On this blog, we’ve done a number of side by side product comparisons of the geolocation startups, as well as speed trials. One thing we haven’t touched on yet is the relative funding of each of the companies.
There are plenty of examples of tech companies that have raised huge amounts of money and failed. And there are also examples of companies who have been able to scale and win their category with minimal or zero funding.
But all things being equal, cash = oxygen for most startups, including the geolocation space.
Let’s take a look at the geolocation category from the perspective of funding.
(this is a little tough to read, but if you click on it, it gets better)
Here are a couple of things that stand out:
Foursquare, the darling of the space, has announced a relatively paltry amount of funding. Have they raised more money than they are letting on? Is their revenue larger than expected? Filings would almost certainly have spilled the beans on any stealth funding. If I were a betting man, I would expect to hear a major announcement here soon.
Whrrl (Pelago), Where (profitable), and MyTown have EXTREMELY deep pockets. Expect to see a lot of activity out of these companies.
Finally, I’ve heard whispers of unannounced funding from at least one other company on this list.
To begin, congratulations to the Diaspora* team on their initial fundraising success. I fully appreciate the sentiment behind their project; they have touched a nerve among the thousands of people who feel jilted by Facebook’s recent actions.
That said, the idea behind Diaspora* (its implementation) is overly complex and won’t work for the large majority of Facebook users. That is not to say that there is no problem to fix, as we’ve seen online privacy is being eroded by Facebook at wicked speed. New Facebook users don’t understand how the site’s privacy settings work, and are thus overly exposed from their first day on Facebook on. Facebook does little to help them.
As Facebook finds its legs among the older and less technologically inclined, it needs serious competition to force it to abdicate its new system of assumed openness. When Diaspora* was announced, it garnered press, excitement, and over $100,000 in funding because people understand that. No one wants to let Zuckerberg decide the future of online privacy by himself. Given all of that, how does this Diaspora* work, and how well will it be received?
Diaspora* gives its users privacy by forcing them to host their own node that contains their information. If the company does not have access to your data, it can hardly infringe on your privacy. In Diaspora*’s words:
Diaspora* aims to be a distributed network, where totally separate computers connect to each other directly, will let us connect without surrendering our privacy. We call these computers ‘seeds’. A seed is owned by you, hosted by you, or on a rented server.
The seed is an aggregator that will gather your content from around the internet into a central location, your server. Link your seed to my seed and we can share and converse. Exactly what the connection will do between the seeds is yet to be fully fleshed out.
In short, you host your own profile that is a amalgamation of your life online, and share with a select group of people.
Not to say that hosting a personal FriendFeed and attempting to link it to my friends and their own FriendFeeds does not sound like fun, but it would be mind-numbingly tedious for most. The friction to get started is far too high for this project to ever gain real traction.
“But wait,” you may cry,” if the company has raised so much money why is its idea untenable?” It’s simple. People are mad at Facebook and they wanted to vent. They blew off steam by throwing dollars into the Diaspora* project.
Your parents probably recently joined Facebook. It must have been a hellish weekend walking them through the website and teaching them how it works. Imagine trying to get them to set up their own server to join Diaspora*. We technology minded people would find it a fun challenge, for everyone else it is a joke to even consider.
Diaspora* hopes to alleviate the tension that I just outlined by letting people rent space on communal servers. All the technological problems are therefore moot, and Diaspora* has a chance, right?
Not at all. By moving the data to a server that you are renting part of to host your seed, you are losing the whole point of Diaspora*: control over your data. Fine then, you might say, let the company rent server time to its users thus ending the fear of letting a sketchy company control your seed. That is another non-starter. Diaspora* does not want to control your data, and you do not want to afford them the ability to do so. If you want full privacy, you cannot let Diaspora* host your seed.
You either take the time and headache of setting up your own server, or you violate the core point of Diaspora* and pay someone else to handle that work for you. Either way, something is not right.
If they cannot handle the tech problem of setting up their own seed server, and are content to live with someone having their data, users still have to pay to have their seed hosted. In short, they have to pay for what they used to get for free, all the while not solving the problem they set out to do. Even more, if I am paying for hosting the more I use the host the more I have to pay. In short, the more I use Diaspora*, the larger the bills I might be on the hook for.
What is the value proposition?
Disapora* has the right drive, but the wrong vision. The good news is that the team will have more than $100,000 to work with this summer. They can fine tune and refine their idea to make it something that we would use.
Facebook needs to be taken down a peg, and these might be the guys to do it. With proper guidance their enthusiasm could become a social revolution. Good luck guys.
New Social Networking Darling Diaspora* Has An Idea Problem. http://r2.ly/543m
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Blippy is being tossed through the meat grinder today over a leak of several credit card numbers from users. The company lets people record and share their purchases with friends online.
A darling of the technology and investment worlds, Blippy signed up the tech elite overnight, and raised $11 million in short order. Today after the privacy breach, people are publicly writing the company off. They broke the trust that made the whole idea feasible, so the logic goes.
After reading what actually happened, I think that any level-headed observer can say this: if Blippy was a good idea a week ago, it still is today after the leak.
Blippy is being run by some of the smartest folks online, including everyone’s favorite Phillip “Pud” Kaplan, who has a special place in bloggers’ hearts for past written works. The company has solid investors, an interesting (some say innovative) product, and they (were) growing like a weed.
Is the accidental release of four credit card numbers due to a small Google caching error enough to stop that momentum? It is true that the rumor of poison is enough to stop drinking from the well. Given the level of noise that is being raised over the leak, yes, this could be a serious problem for the company’s future.
But for the above reasons we can trust that Blippy is going to do the following: publicly remunerate the people who had their information leaked, redouble security efforts, and make plain hopefully through a high-profile new hire that security is at the very core of the Blippy product.
While I find Blippy far to exposing to use, many people love it. We should not let a small glitch take that away. Blippy, do your part and show everyone how serious you are about data privacy and safety and we should be able to set this straight.
Original title and link for this post: Give Blippy Another Chance, They Deserve It
Give Blippy Another Chance, They Deserve It
- (jeff)isageek"Alistair Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable have clashed over whether a hung parliament could be harmful for the UK economy."
- Kol TregaskesIn the shadow of Foursquare Inc., which is fast becoming a start-up darling, the marketing chief of a competing location-based service wondered how hype could help propel his company.
Dan Gilmartin, vice president of marketing for Where Inc., was watching the frenzy building around Foursquare Chief Executive Dennis Crowley as he spoke at a recent tech conference called Where 2.0.
“I took a step back and thought, ‘What would it do for us if we were getting half the exposure Crowley is getting?” Gilmartin said. “Would we be adding 2 million users a month? 3 million?”
He further pondered, “Should we take the buckets of profit we’re making and go hire ten PR firms and buy some advertorial?”
His Boston-based company, which like Foursquare enables users to find businesses near their location, is growing fast and boasts some 3 million users, about three times that of Foursquare. And, unlike Foursquare, Where has a working business model and is cash-flow positive.
Yet it’s missing the blog buzz that surrounds Foursquare, founded in early 2009 about five years after Where formed. The latest scuttlebutt about Foursquare: Venture firms are fighting to invest in the company at a lofty valuation while Yahoo Inc. has reportedly made a $100 million buyout offer.
“Foursquare is being valued on the potential,” said Ryan Moore, a Where board member and general partner at GrandBanks Capital. “They timed the market better. They’re starting fresh and leading with a marketing edge and letting the product catch up.
“The bottom line is that local ad spend is being massively disrupted by these handsets and real-time location. There’s no more valuable context than location.”
Given that scenario Moore believes it’s time for Where - until recently called uLocate Communications, to step up its profile. “We’ve got a great business model and now we have to match that with awareness,” he said.
Gilmartin said the company, backed by $16 million from GrandBanks, Kodiak Venture Partners and Venrock, is going to use a traditional approach to its increased marketing efforts, with plans to turn its social media and public relations campaigns up a notch. He declined to provide specific revenue figures, but he did say Where added 600,000 new users in March, compared to an addition of 100,000 in November.
Where delivers local content to mobile devices, including everything from the weather, news, and restaurant reviews, to the closest coffee shop, cheapest gas, traffic updates, movie show times and more. The content is available through a free downloadable application for smartphones, or as a $2.99 monthly subscription service for feature phones with GPS.
When opening the application on an iPhone in the Dow Jones offices in midtown Manhattan, then clicking on the “Restaurants” icon, Where shows a list of eateries in the area, including Del Frisco’s, directly across the street. Clicking on Del Frisco’s brings up an address, phone number, reviews and links to the Web site and menu. It also allows users to “check in,” like Foursquare’s service, and interact with other users who may be in the same location.
While they are similar, Where currently exists as more of a feature-packed utility, while Foursquare’s gaming feature separates it from the pack. Foursquare encourages members to check in at venues and awards the most frequent patron the title of mayor. Users compete for mayorships and badges, such as the “Crunked” badge awarded to a user who checks into four different venues in one night. That competition may explain why it’s generating so much attention. The app also lists information about local venues and tips from other Foursquare members, such as “New must-have: Halibut Saltimbocca paired with 2006 Domaine de Ferrand Chateaunef du pape.”
Ultimately, Foursquare and Where, and others like them such as Gowalla Inc. and Loopt Inc. will by vying for the same hyper-local advertising dollars that location-based services can attract - not to mention, possibly competing against larger players like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. looking to get into the action.
Where’s revenue model has gone through some trial and error. The company had to learn how to serve ads on a mobile device in a way that doesn’t turn users off. “We found that consumer’s didn’t like the ads and if they’re not going to click on them, we’re not going to make any money,” Gilmartin said.
Bringing in local ad inventory that blends into the application’s suggestion pages was the key for Where. For example, a restaurant who has purchased a local ad is highlighted and placed at the top of the search results with a note that says “Sponsored Result.” “We said, wow, we’ve replaced non-contextual ads with something that’s relevant. Consumers now say, ‘Thanks for removing the ads.’ Winner winner chicken dinner.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), the poster child of liberal bloggers ire, has done it again.
Once the darling of Democratic political heavyweights -- he campaigned in 2000 as the vice presidential running mate of then-Vice President Al Gore -- the Connecticut senator now appears to enjoying sparring his his former party at every opportunity.
Lieberman became an independent during his 2006 campaign, in which he faced off with liberal millionaire Ned Lamont. Liberal bloggers largely supported Lamont.
Since then, Lieberman has nettled those in his former party for his continual overtures to Republicans. Recently, he said he wouldn't rule out running as a Republican in his 2012 Senate race.
But in a Newsmax interview published Monday, he took himself one step further toward the party he once campaigned to defeat.
"There were a lot of people, particularly Democrats, who were declaring after the 2008 election that we were beginning a period of Democratic dominance that would go on for decades," Lieberman told Newsmax. "Now, all of a sudden, the momentum is with the Republicans. And that's — thank God — that's the way people have spoken, you know? That's our democracy."
The senator also said that "everybody should listen" to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
“I think Sarah Palin for a lot of people has become a spokesperson," Lieberman said. "People worried that government has forgotten them, has grown too big, that the deficit is growing too large, and in some sense that we’re not being as strong as we should be in the world — Governor Palin has spoken to those concerns as much as anyone.
“I do disagree with her on some of the specifics that she has said, but I think anybody who underestimates Sarah Palin as a political force in America does so at some peril, because she is speaking for a lot of people out there," he continued. “I don’t know what her future is, but I’m just saying everybody should listen.”
Lieberman was speaking in an interview that largely focused on US foreign policy regarding Israel and Iran. The onetime Democrat has repeatedly urged the US to take a hawkish position against Iranian development of nuclear weapons, and consider an armed airstrike to halt nuclear enrichment.
Print media needs to react effectively to news coverage on the internet if it wants to remain a necessary supplier of information
Forget doomed Asian networkers and contemporary pop players without 6 Music to call their home. Don't bother to list BBC websites for the chop. Just name one big TV channel that won't exist in five years time. And the answer couldn't be simpler: goodbye News 24. Farewell all you flagging newscasters tacking together live and reheated coverage for hours on end, peddling recycled bonhomie, waiting anxiously in case something interesting happens. Maybe the whole live loopline news business is doomed.
Here's broadband, expanding exponentially, even before Messrs Brown and Cameron throw more money at its superfast versions. And here is the BBC strategy that copes with that change. Think of news as a cloud, not some linear confection. Reckon that (Trust delay or no) the unstoppable apps revolution is coming, because it's putting the same core of news in different locations. Use the brand new giant newsroom in Portland Place to meet every demand: on mobiles, laptops, radios – and that 42in monster TV in your living room, the one Sony is already touting in lush two-page ads: the biggest computer screen in the house.
What does bbc.co.uk do over 42 inches then? It fills that screen with news and much more on demand. And because the set is so large, because images fit it far more naturally than print, BBC website coverage automatically stresses high-quality video more than Darling's budget speech (in full).
The whole nature of news on the net switches emphasis, in short. The BBC (and ITN, Sky, CNN and the rest) do what comes naturally. They adjust their web output for maximum advantage and try to leave behind newspaper sites, where words have to matter more than video because words are the staple product. The moment mass audience internet news becomes a fundamentally visual medium is the moment that Fleet Street's print-bound competitors scratch their heads.
Is this the end of the print world, as repeatedly prophesied? Not to such a short-span timetable with thinking caps on. The Mail and the Sun websites, for instance, have beefed up celebrity coverage so much that gossip and flesh the BBC can't match will see them right for a while. The FT can snuggle behind its specialist paywall. The Times and Sunday Times, hunched behind their own walls, have all the resources of Sky and Fox to deploy themselves.
But out in the wider world, where general news and detailed analysis meet, there's a problem growing beyond any current imagining. How do text papers who deal in the written word carve out a place alongside that 42in piece of heavy high-definition artillery? Where's the space for survival?
In a sense, you can see the shape of things to come already as cabling defines America's news balances. MSNBC, CNN, Yahoo, AOL, Fox and ABC took six of the seven top net news places in February. Newspaper sites are also-rans. But at least there isn't surprise as the shift begins to happen.
Text papers, from the London Times to the New York Times, have a known problem that must be solved. What can we offer in words and coverage that can make us necessary news suppliers on phones, iPads and laptops? How can we hone a service where pictures and videos don't count for so much, where what we do in depth, range and vision arrives with survival prospects attached? When do we stop playing video catch-up and start doing our own denser, more detailed thing, just as we did long ago when mass TV made us change course? Can we find the road of reinvention mark two?
This is the 24/7 conundrum as News 24 dies.
"Is this the end of the print world, as repeatedly prophesied? Not to such a short-span timetable with thinking caps on. The Mail and the Sun websites, for instance, have beefed up celebrity coverage so much that gossip and flesh the BBC can't match will see them right for a while. The FT can snuggle behind its specialist paywall. The Times and Sunday Times, hunched behind their own walls, have all the resources of Sky and Fox to deploy themselves."
- Miguel Caetano
Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile Publisher. You can find him on Twitter, and on the Whitepages Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.
While last year’s SXSW seemed to serve as the “coming out” party for location-based services (LBS), maybe this year’s conference signifies the migration of these platforms into mainstream culture. And perhaps the only real “new” concept to emerge this year is the idea that there is finally a real opportunity to make money via “location.”
Here are five things that companies should consider as they look to utilize location-based services (LBS) as part their mobile strategy.
From finding the nearest ski slope on REI’s Ski and Snow Report to a nearby movie on Flixter, there are plenty of Top iPhone applications that have incorporated a “lead with the offer, not the capability” philosophy into their mobile product offering to provide a better service. Build the best service first, then add the bells and whistles.
With all the hoopla surrounding location, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that location’s real appeal to advertisers is the fact that with this functionality, you can reach the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume. Just because Twitter and Facebook offer location doesn’t make that valuable or new to advertisers. Location-targeting via IP address has been around a while. For the same reason radio is a great advertising channel for retailers, LBS advertising is also valuable: because it can reach the consumer near the point of sale.
Foursquare has clearly emerged as the location darling. Consider the fact that after only one year, they’ve reached 500,000 active users (Foursquare recently tweeted they added 100,000 users in 10 days).
However, if you apply any city’s share of the total U.S. population, the results show some pretty low estimates of Foursquare users in individual localities. What emerges is a very “long tail” — a steep, narrow graph — of local user adoption. This shows why it is important to achieve scale if you hope to see return on investment in the location marketing space.
For example, using these rough estimates of a city’s proportional share of the U.S. population, if a local pet supply store wanted to target people in San Francisco, the estimated reach would be 1,310 Foursquare users. Even if you double this audience estimate, the number is fairly small for even a local marketer. We had to hit around 4 million downloads of the Whitepages iPhone app to achieve the minimum scale needed for advertiser geo-targeting. Today, 80% of our campaigns from major brands are geo-targeted.
Editor’s Note: It’s important to remember that these are just rough estimates. Because Foursquare was initially only available in a handful of major metro areas, the geographic distribution of users may not precisely follow the geographic distribution of the population.
Battery life is the single biggest threat to location. With GPS on, the phone is asking the network where it is, and this chatter can drain battery life — anyone with an iPhone knows what I am referring to. Thus, phone manufacturers will play a critical role in the future of LBS. RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, faced this problem early on with the energy-tax of e-mail polling, and as a result, their devices now have some of the best battery life.
Foursquare has helped us move forward here as well. “Check-ins” help to address the issue as they offer efficient geo-triggers without having to keep battery-draining GPS features on at all times.
Looking forward, I predict the mobile platform wars will be fought with location and maps. This is an important feature that a platform can use as a point of differentiation for consumers and developers.
In anticipation of that battle, Apple purchased mapping company Placebase, and Google is starting to provide unique mapping features like turn-by-turn navigation on its Android devices. The only hope I see for Windows Mobile is if they do something completely revolutionary on the mobile location front. A development like this was alluded to at the recent TED conference with its augmented reality layering of geo-tagged Flickr photos and real-time video integration.
At WhitePages, we monetize our mobile services through a mix of premium, national display, and sponsored links for local business. Our effective CPM (revenue per thousand ad impressions) for sponsored local links is $30-$50 — double the effective CPM (eCPM) rate we see for premium display ad campaigns from national brands. The eCPM multiple of local targeted ads over ad network rates is a staggering 10x.
Location-based inventory will also become scarce as Apple recently announced that iPhone apps will not be permitted to access GPS capabilities for advertising alone. There now needs to be some consumer benefit and functionality in order to access a user’s location. Geo-targeted inventory on mobile will continue to be at a high premium with no excess supply or ad networks to drive it down.
It is my hope that by this time next year, SXSW –- the festival of “emerging” music and technology –- will have finally moved on from location. It’s clearly happening now, and if integrated wisely, location will be making companies too much money to be called the “cool kid on the block” any longer
- 9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing
- 10 Foursquare Apps You Can Use Right Now
- 6 Foursquare Apps We’d Love to See
- 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
- Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
- Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010
Tags: android, business, foursquare, geo-tagging, gowalla, iphone, List, Lists, location based advertising, location-based, Longtail, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0, small business
Nor have I been the type to buy into the widely-held view of destiny and I’ve mostly considered (the concept of) fate to be the refuge of the indecisive, the lazy, the fearful and the deluded. But that’s just my (not-very-popular) view. For many people, the traditional concept of destiny provides a level of comfort and if there’s one thing we fearful, lazy creatures like; it’s comfort.
In some ways, destiny is our (perceived) escape clause: life’s all predetermined anyway, so what’s the point of working hard, taking chances, getting uncomfortable and setting goals?
People talk about destiny all the time. Especially when they’re talking about big-picture life stuff. Or when they’re rationalising why something didn’t (or won’t) happen. “Don’t worry Darling; it’s not meant to be”. The term destiny has an almost romantic, mystical, feel-good kind of vibe about it. “That was always going to be her destiny” (as the orchestra comes to life in the background).
It seems that no matter what she did (thoughts, behaviours, reactions, decisions, plans, goals) her life, or part thereof, was predetermined by destiny. It was always going to unfold in a certain way. Despite her; not because of her. Apparently some unseen, cosmic force was firmly behind the steering wheel of her life. She didn’t really have to touch the controls because her life path (destiny) was pre-ordained and non-negotiable.
Am I the only person who considers this thinking to be a load of self-limiting, mumbo-jumbo crap? Am I missing something obvious? Why on earth would anyone buy into this? Oh, that’s right; it requires less effort and courage than the alternative.
In my opinion, one of the most destructive notions we embrace is the traditional concept of destiny. Why? Because it teaches us that our life, and what we might do, be, create and achieve in this life, is somehow beyond our control. Some people embrace this kind of thinking because it takes pressure off them to steer their ship, shape their own future, and be responsible for what they produce in their world.
Take a look at what conventional ‘wisdom’ teaches us about destiny:
De-sti-ny (noun):
1) The predetermined, usually inevitable or irresistible, course of events.
2) The inevitable or necessary fate to which a particular person or thing is destined; one’s lot.
3) A predetermined course of events considered as something beyond human power or control.
If the above dictionary definitions are to be accepted and believed then I may as well sit on the couch and let life happen to me, around me and despite me, because apparently, it’s all gonna eventuate in a particular way no matter what. It’s predetermined. Inevitable. We’re all just helpless passengers on destiny’s back.
I wish someone had shared this with me earlier; I wouldn’t have wasted so much time making those tough decisions, taking those chances, facing my fears, dealing with my destructive habits, overcoming those obstacles, going to university, working hard and busting my arse to create my best life.
To think that people actually believe this “preordained, inevitable and beyond human power” crap? Give me a bucket. I’ll create my own destiny, thanks.
What about you?
Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host, motivational speaker and university lecturer. For the past 25 years he has been a leading presenter, educator, motivator and commentator in the areas of personal and professional development. You can visit Craig's blog at Motivational Speaker.FREE eBook – So… You’ve Decided to Get in Shape (Again) Craig's FREE eBook takes 20 – 30 minutes to read, and addresses the REAL getting-in-shape issues based on his 25 years of experience. To get Craig’s FREE eBook click here, weight loss books.
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- sofarsoShawnDigital Music News: Saying No to Freemium? Rhapsody was the darling that Spotify is today. Has anything really changed? http://bit.ly/bdLIf0
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