The Grey Lady Builds the Brand. You may have heard something about the death of print.
And The New York Times--the granddaddy of all dead-tree publications--is not exempt. Expenses are rising, Frank Rich is leaving, a paywall looms. Faced with the need to make more money, the the Times is venturing into what initially seems like un-Timesian territory: the Grey Lady is getting into the Groupon-like daily deals business, and has also been working with universities to promote New York Times online courses. The online courses have been in the works for a while; according to an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, this is now the Times's third year of such courses. But the venture has been evolving of late; this past fall, courses were created and taught by members of the newsroom. Can We Avoid Another Internet Bubble?: Tech News and Analysis « Launching the Om Says daily newsletter, our fearless leader noted that Silicon Valley is full of confusion right now.
The 10 Most Innovative Web Companies. 01 / Twitter >> For ballooning into a global phenomenon that, finally, has a business model.
In 2009, Twitter boasted some 20 million users. When Is a Tech Company Dead?: Tech News and Analysis « Last week, I had the chance to interview Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and many other game-changing companies.
Whether it was time spent with him, or the news that Oracle was shutting down Sun.com, I’ve been dwelling on a morbid thought: the death of a technology company. Not a day goes by when I don’t say or hear the following: Yahoo is dead.Microsoft is so dead.Nokia is dead. Upon hearing me say this time and again, my friend Pip Coburn, a veteran technology investor and author of The Change Function, asked me, “What do you mean by a company being ‘dead?’”
We had a long conversation, which he summed up in a newsletter to his clients. Microsoft and Toyota Use Cloud to Connect Cars, Homes and Users: Tech News and Analysis « Microsoft and Toyota are jointly investing $12 million in a bid to build a cloud-based platform that will connect cars, homes and electrical smart grids.
The joint venture, announced today, will be run out of Toyota Media Services and will leverage Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing service, creating a platform for mobility apps that can encompass communication, GPS, power management and safety. The companies see the partnership as a way to build next-generation telematics systems that can touch a wide array of end points and allow users to almost carry on conversations with their cars, their homes and the smart grid. The Art of Listening Online. Five years ago, in a small town on the east coast of Canada, the team behind Radian6 realized that businesses, big and small, would need a better way to engage with customers on the web.
They built a platform to facilitate customer relationships by listening first. Now you can monitor a brand online to understand whether a product is getting compliments or complaints, attracting fans or foes. Radian6 quickly grew to dominate this space, with clients including Dell, Microsoft, and General Electric. Spotify Shift Signals the End for Ad-Supported Music: Tech News and Analysis « Spotify, the popular, European, on-demand, music service, has gotten used to things going its way since it launched amid a blaze of publicity back in 2008: plaudits, awards and more than a million paying users.
Thursday, however, it took a bit of a beating after announcing plans to drastically limit the scope of its ad-supported free service. Originally, users could listen to an unlimited stream of music for free, as long as they didn’t mind it being supported by ads. A year ago, it rolled back a little, limiting the amount of free listening to 20 hours each month. Thursday, the company announced the free-to-use model is now cut further to 10 hours each month, and non-subscribers can only listen to a single track five times ever. Was It Google That Killed MySpace? : Tech News and Analysis « It’s been obvious for a long time that Myspace is on the ropes, suffering under a series of pummeling blows including an ever-changing executive lineup and slashing staff, to being put up for sale by owner Rupert Murdoch.
And the general consensus is that it has been knocked out by a combination of two interlinked factors: Its progress was slowed by dealings with its corporate parent News Corporation, which led to it being outmaneuvered by a younger, hungrier, smarter rival in Facebook. That’s the main thrust of this substantial and interesting profile of the company by Reuters reporter Yinka Adegoke. Zite delivers personalized news to your iPad. There are many, many newsreaders available for the iPad, but entrepreneur Ali Davar said his startup Zite is launching an iPad magazine with the content that’s most personalized to a reader’s needs an interests.
The obvious reference point here is Flipboard, the popular “social magazine” for the iPad that allows users to browse their social networking content and news in beautiful, magazine-style layout. Zite seems to combine a Flipboard-style reading experience with content personalization technology that has a similar aim to companies like Gravity and My6sense. Users can automatically create their personalized magazines by connecting either their Twitter or Google Reader accounts to the app. There are other startups looking at user behavior to deliver personalized news, but the ones I mentioned above aren’t delivering that content in the form of a slick iPad magazine.
Apple Reportedly Adjusts How Apps Are Ranked: Tech News and Analysis « Apple is apparently tweaking its App Store rankings to factor in more than pure download numbers, a welcome sign if true.
It could be an attempt to mimic what Google’s done with the Android Market which now appears to take into account daily and monthly engagement data, so this seems to be a case of Apple playing catch-up. According to Inside Mobile Apps, several ad network and pay-per-install executives have noticed a change with the App Store rankings, though it’s too early to say what these changes are based on. Peter Farago, vice president of Flurry, said it’s clear that Apple is using more than download numbers, which he welcomed because it spoke to the true popularity of an app. It’s possible that Apple is now factoring in ratings and daily use into its rankings, said Inside Mobile Apps. (Founder Stories) Joel Spolsky On Startups: “Have A Co-Founder Otherwise You’ll Go Insane” Dispatch from SXSW: Have Startups Become a Fetish? : Tech News and Analysis « Preparing for South by Southwest Interactive every year, I’m inundated with pitches for services (now they’re apps when they used to be social or merely web-based products) that are fun, sometimes useful and generally something I wouldn’t pay money for.
Since the magical breakout of Twitter in 2007 and the Foursquare success of 2009, SXSW has become more and more cluttered with startups trying to break out. Startup creates social marketplace for game “mods” Olympus Games has created a social marketplace for uploading and downloading user-generated modifications to games known as “mods.” Seattle-based Olympus Games says its Gmod market will let hardcore video game fans upload their own mods for popular games such as Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion or Portal. Mods often recast an environment for a game with a different art style or theme, or they provide new maps for multiplayer combat. Mozilla CEO: Firefox Faced Advertiser Backlash Over "Do Not Track" Feature. In January, Mozilla announced plans to add a "Do Not Track" feature to Firefox, a tool that would allow users to opt out from having advertisers and other sites track their web-surfing habits. As Mozilla has readily admitted, the feature is far from perfect: Backwardly, tracking companies would actually have to agree not to monitor a user's browsing patterns, even once he or she opts out.
However, according to Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs, that hasn't stopped the feature from ruffling the feathers of advertisers, who, despite serious public concerns over privacy, depend on personal user data to boost the value of their ads. InMobi Adds More Evidence That Android Is #Winning (With 37 Percent Mobile Ad Share) The evidence is mounting that Android phones are surging past the iPhone in terms of subscribers and now mobile ad impressions, at least in the U.S. A new report put out this morning by mobile ad network InMobi shows that mobile ad impressions on Android devices eclipsed Apple’s iOS devices in January, representing 37 percent of all U.S. mobile ad impressions on its network versus 23 percent for the iPhone.
Android’s share jumped a full 21 percentage points since InMobi’s last report in October, 2010. (Android actually passed the iPhone for the first time in December). The iPhone’s overall share of mobile ad impressions actually dropped 1.3 percent. Don’t Bet Big. Little Bets Are The Ones That Turn Into Billion-Dollar Ideas. Editor’s note: The following guest post is by bestselling author and former venture capitalist Peter Sims. His next book, from which some of this article is exclusively drawn, is Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. His last guest post for us was on how Google is becoming more like Microsoft. He can be found on Twitter @petersims. Pandora, Innovative Internet Radio Station, Files For $100M IPO. The Color Of Money. People. Colors. Apps. A Savvy Combination of Mobile and Facebook Virality Fuels Beluga’s Growth.
The End of the (Nokia) Raj: Tech News and Analysis « Zynga’s Big Gamble: Going Public Before Facebook Does: Tech News and Analysis « How Microsoft’s Nokia payoff could take apps global. Using Empathic Listening to Collaborate. Apple’s largest store yet coming to Grand Central Terminal. Apple is set to make New York City’s Grand Central Terminal even more of a chore to walk through. The company will build its next major Apple Store at the station, and the new store will have the honor of being Apple’s largest retail space in the world, several sites are reporting. Last week, the New York Observer and IFOAppleStore both reported that Apple was eying the space, and today Cult of Mac says it has confirmed the news via its own sources.
Behavioral advertising icon may provide online consumers with more privacy. There is a new industry program supported by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), and the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) to encourage more transparency with respect to behavioral advertising.
How Location-Based Services Changed Social Games in Asia. (Founder Stories) Fred Wilson On Frothy Valuations. What If Facebook Never Actually Does an IPO?: Tech News and Analysis « Safeguarding your company from poachers. Jibe’s Social Job Board Attracting More Than One Million Monthly Job Views. Yahoo's Latest Play at Growing a Media Empire: A New Sports Magazine. The Rise And Fall Of Yahoo: The Infographic. Back off SEC: Let’s Put the “Risk” of Secondary Markets in Perspective. Which Is The Most Capital Efficient Online Video Startup Of Them All? (Hint: Rocketboom) Is MyLife the biggest social site you’ve never heard of? App Stores At War As GetJar Bans Opera Mini: “We All Have To Make A Living” Mobile World Congress: 5 Trends to Watch: Tech News and Analysis « Apple, Please Hurry Up And Ship Those iPhones To Verizon Already. Embedly Pro Lets Your App Embed Content From Any Link. Newspapers Try to Reimpose Scarcity on News With Ongo: Tech News and Analysis «
Storify Gets Funding From Khosla Ventures to Reinvent Media Online: Tech News and Analysis « Does Google's Magazine Make It a Media Company? Social Networking: The Future. Skyara attracts do-gooder activity guides. The Holidays Kick Up Growth on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Apps by DAU. Social Networking: The Past. Sony’s Home virtual world hits 17M users and finds a business model in virtual goods. Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2011. Co-working space General Assembly gives NYC startups a home. Greystripe partners with MNI for local mobile ads. With anti-Zynga strategy, Kabam raises $30M for social games. Zynga’s Reported $7-$10 Billion Valuation Surpasses That Of EA. Groupon shakes up board with Starbucks CEO. Fight Between AOL's About.me and Flavors.me Founders Is the New Zuckerberg vs. Winklevoss.
How Zynga Defused Its FarmVille Time-Bomb. Netflix confirms deal to launch Kevin Spacey series via video streaming. 7 ways to help your games go viral on Facebook. Features - Where Games Go To Sleep: The Game Preservation Crisis, Part 3.