or as attacks on free speech? Let us know in the comments.
09:58 0
Zynga Moves Beyond Facebook to Zynga.com
Zynga, the casual gaming company that accounted for 12 percent of
Facebook’s revenue in 2011, is starting its own gaming site at Zynga.com.
The first games to make the transition will be “CastleVille,” “Words With Friends,” “CityVille,” “Hidden Chronicles,” and “Zynga Poker” in early March.
On the new platform, gamers will be able to connect with other players outside their networks on Facebook, called “zFriends.” Other social features include real-time chat, and the ability to post achievements, or to send gifts and messages without leaving the game. The interface shows a running tally of the number of players currently online, as well as a stream of who’s playing what on the right side of the screen. No one on Facebook is particularly impressed by their friends’ casual gaming scores, so a separate environment where everyone who is there is there to play is Zynga’s best idea yet.
But this doesn’t mean that the company is severing its ties with Facebook. According to VentureBeat,
Zynga gets 90 percent of its revenue from the social network by
recruiting new players through Facebook Connect and collecting payments
through Facebook Credits. The company will continue to use Facebook
Credits as its virtual goods payment system on the new platform, even
though Credits takes a 30 percent cut of the profits.
Third-party developers will also be able to use Zynga’s platforms to publish games. It’s possible that Zynga could take an additional cut, but Zynga COO John Schappert told TechCrunch that terms with these developers were negotiated and private.
“We’ve been a web/game company delivering content to our players and developing our own internal infrastructure and technology. And now we’re transforming into a gaming and platform company,” Schappert told VentureBeat. “We’ve listened to our players, to what they want from social gaming. They want a place where they can play together, they want a place that curates and delivers the best new social games for them, where they’ll always have a friend to play with.”
The first games to make the transition will be “CastleVille,” “Words With Friends,” “CityVille,” “Hidden Chronicles,” and “Zynga Poker” in early March.
On the new platform, gamers will be able to connect with other players outside their networks on Facebook, called “zFriends.” Other social features include real-time chat, and the ability to post achievements, or to send gifts and messages without leaving the game. The interface shows a running tally of the number of players currently online, as well as a stream of who’s playing what on the right side of the screen. No one on Facebook is particularly impressed by their friends’ casual gaming scores, so a separate environment where everyone who is there is there to play is Zynga’s best idea yet.
But this doesn’t mean that the company is severing its ties with Facebook. According to VentureBeat,
Zynga gets 90 percent of its revenue from the social network by
recruiting new players through Facebook Connect and collecting payments
through Facebook Credits. The company will continue to use Facebook
Credits as its virtual goods payment system on the new platform, even
though Credits takes a 30 percent cut of the profits.Third-party developers will also be able to use Zynga’s platforms to publish games. It’s possible that Zynga could take an additional cut, but Zynga COO John Schappert told TechCrunch that terms with these developers were negotiated and private.
“We’ve been a web/game company delivering content to our players and developing our own internal infrastructure and technology. And now we’re transforming into a gaming and platform company,” Schappert told VentureBeat. “We’ve listened to our players, to what they want from social gaming. They want a place where they can play together, they want a place that curates and delivers the best new social games for them, where they’ll always have a friend to play with.”
09:52 0
jeudi 1 mars 2012
Led By Social, Gaming Investment, M&A More Than Doubled In 2011; Consolidation Looms
Today, international investment firm Digi-Capital published its in-depth review of the global gaming space, giving us a sense of the size, breadth, and activity of the very international gaming market last year that is contributing to the changing behavior around virtual commerce — as well as a glimpse into what we can expect from the industry over the course of 2012.
For starters, Digi-Capital found that gaming investment and M&A more than doubled in 2011, as private placements grew by 96 percent to $2 billion, the number of transactions increased by 67 percent to 152, and the average fundraising round increased by 17 percent to $13 million. When combined with the enormous IPOs of Zynga and Nexon, investment value nearly quadrupled. All in all, gaming M&A volume grew 88 percent to 113 transactions, value grew 160 percent to $3.4 billion, and the average M&A deal size grew 38 percent to $30.4 million.
In terms of which gaming sectors saw the most investment and M&A activity in 2011? Unsurprisingly, social and casual games took home the bacon, making up 57 percent of private investment and 45 percent of M&A activity. Digi-Capital believes that Zynga’s IPO was likely the “high water mark for Social Games 1.0,” as the crowded nature of the space will make it increasingly difficult for companies to sustain user acquisition and retention.
In analyzing global gaming in terms of total daily active users and individual game daily active users, the investment firm found that a small number of companies are delivering on the promise of maintaining (and growing) their user bases, specifically referencing Wooga and King.com. However, with the trend beginning in 2011, this year will likely see continued consolidating M&A activity in gaming.
And just as we wrote in April last year, large, profitable Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean gaming companies will continue to look for M&A opportunities in North America, as gaming continues to explode across Asia. The same will be true for some of the big American gaming companies, but both suffer from a lack of local knowledge, and cross-pollination.
Going forward, Digi-Capital expects online and mobile games to significantly contribute to the growth of the international gaming market, with the total market reaching an estimated $82 billion by 2015, and online and mobile games taking 50 percent of that revenue. (Interestingly, it expects the pure console sector to be “flat to down” over that time.) What’s more, the report forecasts that Asia and Europe will take 87 percent of the revenues for online and mobile games, with China leading at 36 percent, followed by Europe at 20 percent, South Korea at 12 percent, and Japan at 10 percent.
That being said, Digi-Capital found that there is more demand for investment among high-growth gaming companies than there is supply, as “outside major investment deals, online and mobile games companies still find it challenging to find high quality investors, and traditional VCs are becoming increasingly selective.” The current trend among VCs, the report finds, is to go after later-stage deals, but there’s potential to change as the market changes and more people flock to mobile and social games.
All in all, it seems there are plenty of potential growth and consolidation opportunities across the gaming sectors, but there’s no doubt that mobile-social, online, and cross-platform games will continue to explode over the course of the coming year, and we can expect M&A and investment activity to increase as social gaming works toward consolidation and more mobile gaming companies rise into the spotlight.
07:28 0
Chrome Beta for Android Hacked, Works On More Devices
XDA-Developer lenny_kano has put together an .apk that should let you run the browser on any device running on an ARM v7 or higher chip -- so long as you're also running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
If you are, and you'd like to try out Chrome Beta, head over to this thread on XDA-Developers, download the .apk, and side-load it onto your device. Enjoy!
07:08 0
Google Updates Trio of Apps: Wallet, Authenticator, Google+
Google Wallet finds itself getting the most significant updates of the trio, but we're still mainly in bugfix territory here. A couple changes have been introduced to how the app handles address input, letting you using a longer address or a PO Box when setting up a prepaid card. Reward cards linked to the app should now see improvements with keeping their data synced-up. Most of us struggle to find one smartphone on which we can run Wallet, but for those of you with multiple NFC-capable phones, this release will better handle sharing your account on more than one handset.
Google Authenticator, letting your use your phone to securely log in to your Google account on public terminals, gets some unspecified bug fixes, but seeing as the whole point of this app is security, we'd treat this release with a little more seriousness than your standard bugfix update. To that end, Google+ also gets some minor, unspecified bug fixes, along with improvements to app stability.
All three Google apps are currently available in the Android Market.
06:14 0
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