To address that perceived problem, Google is kicking off an awareness campaign today to promote building sites that render better on smaller screens.

After all, maybe there’s not always an app for that — or there doesn’t always have to be.

The project, called HowtoGoMo.com, is a public service announcement of sorts that explains why you may need a standalone mobile site — and, if you agree, what to do about it.

The promotional site, which has been delayed for a week, was officially rolled out this morning and detailed in a blog post.

In an interview, Google’s director of mobile, Jason Spero, explained that the purpose of the site is to walk companies through the process of deciding to build a standalone mobile site. Spero joined Google through the acquisition of AdMob, the mobile ad network.

Amazingly, while Apple has successfully convinced everyone that there needs to be an application for everything found on the Internet, mobile needs have not translated as widely to the need for mobile Web sites.

A survey conducted by Equation Research found that two out of three mobile users have encountered problems when accessing Web sites on their phones over the past 12 months. Load time is the top complaint; more than half reported that they had trouble accessing a site from the phone, and 40 percent said they’d use a competing site if they had to.

Beyond being able to view a Web site on a smaller screen, a mobile version could make it easier to book reservations, buy tickets or look up information with fewer clicks.

The new Google site is a resource center that links to a growing list of 15 to 20 vendors and agencies that can help with all aspects of building a mobile site. The site also has an emulator that shows how your site looks on a phone, and offers case studies from other companies.

Spero said the site is not about making money for Google — well, at least not directly.

If more sites were mobile-ready, Google could conceivably help them with mobile ad campaigns. But right now, Spero said, so many conversations for Google’s mobile advertising division start from scratch because so many companies still don’t have mobile properties.

“Google’s interest here is people being able to do business on mobile phones, and once they can, we can offer a great marketing solution for them,” he said. “Having a proper mobile Web site or an app is a prerequisite to marketing to mobile users.”

But I don’t know the details. Employees new and old keep their secrets close. That said, certain aspects of iOS5 have been made public for developers and speculation seems high that this is the juncture where Siri, a company on whose board I sat, will re-emerge as a core part of the operating system. Here’s a heads up on what’s coming now — and perhaps later — so you can prepare.

PC Free
Apple’s recently announced iCloud offers a host of new features but the most underappreciated is device configuration in the Cloud. It will have everything you need to configure and keep your iPhone up to date without a PC. Every Apple device you have will be linked with an Apple ID and iCloud will know the configuration of each one. No more long sync required before a phone upgrade, no more painful restore, simply enter the Apple ID and password and voila, good as new. This will make life easier for people with multiple iOS devices, but the implications go far beyond.

When configuration lives in the Cloud, modification to the configuration happens in the Cloud as well. That means you could install an app onto your phone while clicking a Facebook ad, reading a blog, or responding to an email. Every banner advertisement you see on the web will be an opportunity for app developers to entice you, and with your browser already cookied, a single click could make the new app magically appear on your devices.

This marks a major change for mobile app developers to promote their wares. Being on the Top 25 list won’t matter quite as much; there will be lots of ways to get the word out and drive downloads. The same PPI (pay per install) ad economy that multiplied AdMob’s revenues and led to the Google acquisition will be available to the rest of the Internet ad landscape. With the sophistication of ad exchanges today, app developers could bid on impressions of only Apple users and efficiently target the right people. Developers will need to have instrumented analytics all across this marketing funnel to maximize their opportunity and not get killed by others who have figured it out. Advice: App devs need an Internet acquisition animal in-house.

Assistant
Sixteen months ago Apple acquired a technology company named Siri. Siri was small, with three amazing founders — Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Tom Gruber — as part of a total of only 20 employees. Their size did not match their monumental ambition. Founded out of SRI where the technology originated and a Series A round from Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler, the company was the first to make a “Virtual Personal Assistant” actually work. As an app running on the iPhone, users speak in natural language to book tables, order taxis, check flight times, and many other functions. In fact, their original venture pitch called the service “Hal” after the computer personality in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The app requires the Cloud because although voice is captured on the phone, the computation required to parse the words into intent and then invoke the chain of web services to accomplish the user’s goal is too much to run on the phone. Siri’s server farm does the heavy lifting.

The native integration of Siri into iOS could change the game in three ways. First, voice input will be a breakthrough for touch screen devices. Although users tolerate soft keyboards in exchange for larger screen size, typing anything of length is still painful and even short bursts are more convenient with voice. Siri found the overwhelming majority of queries were spoken rather than typed. High-quality voice recognition along with Siri’s semantic processing could allow a new level of instant gratification when capturing a reminder, queuing a playlist, or sending a text message, especially while driving.

The second game-changer could be voice access to apps. While Siri had to do all of its integration with other services (e.g., OpenTable) in the Cloud via web APIs, as part of iOS it would be possible to interact with any app on the phone seamlessly, with login credentials already there. Imagine being able to say “Checking account balance” and the banking app comes up to that page, or “Directions to Jim’s house” and the phone starts TeleNav to navigate you there.

The third implication is that Apple would be joining the search game and squaring off with Google. For the category of searches that people do on the go, the desired result is often a completed action rather than a page of blue links. Siri is a superior technology for getting the job done quickly. Both companies have a mobile operating system, a mobile device, an app store, and now an engine for navigating the web. It will be a fun one to watch. Advice: 2011 will mark the year a voice user-interface delivers real value and will rapidly become a must-have feature, prepare to respond.

Media on Demand
In addition to the PC Free features deriving from configuration in the Cloud, iCloud also stores media and data in the Cloud where it belongs. For personal media like pictures and videos, that means no more priceless baby shots at risk of deletion on the phone. All of the pics will get synced between devices and likely be shareable from the web.

Purchased media like music and videos will also live in the Cloud. For $25 a year, iTunes Match allows users to unlock pristine copies of all those songs they, um, ripped from CDs. Time will tell if it’s enough to stop the flow of people from iTunes to Cloud music services like MOG and Spotify. Movies will be in the Cloud too, allowing start times to be counted in seconds rather than the minutes required for download and sync. Apple already dropped the hard drive in their 2nd gen AppleTV to turn it into an Internet streamer like Roku, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a larger screened device resembling a TV appeared soon. To monetize all of this newfound cost, Apple has a model that seems inspired by Dropbox: Offer the first 5GB free and when users hit their limit they have little choice but to plunk down some extra bucks for an annual storage fee. Advice: Don’t waste your money on an Internet-enabled TV, it will be obsolete by the time you plug it in.

iNavigator
In 2007 after the iPhone launched, I emailed Steve Jobs to encourage him to take a meeting with TeleNav, a portfolio company who pioneered navigation on the mobile phone. Before TeleNav, the gigabytes of data required to render U.S. street maps was too large to put on phones so TNAV pushed the data, routing engine and traffic into the Cloud and streamed just the information required for GPS-enabled handsets to give turn-by-turn directions. They now power the majority of carrier navigation services in the United States. The fit with the iPhone was a natural. I fired off my carefully crafted note and got back a brief reply:

Shawn, Which provider does TeleNav get their map data from? Why would it be hard for Apple to also license this data and extend its own map application to do what TeleNav’s does?
Thanks, Steve

I replied with reasons of course, but never heard back. Apparently he decided Apple should do it themselves. Since that time, Apple has hired a number of engineers with navigation expertise. Though it has taken them several years, the service has been spotted recently in the wild and will likely show its face soon. Advice: Get an iPhone mounting kit for your car.

The move to the Cloud represents a tectonic shift in the IT landscape for both enterprises and consumers and the disruption is just beginning. It’s wonderful to see Apple embrace it wholeheartedly to drive value for their customers. For companies that are prepared, there will be great opportunities as a part of the ecosystem. The analysis could continue for pages, but I still haven’t found the iPhone5 pre-order page so you’ll have to excuse me for now.

Shawn Carolan is a Managing Director at Menlo Ventures, where he has been for nine years; he focuses on consumer Internet and mobile investing. He sits on the Boards of IMVU, PlayPhone, Roku, Talari, TeleNav (NASDAQ: TNAV) and YuMe.

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

Prior to today, I kept hearing chatter, none of it stronger than word-of-mouth gossip, that Google really did want to make a run at the video site. That struck me as a stretch, given that Google was already facing a wide-ranging federal antitrust probe, and that adding the video site that dominated the market for “professional” content would be a giant red flag for regulators.

Now it seems like a really, really long stretch.

Google could easily afford to shell out a couple billion for the site, owned by a consortium that includes Disney, Comcast and News Corp. (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

At the end of June, Google had $39 billion lying around, and it makes a couple billion more in profits each quarter. And Google biz dev boss David Drummond made a point of telling investors this morning that the $12.5 billion Google wants to spend on Motorola won’t slow it from making other deals.

But Motorola makes Hulu that much more unlikely for two big reasons:

• Google could certainly argue that it wouldn’t break antitrust rules with a Hulu deal for a lot of reasons. They could note, for instance, that Hulu doesn’t have truly exclusive rights to its programming, but shares the licenses with content owners who show the stuff on their own sites (i.e. Fox.com, NBC.com, etc.). But TV is different from mobile advertising or flight search software — people have an emotional attachment to it, and regulators respond accordingly. Note that Comcast had to abdicate any control of NBC Universal’s Hulu stake as a condition to getting its merger done. It’s that much harder to imagine Washington giving Google the go-ahead to control the online output of three of the four broadcast networks at the same time it is asking for control of a giant handset-maker.
• Even if Google thought it could get the deal done, it would have to convince Hulu’s owners, too. Google says it thinks it can get Motorola approved by Washington by the end of the year, but that seems crazily optimistic — as Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney notes, both ITA and DoubleClick took 9 to 11 months for sign-off. If you’re Disney/News Corp./et al and you decide you do want to sell, you want to find a buyer who can actually make it happen.

Then again, perhaps Google could offer a 63 percent premium and a gazillion-dollar break-up fee as insurance, just like it did with Motorola today, and Hulu’s owners would be willing to take the non-risk. Goohulu may have a very, very low chance of survival, but I can’t call it DOA just yet.

The network will compete with Apple’s iAd and Google’s AdMob networks, and is available to iPhone and Android developers and publishers looking to monetize their games or applications through advertising.

It could be particularly powerful because it taps into AT&T’s thousands of local salespeople, who work directly with local pizza places, dry cleaners, movie theaters and restaurants across the country.

The mobile ad network joins AT&T Interactive’s existing properties, including search on the Web or mobile at YP.com. A separate subsidiary prints the yellow directory that is delivered to your doorstep. The company’s interactive revenues have an annual run rate of $1 billion.

As an example of how big this business is getting, last year Google disclosed that mobile ad sales were now at a $1 billion annualized run rate. Google’s business is international and consists of both search and in-app mobile advertising.

While AT&T would still have a lot of catching up to do, David Krantz, AT&T Interactive’s president and CEO, said in an interview that he’s hoping its ads result in higher click-through rates because they can target a person’s location with more relevant ads.

Based on a three-month trial, Krantz said prices and fill rates were falling somewhere in between Apple’s iAd at the high end and Google’s AdMob or Millennial Media at the lower end. In the trial, which included 750 million impressions, costs per click ranged between 25 and 30 cents.

“We have really high fill rates because of our coverage, and we are able to provide CPMs in between [Apple and Google], so we’ve had a lot of interest in the pilot … We are finding a ton of demand for what we do,” he said.

Most of the major ad networks also try to serve more relevant ads based on location, but oftentimes it is difficult if they don’t have the sales force. Greystripe was focused on regional advertising before it was purchased by ValueClick, and Where had also latched on to the idea, before it was acquired by eBay’s PayPal.

AT&T’s ads will appear in any application as long as a person has opted to share their location. If a consumer clicks on a banner, it will direct them to a landing page from inside that application that will include click-to-call information, directions, reviews and coupons.  (Note: AT&T Mobility customers will not be treated any differently from subscribers on other wireless networks.)

AT&T is also launching a daily deals service sometime soon, but it is not part of the launch at this time.

Advertisers who are already part of the YP local ad network will not pay more to participate. AT&T pays the publisher on a pay-per-click basis.

Two of the applications that participated in the beta were Pinger and Skout. In a release, Pinger said it achieved CPMs three times higher than with other ad networks serving ads that were not local.

Krantz said AT&T’s ad network was built in-house with the help of Plusmo, which it acquired in September 2009.

In fact, it’s as easy as taking a picture.

Card.io, which was founded by Mike Mettler and Josh Bleecher, has raised $1 million in seed funding.

Angel investors include Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal; Jeff Clavier and Charles Hudson of SoftTech; Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures; Alok Bhanot, a former PayPal exec; and Omar Hamoui, AdMob’s founder.

Card.io is focused on solving a specific part of the mobile payments business — buying things with a credit card on the phone, whether it’s digital goods, like a song, or physical goods from a site like Amazon.

Rather than having to type in the credit card number, users just hold a credit card up to the phone’s camera, which automatically reads the card information and enters the appropriate data.

Co-founder and CEO Mike Mettler, who was one of the original product managers at AdMob, left the company around the time that Google purchased the mobile ad network for $750 million. He said a four-person team has been working on the concept since August.

“It’s super-frictionless. It requires no behavior change and no hardware dependencies,” Mettler said.

The company is targeting developers who want to sell items within a mobile application. The company is launching a private beta today that will allow mobile developers to integrate the service into its iPhone applications. It does not work for browser-based sites or the mobile Web, because they typically cannot communicate with the phone’s camera.

So far, it’s signed up three developers: MogoTix for event tickets, TaskRabbit for local services, and Samasource for donations.

Previous investors AllianceBernstein, General Catalyst, Redpoint Ventures, Summerhill Ventures, Valhalla Partners and WPP participated in the newest funding round; the company says new investors came aboard as well, but won’t name them.

Much of the funding had previously been disclosed via a regulatory filing in April.

Jumptap is one of several well-funded mobile ad companies yet to be snatched up by a bigger player. But many have: Google bought AdMob, Apple bought Quattro Wireless, and last month ValueClick bought Greystripe for $70 million. Competitor Millennial Media, which raised its own big round in January, talks often about its ambitions to go public.

CEO George Bell joined the company less than a year ago; he had previously been a managing director at Jumptap backer General Catalyst.

This morning, agents from Seoul’s Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) descended on Google’s Yeoksam-dong offices as part of an investigation into whether the company has been illegally collecting consumer location data through its mobile ad platform.

“The raid was carried out to confirm the allegations that Google’s AdMob platform was used to collect data on individuals’ locations,” an SMPA official told The Korea Times.

This is the second time Google’s Seoul offices have been raided on suspicion of privacy violations in the past year. Last August the SMPA seized dozens of hard drives and documents related to the company’s Street View service, which was later determined to have violated South Korea’s law protecting telecommunications privacy.

[Image credit: Flickr/toughkidcst]

Specifically, Inside Mobile Apps is reporting two big adjustments: in the last few days, Apple has rejected “dozens of apps” that use offer walls, and it has also apparently changed the ranking algorithm for its all-important top apps list to favor user engagement over number of downloads.

Apple declined to comment on the reports.

Offer walls are a method of cross-selling apps, where developers use companies like Tapjoy and Flurry to give users options to install other apps in order to earn virtual currency within a game.

The practice is now less influential on Facebook but incredibly pervasive for free mobile gaming apps, as I reported at length in March. Developers pay per install of their app so they can get on Apple’s top app leaderboards, which previously were determined by number of installs.

Similar practices on Facebook (in fact by some of the same companies; Tapjoy was formerly known as Offerpal) achieved notoriety in late 2009 when they were exposed for their scammy tactics in a series of articles about “Scamville” by TechCrunch.

To get on Apple’s free app leaderboard (which is one of the main ways users discover new apps), developers have been paying Tapjoy something like $30,000 to $500,000 for pay-per-install campaigns. That may seem exorbitant, but it’s seen as significantly cheaper than acquiring users with CPM advertising through Apple’s iAd and Google’s AdMob.

In its rejections of apps with offer walls, Apple has reportedly cited a clause in its developer agreement that prohibits app makers from manipulating or cheating its chart rankings. This is similar to Apple’s approach to mandating use of its own in-app purchasing by starting to enforce an existing clause about it with the rejection of Sony’s Reader app earlier this year.

As for the alteration of its app ranking algorithm, Apple now appears to be weighting factors other than recent number of downloads. That change has resulted in apps that clearly have large numbers of active users, like Facebook and Pandora, jumping up 10 or more spots in the most recent version of the list.

The leaderboard has been shaken up again in the day since Inside Mobile Apps reported the changes (a game called Stylish Sprint is now in the top spot), so other signals–perhaps something to highlight up-and-coming apps–may be in play as well.

And while Apple declined to comment, when we covered this topic in depth in March the company gave us a statement that defended its app discovery offerings, thus downplaying the role of companies like Tapjoy.

Tapjoy, for its part, said in a prepared statement:

Tapjoy has been and continues to be very supportive of the Apple app ecosystem, and we were not surprised about the Top Free & Paid rankings algorithm changes–we’re all for incremental changes that add to the user experience and keep the environment dynamic. But banning the largest and most effective channel for application distribution, engagement and monetization has a significant and long-term negative impact on the user experience, developer innovation and advertiser utility.

The moves bring Apple’s App Store practices closer to that of the Android Market, which uses more than just number of downloads in its app ranking algorithm. Pay-per-install campaigns are less prevalent on Android, though that’s also because much of the developer ecosystem is still focused on Apple.

Text messaging applications, which offer the ability to send messages to a group of people via a single phone number, were in the spotlight at SXSW. Companies such as Gogii, KIK, Beluga, GroupMe and Fast Society were the talk of the town since they provided easy ways for large groups of people to socialize and get in touch quickly.

Following the event, GroupMe provided its first hint at what its business model would be when it opened up its mobile group chat to brands, which would be highlighted in a “Featured Groups” section.

Now, Gogii is beefing up its monetizing efforts.

Hill, who will have the title of VP of monetization and publishing, was most recently VP of mobile monetization at Myspace.

She will oversee all company revenue, which includes in-app purchases, advertising and a new publishing unit, said Gogii CEO Scott Lahman. “I can’t think of anyone better who can hit the ground running. She’s been doing this for years at Fox and at Myspace. This is almost the exact same role.”

Gogii’s textPlus application has 7.7 million monthly active users and recently set a record for sending 35 million messages in one day.

While Hill is just joining the Los Angeles-based startup, the company has been monetizing with advertising from the beginning.  ”We hit seven-figure revenue-quarters last year, and that’s continued to grow. We are well past the testing stage. Advertising campaigns were up 300 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.”

Mostly, the app relies on splash ads–which are like a homepage takeover–which the user sees immediately after opening the application. Lahman said users on average open the application 10 to 15 times a day, and that the ads have a click-through rate in the high single digits. There are also banner ads from within the applications, which are seen by its nearly eight million monthly active users.

Lahman said they made the decision to monetize with advertising because it allowed them to grow the business much faster than if they charged for it. A paid version of the application, which has no advertising, allows the user to pick the area code for the phone number they use. He said six to 10 percent of its users choose to upgrade. The app costs $4.99 and is available on iPhone and Android.

“The advertisers love it. We are the text client for a lot of our customers–that’s why they use it so much to send so many messages.”

Gogii uses a mix of its own direct sales force in addition to farming out some inventory to mobile ad networks, like Google’s AdMob, Jumptap and Greystripe. Returning advertisers include Disney, Fox, Target, Ford, Paramount, CBS, Unilever, JCPenney, MTV, Coca-Cola and Zynga.

The new publishing business, which Hill will oversee, will experiment with a sort of white-label service, which will allow a brand to completely take over the application for a specific brand or event.

Lahman said in March, 25 percent of the company’s revenues were coming from paid features inside the application. It’s his goal to hit 50 percent by the end of the year. “That will come against a growing advertising business–that’s not cannibalizing it,” he said.

After all, the folks behind Angry Birds have shown they have plenty of ways to make money, from selling downloads, to in-app purchases, to advertising and toys.

“They didn’t really need the capital,” says Rich Wong, whose Accel Partners was among the investors in the $42 million Series A round announced on Thursday. “It took them a while to convince them of the ways we might be able to help.”

Wong said the talks started last summer and took about nine months to complete.

Rovio’s Mikael Hed said that the dealings with the venture capital firms were somewhat ironic. For years, the company would have given anything for Sand Hill Road to take an interest in one of the company’s projects. Then Angry Birds took off, and suddenly people were beating down their door.

“Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to us and we realized we didn’t really need their money,” Hed said.

Eventually, though, Rovio decided to take some venture funding. In addition to Accel, Rovio’s new investors include Felicis Ventures and Atomico Ventures, the firm created by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström. Zennström is also joining Rovio’s board.

“All of these people have been there to build billion dollar companies,” Hed said.

Rovio is not in that category yet, but certainly has a good start.
Details of the valuation were not announced, though sources said the total value is still in the hundreds of millions, rather than the billions.

“While being valued at a billion or several billion dollars isn’t an end goal in itself, it’s an interesting metric,” Hed said.

As for how the deal came together, Wong said he had known Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka for years, from his days establishing the non-profit Mobile Monday effort. The volunteer-run collaboration project started in Helsinki in 2000 and has expanded all over the world, including an active chapter in Silicon Valley.

Wong notes that AdMob and GetJar–two of his firm’s big mobile investments–can trace their roots to Mobile Monday. AdMob, for example, connected with its first engineer thanks to MoMo, as members call the gatherings.

In any case, Wong said he is thrilled to be part of what is clearly one of the hottest things going.

“I’ve literally been waiting 10 years working in the mobile industry (for something) that is truly this mass market and broad scale,” he said. “It’s almost as simple as that.”

Wong, who grew up in Charles Schultz’s hometown of Santa Rosa, said Angry Birds has the chance to be for this generation what Peanuts and Pac-Man were for him. Among those who convinced him of that were his children and nieces and nephews, all of whom love the birds.

“They really love Angry Birds more than anything else,” he said, adding that perhaps his two-year-old would still pick Curious George, but that all the other ones are sold on Angry Birds.

“Maybe this is their Peanuts and Pac-Man and Super Mario Brothers,” he said.

Hed said he likes the Super Mario analogy, saying the company sees that kind of opportunity, but is careful not to move things too quickly.

“Every step we have taken we are mindful of not overextending the brand,” he said. Clearly one of the challenges for Rovio is going to be expanding with out becoming oversaturated and growing beyond its single hit.

That said, the company already has 40 or so projects in the works–almost as many as it has employees. (There are approaching 60 people at Rovio, all based in Helsinki, Finland.)

Hed said that the company has taken to use Google Docs to keep track of all of the things it has going on at any given moment.

“We do need a spreadsheet for that,” Hed said.

Wong said that the company has solid plans for this year and beyond, noting its efforts to evolve Angry Birds with both the frequently updated “Seasons” version and with the Angry Birds Rio game, which is a movie tie-in with a Twentieth Century Fox film due out in April. Rovio has also talked about a Facebook version coming in May and console games are also on the way.

“There’s a diverse range of products coming out including gaming products,” Hed said. “The pigs will be more prominently in play in the future I can tell you that.”

Beyond app sales and advertising, the company has sold 2 million plush toys and says that 40 percent of new iOS players are purchasing in-game help in the form of a “mighty eagle.”
But with so many eyeballs on Angry Birds–40 million people play each month–Wong said there is an opportunity for the company to influence the entire ecosystem based on which brands are featured within its properties. This week’s deal with Microsoft’s Bing is just an early example, he said.

Hed noted that the company also sees an opportunity to acquire other brands or help lesser-known companies get published.

Wong said he was also impressed with the Rovio team’s dedication. As has been widely noted, Angry Birds was the company’s 52nd game.

“I love the quote that this was an overnight success that took eight years,” Wong said.

The company said Scott will start today, reporting to David Henke, SVP of operations and engineering, and will be assigned to engineering new products and services.

Scott’s extremely thorough LinkedIn profile says he has expertise in “machine learning, distributed algorithms, large-scale distributed systems, information retrieval, compilers, programming languages, internet advertising and engineering management.”

Late last month, LinkedIn filed to go public in an offering worth $175 million. The company said it had 990 full-time employees as of the end of last year.

Verve said the acquisition will help monetize mobile media at the local level by leveraging Deconstruct’s self-serve ad network, which allows advertisers to buy ad campaigns with a credit card.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and not much else is known about the company, other than its platform was built by product and engineering executives from Advertising.com, which is now apart of AOL Advertising.

Otherwise, information on the company’s Web site is fairly sparse, with a lot of its pages saying they are still in the works. Brent Halliburton, founder and CEO of Deconstruct, will join Verve as VP of product management. Prior to founding Deconstruct, Halliburton was senior director of new product development at Advertising.com. He and the rest of the team will be based out of Verve’s Washington, D.C., office.

Verve serves hundreds of media companies, and had the goal of serving 2.2 billion pages in 2010. It works with McClatchy and Belo Interactive, and has raised almost $10 million in capital from investors, including the Associated Press.

The price tag was likely small, but in the past year, mobile advertising and marketing companies have been a hot commodity (luckily, there’s still plenty to go around).

Last week, we broke the news that Facebook acquired Rel8tion, a mobile advertising company out of stealth mode for an undisclosed sum, and earlier this week Motricity said it had purchased Adenyo for up to $150 million.

Of course, these more recent deals pale in comparison with Google’s purchase of AdMob last year, and Apple’s purchase of Quattro Wireless to create iAd.

Facebook confirmed the acquisition in a statement: “We’re excited to confirm that we recently completed a talent acquisition of Rel8tion, a stealth-mode startup in Seattle. The engineering team will join our growing Seattle office, and we’re looking forward to having them on board.”

Rel8tion was started in part by Peter Wilson, who has dabbled in just about every major company that has set up shop in Seattle.

In addition to his responsibilities at Rel8tion, he was spending one day a week assisting Facebook with setting up its Seattle office. He will now be an engineering director.

Prior to that, Wilson was an engineering director at Google for four years, helping to ramp up Google’s Kirkland, Wash.-based engineering center. He also spent nine years at Microsoft, working on Microsoft Windows, XP, MSN and Visual Studio in a variety of roles.

There’s not much information about the company, but according to the little information available on its site, it was trying to create a system for synching up a person’s location and demographics with the most relevant ad inventory.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the role the Rel8tion employees would play at the company, or on the terms of the deal.

Another founder, Scott Hannan, was previously a consultant for Microsoft, and worked as VP of Business Development at Pelago–which operates the mobile social network Whrrl–and Nat Brown, who is listed as the company’s CTO. Brown was previously VP of Technology at Myspace in Seattle and CTO of iLike.

Despite Facebook having a gigantic mobile audience, it has yet to monetize that traffic through advertising. With its introduction of Facebook Places, which allows users to check-in at local establishments and find local deals, you can only expect more is coming.

While both Apple and Google have made big bets in mobile advertising with large acquisitions of Quattro Wireless and AdMob, respectively, this can’t really be put in the same category given its relative size.

The first extension of the event, it produced some very newsy sessions. We’ll be posting them all.

Today, it’s Google advertising bigwig Susan Wojcicki (pictured here), who talked with MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka about the search giant’s mobile ad strategy.

Google has plunged deeply into the nascent market, with its $750 million acquisition of AdMob last year, facing tough competition from Apple.

Will Google dominate mobile advertising in the same way that it’s ruled the online search ad business?

Wojcicki, who was key to that first huge success, is in charge of making sure lightning strikes twice for the Silicon Valley search giant.

Here’s the video of the interview:

Next up: Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, who is the man in charge of its Windows Phone 7 efforts.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101223/d-dive-into-mobile-the-full-interview-video-of-google-ad-head-susan-wojcicki/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/pocket-gems-raises-5-million-from-sequoia-others/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/pocket-gems-raises-5-million-from-sequoia-others/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:32:29 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=699 Pocket Gems, the maker of mobile social games, such as Tap Store, Tap Jungle and Tap Zoo, has raised $5 million in venture capital. The round was led by Sequoia Capital. Other investors include Michael Dearing, an eBay veteran; Jeff Fluhr, co-founder of StubHub; and Omar Hamoui, founder of AdMob. The funding will be used to hire more engineers. Pocket Gem’s free games have been downloaded more than 15 million times from the iPhone App Store and are supported by virtual goods.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/pocket-gems-raises-5-million-from-sequoia-others/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/dive-video-googles-wojcicki-discusses-how-mobile-solves-local-skirts-questions-about-groupon/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/dive-video-googles-wojcicki-discusses-how-mobile-solves-local-skirts-questions-about-groupon/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:23:14 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=280 Google’s Susan Wojcicki was the 18th employee at Google, and now oversees all existing and upcoming advertising opportunities for the company.

At D: Dive Into Mobile, she discusses what gets her excited about products in the pipeline. We’ve heard one example for years–where a consumer is offered a discounted latte while walking past a Starbucks. “The good thing is they are going to become real. This is the year where it will become possible,” she said.

Watch below as Wojcicki dodges questions about Google’s now-failed bid for Groupon, privacy concerns and more.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/dive-video-googles-wojcicki-discusses-how-mobile-solves-local-skirts-questions-about-groupon/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101207/susan-wojcicki-google-svp-and-advertising-chief-live-at-d-dive-into-mobile/ http://allthingsd.com/20101207/susan-wojcicki-google-svp-and-advertising-chief-live-at-d-dive-into-mobile/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:25:50 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=232

You’d have to search a long time to find someone who’s been closer to the evolution of Google than Susan Wojcicki. It was in her rented garage that Sergey Brin and Larry Page launched the company, which she joined in 1999.

Today, while much of the attention on Google focuses on Android or Chrome, Gmail or YouTube, Wojcicki oversees the operations from which Google generates the bulk of its revenue and profits: AdWords, AdSense and DoubleClick among them. And in October she was made one of Google’s eight senior vice presidents.

She’s lately been quoting research from Forrester, which found that while 42 percent of people do research online before buying something, only 7 percent of those purchases happen online. Mobile advertising, she has argued recently, can help bridge that gap. Expect lots of discussion around that stemming from last year’s $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob.

Meanwhile, let’s be honest: Everyone wants to know what really happened between Google and Groupon.

Liveblog

8:36 am: Everyone is seated in the ballroom, and the session with Wojcicki is about to start.

8:39 am: Walt and Kara have come out onto the stage, thanking the audience for their support at big D and this week at D: Dive Into Mobile.

Before Wojcicki comes to the stage, they are introducing the new writers at All Things Digital:

• Liz Gannes, NetworkEffect
• Ina Fried, Mobilized
• Tricia Duryee, eMoney
• Arik Hesseldahl, NewEnterprise
• Drake Martinet

8:43 am: Walt and Kara hand the stage off to Peter Kafka, who will be conducting the interview with Susan Wojcicki.

8:44 am: We’re getting started. Peter Kafka is interviewing Susan. She says when she first rented to Larry and Sergey, they weren’t allowed to come in the front door.

8:45 am: Susan: I charged them $1,700 a month in rent.

8:45 am: Peter: Let’s start with mobile. It’s a big business but small for Google at $1 billion. Break out that billion dollars.

Susan: We don’t break it out. But they are all growing. To give you an idea of the growth, we saw a 4x increase year over year in the number of searches. AdMob has doubled, and is doing more than a billion ad requests per day.

8:48 am: Mobile brings an opportunity not just to bring people to a Web site but to a store. We just did something with Google Ad Goggles, with Buick, where you can see a magazine ad, scan and that takes you to an ad site.

8:51 am: Peter: In-app advertising is a small opportunity, but Google owns it.

Susan: We’d like to have everyone be an advertiser. We think about having very mobile-specific campaigns.

Our barriers to entry are a lot lower than those at Apple. We offer all the formats like video. We want it to be easy to advertise, we have a lot of systems that measure quality.

8:52 am: Peter: Who’s running AdMob day to day? Original management has left.

Susan: We’ve taken different parts of it and integrated it into our advertising and sales organizations. [Former AdMob CEO] Omar [Hamoui] has left for personal reasons, but pretty much most of the staff who joined with AdMob have stayed. The goal is how do we continue to innovate on that platform.

Peter: Do you view the phone differently from a privacy standpoint than on the PC?

Susan: I think the phone is a really personal device in a lot of ways. If you drop your phone or lose it there’s a moment of panic. On the other hand there’s a lot of control that users have.

8:57 am: Peter: You guys and the rest of the ad industry are telling Washington that they will self-regulate around privacy. FTC says that’s not going to fly, and they want something like an opt-out browser.

Susan: Google is a consumer brand and people need to be comfortable. If we were just an advertising brand we wouldn’t have the same concerns. We’ve always tried to promote transparency and choice among our users. We didn’t have a cookie on the AdSense network until about a year ago. There were a lot of things we couldn’t do.

8:58 am: Susan: We’re always interested in what’s being proposed. We’ll always participate in any discussion around proposals to improve privacy for users.

8:59 am: Peter: Do you think users really care about this? They’ll say they care if you ask them. Practically, do they really care?

Susan: People care. They also want to have good content. And they want the advertising to be relevant. We see advertising as information, and as long as we can make that information useful, the better it is.

9:01 am: Susan: We’ve had ads in Gmail since Gmail first launched. Ads get a bad reputation sometimes because theyr’e not useful. They’re not relevant, or slow. If you’re planning a trip to Hawaii, and see ads that are related to that, that’s useful information.

9:02 am: Susan: The moment that our products are not as good, people will go somewhere else.

Peter: So you were employee No. 18; now there are 23,000 employees at Google. Talk about how the culture has changed over time.

Susan: Google is a much bigger company obviously. We’ve tried to have a lot of different divisions and groups and have given them autonomy. Our display group is run like a separate group within Google.

The secret is to break into groups that are manageable, and give them as much autonomy as possible.

9:05 am: Peter: What are we to read into the fact that you’re offering employees bonuses to stay at the company?

Susan: Our employees are really valuable to us. They are basically our business. Google has been doing well. As much as possible we’re trying to share back with the employees. They will continue to create a lot of value.

9:06 am: Peter: If you’re coming to Google as a hot young engineer out of Stanford, what’s the most compelling thing you can say to bring them on board?

Susan: Google’s scale and platform. If you have a passion, and want to get things done. [Cites Andy Rubin, and the scale he's working at now vs. when Android was a start-up.] When you do something, it matters.

9:07 am: Peter: You guys were talking to Groupon. That deal has now gone away. [Asks about integrating companies into the Google culture.]

Susan: Each deal is different and you have to consider how best to integrate them.

9:09 am: Peter: What’s the product you’re most excited about?

Susan: Mobile ads. How can we enable you, when you’re walking around, to find out the best local offers around? As an advertiser, how can I find out if someone saw my ad and went to a store?

The local market is a huge market, we’ve always wanted to be in it.

9:09 am: Now going into Q&A from the audience.

9:13 am: Q: What do you view as being so hard about local?

Susan: The reason local is hard is because it needs to be simple. For small businesses, they don’t have a lot of time. You need to create a model that works for them. And it needs to be easy for them to sign up. On the back end, everything needs to just work for them.

9:15 am: And we’re done!

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101207/susan-wojcicki-google-svp-and-advertising-chief-live-at-d-dive-into-mobile/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/ex-admob-crew-gets-seed-funding-for-mopub/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/ex-admob-crew-gets-seed-funding-for-mopub/#comments Mon, 06 Dec 2010 18:35:34 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=392 The team at MoPub, which includes several former Google and AdMob employees, have scored an undisclosed amount of funding in a seed round. The backers are Accel Partners and Harrison Metal Capital.

With the phone giants scooping up many of the big-name mobile ad firms, MoPub CEO Jim Payne said there is an opportunity for another strong independent player.

“If I have a mobile app and a bunch of ad inventory and I assign it all to AdMob or iAd, I don’t have a lot of control over what happens,” Payne said in an interview. “This is really about putting control back in the hands of the publishers.”

The field used to be dominated by mobile-specific start-ups, but Google’s purchase of AdMob and Apple’s launch of iAd (and purchase of Quattro Wireless) have changed that landscape significantly.

The service, which MoPub likens to a DoubleClick for mobile publishers, is still in private beta testing. MoPub itself is still tiny though, with basically just the founders and their vision. Payne said the company hopes to staff up to about 10 using the new funding, the size of which he declined to disclose.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101206/ex-admob-crew-gets-seed-funding-for-mopub/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:33:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37734

If Google does manage to close the deal to buy Groupon–acquisition discussions flagged by BoomTown 10 days ago–it will be at a cost that is likely to be much more than the $2.5 billion price tag being floated in the latest batch of rumors.

It’s not just that the deal will likely come in at a higher number–upwards of $3 billion, according to sources I have spoken to–which will mean a big payoff for Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners, Boston’s Battery Ventures and Russia’s DST Global.

Or that this deal will net New York bankers used on each side–Allen & Co. for Groupon and Morgan Stanley for Google–sizable fees.

It’s because as soon as it purchases the social group buying phenom, the search giant will be buying a whole lot of pricey regulatory scrutiny too.

That cost will be, many think, much deserved and will definitely not come at any discount, given the rising worries in Washington about the swaggering power of Google.

After ever-testier brushes with federal regulators–including over an overreaching attempt to join with Yahoo in search and online access to copyrighted books–Google narrowly missed getting approval for its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob.

That deal was only saved after Apple made enough noise in the same space to take the focus off the controversy.

And let’s not forget Google suing the feds earlier this month over being excluded from competitive bidding to provide email and collaboration technology to the Interior Department’s 88,000 employees.

More seriously, Google has come under fire recently from numerous critics for its proposed purchase of huge flight data firm ITA Software for $700 million.

Those opposed to the acquisition, on antitrust grounds, contend that Google would control travel search in a way that would inevitably invite abuse.

The government, of course, is looking over the whole deal now.

Having Groupon in its arsenal would garner Google even more powerful pricing information from both customers and merchants across the globe.

That would in the lucrative local commerce arena. Currently, despite a plethora of clones, Groupon dominates socially fueled couponing across cities worldwide.

Owning the hot space around local purchasing and consumer information, combined with the social element, would be a tasty treat for Google.

The Silicon Valley search giant has struggled to deliver social tools to users, even as Facebook has morphed into a potent rival.

Google had looked at social reviews site Yelp for purchase previously, but that deal fell apart.

It has been introducing its own various local advertising and commerce efforts, which would be instantly turbocharged given Groupon’s much quicker progress.

In April, Groupon garnered a valuation of well above $1 billion in a massive venture funding.

It has used that money to buy up companies in the U.S. and internationally, trying to solidify itself as the major player in the marketplace.

If Google were to complete a deal to buy Groupon, it would have echoes of its purchase of YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

Many felt it a high price at the time, but it looks cheap now given how the site almost completely dominates Web video.

If that deal were to be struck today, of course, it is unlikely regulators would allow such a purchase to sail through the approval process so easily.

Thus, it will be interesting to see how they will react to a possible hook-up with Groupon, which–in many ways–is perhaps the most aggressive of Google’s moves to date to own valuable data up and down the food chain.

And, like I said, this particular move to buy discounting online could be one of its costliest too, in more ways than one.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101119/google-turns-its-local-eyes-to-groupon-but-who-else-could-enter-bidding/ http://allthingsd.com/20101119/google-turns-its-local-eyes-to-groupon-but-who-else-could-enter-bidding/#comments Fri, 19 Nov 2010 08:38:06 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37521

According to multiple sources close to the situation, Google is in discussions with local deals powerhouse Groupon about buying it.

Without making the requisite joke about the deal of the day, sources said the price being considered is certainly no discount–well above the $2 billion to $3 billion that Yahoo offered Groupon in acquisition talks that took place earlier this year.

But sources cautioned that the talks are not complete, and could also end up without any result, as the Yahoo discussions did.

In an email, a Google spokesperson said with some style: “Per usual, we don’t comment on rumor or speculation. If we did we’d be busy 24/7!”

A Groupon spokesperson was also sassy, noting: “Thanks for the heads-up!”

Still, the company appears to be engaged in a pattern of shopping itself around, via its bankers Allen & Co., even though Groupon investors have expressed a desire to stay independent many times.

But could there be other interested parties poking around, given the explosive revenue growth of Groupon–whose revenues are reportedly upward of $50 million a month–in the huge local retail market?

Sources said only three could pay such a high price: Microsoft, Amazon and, perhaps the most logical buyer, eBay.

Facebook is another company that could be interested, of course, although this would be a sizable purchase in both cost and also staff for the social networking giant, which has fewer employees than Groupon.

As does Google, all–except perhaps Facebook, which is not public yet–have more than enough cash reserves, as well as stock, to pay up for one of the more promising start-ups in a lucrative arena.

That would be local commerce. Currently, despite a plethora of clones, Groupon dominates socially fueled couponing across cities globally.

Owning the hot space around local purchasing and consumer information, combined with the social element, would be a tasty treat for Google.

The Silicon Valley search giant has struggled to deliver social tools to users, even as Facebook has morphed into a potent rival.

Google had looked at social reviews site Yelp for purchase previously, but that deal fell apart.

It has been introducing various local advertising and commerce efforts, efforts that would be turbocharged given Groupon’s quick progress.

In April, Groupon garnered a valuation of well above $1 billion in a massive venture funding.

It has used that money to buy up companies in the U.S. and internationally, trying to solidify itself as the major player in the marketplace.

If Google were to complete a deal to buy Groupon, it would have echoes of its purchase of YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

Many felt it a high price at the time, but it looks cheap today given how the site almost completely dominates Web video.

A purchase this size would also likely require bankers. Google’s favored one is Morgan Stanley.

But there is one major issue in a possible Google purchase of Groupon: Even more regulatory scrutiny by the federal government over its power online.

Google narrowly missed getting approval for its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob.

And it is currently under fire from numerous critics for its proposed purchase of huge flight data firm ITA Software for $700 million.

Those opposed to the acquisition, on antitrust grounds, contend that Google would control travel search in a way that would invite abuse.

Having Groupon would garner Google even more powerful pricing information from both customers and merchants across the globe.

Stay tuned, but check out this video interview I did with Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason this summer in Vancouver, where I asked him specifically about Google’s interest (actually, I suggested he mug Google co-founder Larry Page):

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101119/google-turns-its-local-eyes-to-groupon-but-who-else-could-enter-bidding/feed/ 16 http://allthingsd.com/20101111/angelpad-an-incubator-for-entrepreneurs-with-credentials/ http://allthingsd.com/20101111/angelpad-an-incubator-for-entrepreneurs-with-credentials/#comments Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:12:20 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=254 AngelPad, the new incubator created by former Googlers, held its first end-of-session Demo Day last night at its office on a dead-end alley in San Francisco’s SOMA district. It was a familiar format for those who have been to Y Combinator and TechStars Demo Days, and indeed just about every one of the hundred or so investors in the room is a frequent presence at those events.

Thomas Korte

AngelPad is captained by the amiable and energetic former Google product evangelist Thomas Korte, who brought in many of the eight participating start-ups from his personal connections. They included somewhat typical tech start-up fare: A couple of Web curation tools (Curated.by and Snip.ly), a get-together planning app (RollCall) and a simpler interface for selling your stuff online (EggCartel). There was also a user-generated outdoors site (AllTrails) and an app that tracks the energy consumption of computers and other devices (Hug Energy).

Probably the most notable difference between AngelPad and other incubators is the level of high-profile experience most of its founders already have. At least half seemed to have worked on product and engineering at Google, and others come from established companies like Microsoft, Yelp, Playdom and RockYou.

(Also, is it just me, or does the name AngelPad scream for a reality show that would be sort of like “Real World” mashed with “Top Chef” about Silicon Valley start-ups?)

After the demos, I asked MoPub founder Jim Payne, who managed product for Google Maps Premier and AdMob metrics, what he and his co-founders thought the AngelPad differentiator is. He said, “As compared to Y Combinator?” I said, “First of all, as compared to doing this outside an incubator.”

Payne replied that he “wouldn’t and couldn’t” have started his company without an incubator, and that taking that route would be forcibly sitting yourself and your start-up “out in the weeds.”

MoPub is a mobile ad server, and will soon announce its first round of funding, said Payne. He and other AngelPad participants said they liked the small size of the program and the more free-form curriculum as compared to more established incubators.

Sean Plaice of Hug Energy at AngelPad's first Demo Day

Bill Tai of Charles River Ventures, who had been chatting with Payne when I walked up, bid him goodbye with the admonition to let Tai get in on the MoPub round. Tai told me that he thought MoPub and Adku were the most interesting of the AngelPad eight. Adku wants to help e-commerce sites optimize what products they are featuring using real-time data mining about what’s relevant to a visitor’s location and demographic.

Tai said he agreed that founders in the first AngelPad class do have more experience, particularly at large companies. But he added that’s not necessarily always an asset. “At Y Combinator there may be a higher probability of a breakout idea,” Tai said, “because less-experienced people don’t have context.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101111/angelpad-an-incubator-for-entrepreneurs-with-credentials/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101109/exclusive-boku-to-be-added-as-option-to-facebook-credits-setting-up-face-off-with-rival-zong/ http://allthingsd.com/20101109/exclusive-boku-to-be-added-as-option-to-facebook-credits-setting-up-face-off-with-rival-zong/#comments Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:32:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37063

For the past 18 months, mobile payments start-up Zong has had the enviable prime spot on Facebook Credits as its sole option for users wanting to use their cell phone number to buy virtual goods for social gaming and other services.

But, according to multiple sources, that’s about to change later this week, when the social networking giant starts A/B testing its rival, Boku, as an alternate payment method to Zong.

The face-off on Facebook to allow consumers to charge virtual purchases to their wireless bills is just another point of conflict, among many, between the two top Silicon Valley mobile payments companies.

Both have received large amounts of venture funding from prominent investors–$38 million for San Francisco’s Boku and $15 million for Menlo Park, Calif.-based Zong.

And there has been acquisition attention as well from big companies–such as Apple, Google and more–who are mightily interested in the fast-growing space of late.

Sources close to Facebook said the move to include both on its king-making platform is a natural one for the company, giving its users a range of options in the mobile payments area.

One person noted that Facebook execs told both Zong and Boku that it was important to enable people to buy Facebook Credits via whatever means they choose.

The plan is to use both for a while, said another source, gauging how users like them, although it was not considered “a horse race between them” by Facebook.

Nonetheless, that’s just what both Zong and Boku think it will turn into on Facebook.

“It is all about performance,” said one person with knowledge of Boku’s strategy. “Facebook is testing the landscape, especially outside the U.S.”

Indeed, mobile payments are currently much more important internationally than in the U.S. market, although that is changing fast, especially as smartphone usage booms.

Zong CEO David Marcus, in an interview with BoomTown today at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, said that competition was inevitable.

“Every single large-scale mobile process needs to have a backup, especially as mobile payments reach the scale everyone expects it to,” he said. “But we are confident that we have the best product for the Facebook platform.”

Performance and distribution will be much on the minds of potential acquirers, in much the same way Apple and Google snapped up mobile advertising companies Quattro Wireless and AdMob, respectively.

Most expect both Zong and Boku to eventually be bought, although both companies have said they intend to remain independent.

Selling out might also have its downside–if, for example, Boku were bought by Google for its Android mobile operating system, it would quickly become less attractive for the search giant’s growing archrival Facebook to feature it.

The same goes for Apple, since it also has its own agenda with the iPhone.

But there are other possible buyers, such as Amazon, eBay’s PayPal and a spate of credit card companies.

Whatever happens, the new battle on Facebook will surely be an interesting one to watch.

To get up to speed, here is a video interview I did with Boku’s top execs–CEO Mark Britto and Ron Hirson, SVP of product and marketing–in July, followed by a more recent one I did with Zong’s Marcus:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101109/exclusive-boku-to-be-added-as-option-to-facebook-credits-setting-up-face-off-with-rival-zong/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101029/google-2010-ma-bill-1-6-billion-and-counting/ http://allthingsd.com/20101029/google-2010-ma-bill-1-6-billion-and-counting/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:25:33 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25269 Lost track of Google’s M&A binge this year? No problem: The company helpfully tallies it up for investors in its most recent quarterly filing.

The big picture: Google has spent at least $1.6 billion buying 40 companies during the first nine months of 2010. And if you assume the previously announced ITA deal goes through this year, you can tack on another $700 million.

Google breaks out a few of the bigger deals:

• Slide: $179 million
• AdMob: $681 million
• On2 Technologies: $123 million
• 37 other companies: $626 million

Bear in mind that these numbers very likely underestimate Google’s real M&A cost, since they don’t include big employment contracts it hands out to keep key talent it picks up. Slide’s Max Levchin, for instance, is going to do very well as a Google engineer for at least a couple of years.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101029/google-2010-ma-bill-1-6-billion-and-counting/feed/ 5