Google Google’s VP of Shopping Sameer Samat

At the top of the Shopping page, a photo shows a snowboarder floating down a mountain on a clear blue day, directing consumers to a page where they can compare the lastest ski equipment. Another link sends consumers to a Garnet Hill catalog, where they can see an electronic copy of the print version that normally clogs mailboxes.

A deeper dive into the Shopping experience reveals that some of the product pages have a blue button in the top right-hand corner that could easily be mistaken for Amazon’s “Add to Cart” yellow button.

Despite these visual cues, said Sameer Samat, Google Shopping’s VP of product management, in an interview with AllThingsD, the company has no aspirations to open a store. “We aren’t planning on being a retailer,” he said. “We don’t view being a retailer right now as the right decision.”

Behind closed doors, some have wondered if Google was building up the infrastructure before making the move into selling physical items. Along with the updates to the site, another recent announcement that got people chatting was when Google announced last month that it acquired BufferBox, a locker service where consumers can safely pick up packages.

Samat said that BufferBox had nothing to do with becoming a retailer; it was about helping other retailers to become more competitive.

“We are trying to provide a level playing field for retailers,” he said, adding that there are some companies that have managed to do both tech and retail well. “How’s the rest of the retail world going to hit that bar?”

Of course, one of those companies is Amazon. The technology powerhouse has been working for almost two decades at building out the infrastructure to store merchandise all around the world. It has also built a first-class consumer-facing business that sells and distributes nearly anything you could need, as cheaply as possible.

To compete, retailers — and especially brick-and-mortar companies — are faced with either investing heavily in technology or teaming up with a technology partner like Google. At least, that’s Google’s pitch: “I think it’s great that Amazon and others, like Rakuten, are upping the bar,” Samat said, but Google is just trying to partner with retailers to “create a level playing field.”

Over the past year, the Google Shopping team has been busy adding improvements to the site.

This summer, Google completely overhauled its shopping experience. While the move has remained fairly below the radar for consumers, it has been very controversial among merchants. In fact, Samat jokes that at some point he’ll receive “The Least Popular Dude” award.

That’s because in the new system, retailers must pay to ensure that their products show up within Google Shopping. Previously, merchants could upload their data feed for free. This is the first holiday season in which retailers have had to pay to participate, and despite the service being so new, many retailers are reporting good results.

Google has made some major technology improvements, too.

It built an imaging system that creates 360-degree photos of the products. While it’s still not like being in the store, you can get a better sense of the product when you can see an item from all angles. Look for the “3-D” swivel icon on the product image to get the 360-degree view. It’s not available for that many products at this time, but Google did put together a Holiday Toy Collection, featuring 3-D images for each of the items.

There are at least a couple of hints that the photos aren’t a completely smooth-running operation yet. Google had to purchase all of the toys in the collection in order to take the photos, and, as Samat found out, those Lego kits don’t build themselves.

Google’s goal of becoming a retailer’s best tech friend may sound noble, but it is also smart. Amazon is already a starting point for many consumers on the Web, especially when it comes to shopping. Google obviously wants to be the first destination people visit for pretty much anything.

Additionally, the Seattle company is encroaching into other territories, including consumer electronics, like the Kindle Fire, which, coincidentally, runs on Google’s Android operating system. Amazon also distributes digital content and provides back-end cloud services to enterprises.

Google is not the only technology retailers can turn to if they are feeling competitive pressure from Amazon. Just down the road is a major player in the retail services space: eBay. The San Jose-based company has spent more than a year making inroads into the space, by forming tight bonds with a number of big retailers and by acquiring a company called GSI Commerce, which provides a lot of the back-end services mentioned.

Looks like it’s not just the consumer’s pocketbook that businesses are after anymore — it’s the retailer’s purse strings, too.

Former Yahoo exec Ross Levinsohn, who has laid pretty low since he left there earlier this year, will be joining the board of the Venice, Calif.-based video start-up, Zefr.

“Ross is a perfect intersection of everything we are in media and technology,” said Zefr co-founder Zach James. “He understands both sides natively, and we need that kind of expertise.”

Indeed — the company raised $18.5 million in additional funding this summer to turbocharge its offerings.

At the time, Zefr changed its name from Movieclips, and added sports, television and music videos to its film efforts. Zefr launched in 2009 as a niche video catalog site, focusing on helping movie studios collect and monetize fan and professional postings on YouTube, and offering advertisers a large network of premium movie clips.

The company said then that it had 600 million monthly views, 25,000 movie clips, and three billion total lifetime views on YouTube. It is about to celebrate one billion monthly views.

“Zefr has all the ingredients for success — dynamic, inspiring management, the ability to marry technology and content, and a business model that can scale,” said Levinsohn. “I’m thrilled to be part of the team.”

The New York-based company is part of a recent trend to make shopping on the iPad easier and more fun than sifting through an offline catalog.

Pickie participated in TechStars in New York this spring, and was co-founded by Sonia Sahney Nagar, who previously worked as a product manager at Booz & Company and Amazon. The company is announcing today that it has raised its first round of seed financing. Investors include DFJ Gotham, Betaworks, Liberty City Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, MESA+ and several angels.

It is also launching its app, also called Pickie. Once a user logs in to the app using Facebook and sets up his or her account, including interests such as home goods, books or fashion, the app will start scanning Pinterest and Twitter for product recommendations. Similar to a magazine or even a catalog, Pickie will tie together the experience with some of its own editorial, but the real advantage is that Pickie will allow you to click to go to the retailer’s site and buy an item without ever leaving the application. Today, users must leave Pinterest and sometimes have to dig several layers deep to find the items they want to buy.

Another recently launched iPad app that is trying to solve a similar problem is Flit, which aggregates a user’s favorite stores into one app, eliminating the need to switch between multiple browser tabs to shop.

Earlier this year, Apple added an App Store category called “catalogs,” obviously recognizing the trend of digitizing the experience of receiving a glossy circular in the mail. Today, there are hundreds in the category from retailers like Jo-Ann and L.L. Bean. There are catalog collections, too, with a handful of well-known brands, including CoffeeTable, Google Catalogs and Catalog Spree.

The e-commerce giant, which already had an enormous selection by any measurement, is calling this its “Add-on” program, where consumers will be able to add low-cost items to their baskets in order to qualify for free shipping — as long as they spend $25.

Many of the new products fall into the household goods, beauty or grocery categories, such as Guayusa Tea ($3.52); four ounces of chopped pecans ($3.42); or a 1.6-pound bag of Iams cat food ($4.72). The items are identified by a blue checkout box.

Previously, Amazon had said these products were not available on the site at all, or had to be purchased in bulk, making them a little impractical. After all, how many four-ounce bags of pecans does one family really need?

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the program launched about two weeks ago.

The addition of low-cost everyday items to Amazon’s site signals that the company has been able to figure out how to make the economics work for items that were previously deemed uneconomical, or that it is betting that the program will lead to incremental sales.

For instance, now customers will be able to use these low-cost items to fill out their baskets in order to qualify for the company’s free Super Saver Shipping program, which requires orders of $25 or more. Consumers were often faced with the dilemma of adding more items to their cart in order to hit the $25 minimum — often overspending to do so — or paying for shipping.

Now, they could order a $22 book and add a box of tea to qualify without going over, or they could just buy five “add-on” items for $5 each in order to get free shipping.

Amazon Prime members, who pay $79 a year for free two-day shipping on qualifying items, will also have to spend $25 in order to get these items, but they will get items shipped to them faster — or within two days.

The capital represents the company’s first round, led by Comcast Ventures. Participants in the company’s seed round, totaling $1.3 million, also chipped in, including BlackBerry Partners Fund and El Dorado Ventures.

Padopolis’ co-founder and CEO, Joaquín Ruiz, said the latest version of the application will come out next week, right in time for the holidays.

Improvements include realistic page turns and the ability to mark up content. ”People wanted it to feel like paper while retaining the vivid imagery,” he said. “The little things add up to a lot.”

The new release is not only timed with Black Friday — which is the day after Thanksgiving and is counted as one of the busiest shopping days of the year — but also with something he’s calling “Sofa Sunday.”

“I know when people shop. I know when they are looking. … After you are exhausted with your Black Friday experience, you’ll relax and regroup on Sofa Sunday,” he said.

Padopolis is currently registering millions of page views on the weekends, when the average consumer spends 30 minutes flipping through catalogs. The amount of time increases the farther the users are from stores. If they are more than 100 miles outside of a major city, for example, he says the average kicks up to an hour and 20 minutes per session.

For women between the ages of 25 and 55, he calls it entertainment and relaxation.

“This is not a search, find and buy experience. It’s more about shopping, engaging and discovering,” he said.

Since raising the seed round earlier this year, the company has grown from seven retailers to more than 100, and from three employees to more than a dozen. It has also leased official offices in Los Altos, Calif.

One downside is that it’s also attracted fierce competitors, all angling for a piece of the $100 billion annual business in the U.S. Last year, roughly 20 billion catalogs were mailed, jumping from 18 billion two years ago, and now they are all betting those will go digital.

The biggest name to throw its hat in the ring is Google. It entered the arena in August, leveraging partnerships it had with retailers from its search engine to build an iPad app. TheFind, a six-year-old online shopping comparison site, launched the Catalogue app in May, and Coffee Table updated its app this week with more than 30 catalogs.

“I’m flattered that there’s three to four or five that are mimicking us,” Ruiz said. “It would be more daunting if we were the only ones out there. By this time next year, there will be at most three of us in the space and most likely only two because we’ll have had so much content and aggregation.”

The new funding will be used for growing the marketing and engineering teams at the company. Recently, the company added Claudia Carpenter, VP of user experience, who was a founder of Writely (which was acquired by Google), and Lee Bieber, VP of engineering and operations, who previously was at Rackspace, Intuit and Sun Microsystems.

Both applications will enable consumers to shop online or see what’s available locally. Orders can be shipped or picked up.

The apps are being released ahead of the end-of-the-year shopping frenzy, which many retailers are hoping will be one of the busiest mobile commerce events ever.

“As customers use more smartphones and tablets, the Wal-Mart customer is doing the same thing,” said Gibu Thomas, the company’s SVP of mobile and digital.

That’s true, and it’s scary for big retailers. Increasingly, consumers are scanning barcodes to get reviews and compare prices before deciding whether to make a purchase or go somewhere else.

Thomas said the apps are not a defensive move against this trend, but rather a way to give consumers what they want. ”We want to know how we can help our customers shop better with us, which will make them shop more with us,” he argued.

Wal-Mart’s first iPad app launched about a week ago.

It lets people browse inventory in their local store, while also seeing what else is available online. Instead of duplicating the online experience, they’ve created categories. For instance, in the home section, shoppers will browse a catalog-like experience, where they’ll see pots and pans, stereo speakers and outdoor fireplaces without any additional information.

To see prices or more details, a user will have to choose an item.

The major new feature of the iPhone application, which originally launched more than a year ago, will be a shopping list with integrated voice dictation using Nuance’s speech recognition, and discounts through a partnership with Coupons.com.

The app will be available as soon as it receives Apple’s approval.

This app gets pretty close to what many companies have been describing as mobile commerce — minus near field communication that would allow users to tap and pay. And, at Wal-Mart’s scale, this is truly something for the mass market.

Thomas said 90 percent of consumers who come to a Wal-Mart store on a weekly basis come with a shopping list.

The iPhone shopping list feature will allow people to enter items manually using predictive text. Type “cheddar,” and you’ll see a number of cheese brands and the price of each item.

Consumers will also be able to enter items using their voice. When Thomas demonstrated it to me, the app was fairly accurate. It recognized orange juice and sour cream as one item each, but Campbell’s soup came up as two.

Because the real price is listed, budget-conscious shoppers can decide how much to pay for groceries before even getting to the store. Coupons from Coupons.com will also be integrated into the shopping experience. You might type in “yogurt,” but decide on Yoplait for the discount.

For some stores, Wal-Mart has given consumers the ability to find out what aisle the items are in from the phone. That capability will roll out to more stores as it comes out of beta. Eventually, the information could be overlaid on a map to show the most efficient route for getting all of your items.

Thomas also said the company anticipates being able to store shoppers’ receipts electronically, so that items purchased will be uploaded to an individual’s device, making it easier to create shopping lists in the future.

“We think of your mobile phone as your loyalty card. We don’t have cards but we think of it in the sense that you can use your phone to surface real-time discounts,” he said.

The applications were built by @WalMartLabs in Silicon Valley, which serves as the technology hub for the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer.

Zappos expects to launch its first attempt at recreating the catalog experience on the iPad in early December, just in time for the holidays.

The app was developed by the Zappos office located in San Francisco, where a dozen or so employees are working on building new shopping experiences.

Zappos, which is owned by Amazon.com, is headquartered in Las Vegas.

The new app joins the regular Zappos iPad app, which features most, if not all, of the products found on the company’s Web site.

Instead of being generally available in iTunes, the Zappos app will be found on Apple’s Newsstand, which organizes magazine and newspaper subscriptions for those who use iOS 5. It will be free; a new edition will appear monthly.

Articles will highlight things like fun and funky boots for winter or trends in color. All of the items will be for sale, making it more catalog than magazine.

Will Young, a director in Zappos’ San Francisco office, said the catalog will highlight about 100 items a month, featuring shoes, clothes and handbags. “Most people still think of Zappos as shoes,” Young said. “The main goal isn’t sales. It’s about educating.”

The app was unveiled to all Zappos employees at an all-hands meeting yesterday.

Next week, the company will launch its best guess: a platform that enables brands and merchants to launch the equivalent of a mail-order catalog on the iPad.

TheFind’s Catalogue app follows a similar app called Catalog Spree, which was developed by the start-up Padopolis and launched last month.

“We’ve been working on iPhone apps for awhile and have about 12 million searches monthly,” said TheFInd’s CEO Siva Kumar. “It’s a large part of our traffic, but the question is, what do we do with tablets? And, how do we engage with users?

“It’s more about discovery than it is about search.”

The application, which is expected to launch early next week, will be different from TheFind online and on the phone. Rather than starting with a search box–and having a specific product in mind–users can browse large photos and digitally window shop.

Kumar said the application will include roughly 35 different catalogs in the beginning, including Sephora, Nordstrom and Crate and Barrel. It will also have some unconventional companies that aren’t known for catalogs, such as eBags and Stella & Dot.

Likewise, Catalog Spree, which launched last month, has a number of partners, such as Dwell Studio, Serena & Lily, Tea Collection, Nordstrom, Filson and Artful Home.

Both expect to add more catalogs over time and offer fairly similar experiences, such as a homepage presenting thumbnails of all of the catalogs, which can be subscribed to like newsfeeds via RSS.

TheFind has raised $26 million in three rounds and has been cash-flow positive for the past nine quarters. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Padopolis has raised $1.3 million in seed funding.

Padopolis and TheFind both believe they’ve created an interactive platform that enables shoppers to sift through lots of merchandise quickly, like sitting on the couch and thumbing through a catalog. But they also have integrated the applications into merchants’ e-commerce sites, so consumers can get more information about a particular product and ultimately place an order.

“We’ve been working on how to re-imagine the catalog with pinch and zoom and take full advantage of the pictures. It’s been a technical challenge to make it so you can flick from page to page easily and reflect the actual state on the Web. We wanted to marry up the two things to make [the catalog] alive on the tablet,” Kumar said.

Catalogue and Catalog Spree are free, and both companies collect commissions from sales. TheFind anticipates launching an Android version soon, and following it up with a similar experience on Facebook.

If either are successful at digitizing the catalog, the opportunity could be significant.

Roughly 20 billion catalogs were mailed last year in the U.S., jumping from 18 billion two years ago. That translates to a more than $100 billion annual business, often representing the single-largest revenue generator for retailers.

Catalog Spree, which launched yesterday on the iPad, aggregates a number of catalogs in one place, similarly to a mall, where consumers can go to find multiple stores.

So far, the app includes catalogs from Dwell Studio, Serena & Lily, Tea Collection, Nordstrom, Filson and Artful Home. More will be added regularly.

On the surface, the application may sound like a bunch of pretty pictures, but Padopolis’ co-founder and CEO Joaquín Ruiz makes a big case for the idea, which investors were willing to bet on.

After 10 months of boot-strapping, the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company has raised $1.3 million in seed funding from El Dorado Ventures, Blackberry Partners Fund and Andrew Jenks, an angel investor. The company, which officially launched in November, didn’t know it was on to something until Christmas.

Ruiz said they started having discussions with retailers, who reported that anywhere from 2 percent to 10 percent of holiday purchases occurred on the device in the months leading up to Christmas. That’s up from zero the year before since the iPad didn’t exist.

Ruiz said the catalog industry makes a great target because unlike other print publications, such as newspapers and magazines, it’s on the rise.

Roughly 20 billion catalogs were mailed last year in the U.S., jumping from 18 billion two years ago. Those catalogs translate to more than $100 billion in annual revenues, he said, representing the single-largest revenue generator for retailers.

But despite their effectiveness, there’s two downsides: distribution costs–including paper and postage–and, of course, consumers who don’t want the clutter (Ruiz swears 65 percent of people who discontinue catalogs still want to shop from that store, they just don’t want the paper).

That’s where the iPad can make the difference on both sides of the equation.

“There are three ways to interact with the customer: brick and mortar, there’s the Internet and there’s the catalog,” he said. “An Internet-only shopper spends an average of $120 a year. If you buy in the store, you spend an average of $180. If you’re a catalog shopper, your average spend is $240. But if you shop on all three, it’s more than $1,000. There’s a fourth channel. Mobile is going to become a significant part of that fourth channel.”

When you first enter the app, you are greeted by “Sally Spree,” a cartoon-ish blond-haired woman in high heels with a big smile who is galloping across the screen, carrying four shopping bags. The image portrays how fun and easy the shopping experience can be (instead of fighting crowds at the mall in any kind of shoes–much less pumps).

Once inside the app, there are miniature pictures of several catalogs, much like iBooks, where Apple sells the latest bestsellers from a digital bookshelf.

A user touches a catalog to enter, where they will see a nearly identical layout of the real catalog with pictures and descriptions. The difference, however, is its interactivity. Users can tap on an item to receive more information or to buy it. They can search to discover new catalogs and subscribe to feeds or be alerted to promotions. A favorite item can be posted to your Facebook feed.

On the back end, the catalog is linked into the retailer’s e-commerce site, so it’s intelligent enough to know if an item is in stock. Likewise, if a friend clicks on an item from your Facebook page, it won’t take you to a broken link or an iPad app, but to the company’s regular Internet site.

The application is free to consumers to download and to browse. Padopolis plans to take a percentage of revenue from each sale it helps generates on behalf of the retailer.

For now, the company seems to be ahead of the curve.

A search in the iPad store reveals a competitor called Catalogs.com that has products from Home Depot, Petco, Speigel and others, but it has only received two stars. Its biggest competition likely is the retailers themselves that have the resources to create their own standalone applications. As of launch, a search reveals that none of its partners have taken that route.

IntoNow users can “check in” to a particular episode once it’s been recognized, like one would check into a restaurant on Foursquare. The goal is to enable conversations around the watercooler and on social networks by helping users connect around what they’re watching and discover new things to watch.

It’s common knowledge that the only thing people love more than watching TV is talking about it, but none of the many “social TV” start-ups–GetGlue, Miso, Philo, Comcast’s Tunerfish etc.–has emerged as a clear leader. Unlike the competition, IntoNow isn’t trying to provide a platform for conversations, but rather to show what people are watching.

Still, it’s not clear people want to download an app to tell themselves and their friends what they’re already watching on television.

IntoNow can recognize both live television and five years of archived U.S. TV airings. It constantly analyzes satellite feeds and matches them to TV listings to have current data.

Adam Cahan, the CEO of IntoNow, says his company’s TV recognition technology–which it calls SoundPrint–is akin to a GPS, which takes the hassle out of figuring out exactly which restaurant you’re at and matching it to something like Foursquare’s database.

Cahan’s company was very recently spun out of Auditude, a company where Cahan was also CEO. IntoNow’s seven employees and its technology were all formerly part of Auditude, actually. That company, which just raised $11 million from investors including Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures, has shifted away from video identification to video advertising management. IntoNow has yet to raise its own funding, but Greylock and Redpoint already have equity in the start-up.

In addition to creating a feed of what episodes they’re watching, IntoNow users can share on Facebook and Twitter, look up programs on IMDb, add shows to their Netflix queues and purchase episodes on iTunes.

The name “IntoNow” comes from the expression “What are you into now?” IntoNow hopes other companies will build SoundPrint audio recognition into their own social TV products. SoundPrint has 2.6 million airings in its catalog, is constantly recording 130 channels and needs four to 12 seconds of audio to make a match.

While it’s only iOS for now, IntoNow and SoundPrint are in development for Android and Web-enabled televisions.

IntoNow eventually hopes to help content owners validate that their watchers are participating with live content, and help the TV industry measure advertising and viewership metrics without relying on a panel.

The catch here is that the capability, which will be offered on Apple’s iPad as well as tablets running Google’s Android, will only work inside subscribers’ homes.

So you still can’t watch a live episode of “Two and a Half Men” on your iPad in the airport, but you will be able to watch it in your kitchen, while your better half watches “Frontline” in the living room. Or whatever.

It’s worth noting that Verizon announced its own version of this feature (with the same limitations), for its FiOS TV subscribers last summer, but has yet to roll it out.

Comcast will be demoing the feature later today at a Citigroup investors conference, but won’t be providing details about timing, or if there will be any programming restrictions on what you can watch on your tablet.

It’s possible there could be some holdouts, but the cable giant ought to be able to offer just about everything, since there’s no issue with carriage rights or ad loads, etc.–tablet watchers will be watching whatever’s already on live TV.

The killer feature, of course, would be the ability to do this on-the-go, but we’re not there yet, and it may take awhile to get there. Mobile rights for video–especially live video–are a whole different ball game.

Meantime, though, Comcast is offering a half-step–as previously promised, it will let traveling iPad users start to watch a selection of on-demand content, via its Xfinity TV app.

Comcast says it will offer some 3,000 TV shows and movies that iPad users can watch on-demand, over any network–AT&T’s 3G, or Time Warner Cable’s broadband, or whatever. Once that feature is up and running, which should be shortly, we’ll be able to compare that catalog to the ones that Netflix and Hulu Plus are offering for $7.99 a month.

And that’s the big picture here: Comcast and the other big cable providers, which continue to insist that cord-cutting isn’t real, want to make sure that it doesn’t become a reality, by offering their subscribers access to as much stuff, in as many places, as they can. It’s going to take years to find out whether that works or not, but best to start experimenting ASAP.

The year-old company has big-name backers and lots of interest from tech’s A-list. But when you start talking about what the company is up to–a structured database of objects, compiled primarily by machines–things get a little fuzzier.

Here’s another way to look at what the company is doing: TheFancy.com. It’s ThingD’s consumer site (and where you’ll now end up if you try heading to http://www.thingd.com).

This one is easier to understand. It’s a catalog of stuff people like, illustrated with photos they’ve taken or pictures they’ve found on the Web.

See something you like, and Fancy will tell you more about it; find someone who has interesting taste and Fancy will show you more stuff they like. You can also see what Ashton Kutcher likes, if that floats your boat.

And there is an iPhone app, of course.

There’s no business there yet, but you can easily imagine how Fancy could add e-commerce into the mix, if it gets scale. Which makes it quite similar to other social/stuff/catalog start-ups like Svpply.

The big difference is that Fancy is powered by ThingD’s database, which is supposed to be doing some very heavy lifting, and that Fancy/ThingD has some very serious expectations. The kind you get when you get backing from people like Andreessen Horowitz, Allen & Co., Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and Facebook’s Chris Hughes right out of the gate.

You can see where this is going, or at least where it’s supposed to go. ThingD’s ambition to catalog lots and lots and lots of stuff puts it in the same sandbox, theoretically, that heavyweights like Amazon and eBay are already playing in. And Google, of course. The folks at Facebook, among other big tech companies you know, are paying attention.

With the exception of a Sun Valley showcase, ThingD/Fancy has stayed mostly quiet for the past year. But now, as 29-year-old founder Joe Einhorn gets ready to open up Fancy to the general public, he’s trying to explain what he’s doing to the rest of the world. This New York Observer profile is especially well-done.

I thought it’d be fun to get him on camera and let him tell his story in his own words, so I dropped by his very unstart-up-like office (it’s on top of the Apple Store in New York’s meatpacking district!) and he put up with my brutal cold and my caveman questions.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101223/what-is-thingd-why-did-it-make-the-fancy-and-whats-up-with-those-fancy-offices-lets-ask-founder-joe-einhorn/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/ http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:02:26 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1581 Thanks to the popularity of Facebook, it’s easy to assume that all social networks are designed primarily to connect friends with one another. But many of these networks—think Twitter, Yelp and LinkedIn—aren’t focused on that. Instead, they provide information from strangers, business contacts and group postings on a variety of topics. Myspace is now also shifting in this direction after Facebook decisively overtook it as the most popular social network.

Last month, the company rolled out a revamped version of Myspace, which is owned by News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal. I’ve been testing it to see what has changed and if it’s worth using. Its interface is cleaner than the old version of Myspace and I found it easy to navigate. It’s also inviting for non-members or people who’ve long-since given up on Myspace. But I can’t definitely say I like it enough to add it to my large list of social networks.

Step one of this site’s rehab was a new focus. Myspace (myspace.com) was redesigned to serve as a source of information about entertainment. People who use it can follow five categories—TV, music, movies, celebrities and comedy—that include more than 100,000 topics. News about these topics comes from sites all over the Web and is arranged on users’ home pages to show loads of information at a glance. A Discovery tab at the top of the page shows content related to trends on Myspace makes suggestions based on a user’s preferences and taste. A spokesman said the Myspace topics can be expanded, but for now, if you’re fonder of, say, books, theater or hard news, Myspace won’t be a good fit.

Step two for Myspace included making nice with its old competitor. It now works with Facebook Connect to pull in people’s Facebook “likes” and interests, which automatically generate customized Myspace pages for new users.

The final step of the Myspace redesign was its emphasis on music. The site still contains one of the largest Web music catalogs that plays full versions of songs for anyone who visits Myspace. New versions of band profile pages look more organized. And all artists with band profiles will have ReverbNation’s FanReach email product integrated into their profile to help them create targeted email campaigns for fans.

Was Myspace’s rehabilitation worth the effort? I’ve been using it for a week and it has taught me a lot more than I knew about things I care about. I had no idea that one of my favorite TV shows, TNT’s “The Closer,” recently said that 2011 would be its last season. Nor did I know that Anthony Bourdain blogs about his role as a judge on “Top Chef Masters.” These items and others appeared on my Home page after I performed the process that the Myspace site refers to as a Facebook Mashup.

The Facebook Mashup does a few things automatically for you, in addition to generating a Myspace page filled with topic-related news. A playlist is created in the Music section of your page that contains artists whom you “like” on Facebook (or whom you indicated while setting up an account). And the Videos section of the Myspace page will reflect your tastes in a list of Followed Channels related to your Facebook preferences.

The Home page can be seen in one of three views—List, Grid or Play—and icons at the top of the screen let users toggle among these views. My favorite was Grid View in the Full Grid View format, visible by clicking a small box at the top of the page.

Some of the content displayed on my Home page was mixed up. For example, a tile representing the story about Mr. Bourdain’s blog (originally posted on Celebrifi.com) displayed with it a photo of actor Tom Cruise, who wasn’t mentioned in that post. Another Tom, Tom Colicchio, chef and a “Top Chef Masters” judge, was mentioned in the post, but that doesn’t explain the mix-up.

Anything that falls into the 100,000 plus topics of Myspace’s realm can be found via a search box in the top right corner of the page, but this box is confusingly labeled, “Search People.” Though Myspace still allows users to search for and friend one another, the label on this search box is puzzling, given the greater reach of the site.

You can watch video content from Hulu.com (of which News Corp. is part owner) without jumping to a new page. And videos also come from other sources like TMZ and the NFL.

Users can earn recognition badges—icons that show up on their page—for their involvement on Myspace, and can become curators of topics, awarded on the basis of users’ involvement and how much other people respond to their activity.

This week, a Myspace mobile app was launched in Apple’s App Store, and an Android app is due out next year.

Myspace successfully reinvented itself in a way that could very well get people using it again, but Facebook’s more personalized social network may be more valuable than a rich library of entertainment content.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101221/trying-out-a-revamped-myspace/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101217/amazon-cant-dent-itunes/ http://allthingsd.com/20101217/amazon-cant-dent-itunes/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:31:00 +0000 Ethan Smith and Geoffrey A. Fowler http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=34098 On the day Apple Inc. rolled out the Beatles’ catalog on its iTunes Store, Amazon.com Inc. fired back with a digital exclusive of its own: The latest album from rap-rocker Kid Rock–whose music still isn’t available on iTunes–for just $3.99.

Such steep discounts are a cornerstone of Amazon’s strategy to gain traction in a market in which iTunes remains the dominant player. At the same time, a debate has arisen among music labels about whether such discounts risk undermining the value of their products.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101217/amazon-cant-dent-itunes/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101208/netflix-adds-more-disneyabc-shows-but-not-the-ones-you-missed-last-night/ http://allthingsd.com/20101208/netflix-adds-more-disneyabc-shows-but-not-the-ones-you-missed-last-night/#comments Wed, 08 Dec 2010 17:08:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=26789 Here’s the latest addition to the Netflix streaming video catalog: More TV shows from Disney and its ABC network.

But don’t expect to use Netflix to watch shows that aired last night, or even in the last few weeks or months. In most cases, Netflix is adding shows that are a year old or more.

And in the case of the handful of shows that Netflix does run in the same season they appear on TV, it is increasing the “window” between their air date and the time they show up on the company’s streaming service.

Netflix previously had the ability to stream some Disney Channel shows, like “Wizards of Waverly Place,” the day after they aired. But now it will wait 15 days to run them, says Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos. The flip side: Netflix will get access to other Disney/ABC-owned shows that it hasn’t had in the past, like “Scrubs,” and in some cases it will get a deeper catalog, like more episodes of “Lost.”

Which makes this deal similar to other deals Netflix has cut in the past year with movie studios like Sony and Time Warner’s Warner Bros. for their offerings: Netflix writes a big check and agrees to wait longer to distribute some content, in exchange for the rights to more content, overall.

So what if you want to watch TV shows that ran last night? There are plenty of other places to get that, like Hulu, Apple’s iTunes or video-on-demand offerings from cable providers.

“Day-after broadcast is not core to our strategy. We’re not in that business, particularly,” Sarandos says. “I highly value completeness over freshness. For our customers, it’s much more about being able to watch the entire run of a show, as it is about being able to see time-shifted episodes.”

Translation: Hey Hollywood and TV executives! Don’t believe what you hear and read–we don’t want to blow up your existing distribution models. We just want to write you big checks for stuff after you’re done with it.

Earlier this fall, Netflix announced a similar deal with GE’s NBC, and Sarandos says he thinks his agreement with News Corp.’s Fox is fairly robust (News Corp. also owns this Web site).

Which means we should expect to see something from CBS down the pipe, too, right? “We’re constantly in talks” with other content owners, Sarandos says.

Translation: Hey Les Moonves! We’re no Google. How much do you want for “The Mentalist”?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101208/netflix-adds-more-disneyabc-shows-but-not-the-ones-you-missed-last-night/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101118/netflix-web-only-service-coming-probably-not-cheap/ http://allthingsd.com/20101118/netflix-web-only-service-coming-probably-not-cheap/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:00:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25992 Hate discs? Love Web video? Netflix should have something for you shortly: At the Web 2.0 conference yesterday, CEO Reed Hastings said a streaming-only option for U.S. subscribers should be available “shortly.”

It’s the third time this fall the company has talked up a Web-only service. And each time it does so it excites some of you who… really like the idea of not using DVDs.

The rest of you? You may be underwhelmed.

The big caveat here is we don’t know what Netflix plans to offer. But my hunch is the company won’t be able to offer a streaming-only option at a significant discount to its most popular $8.99-a-month plan, which also lets you stream unlimited video–and allows you to check out any DVD you want.

Note that:

• The streaming-only service the company launched in Canada this year costs $7.99 a month.
• Netflix has been testing the same service, at the same price, in the U.S. this fall.
• Even though the Netflix streaming-only option only offers about 20 percent of the catalog available on its traditional DVD rental service, the company is paying big money for that catalog. Netflix has already racked up a $1.2 billion digital content bill, which could grow to $2 billion next year.

Netflix has also been testing out a price increase for its $8.99  streaming + disc plan, to $9.99 a month. Perhaps that’s to make the $7.99 option appear that much more attractive ($7.99 also happens to be the new price for Netflix competitor Hulu Plus).

And perhaps $7.99 will be just fine for people who don’t want to deal with discs and envelopes and mailboxes, and want instant video whenever they want it. Even if they can’t get everything they want.

In any case, this could all be moot. While I haven’t seen any reports of a streaming-only option priced below $7.99, Netflix has said it has run “many” tests. So perhaps it has a trick up its sleeve.

For giggles, I asked Netflix PR guy Steve Swasey what he could tell me. His response: “Stay tuned!”

Fair enough. I assume that “shortly” means “in time for the Christmas shopping season, when people start buying shiny new TVs and gadgets that work well with Netflix streaming.” And that kicks off on Black Friday–just eight days away.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101118/netflix-web-only-service-coming-probably-not-cheap/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20101115/apple-itunes-at-long-last-gets-rights-to-beatles/ http://allthingsd.com/20101115/apple-itunes-at-long-last-gets-rights-to-beatles/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:53:52 +0000 Ethan Smith http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32566 Steve Jobs is nearing the end of his long and winding pursuit of the Beatles catalog. Apple Inc. is preparing to announce that its iTunes Store will soon start carrying music by the Beatles, according to people familiar with the situation, a move that would fill in a glaring gap in the collection of the world’s largest music retailer.

The deal resulted from talks that were taking place as recently as last week among executives of Apple, representatives of the Beatles and their record label, EMI Group Ltd., according to these people, who also warned that there is still a chance that Apple could change plans at the last minute.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101115/apple-itunes-at-long-last-gets-rights-to-beatles/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101115/dont-count-on-music-subscriptions-or-streaming-from-apple-tomorrow/ http://allthingsd.com/20101115/dont-count-on-music-subscriptions-or-streaming-from-apple-tomorrow/#comments Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:20:56 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25828 What’s Apple planning at its iTunes announcement tomorrow? Good question!

But I’ll be very surprised if it is music related–like a new music subscription service, or even one that lets you stream music you already own to multiple devices.

(UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal says that Apple has finally signed the Beatles to an iTunes deal to be announced “soon”. Which makes tomorrow’s announcement a much easier guess.)

It’s easy to understand why Apple might head in that direction: Generally, because it seems inevitable and because Google has been talking about doing something similar. And specifically, because Apple has that shiny new North Carolina data center to play with.

But the music industry sources I’ve talked to so far today don’t know of any new deals between Apple and the big music labels. So that would rule out a new subscription service, which would definitely require a new rights deal.

And that also makes it very unlikely that Apple does the next best thing: Letting users upload their iTunes catalog to the cloud, and letting them access it anywhere they want.

Does Apple have to get a special deal with the labels in order to do that? Not necessarily. Some start-ups are offering similar services, without a deal (though one of them, MP3tunes, is getting sued).

And you can make a common-sense argument that simply storing someone’s data, then letting them access it again, shouldn’t require a deal. But the labels argue that it does.

So unless Apple wants to make them go ballistic–and freak out the movie and TV studios, the folks that Steve Jobs really wants to court–it’s hard to see Apple announcing a service without signed paperwork.

Okay. So what are they announcing? Again–got me. Hoping to find out before tomorrow, but if not I’ll be watching at 10 am Eastern like the rest of you.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101115/dont-count-on-music-subscriptions-or-streaming-from-apple-tomorrow/feed/ 28 http://allthingsd.com/20101109/like-movies-only-shorter-movieclips-rounds-up-more-cash/ http://allthingsd.com/20101109/like-movies-only-shorter-movieclips-rounds-up-more-cash/#comments Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:34:28 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25671 Here’s an interesting niche video play: Movieclips, a site that does exactly what it sounds like.

The company launched in beta a year ago, and it was fairly rough at the time–its catalog of clips was limited, and navigation was much tougher than it should have been.

But now Movieclips is much easier to get around, and the catalog seems much more substantial, at least from the outside. In any case it’s enough to convince investors, led by Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital, to put in $3 million in a Series A round.

The big question is whether Movieclips can train users to visit when they want to find a movie clip, instead of looking on Hulu or Google’s YouTube.

Because at Hulu, for instance, you can watch not only this scene from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” but you can see the entire film–which is still great nearly 30 (!) years later.

Still, worth playing around with. It’s our time, as Spicoli would say.

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101109/like-movies-only-shorter-movieclips-rounds-up-more-cash/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101104/hulu-plus-opens-up-doesnt-go-on-sale/ http://allthingsd.com/20101104/hulu-plus-opens-up-doesnt-go-on-sale/#comments Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:10:46 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25517 If you’ve been waiting to pay $9.99 a month for Hulu Plus, but haven’t been able wrangle an invite, your wait is over: The service is now open to the public. If you’ve been waiting to pay half that price for the video service, which gives you a deeper catalog and access to devices like Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Xbox 360–keep waiting. While CEO Jason Kilar has pushed to cut the price of the service by 50 percent, not all of his network partners/owners–Disney’s ABC, News Corp.’s Fox and GE’s NBC–are on board. So it’s full price, for now. Have at it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101104/hulu-plus-opens-up-doesnt-go-on-sale/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101029/michael-jackson-cant-help-sony-music-any-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20101029/michael-jackson-cant-help-sony-music-any-more/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 13:37:02 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=25230 Michael Jackson was such a huge star that he was able to stop the music industry’s perpetual slide: In the aftermath of his death last year, sales perked up at Sony’s music arm, which puts out the singer’s catalog.

But there’s no star big enough to permanently stop gravity. Now that Jackson sales have come back to earth, Sony reports that last quarter’s sales dropped another 10.8 percent, or a mere 6 percent if you strip out the effect of currency fluctuations. Operating income dropped 6.1 percent.

Reminder: Digital music sales, which were eventually supposed to overtake physical sales and push revenue back up once again, aren’t doing the trick. In the U.S., sales via Apple’s iTunes and other outlets are either flat or shrinking, depending on the sales data you’re looking at. (Which should make the labels either less likely or more likely to get deals done with the likes of Spotify. Take your pick!)

Meanwhile: Did you buy, or hear of, any of the following? Sony says they were bestsellers, at least comparatively: Yui’s “Holidays in the Sun,” Miliyah Kato’s “Heaven,” Kana Nishino’s “To Love,” Yannick Noah’s “Frontières,” Santana’s “Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time” and Kenny Chesney’s “Hemingway’s Whiskey.”

UPDATE: Billboard editor Bill Werde notes that Sony plans to release more Jackson this year, so perhaps it can wring out another bump. He also notes that he’s heard of Kenny Chesney. Me too! But I was surprised to learn that Yannick Noah has a post-tennis career as a musician.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101029/michael-jackson-cant-help-sony-music-any-more/feed/ 12 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:47:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24979 Hulu is considering cutting the price of Hulu Plus, the subscription service it began testing in June, sources tell me. I’m told the video site is talking about slashing its $9.95 per-month fee in half, to $4.95.

Hulu Plus was supposed to be the video site’s strategy to generate a second revenue stream to complement the free, ad-supported site that launched in 2008.

The idea is that paying subscribers get access to a deeper catalog of TV shows and movies than what the free service offers, as well as the ability to watch Hulu on devices like Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game machine and Internet-connected TVs from Samsung and Sony.

But a price cut would indicate that consumers haven’t bought in to the pitch. That shouldn’t be a shock, considering the other video options that consumers have, and the limits that Hulu’s content providers have placed on the service.

At $8.99 a month, for instance, Netflix subscribers get access to a very deep catalog of movies and TV shows delivered on DVD, and a growing number of titles delivered to their PCs, phones or iPads.

But Hulu Plus is limited primarily to current  broadcast shows from its three owners–Disney’s ABC, GE’s NBC and News Corp.’s Fox–as well as other shows that have stopped running on TV. (News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

And tensions between programmers and cable providers mean that Hulu won’t give subscribers access to current cable shows from those same partners–even though some of them are (barely) available on conventional Hulu. “It’s a broadcast-focused service,” in the words of CEO Jason Kilar.

Hulu declined to comment about the service, which is still officially in beta mode.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/hulu-plus-take-two-hows-4-95-a-month/feed/ 21 http://allthingsd.com/20101021/who-us-netflix-says-its-customers-arent-cord-cutters/ http://allthingsd.com/20101021/who-us-netflix-says-its-customers-arent-cord-cutters/#comments Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:30:01 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24956 Here is the standard cord-cutting formula: Tell your cable company to pound sand and replace it with an antenna, an Internet connection and a Netflix subscription.

Except, says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, that’s not what his 19.6 million customers are doing.

Responding to a question during yesterday’s earnings call, Hastings told analysts he doesn’t see any evidence that his customers are choosing Netflix instead of cable. They’re using it to augment their cable subscription, he said: “We still see no evidence that our subscribers cut cords at a greater rate than the population.”

That contradicts both popular wisdom, as well as at least one recent survey, which found Netflix subscribers using the service as a cable substitute. Then again, a competing study from BTIG’s Rich Greenfield (registration required) found that hypothetical cord cutters are only slightly more likely–by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent–to have Netflix.

And the existence of cable-cutting itself is still very much up for debate in the TV business. Cable companies like Comcast insist that they don’t see evidence of it. But Ivan Seidenberg, who runs cable competitor Verizon, says it’s inevitable.

Netflix, meanwhile, has been consistent in arguing that it’s not helping anyone do any snipping. Here’s Hastings answering a similar question during an earnings call three months ago (PDF):

Q: Do you see any evidence that Netflix subscribers are inclined to either cancel multi-channel video subscriptions, or to pare back use of premium services such as Starz, Encore, HBO?

A: No, we haven’t seen any evidence of that and there’s no evidence in the total numbers of those firms in last quarter’s financials and total subscribers, so total multi-channel video subscribers is continuing to grow in the US. Premium subscribers is not showing any decline, so I don’t think there’s any material cord cutting. I think what’s happening is the multi-channel video, such a broad package with an incredible array of products, that we’re a tiny little fraction of that, and our subscribers view us as a supplemental service, and because it’s a modest cost at $9 a month, it works for them and their budget.

The numbers bear Hastings out: In the past year, his service has added 5.8 million subscribers. If, say, 20 percent of those new customers were cord cutters, you would have seen cable rolls drop by more than one million people. But so far we’ve only seen a 200,000-person drop, in the second quarter of 2010. And some analysts think that number will turn positive for the rest of the year.

But that doesn’t mean Hastings doesn’t plan to cut directly into the cable business in the future, when Netflix has a truly comprehensive streaming video catalog. Which means it’s worth asking Hastings about cord-cutting every quarter.

One of these days you might get a different answer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101021/who-us-netflix-says-its-customers-arent-cord-cutters/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20101015/youtube-leanback-freshens-up-for-google-tvs-debut/ http://allthingsd.com/20101015/youtube-leanback-freshens-up-for-google-tvs-debut/#comments Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:00:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24669 One of the things that Google thinks you’ll do with Google TV is watch a lot of Google video, via YouTube. That’s why the search giant introduced a “Leanback” version of the site, designed for couch-bound surfers, over the summer.

And that’s why Google has freshened up Leanback for this weekend: Saturday is the first chance consumers will have to get their hands on Google TV for themselves, via sets sold at Sony’s Style stores. (Regular humans can buy the sets at Best Buy in a week.)

You don’t have to use Google TV to use Leanback. It will work on any PC and any browser, and it’s worth playing around with. Also, that will save me the trouble of telling you what it’s like.

I will tell you about a few tweaks Google has made to the site since its July launch, though:

• You should now be able to watch any video in the YouTube catalog in Leanback mode. Previously some clips, primarily music videos, had not been available for the new format, due to licensing issues.
• But just because you can watch any clip doesn’t mean you’ll want to see it on a big screen. Or to put it another way–some YouTube stuff will work particularly well on your TV, and the Leanback team has tried to show that stuff off with preselected channels and playlists.
• There’s always a catch: Leanback, which had previously been ad-free, will now start showing you the preroll and overlay ads that you’re used to seeing on regular YouTube.

YouTube managers say that they’re already happy with Leanback in its current form. They cite internal research that shows YouTube users watch twice as much video when they use Leanback.

Impressive! Though I assume those tests were done on PCs, and I wonder how the experience will translate when you’re sitting 10 feet away from your screen, on your sectional.

But that’s pretty much the core question about Google TV–do people really want to watch Web video in their living room? We’ll begin to find out this fall.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101015/youtube-leanback-freshens-up-for-google-tvs-debut/feed/ 5