29
10/2008LinkedIn is changing
LinkedIn has launched its new OpenSocial-based application platform called InApps - an answer to the platforms found on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, but without the clutter and “junk” apps that plague those sites. Unlike most other social networks, LinkedIn apps must go through an approval process before they will go live on the store, and all apps must be deemed “professional” in purpose to appear on the business-oriented social network. To prevent an overwhelming amount of clutter, users will be restricted to including a maximum of 15 applications on their main profile pages, though they will eventually have the option to install more apps on a separate page.
Beyond the quality assurance process, LinkedIn is also limiting the flexibility apps will have when it comes to monetization. Apps won’t be allowed to use third party ad networks - instead, they’ll have to work with LinkedIn’s ad system. For now applications will only have access to LinkedIn’s current ad inventory, which could make targeting ads less effective (though it sounds like there will be more options for targeted ads in the future). Apps will still be allowed to charge users for individual goods, and can also implement a paid subscription service (launch partner Box.net is using this model).
At launch available applications include a trip application from TripIt presentations from SlideShare and Google Presentations, blog feeds from WordPress and Six Apart, file storage and collaboration from Box.net, online workspaces from Huddle, and a Reading List app from Amazon that will allow users to share the books they are reading. LinkedIn is also offering a few homebrewed apps, including a tracking application that monitors for a company’s mentions on Twitter and a Poll app.
14
10/2008Siri Raises $8.5 Million for Personal Artificial Intelligence
Who says there isn’t innovation going on?There is company whose project has been kept very hush-hush, but the bits and pieces has been revealed from several sources and this was put into context.The CEO of the company heading up the project, Dag Kittlaus.
The company is called Siri, and it’s so serious about it’s stealth status that it’s even registered the domain stealth-company.com. They’ve announced their $8.5 million Series A with Morgenthaler and Menlo Ventures.
09
10/2008This Week on CrunchBoard
Is your boss like Lumbergh? Maybe you should start looking for new opportunities. Check out the latest job listings on CrunchBoard.
Written by: Dan Kimerling
05
10/2008Yahoo’s Promises v. Yahoo’s Reality: Congress Finally Gets Why The Google Deal Is So Bad
Congress is finally understanding the reality of the Yahoo-Google search deal, and what it means for the state of search competition in general. It’s not about price fixing advertising rates, it’s about neutering the second place market participant.
As I wrote on September 27, the current deal between Yahoo and Google will inevitably lead to the decline of Yahoo’s core search advertising business. They will insert Google ads to push revenue. But as they do so, they’ll give advertisers an increasing incentive to just go to Google for their ad management. The disparity between Yahoo and Google’s revenue-per-ad models will grow, which will further encourage Yahoo’s reliance on Google. The result will be a Google monopoly in search advertising. And instead of competing for that monopoly, they get paid for the privilege.
02
10/2008CBS Testing Social Viewing Room: Watch Stuff With Strangers And Talk During The Show
CBS Labs, which has been testing new HD streaming products, has also rolled out a labs version of a new product called Social Viewing Room. The idea is that you show up to the site, pick a show that’s on right now, and watch it with your friends or whoever is there. You can comment, LOL or take quizzes for points.
Given how awesome on demand TV is, I don’t see this kind of thing being very popular. With one big exception: live broadcasts, which are by definition shown at a certain time and watched by everyone then. Apart from live content, it seems like asynchronous comments are a great way to go, as YouTube, Hulu and Joost have done.
29
09/2008ABC’s digital frontier: Closed is open
ABC TV has apparently embraced the mantra of giving users content when, where, and how they want it.
While Disney-ABC digital media EVP Albert Cheng’s keynote speech at Streaming Media West last week at the San Jose Convention Center was laden with PR spin (”first,” “most,” “great”), he also fessed up that as little as three years ago the network was debating internally whether to even stream shows online. Today, the network of Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Ugly Betty has taken on a strategy of ubiquity.
ABC intends to give viewers control of their viewing experience on any platform, Cheng said. The network is already showing its shows on everything from Facebook to AOL and Veoh, and plans soon to launch a new video player on its own site. This month ABC launched its “Open ABC” initiative, giving access to developers who will “innovate and give access to our shows (in ways) we haven’t even thought of yet,” such as new forms of 3D visual search and other applications for blogs, fan sites, and social networks.
“ABC isn’t just a television brand,” he said. “It’s a content brand living on any device, and tailored specifically to the consumer and advertiser needs, and optimized for each specific use case and digital platform.”
The network’s new video player, he said, will offer full screen viewing, enhanced navigation, content recommendations, closed captioning, and embedability. To that last point, we saw a mockup of ABC shows running embedded in the NBC/Fox-owned Hulu, but Cheng ducked out before we could ask him about it. The player will offer other content sharing tools, such as allowing sending of programming to friends and social-networking sites. One feature we haven’t seen elsewhere: sharers can specify at what point in the video the shared show will start to play.
Cheng said the network had been the first on iTunes, the first to stream entire shows online, the first to stream in a “720p” format in HD, had the most views of its shows of any network online and continues to lead in attracting unique users, in page views and time spent per user, compared with other networks’ sites. And, he said, ABC found that rather than cannibalizing TV viewership, giving away the shows online instead enhances it.
He acknowledged that despite all the openness, some consider ABC’s strategy to be largely closed, because it requires viewers to watch in the ABC player, and, of course to watch the ads. “I’m surprised when people talk about our video distribution approach as a closed strategy,” he said. “But we’re not going to surrender control in a way that surrenders the brand or doesn’t support our business.”
Digital media industry expert and analyst Dorian Benkoil is the founder of Teeming Media, and the host of media business show Naked Media.
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28
09/2008Songreference Turns Your MP3 Playlist Into A Video Playlist
Useful tools like this is very interesting. Songreference is a free download for iTunes (Windows only for now) and Winamp that searches for the music video of whatever MP3 you are playing at the time and then plays it synced to the song. That syncing part isn’t trivial, and it makes all the difference. The plugin also has links to Wikipedia information on each song.
27
09/2008Big-media investors couldn’t save social site Uber
Another one bites the dust is Uber.com, a fledgling blog platform that was backed by Discovery Communications and Universal Music Group, shut its doors Friday. And the reason is that,the investors pulled out.
“We have some bad news,” this is a message on the Los Angeles-based company’s home page read. “The crisis in the economy has claimed Uber as its latest victim. Our investors have decided to stop supporting Uber and we have closed the doors.”
Uber had been co-founded by former Friendster CEO and NBC Entertainment president Scott Sassa, and had completed a $7.6 million series B venture round this spring that included money from the aforementioned investors as well as venture firm Sterling Stamos.
With a focus on editorial content centered on highbrow art and media, including a Huffington Post-like “Uber Index,” and the slogan “it’s easy to create better,” it was tough to define Uber. Was it a blog platform? A social network? A discussion hub? The financial crisis didn’t help, but the truth is that Uber had never really taken off in the first place.
25
09/2008International flavor comes to OpenSocial with translation app
Social network Hi5 plans to announce on Thursday that it has built a developer application with the Google-created OpenSocial standard that “crowdsources” language translation.
This makes it possible for OpenSocial-compatible social networks or applications to let their users work to translate a site or application’s text and interface into more languages, in turn making it easier for the service to have broader geographic reach. The translation app will be implemented on Hi5, a social network that was founded in San Francisco but is most popular in Spanish-speaking countries, as well as its own developer platform, and is open for more developers to use as well through OpenSocial.
Hi5’s own site is already available in two dozen languages.
One big player in the social-app space that plans to use Hi5’s translation code is iLike, a music service that has become popular largely through applications for platforms from Facebook to Apple’s iTunes, and hopes to see its user base distributed around the world as well as across the Web. Another is RockYou, the “app factory” behind some of the most popular applications created with the Facebook and OpenSocial standards.
“As the leading music provider on hi5, we’re excited to know that hi5’s crowdsourcing service would expand iLike’s reach internationally, helping music spread among fans from different languages, geographies and cultures,” iLike CEO Ali Partovi said in a release.
The concept of crowdsourcing language translations caught fire when Facebook started enlisting volunteer members to help with the effort through an application on its own platform called Translation. The Hi5 application will, in effect, do the same thing for the OpenSocial platform.
Google built OpenSocial as a universal standard for social-network applications, and has since gained the following of almost every social site except for Facebook, which continues to use its own platform. Earlier this year, OpenSocial was spun off into a nonprofit organization separate from Google.
24
09/2008Usernamecheck knows where your name is still available
If you’re one of those people who tries to grab his or her own preferred username on every new service that comes along, just in case the service becomes hot one day and you want to start using that cool ID, check out this new tool: Usernamecheck.
All it does is ask you for a user name, and then pings about 45 services so it can return to you “taken” or “available” for each one.
If a name is taken, it can’t tell you if the owner of it is you or someone else (how would it know?), and there’s as yet no way to add new sites for it to check–you have to wait for the developer to add them. Also, it’s slow. And it doesn’t appear to work on anything but Firefox.
But this is a useful tool for managing one’s personal brand. And here’s a tip for parents-to-be: Run your baby names through it, as well as through BustAName. Your kid might thank you.
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