According to an internal memo and now on his LinkedIn profile, Yahoo has just hired longtime McKinsey exec John DeVine as SVP of global operations. He has worked in the marketing and sales practice at the consulting firm since 1999 and has been an advocate there of “how companies need to embrace the customer experience.”

Devine will report to COO Henrique De Castro — who also worked at McKinsey — and will be helming a wide swath of operations, such as advertising solutions. DeCastro has also been searching recently for a head of the key U.S. ad unit and has tried to hire former AOL sales chief Ned Brody. That hire is limbo now, due to Brody’s 14-month non-compete contract with AOL; CEO Tim Armstrong shows no signs of letting him leave sooner.

But DeVine is on board at Yahoo, so to speak. The former submarine officer in the U.S. Navy also has a masters degree in nuclear engineering — batten down the hatches for incoming at ATD HQ! — from the University of California Berkeley and did his undergraduate work at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Groupon said it had revenue of $601.4 million, up eight percent, in the first quarter, and earnings of three cents. Those profits were in line with Wall Street expectations, but sales were better than the expected $590 million at the daily deals site.

The stock was up nearly 12 percent in after-hours trading to $6.21. Shares have risen 42.6 percent in the last six months, although that’s down 43.9 percent from a year ago.

There was no news of the search for a new leader for Groupon, which fired its CEO, co-founder Andrew Mason, in the quarter.

On a conference call later, co-CEO Ted Leonsis said that Groupon’s board had formed a search committee, but that it was “not in a hurry” to find a new company head.

But, in a statement, co-CEO Eric Lefkofsky said: “We are encouraged by our results, as our local revenues accelerated and our margins improved over the prior quarter.”

Anything up is good news for the suffering Groupon, which has been pilloried by Wall Street since its late 2011 IPO, although sentiment has improved since Mason’s ouster.

Gross billings, which is the amount consumers buy from Groupon overall, without subtracting payments to merchants, were up four percent, to $1.04 billion, on strong growth in North America. Sales were off internationally, though, by 9 percent.

International business, which has a bigger active customer base than North America, was the cause of much of Groupon’s declines, a problem execs have been trying to address with a new “One Playbook” strategy to consolidate systems.

On the conference call, COO Kal Raman called the situation “a tale of two Groupons.”

On a GAAP basis, Groupon had a loss of one cent, from two cents in the same period a year ago.

Groupon also said North American transactions on mobile devices accounted for 45 percent of the overall number, up from 30 percent last year, while email fell to less than 45 percent of the deals sold.

On a less happy note, Groupon said that its outlook for the second quarter would be below consensus.

Here’s the the Chicago-based Groupon’s official press release, as well as some tasty financial slides, so you can read it all for yourself:

GRPN

GRPN_1Q13_Earnings_Slides

Joyus, the video shopping platform startup led by former top Google exec Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, said it had raised $11.5 million in a second round of funding, led by InterWest Partners and Time Warner Investments. Existing investors Accel Partners and Harrison Metal also participated.

In related news, Joyus said that Ido Leffler, co-founder of natural beauty brand Yes To, would join its board.

The San Francisco-based Joyus has now raised total capital of $19 million to push its efforts to combine video with retailing online. Along with the funding news, the company underscored the efficacy of its approach in a study it also released that it says shows “fashion, beauty and lifestyle brands can directly monetize video through direct response product sales.”

Using premium video content to flack its wares, Joyus said that it converts at 5.15 times the rate of visitors who only browse product listings on the site and that its viewers buy 4.9 times more than those who don’t watch the product videos.

“Every time someone watches a video, Joyus can measure the resulting sales revenue, creating the first ever metrics for return on investment (ROI) using online video to drive product sales,” said Joyus, which noted that on a half-dozen product areas that the average revenue per video (RPV) view ranges from 47 cents to 93 cents, meaning every thousand views of video on Joyus produces between $470 and $930 in direct sales revenue. Joyus shares a cut of the sales on its site with its merchants and provides the purchasing tools.

While others might dispute this performance and many online retailers have added video to their sales processes, Joyus CEO and founder Cassidy said in an interview that online retail has to shift from a focus on engagement statistics and monetization via brand advertising to direct product sales results.

“The data on video shopping needs to be aimed at a return on the investment rather than on just brand recognition,” she said. “We think by providing an informative and entertaining experience, where you can make purchases right away, consumers buy and that this is the direction online commerce is moving.”

As I noted in a previous post about Joyus when it launched in mid-2011: “If you think about a link-laden infomercial, you’ll get a general idea of what is being created by Joyus.”

While Cassidy did note that a comparison could be made to television shopping networks like HSN, which shows elaborate demos of its products, Joyus has its own tech stack and video platform that allows shoppers to watch in a non-linear way that is preferable online and also on mobile.

“We are aimed at those customers who are bred and born on digital, so the merchandising formula is different,” said Cassidy. “This is a shopper from 30 to 50 who wants entertainment and commerce together in a format that is convenient.”

After a massive breach of its computer systems yesterday, LivingSocial has sent out emails to all of the 50 million customers impacted, a company spokesman said, and is now working with law enforcement in an investigation to help find the perpetrators.

The company declined to give more information about how the hackers might have entered the Washington, D.C., daily deals company’s system to get access to names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords. But it did note that it was taking extra measures to restrict access to all of its systems and consumer data and has been doing heavy monitoring of consumer accounts.

LivingSocial also underscored that credit card information of its users has not been hacked. “We store credit card data through a financial processing network, so the full number literally does not exist anywhere in our system,” the spokesman said.

Still, the hack is a huge blow for LivingSocial, which is owned in part by Amazon, impacting 50 million customers, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help stanch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

LivingSocial, the daily deals site owned in part by Amazon, has suffered a massive cyber attack on its computer systems, which an email from CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy — just sent to employees and obtained by AllThingsD.com — said resulted in “unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers.”

The hack includes customer names, emails, birthdates and encrypted passwords.

The breach has impacted 50 million customers of the Washington, D.C.-based company, who will now be required to reset their passwords. All of LivingSocial’s countries across the world appear to have been affected, except in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, as LivingSocial units Ticketmonster and Ensogo there were on separate systems.

One positive note in a not-so-positive situation: The email sent to employees and customers noted that neither customer credit card nor merchant financial information was accessed in the cyber attack.

This is the latest big data breach in the consumer Internet space, which has seen troublesome incursions into some high-profile companies recently, including Zappos, LinkedIn and Evernote.

When asked for comment on the email, a LivingSocial PR spokesman confirmed the attack and that 50 million customers were impacted.

The attack comes at a tough time for the company, since it has been trying to turn itself around after a downturn across the daily deals landspace. LivingSocial got a large cash infusion recently from investors to help staunch its losses. Amazon owns 29 percent of the company.

More to come, but here’s the email sent to employees, including one that will be sent to customers soon:

Re: Security Incident

LivingSocialites –

This e-mail is important, so please read it to the end.

We recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

Two things you should know:

1. * The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

2. * The database that stores merchants’ financial and banking information was not affected or accessed.

The security of our customer and merchant information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

To ensure our customers and merchants are fully informed and protected, we are notifying those who may have been impacted via email explaining what happened, expiring their passwords, and requesting that they create new passwords. A copy of the note is included below this email.

If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Pulse –https://pulse.livingsocial.com/intranet/Home/more_updates.html — for a list of frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions that aren’t answered in the FAQs, please submit them via email to XXX@livingsocial.com.

Because we anticipate a high call volume and may not be able to answer or return all calls in a responsible fashion, we are likely to temporarily suspend consumer phone-based servicing. We will be devoting all available resources to our web-based servicing.

I apologize for the formality of this note, which the circumstances demand. We need to do the right thing for our customers who place their trust in us, and that is why we’re taking the steps described and going above and beyond what’s required. We’ll all need to work incredibly hard over the coming days and weeks to validate that faith and trust.

– Tim

Subject: An important update on your LivingSocial.com account

LivingSocial recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.

The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords — technically ‘hashed’ and ‘salted’ passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.

The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.

Although your LivingSocial password would be difficult to decode, we want to take every precaution to ensure that your account is secure, so we are expiring your old password and requesting that you create a new one.

For your security, please create a new password for your *email_address* account by following the instructions below.

1. Visit LivingSocial.com

2. Click on the “Create a New Password” button (top right corner of the homepage)

3. Follow the steps to finish

We also encourage you, for your own personal data security, to consider changing password(s) on any other sites on which you use the same or similar password(s).

The security of your information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.

Please note that LivingSocial will never ask you directly for personal or account information in an email. We will always direct you to the LivingSocial website — and require you to login — before making any changes to your account. Please disregard any emails claiming to be from LivingSocial that request such information or direct you to a different website that asks for such information.

If you have additional questions about this process, the “Create a New Password” button on LivingSocial.com will direct you to a page that has instructions on creating a new password and answers to frequently asked questions.

We are sorry this incident occurred, and we look forward to continuing to introduce you to new and exciting things to do in your community.

Tim O’Shaughnessy

CEO, LivingSocial

According to sources, Amazon paid about $150 million for Goodreads, the popular books recommendation service. But that number could close in on $200 million, if certain performance metrics are met.

And, while BusinessWeek ran a we-are-just-guessing story today that posited a self-described “overly simple, back-of-the-envelope estimate” of $1 billion, sources said that number is simply wrong.

I am still trying to determine how much of the deal was cash — most of it, said sources — and how much was stock.

The San Francisco-based Goodreads had raised close to $3 million from a range of angel investors, as well as True Ventures. The sale is a big win for the firm, which apparently owned between 20 percent and 30 percent of Goodreads.

The online retail giant bought the company to help its book-y social discovery efforts for customers.

Amazon declined to comment, but the Seattle-based company said previously that the deal should close in the second quarter. It’s not the first time Amazon has bought a social book site — in 2008, the company acquired Shelfari for under $10 million.

Zynga CIO Debra Chrapaty, who has also done high-ranking stints at other big companies such as Cisco and Microsoft, has been named CEO of enterprise cloud storage company Nirvanix.

She replaces Dru Borden, who will remain at the San Diego-based company as SVP of planning and development and who will also remain a director. Chrapaty will also remain executive chairwoman of the board of Nirvanix, which has investments from Khosla Ventures and Intel Capital.

Chrapaty has most recently been CIO of Zynga, but was also SVP of Cisco’s collaboration software unit and was a corporate VP at Microsoft. She was also president and COO of E*Trade Technologies.

In an email to me, Chrapaty wrote: “I had a great run at Zynga, wish the company and the team the best. But this is a really unique opportunity to leverage a company that is at the center of unstoppable trends (to cloud which hasn’t really affected Fortune 1000 storage yet) and a company that already has some great existing people and customers and investors you have known for decades.”

Zynga has seen a number of high-level departures and top management reorgs in recent months, as it seeks to turn around its recent rocky performance.

Zynga said that Chrapaty, who was hired from Cisco in 2011, will be replaced by Zynga exec Dorion Carroll.

“We thank Debra for her leadership and contributions to Zynga over the past years and wish her luck in her future endeavors,” said Zynga COO David Ko in a statement. “As one of our Zynga Fellows, Dorion has provided direction, leadership and management across numerous technology and products teams at Zynga over the past three years as well as being one of our most senior technology leaders.”

High-profile Silicon Valley entrepreneur Max Levchin is launching a new mobile payments startup today called Affirm.

It’s the first project emerging from Levchin’s San Francisco tech incubator Hard, Valuable, Fun (HVF), which he started after selling his last company — Slide — to Google and then eventually leaving the search giant. Previous to that, Levchin and investor Peter Thiel had sold PayPal to eBay.

While it might seem at first as if Affirm is in direct competition with other mobile payments-focused companies such as Square and Stripe, it seems to be aimed at another layer of the value chain in an effort to improve conversion for mobile payments.

In fact, Stripe — in which Levchin is an investor, too — will be processing credit card payments on the back end.

But it will be an uphill battle for Levchin in the current payments arena, with a range of challenges from a multitude of rivals to regulatory scrutiny to the risks associated with credit in general.

Its most similar competitor, for example, is Klarna, a hugely funded company based in Sweden that offers payment solutions for a wide range of online storefronts across Europe that did $200 million in revenue last year. Klarna, which means “clear” in Swedish, is likely to be eying the U.S. market and has well-regard VC Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital on its board.

As part of its effort, Affirm will use Facebook for authentication of consumers, and also use a number of other social and data signals to assess risk. It will then guarantee payment to merchants — who will pay Affirm a fee — after this check.

“We are trying to get as close as possible to one-click, which has always been the case on the desktop,” said Levchin in an interview today. “In mobile, it has become an imperative to be able to buy it now or you lose a customer quickly.”

Levchin described Affirm as a digital charge card rather than a credit card, trying to be valuable to merchants by lowering the abandonment rate of mobile transactions. Affirm’s beta launch retail partner is 1-800-Flowers.

“You will essentially be putting a purchase on a digital tab, and we are going to make it work for us by looking at all available data to determine if you are someone who will pay it back,” said Levchin.

Like an American Express or other charge card, consumers will have about 30 days to settle bills, although Affirm will not be making any money from them.

As to why he decided to enter the increasingly competitive online payment space — which is also rife with regulatory and fraud issues — Levchin said that his efforts at PayPal did not go far enough.

“Payments online are still too hard — we started the revolution with PayPal and democratized payments for small businesses, but we stopped short of changing the system,” he said. “The world is now awash in data and we can see consumers in a lot clearer ways.”

In addition, he added, the “overwhelming transformation of everything toward mobile changes all the fundamentals.”

Relying on Facebook could be an issue, of course, opening up a thicket of privacy issues and also worrisome reliance on the social networking giant. But Levchin said that Affirm’s system depends on the company for confirming identity more than anything else and there will eventually be a number of ways to do that.

Other data Affirm will be using, he said, range from incomes per zip code and even a user’s mobile device ID.

Affirm has been funded by Levchin and a group of friends in the “low-digit millions,” he said, with only a few dozen employees compared to bigger mobile payments efforts from others.

He said he knows the risk of entering the space, especially given that there are only so many solutions and a limited retailer attention.

Still, Levchin noted: “I just think there is so much more to do. Technology has come a long way since PayPal.”

For a long time in Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, Brad Koenig was one of Silicon Valley’s top investment bankers, shepherding deals such as Yahoo’s IPO and a plethora of others.

That’s no surprise, given that he was the managing director and head of global technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Goldman, as well as Morgan Stanley, led many of the big-name, big-money transactions for the digerati.

But no matter how you slice it, Koenig’s job was on the sidelines as a facilitator rather than as a participant.

No longer. After retiring in 2005 from Goldman and doing a bunch of advising work, Koenig decided to jump into the fray, putting his money into a new start-up called FoodyDirect.

Simply put, the service ships food from iconic restaurants, bakeries and other specialty food outlets, adding in a variety of information about the products and also making it easier for those businesses to ship.

Some of the offers being coordinated include well-known — among foodies, at least — fare from places such as Anderson’s Frozen Custard in Buffalo, N.Y.; Black’s Barbecue in Lockhart, Texas; Sable’s Smoked Fish in New York City; and Hancock Gourmet Lobster in Cundy’s Harbor, Maine.

I tried both Anderson’s and Sable’s and they arrived on time and fresh — as well as delicious — which is presumably the selling point that FoodyDirect pitches to merchants.

While many of these restaurants do this on their own, Koenig is hoping that the systems FoodyDirect creates are easier and more efficient, from packaging to shipping.

Of course, FoodyDirect faces a lot of competition — from big online retailers like Amazon to smaller ones like Gilt Taste — as well as an uphill battle to acquire frequent customers.

But Koenig believes in the concept so much — which he is doing with his brother, who has been in the restaurant biz for 25 years — that he invested his own money in the initial effort.

Now, along with more money from him, a bunch of angel investors and venture interest, FoodyDirect is getting $3 million more to see if the concept pans out.

Here’s Koenig talking about his new life on the other side of the table:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121217/tasty-foodydirects-gets-3m-as-former-goldman-banker-turns-entrepreneur/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121211/in-another-onstage-interview-groupons-andrew-mason-says-nothing-but-charmingly/ http://allthingsd.com/20121211/in-another-onstage-interview-groupons-andrew-mason-says-nothing-but-charmingly/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:44:03 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=276875

Today at a local mobile conference in San Francisco, Groupon CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason appeared for another onstage interview and was immediately asked about the various and sundry mishegas of late at the daily deals site.

And said, um, not much. It wasn’t exactly his fault — there is almost no plus to him saying much.

So Mason did not.

Not much about thinly sourced rumors of acquisition interest by Google.

Not much about the palpable tension and discussions between him and some board members about whether he should remain as Groupon’s top leader.

Not much about its lackluster stock, down more than 80 percent since its IPO just over a year ago.

Not much about its issues in Europe or about its growth prospects.

“What I have said about Groupon is everything I will say about it,” he said. “I am focused on looking forward.”

Bokay!

Actually, Mason, who is a very clever man, joked effectively, “Let’s not talk about mobile,” which was the actual focus of the Mobile-Loco conference he was appearing at.

Fair point, and he moved into explaining what Groupon was up to these days (more of the same, but more with the mobile).

About one-third of the Chicago-based company’s business is now done via mobile, by the way.

“Our mobile customers have been our best customers,” he noted, making the point that smartphones appeal to a more cutting edge consumer and also merchants.

“I think they are willing to use technology when the value proposition is clear to them,” Mason said about retailers, one of whom he worked at recently. “They do it because it is important to them.”

Mason also talked about local, payments and other generalities about the social daily deals business.

All of which he answered with a level of nice confidence that belies troubles that the novice CEO is trying to overcome. It’s a tough task for anyone, of course, and not one that many would be able to handle with as much equanimity as Mason does in public. So, on one level, you have to hand it to Mason for putting himself out there so much at a difficult time and chatting away.

But not about what the audience wanted to hear about. Which is to say: What’s really next?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121211/in-another-onstage-interview-groupons-andrew-mason-says-nothing-but-charmingly/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/ http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:21:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=276811 Personal genomics company 23andMe said it has raised more than $50 million in a new funding round, a near doubling of its investments so far. 23andMe has already raised over about $68 million since it was founded in 2006. The new financing includes Russian investor Yuri Milner, as well as existing investors Sergey Brin of Google, 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital. The money will be used by the Mountain View, Calif., company to grow to one million customers and also to cut the price of its Personal Genome service to $99, which offers 244 reports on health and personal traits, as well as genealogy and ancestry information. That price was originally $999 and provided only 14 reports.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121211/23andme-raises-50-million-in-new-funding-adding-yuri-milner-as-investor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121211/former-yahoo-exec-blake-irving-named-ceo-of-domain-giant-go-daddy/ http://allthingsd.com/20121211/former-yahoo-exec-blake-irving-named-ceo-of-domain-giant-go-daddy/#comments Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:05:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=276719

Go Daddy, the world’s biggest Web hosting and domain registration company, has hired former Yahoo Chief Product Officer and Microsoft exec Blake Irving to be its new CEO.

The privately-held Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company said Irving would start his new job on January 7 and will also join its board of directors. He is replacing Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ Scott Wagner, who served as interim CEO since the summer, after Warren Adelman stepped down after only eight months on the job.

Private equity firm KKR is a major investor in Go Daddy, along with Silver Lake. The pair, as well as Technology Crossover Ventures, purchased a major stake in the company for $2.3 billion in a leveraged buyout in 2011. Go Daddy Executive Chairman and founder Bob Parsons — well known for being outspoken — also still holds a large percentage.

Go Daddy — which had sales of $1.3 billion in 2012 from fees from a wide variety of services offered to 11 million small business customers — is the largest registrar of Web sites, managing 54 million domains and hosting more than 5 million accounts. But it has been expanding the suite of services it offers.

“Go Daddy is an on-ramp for small business and I view it as a platform at tremendous scale for them,” said Irving in an interview yesterday, who noted he had 45 domains at Go Daddy himself. “There is a real vision here at further combining all these capabilities and opportunities here in the U.S. and internationally.”

For example, Go Daddy said that it recently bought Outright.com, a cloud-based financial management app, and also launched a mobile Web site-building tool.

Irving, as well as Wagner, underscored the global opportunities he intended to focus on. “If we move quickly, we can manage these opportunities into a bigger juggernaut,” he said, noting companies like Google, Intuit and others were also seeking to expand.

Currently, said Wagner, about one-third of customers added are internationally based and the business is about 25 percent of revenue, although most of the 3,400 Go Daddy employees are based in Arizona.

Go Daddy is not without its controversies — it has gotten dinged in recent years for its racy advertisements featuring scantily-clad women and also its support of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which it later pulled.

Irving was a longtime Microsoft exec, including heading its Windows Live platform. Most recently he served as Chief Product Officer at Yahoo, before resigning earlier this year under the regime of now-ousted CEO Scott Thompson. He is a graduate of San Diego State and got his MBA degree from Pepperdine University.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121211/former-yahoo-exec-blake-irving-named-ceo-of-domain-giant-go-daddy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121125/furby-childrens-tablets-generate-top-buzz-in-toy-aisle/ http://allthingsd.com/20121125/furby-childrens-tablets-generate-top-buzz-in-toy-aisle/#comments Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:30:18 +0000 John Kell http://allthingsd.com/?p=272379 A mix of retro toys like the new, tech-focused Furby and newer brands including the Skylander videogame and the freaky guys and ghouls of Monster High are generating the greatest buzz in the children’s toy aisle this holiday season.

Much of the toy industry’s success will hinge on how many customers the top toy retailers can lure to their stores with a mix of door-buster deals, exclusive merchandise, price-match guarantees and layaway programs.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121125/furby-childrens-tablets-generate-top-buzz-in-toy-aisle/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121123/mobile-thursday-smartphone-shopping-is-still-tiny-but-its-this-years-big-online-buzzword/ http://allthingsd.com/20121123/mobile-thursday-smartphone-shopping-is-still-tiny-but-its-this-years-big-online-buzzword/#comments Fri, 23 Nov 2012 18:13:19 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=272070

In what has become an annual holiday tradition, those who keep track of these things have started in on touting just how digital the holiday shopper has become, whipping out all manner of buzzwords to do so.

Last year, it was Cyber Monday — this year, it’s turned out to be Mobile Thursday. What’s next? Social Network Saturday? Self-Driving Car Sunday? (We still have Black Friday, by the way, which is today.)

And, indeed, the Mobile Thursday phrase got some big laps around the track, with numerous online shopping surveys — coming out faster than you can buy that new tablet — using it in their flash reports yesterday and today.

This year’s anecdotal meme: Apple iPads go well with pumpkin pie.

What isn’t said so much is that it is still a very small number — though fast-growing — over the last few years, with overall sales reaching $500 million for Thursday, compared to about $1.2 billion on Monday, according to comScore.

Still, for now, no one seems to break out actual mobile sales figures, which are clearly still a fraction of the totals. But they are more than happy to tell you that people are certainly browsing on their mobile devices, which should come as a surprise to exactly no one who is tired of talking to the relatives about three hours into the day.

According to IBM’s Benchmark report, for example, online sales were up 17.4 percent over 2011 on Thanksgiving Day, noting that “big winners were retailers who connected customers with personalized deals across multiple screens including PCs, smartphones and tablets.”

Some stats from IBM about Thursday:

Mobile Traffic: The number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site reached 25.3 percent, up from 66.2 percent over 2011.

Mobile Shopping: The number of consumers using their mobile device to make a purchase increased to 18.3 percent, up 65.3 percent from 2011.

Mobile Email: Smartphone and tablet shoppers responded to email deals from retailers, with emails opened on mobile devices jumping 23 percent on Thanksgiving Day over 2011.

Couch Commerce: In the evening hours, consumers shifted from shopping through their smartphones at the dinner table to buying through their iPad on the couch. At the end of the day the iPad drove more retail traffic than any other device with traffic reaching 10.7 percent versus the iPhone at 9.1 percent and Android at 5.8 percent.

Social Shopping: Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook and Twitter increased in evening hours generating .63 percent of all online sales on Thanksgiving.

And today, Black Friday, IBM slightly upped those figures, noting that the iPhone was the preferred device to bring into a store to shop with — presumably irritating sales clerks everywhere.

Over at Fab, CEO Jason Goldberg was touting in a Betashop blog post that his mobile app sales were 40 percent of the retail site’s total for the day. It’s usually 33 percent, so it’s a small jump, which Goldberg attributed to a tweet by Apple promoting it. But how much did he sell? He’s not saying.

And eBay said it launched 20 mobile-only e-commerce promotions over its app, as did many other retailers.

Also, no surprise, the New York Times weighed in with the classic trend piece: “The Shrewd Shopper Carries a Smartphone.” Um, everyone carries a smartphone now, but it apparently gets more magical when you take it to Macy’s.

We’ll see if Mobile Thursday becomes Mobile Holiday Season, which would be a big deal — but it’s winning so far in the pundit stakes.

Until we get actual numbers, here’s a chart about the whole thing from eBay:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121123/mobile-thursday-smartphone-shopping-is-still-tiny-but-its-this-years-big-online-buzzword/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121030/lolly-wolly-doodles-brandi-temple-talks-facebook-fueled-real-time-retail/ http://allthingsd.com/20121030/lolly-wolly-doodles-brandi-temple-talks-facebook-fueled-real-time-retail/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:30:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=264237

When you have a name like Lolly Wolly Doodle, it’s hard not to get some kind of attention.

And, in fact, the online retailer of personalized, monogrammed children’s clothing has gotten a lot of it, mostly on Facebook, in what is one of the more successful efforts to take advantage of e-commerce on the social networking platform.

The company was founded by a North Carolina stay-at-home mom, Brandi Temple, who sewed clothes for her four kids. She started to branch out locally with simple A-line dresses for girls, then moved online at eBay and elsewhere, eventually almost primarily using a system on Facebook to sell her goods.

Essentially, Temple is doing a modified version of a flash sale, but with just-in-time retail elements. Customers fan the Lolly Wolly Doodle site, which puts daily sales alerts into the news feed. Once a new item comes up, the buyer comments on it with the size, the monogram desired and an email. The first people to comment get the item and pay for it immediately.

Only then is it actually made, in a kind of real-time social cycle. Unlike most retail, which is made and then sold, Lolly Wolly Doodle knows just how much demand is out there, and improves it with easy personalization.

It does not always work out on any individual item, but the fans have added up to 400,000, as have sales. With that success, Temple has raised $1.7 million in funding.

She was out in San Francisco recently, considering more investment to expand to new categories and improve on distribution arenas such as Pinterest, although she is definitely wary of taking too much money from venture capitalists for something that is already working well.

In other words, Temple is one sharp cookie.

You can hear all about it in the video interview I did below, explaining how she has turned shoulder bows and ruffles into an online phenom:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121030/lolly-wolly-doodles-brandi-temple-talks-facebook-fueled-real-time-retail/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121029/breaking-scott-forstall-out-at-apple-along-with-retail-head/ http://allthingsd.com/20121029/breaking-scott-forstall-out-at-apple-along-with-retail-head/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2012 21:10:44 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=264700

Big management shifts at Apple are now taking place.

Scott Forstall, the man in charge of its iOS mobile software efforts and a major and longtime executive at the tech giant, is leaving next year and will remain an adviser to CEO Tim Cook until then.

In addition, new retail head John Browett is headed out the door.

As part of the move, Apple noted that four key execs — Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi — would “add responsibilities to their roles.”

Ive gets “Human Interface”; Cue will take over Maps and Siri voice recognition responsibilities; Mansfield will run a new unit called Technologies, “which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization”; and Federighi gets the big job of iOS and OS X.

More to come on what happened, but Forstall’s departure is very big news and a drastic move for such an important player in the tech space.

He had big fans and also many detractors for his sharp-edged personality, as well as what some described as exhibiting “growing open challenges” to Cook himself. Forstall had previously been called “CEO-in-waiting” in one media account in Fortune.

In addition, numerous sources noted persistent tension between Forstall and several other key execs, especially the powerful design chief Ive.

Veiled internal politics at Apple aside, Forstall has been a key part of Apple’s success over the last decade, especially in the development iPad and the iPhone.

Recently, there has been some level of ire at Apple over the troubled rollout of its own mapping software and the replacement of Google’s popular service, which was Forstall’s responsibility. (No, this move does not mean everyone gets Google mapping back, as one person asked me.)

Browett’s leaving is a little less of a surprise. Since he got the job, he has alienated many within the highly successful retail organization at Apple, many sources said.

His departure comes less than one year after the former Dixons CEO was hired by Apple to succeed Ron Johnson, who left for J.C. Penney in November 2011. Recently he’s been criticized by some Apple Store employees for unfriendly policy changes aimed at increasing Apple’s retail profit margins.

More to come, obvi, but here is the official press release from Apple, which it put out with the most understated title of all time:

Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services

Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles

CUPERTINO, California — October 29, 2012 — Apple® today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between the Company’s world-class hardware, software and services teams. As part of these changes, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi will add more responsibilities to their roles. Apple also announced that Scott Forstall will be leaving Apple next year and will serve as an advisor to CEO Tim Cook in the interim.

“We are in one of the most prolific periods of innovation and new products in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The amazing products that we’ve introduced in September and October, iPhone 5, iOS 6, iPad mini, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, iPod touch, iPod nano and many of our applications, could only have been created at Apple and are the direct result of our relentless focus on tightly integrating world-class hardware, software and services.”

Jony Ive will provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design. His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.

Eddy Cue will take on the additional responsibility of Siri® and Maps, placing all of our online services in one group. This organization has overseen major successes such as the iTunes Store®, the App Store℠, the iBookstore℠ and iCloud®. This group has an excellent track record of building and strengthening Apple’s online services to meet and exceed the high expectations of our customers.

Craig Federighi will lead both iOS and OS X®. Apple has the most advanced mobile and desktop operating systems, and this move brings together the OS teams to make it even easier to deliver the best technology and user experience innovations to both platforms.

Bob Mansfield will lead a new group, Technologies, which combines all of Apple’s wireless teams across the company in one organization, fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level. This organization will also include the semiconductor teams, who have ambitious plans for the future.

Additionally, John Browett is leaving Apple. A search for a new head of Retail is underway and in the interim, the Retail team will report directly to Tim Cook. Apple’s Retail organization has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level who will continue the excellent work that has been done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services for customers.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121029/breaking-scott-forstall-out-at-apple-along-with-retail-head/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121027/missing-from-surface-tablet-barnes-nobles-nook-app/ http://allthingsd.com/20121027/missing-from-surface-tablet-barnes-nobles-nook-app/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 21:56:37 +0000 Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Keach Hagey http://allthingsd.com/?p=264226 When Microsoft agreed to invest $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s new subsidiary Nook Media LLC earlier this year, Barnes & Noble committed to creating a Nook e-reading app for Microsoft’s new Surface tablet. But with the tablet’s release Friday, that app is missing in action.

In contrast Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle app is already available to be downloaded free. The online retailer said in a release that “customers around the world can now download this free app and enjoy Amazon’s selection of over 1.5 million books at the best prices, including over 200,000 exclusive titles.”

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121027/missing-from-surface-tablet-barnes-nobles-nook-app/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121001/disney-unveils-new-home-page-with-entertainment-focus/ http://allthingsd.com/20121001/disney-unveils-new-home-page-with-entertainment-focus/#comments Mon, 01 Oct 2012 21:06:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=255649

The Walt Disney Company will finally be unveiling a newly refurbished Disney.com site — aimed at delivering a robust entertainment experience — which the digital division of the company has been working on for a year.

In an interview Friday, Disney Interactive co-President James Pitaro said that the new site has been built from the “ground up,” keeping in mind delivery to multiple devices, especially increasingly popular tablets and smartphones.

Making such a dramatic shift to what he called the “digital gateway to Disney” is not without risk, he said.

“The new Disney.com is a much cleaner and more elegant site and a significant change from the legacy site, and any time you make material changes to a Web experience that has a large audience, you have potential to unsettle some users,” said Pitaro, who came to Disney from Yahoo in late 2010. “That said, we take a lot of pride in the new entertainment experience we’ve created and are confident that the multi-platform site will both further engage our current Guests and bring in new ones.”

The rollout began with a video beta site appearing in May.

Pitaro said the load time on the site had been drastically improved, along with the new minimalist design, which “puts Guests first.”

(“Guests” is how Disney refers to its customers, wherever they are.)

Instead of positioning the site as the marketing vehicle it has been in the past, Pitaro said the new Web and mobile destination is much more of the entertainment experience throughout.

That has meant getting fresh content from a wide range of Disney units, from its high-profile theme parks to its television channel to its movie studio. Content from its ABC and ESPN divisions are not part of the site, but both Marvel and Pixar are included.

The new site does not mean Disney’s online efforts will be less available outside the site. The company has a large-scale relationship with Google’s YouTube, for example, as well as being partial owner of the Hulu premium video site.

“We still need to take Disney where our Guests are,” said Pitaro.

Disney’s efforts online in the past have been decidedly mixed — from its doomed Go.com portal in Web 1.0 to its highly successful Club Penguin acquisition many years later.

Thus, said Pitaro, what is now appearing today on Disney.com — a new front page, movie and music pages — is still a work in process, with more changes coming.

Here are some screenshots of the new look:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121001/disney-unveils-new-home-page-with-entertainment-focus/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/ http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:29:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=254410

As most readers know, I love a good internal memo from Yahoo — and now I have landed a really meaty one.

It’s the “Yahoo! Three-Year Product Strategy” plan, a 21-page report that was completed in mid-2011 by a team headed by former product head Blake Irving.

While it is a year old — and five CEOs ago (no, really) — it’s an important read since it tracks closely to the strategic vision that Yahoo’s latest CEO Marissa Mayer discussed earlier this week at an all-hands employee meeting and, according to sources, is very similar to one she seems to be pursuing.

That includes a focus on personalization, mobile, social, improving Yahoo’s advertising tech platforms and more.

And here’s the centerpiece of goals — called “Five Strategic Elements” — from the Irving memo:

1. Infuse deep personalization using science and data into every consumer and advertising experience we build.

2. Delight our customers with best-in-class products, iterating frequently for constant improvement.

3. Build for connected devices first with localized, in-context, multi-screen experiences in mind.

4. Power real social relationships with features that enable 1:few conversations around content.

5. Build a digital media ecosystem that creates a premium marketplace for advertising and content and distributes Yahoo! experiences across the Web.

Sound familiar?

In fact, at the event’s Q&A part yesterday, one staffer specifically pointed out that her broad presentation to employees sounded a lot like the one Irving had proposed the year before.

Since that was never truly implemented, due to never-ending management crises, the obvious question was asked: “Why would things be different this time?”

Mayer answered that the execution against that strategy wasn’t good and she would have a better model to pull it off.

The memo, embedded in its entirety below, is really instructive to use as a possible roadmap, outlining Yahoo’s challenges, as well as the competitive landscape.

Noted the report, quite clearly: “Yahoo! does not have an audience problem, as we are growing on pace with the Internet. Yahoo! does, however, have an engagement problem, as our share of time spent is flat, relative to our competitors.”

It’s aim is to fix that by building the “One Yahoo! experience, in which each of our current and future products fortifies the whole.”

Easier said than done, especially in building up its ad tech business, as the report adds, zeroing in on its most potent rival:

“To defend and grow our share of the premium advertising market, Yahoo! must continue investing to reach parity where necessary and achieve sustainable differentiation against Google with our premium marketplace and technology stack.”

There’s a lot more than that, so dig in to the document, which suggest a whole lot of spending to turn around Yahoo.

Since Mayer is well on her way in that department — including bouncing CFO Tim Morse, who was very bottom-line wary — more on that, next!

You must now download the full report here, which was removed from DocStoc here after a takedown request from Yahoo’s lawyers.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120819/onlive-bought-by-um-onlive-and-former-investor-lauder-partners/ http://allthingsd.com/20120819/onlive-bought-by-um-onlive-and-former-investor-lauder-partners/#comments Mon, 20 Aug 2012 01:58:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=242931

Here’s a press release I just got sent by OnLive, about its sale to its mysterious new investor.

Which is actually an old one — Lauder Partners, which invested in the innovative cloud-gaming service in 2009. Under the new arrangement, the start-up will still be called OnLive, operate in the same manner, but with only about half its old staff hired back to work for the Lauder “affiliate.”

Whatever that is!

In other words: OnLive is dead! Long live OnLive!

Such confusion is par for the course in this most bizarre of Silicon Valley restructurings.

On Friday, the Palo Alto, Calif., company abruptly laid off its staff and went dark about what was going on, making a series of ever more opaque statements.

Along with the new press release, designed to clear up the mess, OnLive included an FAQ about the transaction. But it still leaves many questions unanswered.

Such as the price paid by Lauder for the assets, as well as whether founder and CEO Steve Perlman was still running the joint.

Here’s one thing that was made clear: The employee’s equity in OnLive the First, as well as that of investors, has gone poof in the new configuration of OnLive the Second.

That would be at least $56 million from investors, as well as tens of millions more in funding from earlier.

Said the company: “OnLive, Inc.’s board of directors, faced with difficult financial decisions for OnLive, Inc., determined that the best course of action was a restructuring under an ‘Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.’ The assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual property, etc.) to the new company.”

Incredibly, in its statement, OnLive had the audacity to say that it was a “heartbreaking transition for everyone involved with OnLive.”

For the other half of the staff — inexplicably called “non-hired” in the press release — laid off in such a manner, it certainly was.

Apparently, they might be able to consult “in return for options in the new company,” and could perhaps even be hired later.

Gee, thanks!

Oh, go read it for yourself:

OnLive Assets Acquired by New Company

All OnLive Services, Devices, Apps and Partnerships Continue Uninterrupted
Lauder Partners Backs New Company as First Investor

Palo Alto, Calif. August 19, 2012 – OnLive, the pioneer of instant-action cloud computing, announced today that on August 17th all of its assets were acquired by a newly formed company that will continue to operate under the OnLive name. The OnLive® Game and Desktop Services, all OnLive Devices and Apps, as well as all OnLive partnerships, are expected to continue without interruption and all customer purchases will remain intact; users are not expected to notice any change whatsoever. OnLive’s current initiatives will
continue as well, with major announcements of new products and services planned in the coming weeks and months. An affiliate of
Lauder Partners was the first investor in the newly-structured company, holding the view that OnLive is the future of computing and
entertainment, and a passion to see OnLive’s breakthrough technology continue to grow and evolve. The new company structure enables OnLive to do so.

OnLive, Inc.’s board of directors, faced with difficult financial decisions for OnLive, Inc., determined that the best course of action
was a restructuring under an “Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.” The assignee of the company’s assets then sold all of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (including its technology, intellectual
property, etc.) to the new company.

Unfortunately, neither OnLive, Inc. shares nor OnLive staff could transfer under this type of transaction, but almost half of OnLive’s staff were given employment offers by the new company at their current salaries immediately upon the transfer, and the non-hired staff will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company. Upon closing additional funding, the company plans to hire more staff, both former OnLive employees as well as new employees.

The OnLive Service has been in operation 24/7 without interruption since its launch over two years ago, and is expected to continue to
operate smoothly under the new company. All games, products and services remain available, and the company has new product and partnership announcements on the way.

OnLive’s breakthrough instant-action cloud computing technology has been in development for over a decade and, despite immense skepticism, OnLive successfully deployed this highly disruptive technology as a polished consumer offering with commercial-grade reliability across a vast range of devices, including TVs, tablets, phones, PCs and Macs,
connected over almost any Internet connection, including wireless and cellular. Only a few major corporations have ever developed and deployed products and services across such a broad spectrum. OnLive is rare among startups in both the depth and scope of its offerings.

The asset acquisition, although a heartbreaking transition for everyone involved with OnLive, allows the company’s core innovation and ongoing offerings — the product of over a decade of hard work transforming the OnLive vision into reality — to survive and continue to
evolve.

Given the widespread speculation about OnLive and the new company, a FAQ is below that addresses a number of questions both for the public and former employees.

FAQs

Q. Will users see any change in the OnLive Game or Desktop Services? What about their purchases?

A. Users should see no change in the OnLive Game or Desktop Services. All of their purchases remain intact and available. OnLive has been up 24/7 since launch over two years ago and expects to remain so. OnLive has over 2.5 million subscribers, with an active base of over 1.5 million subscribers, connecting from a vast range of devices and networks, with many sessions running for hours. The user base is
growing rapidly with OnLive’s addition into recently announced devices and TVs from major manufacturers. We expect this growth to continue under the new company.

Q. Is there any cash or stock in the new company provided for any OnLive, Inc. shares?

A. Unfortunately not. The nature of the transaction is such that only assets, not shares, were purchased. This is true for all shares of
OnLive, Inc., whether held by investors, employees or executives.

Q. Did Steve Perlman receive stock or compensation in this transaction?

A. Like all shareholders, neither Steve nor any of his companies received any stock in the new company or compensation in this transaction at all. Steve is receiving no compensation whatsoever and most execs are receiving reduced compensation to allow the company to
hire as many employees as possible within the current budget.

Q. Did all OnLive, Inc. assets transfer into the new company? Are any assets held by any other party?

A. All of OnLive, Inc.’s assets (e.g. technology, patents, trademarks, etc.) were transferred to an assignee, which then sold the assets to
the new company. There was no transfer to any other party.

Q. Have OnLive, Inc. employees been offered positions in the new company?

A. Almost half of OnLive’s staff were offered employment at their current salaries in the new company immediately upon the transfer, and
the non-hired staff will be given offers to do consulting in return for options in the new company. Upon closing additional funding, the
company plans to hire more staff, both former OnLive employees as well as new employees.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120819/onlive-bought-by-um-onlive-and-former-investor-lauder-partners/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120319/vaunted-yahoo-techie-departs-for-microsoft-surprised-me-neither/ http://allthingsd.com/20120319/vaunted-yahoo-techie-departs-for-microsoft-surprised-me-neither/#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2012 03:29:01 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=188072

One of Yahoo’s most respected researchers, Raghu Ramakrishnan, who is the author of one of the most famous database textbooks, “Database Management Systems,” has left the Silicon Valley company to join Microsoft. He was also critical to the development of much of Yahoo’s personalization technology.

Sources said the chief scientist for search and cloud platforms at its Yahoo Labs unit will be a fellow on the software giant’s SQL team.

Ramakrishnan, who has been at Yahoo since 2006, is one of many key researchers to depart before what is expected to be a gutting of the company’s research division in upcoming layoffs and other cuts by new CEO Scott Thompson.

None of this exodus of high-level research talent comes as a surprise. Prabhakar Raghavan, the well-respected head of the Yahoo Labs unit and also recently its head of strategy, has recently left the company to take a job at Google.

Ramakrishnan came to Yahoo from a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to his bio from Yahoo, he was the “founder and CTO of QUIQ, a company that pioneered crowd-sourcing, specifically question-answering communities, powering Ask Jeeves’ AnswerPoint as well as customer-support for companies such as Compaq.”

A Yahoo spokesperson declined comment (but, trust me, it is true).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120319/vaunted-yahoo-techie-departs-for-microsoft-surprised-me-neither/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120302/users-rip-att-data-curbs/ http://allthingsd.com/20120302/users-rip-att-data-curbs/#comments Sat, 03 Mar 2012 07:30:06 +0000 Anton Troianovski and Greg Bensinger http://allthingsd.com/?p=180156 Wireless carriers are getting increasingly forceful in their efforts to pitch mobile bandwidth as a scarce, valuable commodity — setting up a battle with consumer groups that support open-Internet rules and longtime customers who treasure their unlimited data plans.

Among U.S. carriers, AT&T Inc. is leading the charge. Its latest scuffle came on Friday, a day after the country’s second-largest wireless company said its 17 million customers who subscribed to unlimited-data plans will see much slower speeds if they exceed a new monthly usage cap.

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