Postabon, a website focused on helping users find local retail deals, has secured $1 million of a $1.5 million funding round led by Spark Capital, according to a regulatory filing. Todd Dagres of Spark has joined the Postabon board of directors.
The company was founded last year by Harvard students Stu Wall, John Buchanan and Shaneal Manek. Mashable suggested that Postabon is “Foursquare meets shopping” — based on its use of mobile geolocation technology. Its current offering focuses on the New York market, even though the company is technically headquartered in Cambridge. www.postabon.com
Google (GOOG) now lets users crunch public data with the snazzy data visualization tools it acquired when it bought Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation, the company announced today.
Public Data Explorer is a new product in Google Labs that lets users create interactive charts like the one shown below using data sets from the World Bank, the U.S. Census Bureau, and a handful of other agencies.
There isn't all that much data in there just yet, and the interface is fairly primitive, but this looks like it could be a useful tool going forward as more agencies' data is incorporated.
See Also:
Yesterday at the Belvedere Hotel the Manhattan DA auctioned off glitzy bracelets, watches and cuff links from the collections of two convicted Wall Street crooks. Benefits from the sale will got to victims of equities trader David Holzer and onetime Morgan Stanley boss Richard Garaventa. The former was sentenced to 15 years after stealing $15 million from friends, claiming he’d invest it. The latter took $2.5 million from his company and is serving two-six years. Both bought lots of jewelry.
New Yorkers showed up at the auction, cash in hand, with spending totaling a quarter of a million dollars. The highest selling item was a 3.12 carat diamond that went for $24,000. "It's worth a lot more," said its buyer, who purchased it for his wife. A gold Rolex adorned with diamonds went for $10,000 and the cheapest item, a pair of costume-jewelry cuff links, sold for just ten bucks. Buyers expressed sadness for the victims, but glee at their newly acquired jewelry. "I feel bad they lost out," Bob Kramisen told the Daily News. His wife chimed in, saying she planned to flaunt her bling. "They're not for the safety deposit box," she said.
CBS Finds Personalized Online Video Ad Insertions Nets 95% Completion Rates; network says personalized ads fare up to 15 percent better that regular mid-roll ads. (Beet.tv)
Hulu to Offer NFL Content; partnership with NFL gives Hulu viewers access to award winning shows containing historical game footage. (emailed release)
Panasonic Ties With Best Buy for 3D TV Promotion; CE maker hopes to sell 500,000 3D TVs in the U.S. this year. (Reuters)
Uneasy Alliance Between Canvas and Manufacturers; U.K.’s Project Canvas has named Cisco, Humax and Technicolor as manufacturers for its connected TV platform, but tensions with major industry players remain. (Broadband TV News)
Over 4.5 Million Choose Terra for Olympic Coverage; audience in Latin America tuned in through Terra’s 15 online channels, watching an total of 16 million streams. (emailed release)
Blockbuster Won’t Survive: CEO Says “Conservative Approach” Required For Digital; Dan Rayburn listened in on Blockbuster’s earnings call, now believes the video chain is doomed. (BusinessofVideo.com)
OpenFeint says that as a result of its Free Game of the Day promotion generating more than 5 million iPhone game downloads, it is launching a new website in hopes of future expansion. The site is designed to push shoppers towards a variety of games, and provides an alternative to searching through the App Store. The site highlights a new app every day and also lets users browse through previously featured ones....
Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), one of the largest and most successful online gaming companies of all time, has launched its first Facebook game, entitled PoxNora. PoxNora was previously available for play at PoxNora.com, and was hugely successful. The game was in fact acquired by SOE in January 2009, and has accumulated 2.5 million registered accounts so far. The game is a turn-based strategy game and collectable card game set in a fantasy universe. Sony also announced that they will “follow this inaugural Facebook launch of PoxNora with additional games for the Facebook platform based on both existing franchises and new intellectual property”.
Read the rest of this entry on Social Times »
PlumWillow, a to-be-launched social shopping site betting that teens will skip the mall for online—as long as online shopping is social enough—has raised a seed round led by Crossbar Capital. The site promises to “empower its members to shop together with friends, make wardrobe choices from multiple brands, design their own outfits, customize an avatar and share these choices through their social networks.”
That sounds part Fashion Playtes (which lets tweens design their own clothes and has raised $1.5 million of its own) and part ThisNext (which lets users build profile pages with their recommended purchases).
PlumWillow CEO Scott Stone’s catchy quote in the release: “Ninety-five percent of apparel bought today by teens is purchased from stores, in large part, that’s because the online shopping experience today is like the mall was 30 years ago—boring.” The site is “coming soon.”
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Chatroulette, the creepy video chat site, is drawing investment interest from heavy hitters including Google, Yuri Milner of DST, Skype, and Yandex, Google's Russian rival, Der Spiegel reports.
The product of 17-year-old Russian, Andrey Ternovski, Chatroulette has gone from 500 users in December to 1.5 million on a daily basis, says Der Spiegel.
See Also:
While everyone in Hollywood was busy preparing for last night's celebrity prom, a 3D movie was quietly having the best March opening weekend ever. Sure it was on IMAX screens so every ticket cost $40, but it's still impressive.
1) Alice in Wonderland — $116.3 million
Yes, one hundred and sixteen million. That's a lotta millions! What this basically means is that those of you who were desperately hoping that this whole 3D renaissance would be a crazy and passing fad are unfortunately going to have to suffer and endure for a bit longer, because that shit is eminently bankable right now. People love to think that the stuff on the screen is coming at them. Just love it. The question for Alice is now whether or not it will hold on and continue dominating with good word of mouth and all that. Everyone I know who saw it said it was dumb and bad, but everyone I know is a jerk. So what did you think, lowly reader? Did you shuffle off sadly to your local rundown cineplex and wheezily say "Ticket for one, please" and then chomp greasily on popcorn and vaguely, whiningly delight as Alice and all her friends Came Right At You? What's that? You went with friends or on a date and are fabulously good looking and had a fabulously good looking time? Well, I guess people I don't know are jerks too.
2) Brooklyn's Finest — $13.5 million
What do you think? Was it the Richard Gere appeal? Ethan Hawke? Wesley Snipes?? Something about this movie was attractive to people and I just don't think it could be the plot. What was the plot, even? The movie basically should have been called We Own the Yards of Pride & Glory because it is the same exact thing as every other movie in this new-ish Gritty Cop Movies About Family and Honor genre that's been kicking around inexplicably for a few years now. The individual movies aren't bad, it's just that they are all the same movie, over and over and over again. Has anyone ever seen Antoine Fuqua and James Gray in the same room?
4) Cop Out — $9 million
It's holding on! Even though boyfriends the nation over were forced to go see that Alice movie instead of this, their true hearts' desire, this weekend, the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan dramedy dropped only about 50% and pushed its two-week take to $32 million. That's a respectable number, especially for a Kevin Smith movie, especially these days. So well done, Cop Out! You may go down in film history as the movie that's actually redeemed by Seann William Scott, like Balls Out: The Gary Houseman Story before you, but no matter. Cop Out 2: The Cops Are Coming At You should be a big, big hit.
9) Crazy Heart — $3.3 million
This grizzled old movie continues to ride a wave of Oscar buzzzz, and actually increased its grosses from last week by 36%. Good for it and its crazy, crazy heart. It's really a miracle that anyone is actually going, because for me it's one of those movies that I know I should see and I've even gone so far as to make plans to see it, but then something comes up or I'm just not in the mood and it gets postponed and I still haven't seen Crazy Heart. I suppose I will someday. But now that the Oscar urgency is suddenly gone... I wonder when that will be. Some time in the future, when I am old and tired, they will rerelease Crazy Heart and I'll go see it and sigh to myself and say "Ohh, remember Jeff Bridges?" And then I'll say "Look how young Colin Farrell was!" and I will think about the winter I was 26 and how I never went to see Crazy Heart, because I foolishly thought I had all the time in the world.
18) The Hurt Locker — $439,000
This movie, a bigtime Oscar winner, has only earned $14 million in domestic box office. Which makes it the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner in ever. Go see this movie! Or rent it! Is it on video? It can't be, I don't think. Not if it's still playing in theaters. Or maybe it is. I don't know. Either way, find a way to see it and go do so. Things blow up and there are guns! It isn't artsy and boring. There aren't women in period costumes weeping and holding parasols while they diffuse bombs. Although that would be kind of wonderful. "Madam, your bustle has activated that explosive." "Oh dear..." BOOM. But yeah. Go watch! What are you waiting for, a Crazy Heart double feature rerelease?
Yingli Green Energy (YGE) shares are trading sharply lower this morning on investor disappointment with the company’s Q4 financial results.
For the quarter, the solar energy company posted revenue of $370.8 million, up 15.7% sequentially, and well ahead of the Street at $326.5 million. But adjusted EPS of 13 cents a share missed the Street consensus by a penny a share. Gross margin in the quarter was 29.6%; operating margin was 4.4%.
For 2010, the company sees shipments of 950 MW to 1 GW, up 80.8%-90.4%; the company sees gross margins for the year in the 27%-29% range.
YGE is down 78 cents, or 6.1%, to $12.10.
Well that didn't take very long. In just under four years time, Twitter bolted past 10 billion tweets, serving up its 10 billionth message last week. So what did the milestone message say and who posted it? Nobody knows, as it belongs to a protected user.
Visible or not, the message underscores the continuing popularity of the microblogging service, which doesn't appear to be losing any steam (sorry Google Buzz). According to Mashable.com, Twitter posted its one billionth tweet back in November 2008, and five billion tweets only four months ago.
As it stands now, Twitter says its service pumps out about 50 million messages every day, up from 2.5 million about a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Online retail sales aren’t growing at the torrid pace they once were, but they continue to grow steadily. Forrester Research put out a new five-year forecast today predicting that e-commerce sales in the U.S. will keep growing at a 10 percent compound annual growth rate through 2014. It forecasts online retail sales in the U.S. will be nearly $250 billion, up from $155 billion in 2009. Last year, online retail sales were up 11 percent, compared to 2.5 percent for all retail sales.
In Western Europe, Forrester expects a slightly faster 11 percent growth rate for online retail sales, going from $93 million (68 million Euros) in 2009 to $156 million (114.5 million Euros) in 2014. Forrester’s estimates exclude online sales of autos, travel, and prescription drugs.
Some other stats from the U.S. forecast:
While $155 billion worth of consumer goods were bought online last year, a far larger portion of offline sales were influenced by online research. Forrester estimates that $917 billion worth of retail sales last year were “Web-influenced.” It also estimates that online and Web-influenced offline sales combined accounted for 42 percent of total retail sales and that percentage will grow to 53 percent by 2014, when the Web will be influencing $1.4 billion worth of in-store sales.
Yet there is a lot of room for improvement in helping consumers go from doing online research to in-store purchases. Only 61 percent of consumers who cross over from one to the other are satisfied with their buying experience, compared to 82 percent for those who end up buying online. Forrester draws the lesson that retailers need to do a better job appealing to online consumers in their physical stores. I come to a different conclusion: avoid going to real stores and buy online whenever you can. You will be happier.
Blackboard, a company that designs an education software for school groups, has acquired mobile messaging provider Saf-T-Net for $33 million. Saf-T-Net develops AlertNow, which is a mobile messaging technology aimed to the K-12 marketplace.
AlertNow’s technology delivers voice, e-mail and emergency SMS messages at a rate up to 2.5 million per hour to parents, students and school administrators.
(Link: Blackboard Buys Mobile Messaging Company Saf-T-Net For $33 Million)
The core of any long-standing technology company is research and development. Here's how Apple, Microsoft and Sony's last decade of spending stack up.
Note that the first graph shows research and development as a percentage of revenue (to scale the spending by company, since revenues differ so greatly). This next graphic can help you conceptualize the revenue and R&D gap:
A Few Interesting Notes:
• Now, Microsoft spends about 17% of their revenue on R&D. Sony spends about 8%. Apple spends less than 4%.
• If you were to break down the amount of R&D that goes purely to physical (non-software) products sold by Apple and Sony, Sony would spend about $11.5 million per product while Apple would spend about $78.5 million per product. (Of course, that's rolling the cost OS X and iPhone OS development into Macs and the iPhone, which could be seen as inflating their per product spending.)
• Microsoft just spends a lot of money in R&D, period—about $9 billion this year. In terms of percentage growth over the last decade, Apple's R&D has grown the most (nearly quadrupled) while Sony's has grown the least (not quite doubled).
In light of these bare numbers, is it any surprise that Sony is struggling the most to capture the hearts and minds of a public hungry for gadgets?
Sources:
Apple
Apple Public Relations
Apple Investor Relations
Apple Insider 2004
Apple Insider 2005
Apple Insider 2006
Apple Insider 2008
Mac Observer
Microsoft
Microsoft Investor Relations
Sony
Sony Investor Relations
Research by David Chaid
Columbia Journalism Review research finds that many magazines don't even know if their site makes a profit
More than half of the consumer magazines with a monthly traffic of 1.5 million unique users and more are profitable, according to a survey.
Advertising is the largest revenue source with 83% of these websites saying it is most important. Weekly magazines are more than twice as likely to be profitable than those of quarterlies. Almost two-thirds of the sites that do make a profit offer their content for free.
Some 665 consumer magazines completed the survey Magazines and Their Web Sites conducted by Abt SRBI for Columbia Journalism Review.
The study found that more than a third of consumer magazines don't even know if their website makes a profit or not, as 134 answered "not sure" and 110 don't measure the profit separately, compared with 212 that said it does make profit, while 209 did not respond.
However, to regard online as a distinct area seems to pay off. Among the magazine websites that do not make a profit, it is nearly two times as likely that they have the web budget controlled by the editor-in-chief of the print magazine, the study found. In magazines with profitable websites, 67% say that it is publishers or independent web editors control the internet budget.
If an independent web editor is in charge of the budget or the content decision, it is also more likely that they keep up with technological developments and have versions of their websites designed for multiple platforms such as mobile phones or smartphones. Social media have gained in popularity among journalists, with three quarters of magazines surveyed using them, and 60% reporting that Facebook and Twitter drive traffic to their site.
As with newspapers, the integration of web and print has become an important issue for consumer magazines. Some 62% of magazines said that their staff work on both web and print, while 24% worked on print only and 5% on web only. And 87% said they have one advertising team that works in web and print, while 13% said they have separate teams.
The survey also showed that magazines try to maintain their standards online: 89% of the magazines surveyed do copy-editing of their online content; 41% use the same process as in print, while 48% is copy-edited, but less rigorously than print content.
However, once published there isn't still a real standard for the correction process. Some 45% still correct factual errors with no indication to readers, while 37% append an editor's note, and 6% leave major factual errors in but add a note at the point of the error.
Not very surprisingly, one of the many interesting findings of the survey is that magazine publishers need to be more aware of the need for web-specific skills. "While we are well into the second decade of magazines' presence on the web, the survey demonstrates that the people who work on magazine websites still largely come from the world of print journalism."
Do publishers have to take the web more seriously or does one content fit it all? What do you think is most important for the future of magazines? Please have a say in the comments.
Blackboard, a company that designs an education software for school groups, has acquired mobile messaging provider Saf-T-Net for $33 million. Saf-T-Net develops AlertNow, which is a mobile messaging technology aimed to the K-12 marketplace.
AlertNow’s technology delivers voice, e-mail and emergency SMS messages at a rate up to 2.5 million per hour to parents, students and school administrators. The company, which sent 25 million message in February alone, has over 2000 schools using its product and will be used to Blackboard’s mobile technology. Saf-T-Net will also help Blackboard further its dominance in the the K-12 market; Blackboard’s software has been used predominantly by colleges and universities.
Currently, Blackboard provides software for 5000 educational institutions. The company recently boughtTerriblyCleverDesigns, a startup that helped create iPhone and other mobile apps for colleges and universities, for $4 million.
Blackboard Buys Mobile Messaging Company Saf-T-Net For $33 Million
- Rob Diana
Online ad manager DoubleVerify has raised a $10 million second round funding. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners. Previous investors Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures and private backers also returned to provide the larger funding. The company, which is based in New York and has offices in Israel, raised a $3.5 million first round last May. The much larger round this time will go towards what the start-up says has been impressive growth. In particular, it claims that it became profitable after two quarters and went from 10 to 45 employees in less than a year. While a number of young online ad companies felt even more squeezed by the dismal economy last year, the recessionary pressures seemed to have led to more business, since DoubleVerify’s promise of monitoring how well marketers’ insertion orders are completed filled a pretty big void. Release
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From an exhibition of early human ancestor busts by “paleo-artist” John Gurche:
Australopithecus africanus This species lived about 2.5 million years ago and, like A. afarensis, is thought by some paleoanthropologists to be one of our direct ancestors. “I wanted to get an expression that captures something that both humans and great apes do, though the meaning is a little different,” Gurche says. “I wanted to build a smile, but a smile with a lot of tension in it. You might even call it a nervous smile, like the fear grin of the chimpanzee.”
More images here. Gurche's website is here.
Universal Music/BPI claims UK ISPs could earn £103m from digital music by 2013 http://bit.ly/cZPT6u (Wishful & speculative thinking?)
A new report from Ovum claims that if the six largest UK ISPs all launched bundled digital music services this year, they could be generating £103 million in direct revenues by 2013. The report was commissioned by Universal Music Group ‘on behalf of the BPI’.
That figure is apparently based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and would equate to 41% of the total retail value of the UK digital music market in 2009. Ovum has also published an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ suggesting that bundled ISP digital music services could be worth £203 million by 2013.
The report also offers more carrots to ISPs who launch these services, claiming that an ISP with 3.5 million customers could generate indirect value of more than £20 million a year, if its bundled music service cut churn by 10%. The key words in that sentence being ‘could’ and ‘if’ – this is all speculative, and entirely dependent on the nature of such services.
Ovum says its report is based on interviews with digital music services, content platforms and ISPs who are already offering digital music services. It also suggests that the ‘blueprint for success’ for ISPs is to offer subscription-based streaming services including bundled download-to-own tracks and recommendations to spur further purchases – costing around £6.49 a month.
A line in the press release says that “The revenue prospects for bundled ISP music services would be substantially increased if services were offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading” – although it’s unclear if this is an Ovum conclusion, or the views of the BPI (which issued the press release).
“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’,” says BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor. “This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs. UK music companies want to innovate and develop exciting new digital offerings. ISPs such as Virgin Media have recognised that legal digital music services offer a more exciting and profitable future than continued widespread piracy.”
The six ISPs covered in the report’s headline revenue prediction are Virgin Media, Sky, BT, O2, Orange and TalkTalk. However, the £103 million prediction is dependent on them all launching music services this year – an unlikely prospect as things stand. The question of ‘meaningful action’ to tackle illegal downloading continues to cause controversy too, with the UK’s Digital Economy Bill yet to come into law, and with TalkTalk and BT both having attacked music industry arguments on this score in recent months.
The fact that UMG commissioned the report on behalf of the BPI could affect the way its findings are perceived by critics – although the industry body has been transparent about its involvement. It comes at a time when Virgin Media has been trying and failing to get UMG’s major label rivals to buy into its plans for an unlimited MP3 downloads bundled service – it may now be focusing on a model similar to that outlined by Ovum in its report.
BPI claims UK ISPs could earn £103m from digital music by 2013 - Music Ally
- Miguel Caetano"A new report from Ovum claims that if the six largest UK ISPs all launched bundled digital music services this year, they could be generating £103 million in direct revenues by 2013. The report was commissioned by Universal Music Group ‘on behalf of the BPI’.
That figure is apparently based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and would equate to 41% of the total retail value of the UK digital music market in 2009. Ovum has also published an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ suggesting that bundled ISP digital music services could be worth £203 million by 2013."
LONDON (Reuters) - HgCapital is in exclusive talks to buy UK commercial laundry equipment supplier John Laithwaite (JLA), in a deal that could be worth around 150 million pounds ($225.5 million), people familiar with the matter said.
HgCapital saw off competition from other private equity houses to enter exclusive talks for the business, which provides washers and dryers to hospitals and student accommodation, sources said.
HgCapital declined to comment, while JLA was unavailable for comment.
A deal would allow HgCapital to start to mobilise its recently raised 1.85 billion pound fund. Its sixth fund bucked tough fundraising markets to beat targets and double the size of its previous buyout pot.
West Yorkshire-based JLA had been looking for a buyer to bring in new management for the company, an arrangement that suits HgCapital, a source familiar with the process said.
JLA generated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of about 16 million pounds in 2009 but valuing the business proved difficult as it had large depreciation and interest charge figures, the source said.
(Reporting by Simon Meads; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
($1=.6652 Pound)
Web advertising is a big business, but it’s a young and rowdy one, too. Does it need a sheriff?
That’s the job that DoubleVerify wants. And it’s just raised more money to help it get the gig. Institutional Venture Partners has led a $10 million B round for the company, with earlier investor Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures all re-upping after a $3.5 million A round last May.
DoubleVerify’s basic pitch is directed at advertisers: It promises to make sure they are getting the media buys they paid for. The company says it can make sure, for instance, that a marketer that only wants to reach a US audience on Yahoo (YHOO) doesn’t have its ads displayed to visitors from France — or that an ad network isn’t running invisible ads that no one can see. It also promises to maintain “brand safety” for advertisers — to keep, say, a Jet Blue ad from running next to a story about the underwear bomber.
This stuff sounds small time, but it’s a big enough concern with advertisers — and publishers who would like to court them — to turn into a real business for DoubleVerify and a host of competitors. DoubleVerify won’t disclose revenues, but says that since November, it has been generating enough to cover costs for a 45-person staff. My back-of-the-envelope math translates that into something like a $5 million run rate.
The problem for DoubleVerify is the same one facing all of the startups that want to carve off a piece of the online ad market — there are a lot of startups that want to carve off a piece of the online ad market.
In DoubleVerify’s case, it is either getting paid directly by the advertiser, in which case its fee gets tacked on to the ad buyer’s media spend, or by an advertising network, in which case its fee comes out of the ad buyer’s media spend. Either way, it is taking another slice of a piece that is already getting sliced quite thin.
Web advertising is a big business, but it’s a young and rowdy one, too. Does it need a sheriff?
That’s the job that DoubleVerify wants. And it’s just raised more money to help it get the gig. Institutional Venture Partners has led a $10 million B round for the company, with earlier investor Blumberg Capital, First Round Capital and Genacast Ventures all re-upping after a $3.5 million A round last May.
DoubleVerify’s basic pitch is directed at advertisers: It promises to make sure they are getting the media buys they paid for. The company says it can make sure, for instance, that a marketer that only wants to reach a US audience on Yahoo (YHOO) doesn’t have its ads displayed to visitors from France — or that an ad network isn’t running invisible ads that no one can see. It also promises to maintain “brand safety” for advertisers — to keep, say, a Jet Blue ad from running next to a story about the underwear bomber.
This stuff sounds small time, but it’s a big enough concern with advertisers — and publishers who would like to court them — to turn into a real business for DoubleVerify and a host of competitors. DoubleVerify won’t disclose revenues, but says that since November, it has been generating enough to cover costs for a 45-person staff. My back-of-the-envelope math translates that into something like a $5 million run rate.
The problem for DoubleVerify is the same one facing all of the startups that want to carve off a piece of the online ad market — there are a lot of startups that want to carve off a piece of the online ad market.
In DoubleVerify’s case, it is either getting paid directly by the advertiser, in which case its fee gets tacked on to the ad buyer’s media spend, or by an advertising network, in which case its fee comes out of the ad buyer’s media spend. Either way, it is taking another slice of a piece that is already getting sliced quite thin.
Geologists have found evidence that ice covered the whole world 716.5 million years ago.
There was a good article on Techcrunch on Saturday covering an interview Erick Schonfeld had with Marc Andreessen. In a reference to explorers landing in Mexico and burning their boats so looking forward was their only option the post was titled: Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats”.
He makes an excellent contrast between the way technology companies embrace change whilst old media companies fight it.
On technology companies embracing change:
The one thing technology companies do really well is deal with constant disruption. “Microsoft is going through this right now,” he points out, “Ballmer is not complaining about it.” He’s tackling it head on. So did Intel when Andy Grove gutted it to shift from memory chips to microprocessors.
On old media fighting change:
Andreessen asked me if TechCrunch is working on an iPad app or planning on putting up a paywall. I gave him a blank stare. He laughed and noted that none of the newer Web publications (he’s an investor in the Business Insider) are either. “”All the new companies are not spending a nanosecond on the iPad or thinking of ways to charge for content. The older companies, that is all they are thinking about.”
And if you are wondering about the impact of the iPad, read this:
[Andreessen] points out …. No matter how many iPads the Apple sells, the Web will always be the bigger market. “There are 2 billion people on the Web,” he says. “The iPad will be a huge success if it sells 5 million units.”
Old media’s excitement about the iPad is symptomatic of an industry in existential crisis. The smart thing in every company is to go where the customers are, i.e. the open web, rather than where your business model might work better, yet that isn’t their approach. Until/unless the old guard learns to embrace change and think about what the consumer wants rather than how they can preserve their businesses they continue to lose out to new media businesses like Techcrunch.
Note – this is not a post about free vs paid content, an argument which I think is more finely balanced that comes across in Andreessen’s TC interview. Right now my view is that it is difficult to come down emphatically on either side of this debate and I expect to see both more companies making free content pay as a business model and more companies innovating and successfully persuading consumers to pay.
LG Cookie Fresh GS290, the new touchscreen phone that we first saw last week, has just been officially announced.
Like the LG Cookie Plus GS500, the LG Cookie Fresh GS290 builds on the success of the first Cookie phone (sold in 12 million units until now).
Feature-wise, the Cookie Fresh is somewhat similar to the Cookie Plus. It has a 3 inch WQVGA touchscreen display, “cartoon UI”, social networking integration, FM radio and a 3.5mm headset jack. The handset doesn’t have 3G and its camera is only a 2MP one.
Both the LG Cookie Fresh and the LG Cookie Plus will be available in Europe starting this month, in lots of color versions. LG plans to launch them in more than 50 countries by the end of the year.
The phones’ prices have not been announced, but the Cookie Fresh should be slightly cheaper than the Cookie Plus.
Via Press release
