AllThingsD » Gap

Gap, H&M, Sephora and Others Unwrap New Social Gifting Service in the U.S.

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 04:01:51 +0000

More than 25 major retailers, including the Gap, H&M, Sephora and Brooklyn Industries, are working with a Swedish company named Wrapp to roll-out a social gifting service starting today.

The intention of the service is to drive consumers into stores, much like Groupon, but rather than enticing them with coupons, the bait is presumably even better: Free gift cards.

Wrapp, which was founded by a mix of former executives from Spotify and Groupon and received financial backing from Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, is now available in the U.S.

It works like this:

Using Facebook and a mobile application, people can give their Facebook friends free gift cards, commonly valued at $5 to $15.
A notification saying that they’ve received a gift card is posted to that friend’s wall, where anyone can see it and contribute more money if they wish.
The person, who received the gift card, can then redeem it using a mobile application in the store.

Lexy Funk, the CEO of Brooklyn Industries, a New York retailer that sells handbags and apparel online and at a dozen-or-so stores, said she was drawn to the concept because of its ability to target customers based on their Facebook information, including age.

“Wrapp has the potential to be more sophisticated for us and the consumer,” she said, adding that she experimented with Groupon, but felt it attracted a lot of low-end users.

With Wrapp, a $15 gift card could show up for someone in their 40s, but a $5 gift card might appear for someone younger, depending on the retailer’s core demographic or how much they may want to spend to acquire that user. Funk said it will take some tweaking to find the right combinations, but that they are eager to try it out.

A lot of companies are trying to define social commerce. Some have translated it very literally by trying to generate sales directly on Facebook. Others have taken smaller steps, such as letting users “like” products from their online store. But so far, not many companies have been wildly successful.

Wrapp’s concept ties together gifting and social in one easy-to-understand package.

Hjalmar Winbladh, Wrapp’s CEO, said retailers are looking for an efficient way to drive customers to their brick and mortar and online stores, and with Wrapp, they can do it in a way that continues to build their brand online and leverage friend-to-friend marketing.

“Everyone is trying to leverage their Facebook presence and the smartphone boom in a way that’s not just about discounting,” Winbladh said.

Retailers only pay Wrapp when a customer comes into the store and redeems the gift card.

Based on company’s successes in Sweden, retailers like Brooklyn Industries’ Funk are hopeful that the results will be meaningful.

Since Wrapp’s commercial launch in Sweden five months ago, it has more than 165,000 active users; has given away more than 1.4 million gift cards; and reports that the average sale size from those gift cards are four to six times higher than the card’s original value.

And, that’s in a country with fewer than 10 million residents.

Another Science Start-Up, Wittlebee, Gets $2.5 Million in Funding for Kids' Clothes Club

Kara Swisher — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:00:30 +0000

Wittlebee, a monthly kids’ clothing club that was incubated at Los Angeles area “technology studio” Science, has gotten $2.5 million in funding.

Much like another Science start-up, Dollar Shave Club, Wittlebee ships a custom box of high-quality kids’ clothes to members.

The seed round of funding was led by Rincon, with participation from SoftTech, Google Ventures, Matt Coffin, Crosslink, and Morado.

Wittlebee’s CEO and founder Sean Percival said the money would be used to create a private-label clothing line.

Wittlebee uses stay-at-home parents, who have used the site, as customer service reps. The start-up sends a new order of children’s apparel each month, including onesies, t-shirts, leggings, socks and pants, upping the sizes as the kid grows.

In other words, kind of like a never-ending online Gap.

Here’s the official press release on Wittlebee’s funding:

Wittlebee Raises $2.5 Million Seed Funding Lead By Rincon

Children’s clothing membership service to begin manufacturing private label designs to keep up with growing customer demand

Los Angeles, CA. April 4, 2012 — Wittlebee (www.Wittlebee.com), the affordable children’s clothing monthly membership service backed by technology studio Science Inc., today announces the company raised $2.5 million in seed funding leady by Rincon, with participation from SoftTech, Google Ventures, Matt Coffin, CrossLink, and Morado. Jim Andelman, co-founder and General Partner at Rincon, joins Wittlebee’s board alongside Michael Jones, founder and CEO of Science, and Sean Percival, Wittlebee’s founder and CEO.

Since launching less than two months ago, Wittlebee has experienced accelerated growth, in part because of Science’s track record of quickly scaling ecommerce businesses. The company will use the new investment to build out its executive team and user acquisitions.

Upon joining Wittlebee, customers are connected to a team of mom stylists who work with families to compose boxes of high-quality children’s clothing to meet individual children’s needs. Active kids in warm climates like Miami may receive appropriate t-shirts, shorts and socks whereas infants in Albany receive long-sleeve onesies and cozy pajamas.

“Wittlebee’s recent growth has been tremendous,” said Percival. “Our customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive; we are speaking to an audience of 20,000 highly engaged moms across social media who tell us they’re delighted we’re saving them time and money for all their children’s clothing needs. We plan to use Rincon’s investment to create Wittlebee’s private label clothing line that will truly showcase our commitment to high-quality practical children’s apparel.”

In the coming months, customers will receive a selection of parents’ favorite well-known brands in addition to Wittlebee’s private label. Manufactured both locally in Los Angeles and abroad, the new line represents customers’ wish-list of kids’ must-haves, from high-quality soft fabrics, to a wide color palate, to unique graphic designs. After months of research and testing apparel options through Wittlebee’s social networks, the resulting Wittlebee bespoke label will be a timeless array of apparel basics to carry kids through seasons, activities and all their lifestyle needs.

“For every investment decision we make, we care most about customer value proposition, team, and business model,” said Jim Andelman, Managing Partner at Rincon. “We’ve been tremendously impressed by parents’ positive response to Wittlebee’s offering: they love the selections, they save money and you can’t beat the convenience of clothes showing up right to your door. The e-commerce space is exploding in LA, and we’re very excited to be at the forefront with Wittlebee.”

For more on Wittlebee, please visit www.Wittlebee.com.

Visa is Coming to Mobile Next Week to be Everywhere You Want to Be

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:55:49 +0000

Visa is fulfilling its promise of being “everywhere you want to be,” beginning as soon as next week, when it plans to make an announcement regarding its mobile payments strategy.

Joseph Saunders, Visa’s executive chairman and CEO, could hardly contain himself yesterday during the company’s second-quarter conference call.

At first, he was reluctant to say too much, only that an announcement was coming later this month. But later in the call, he added that the company will begin revealing plans as soon as next week.

Over time, he used words such as “happy” and “excited” to be involved in mobile technology.

To be sure, the company has already been investing aggressively in the space.

Late last month, it invested in Square, the San Francisco company that is enabling almost anyone to accept credit card payments using a smartphone. In February, it acquired PlaySpan, which handles transactions for virtual goods in online games, digital media and social networks, for about $190 million in cash.

And, two weeks ago, it unveiled a partnership with Gap, which is using Visa’s platform to alert customers by text message to discounts on jeans and other apparel when they are in the vicinity of a store. Visa is also opening up that platform to other retailers.

Saunders tooted his own corporate horn, saying he believes Visa has a more complete solution than anyone else in the market. “We’ve been reluctant to talk about it until we have put together…an appropriate [response], where we can tell you something positive and significant,” he said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call.

Of course, Visa’s competitors would probably like to say something about that.

MasterCard, PayPal, American Express, the wireless carriers, and even Internet giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Google are all in various stages of cooking up a digital payments strategy.

Saunders said that a viable payment solution must have five characteristics: Convenience and simplicity, standardization, interoperability, global accessibility and security.

“None of the solutions we have seen from competitors is comprehensive enough because they don’t address all of these criteria at once. Visa has long delivered solutions at the physical point of sale that passed this test and we are applying the same standard in the online and mobile arena,” he said.

I guess we’ll see as soon as next week.

Gap Partners With Visa to Send Location-Based Offers to Your Phone

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:00:23 +0000

Here’s another variation on the idea that we will one day get offers sent to us on our phones while in the vicinity of a retail store. This time it’s from Visa.

The payments provider is announcing a partnership today with Gap, which has been using Visa’s platform since November to alert customers by text message to discounts on jeans and other marked-down preppy apparel.

The service does not require users to have a smartphone, or to download an application. Conveniently, they also never have to remember to check-in.

Rather, Gap customers, who sign-up for the program called Gap Mobile 4 U, will receive text alerts for offers when they’ve made a purchase on their Visa card in the same zip code as a Gap location.

While the first trial was conducted with Gap, Leigh Amaro, Visa’s senior business leader for the company’s global information products, said it will be expanding to other retailers soon. “We have a strong pipeline with more announcements coming shortly.”

The platform uses Visa’s normal global processing network, which analyzes and processes transactions in real time to ensure that payments are not fraudulent. With a consumer’s permission, Visa can use that information to see where and when the last transaction was made and deliver an offer based on their preferences and the time of day.

Visa cannot send an offer to a consumer unless they’ve made another transaction, or signed up with the retailer to receive them.

In a hypothetical scenario, Amaro said if someone fills up their gas tank early in the morning, a logical offer might be to send you a discounted cup of coffee at a nearby cafe. Or, if you make a purchase at the cafe in the morning, it might send you an offer that would draw you back in the afternoon.

For now, the purchase does not have to be made with your Visa card, but in the future, the discount could be applied afterwards, by crediting your bank statement. “It takes the work away from the retailer, which is important to businesses where you want to get people through the line as fast as possible,” Amaro said.

Other companies are trying to enter the space, including Groupon and LivingSocial, which offer instant deals via mobile applications. Foursquare and Shopkick also provide occasional discounts when a consumer has checked into the store. Visa has an advantage because of its scale and because the technology requires no downloads and very little user engagement.

A Gap spokesperson said they will continue to pilot the program with Visa in addition to exploring other ways to engage with customers on their mobile devices. Also in November, Gap gave away free pairs of jeans to the first 10,000 customers who checked into a store using Facebook Places.

Gap did not disclose how well either campaign performed.

Visa declined to discuss terms of the partnership, but said in addition to a financial arrangement between the two, it was designed to drive more payment volume.

Yahoo's Ad Talent Loss Is Groupon's Gain: Lee Brown Will Be Social Buying Phenom's Head of National Sales

Kara Swisher — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 19:28:02 +0000

Yahoo is losing another top advertising sales exec, who is heading to hot social buying site Groupon as its head of national sales, according to sources.

Lee Brown, who heads up Yahoo’s advertising efforts in its key New York region, is taking a post at Groupon as an SVP, focused on national accounts such as Gap and others that the start-up has recently begun targeting.

Groupon, which has been around only since 2008, has built a giant business in a short time by linking customers with mostly local merchants via daily discounted deals.

According to sources, it has a $2 billion revenue run rate this year, more than half of which will be returned to retailers.

Groupon’s growth has attracted a lot of attention of late, including a $6 billion acquisition bid by Google.

Those deal talks ended, although Google execs have said this week that local sales are a critical part of its future.

Yahoo has lost a lot of sales talent over the last year, including most recently Keith Nilsson, who ran global sales initiatives.

Interestingly, a former top Yahoo commerce exec, Rob Solomon, is Groupon’s president.

Silicon Valley's Latest Geek: Barbie Gets a CS Degree

Drake Martinet — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:00:12 +0000

Of course, All Things Digital went.

How could we not, what with Microsoft, Mattel and the Girl Scouts of America holding a joint event last week to talk up their new partnership aimed at halting the expanding gender gap in the tech sector.

Their weapon of choice? Barbie.

Bear with us here.

According to Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the percentage of women receiving computer science degrees are at about 20 percent, down from almost 40 percent in 1985.

The decline is even sharper when compared to gains made by women in almost every other academic arena in the same time period.

Recognition of the problem has sparked numerous summits, associations and research grants in tech in recent years.

Enter Microsoft and, um, Barbie.

As part of its larger DigiGirlz program, Microsoft announced a $5,000 grant supporting technology education in Girl Scouting, along with a mentorship program that will match women working in tech with girls interested in science and engineering.

The summit, held at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus, also featured Mattel’s signature doll donning hipster glasses, a Bluetooth wireless headset and some techie duds to start her umpteenth career, this time as a computer engineer.

Thus, a video, where highlights include a quick chat with Sid Espinosa–Microsoft’s director of citizenship–a backstage chat with California’s acting Chief Information Officer Christy Quinlan, a sneak peek at the geeky Barbie and a chitchat with a troop of Brownies about their computer-use habits.

Here’s the video:

[ See post to watch video ]

Nordstrom and Oprah Take Groupon Down

Liz Gannes — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:06:21 +0000

Groupon has been slow or completely down for the last two hours. The leading daily deal site is today featuring Nordstrom Rack in many of its markets (spend $25 and get a coupon worth $50). It’s a somewhat ironic situation given Groupon is known for physically overwhelming retailers with its armies of deal buyers.

To compound matters, Groupon is also set to be featured on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” today, though I’m not sure the show has actually aired in any markets yet. Oprah picked Groupon as one of her “Ultimate Favorite Things” for 2010, and as part of the announcement the company will be offering a nationwide deal of a $25 Kiva credit for $15.

Groupon acknowledged the slowness in a Tweet: “Hang in there, everyone: big things are afoot at Groupon.com today and we apologize for the site being so slow. We’re on it. Updates soon…” Tweeters replied that it was more than slowness that they were seeing; the site has actually been mostly down for some time now.

Kara Swisher reported this morning that Google is eyeing Groupon and would potentially offer more than $3 billion for it.

A nationwide deal with Gap in August had also compromised Chicago-based Groupon’s servers.

Liveblogging the Facebook Mobile Event: Single Sign-On for Social

Kara Swisher — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:55:54 +0000

BoomTown arrived late to the Facebook mobile event for the press due to traffic related to the parade today for the San Francisco Giants’ World Series victory–and where I would much rather be right now.

Go Giants!

10:53 am PT: In any case, I am here in the cafeteria of Facebook again, where the company continues its attempts to take over the known digital universe before Google does.

Currently, the social networking giant notes “200 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook from a phone, more than triple the number just one year ago.”

Thus, some new tries of a lot of stuff, such as single sign-on.

Meaning you sign on a Facebook and it signs you on all over the Web (or at least at those in partnership with the company).

Such as at Groupon and Zynga.

This single sign-on stuff has been tried by many before, a kind of Holy Grail of the Web, and where everyone has failed.

But it also the proverbial camel’s nose poking in your digital tent.

As in, the whole Facebook body is surely coming in next.

Facebook’s exec in charge of all this, Eric Tseng, talks about a virtuous circle of single sign-on, happy users and happy developers, sounding as if this is the single biggest problem facing humanity.

A password crisis! Silicon Valley to the rescue!

Perhaps the only issue the now damaged administration of President Barack Obama could actually get some legislation passed on now.

“My fellow Americans, we have too long be stuck in a miasma of forgetting which name of our dog we used for our password plus the number one…”

How much do I want to be at Giants parade right now? Much!

11:02 am: Next, we move onto more ability to show your location to friends on Facebook better and make sense of it by opening location APIs.

More heavy pontificating about what a disaster it is that we cannot properly see where our friends are on Facebook in the real world.

Of course, this leaves out the pertinent point that my “friends” on Facebook are exactly those I do not want to run into at the Starbucks on El Camino Real in Palo Alto, Calif.

Loopt Founder Sam Altman comes up to show off the integration with Facebook Places, where this problem is solved anyway.

“We believe data wants to be unified,” says Altman.

Certainly if you are the Borg, you want it to be unified. Me, not so much.

11:11 am: Now comes the attempted Groupon-killer from Facebook, which is creatively called “Deals.”

This is essentially allowing Facebook Places to locate a person and then merchants to offer deals when a user is nearby via a platform offered by Facebook.

You can do individual deals, such as getting a beer at a bar when you check in. Then, there is a loyalty deal on the phone, taking the place of that dog-eared card you always lose.

And there is the “friend deal.” This is not friends with benefits, sadly.

It means if you check in and bring a lot of folks, one eats free–which sounds just a little naughty.

Also, there is one deal type related to charity.

For the Gap, for example, you get a free jeans if you are among the first 10,000 to check in at a Gap store. There are 500 million Facebook users, so you do the math.

Essentially, it is about getting stuff if you check in, including experiences.

So, just like little white mice in Facebook’s lab, we push the button, we get the cheese. Sigh.

But I wonder if I check in right now, I can be transported to the Giants parade via a time machine. Now that might be something worth handing over my privacy to Facebook.

“The big takeaway for today is that there is obviously a lot of change in the social space,” says Facebook CEO and Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. “You can rethink any product area and make it be social.”

Indeed, you can. And Facebook obviously is going to be plowing on through a lot of them in order to solidify its stranglehold on the consumer.

11:23 am: Q&A!

The first question is on privacy and third-party developers giving up your location.

Yes, that!

Zuckerberg makes assurances that the current privacy steps now in place are working just fine and also users need to consent.

“The place information about people is not public,” he says.

There is question from Ben Parr of Mashable, about whether there is an iPad app for Facebook coming.

“It’s not mobile…it is a computer,” declares Zuckerberg, dismissing the very good question.

“I think Apple would disagree with you,” countered Parr, correctly.

“Well, sorry,” said Zuckerberg with more than a little bit of snark.

For a second, he sounds just like the guy from the Facebook movie.

But Zuckerberg quickly declares his love of Apple products and apologizes, although he should not have as it was a funny exchange.

A question about single sign-on. Zuckerberg notes that it has been tried, but the experience was bad.

“What we think is going to happen now is that it is so easy when it works, it is a whole different experience,” he said, comparing it to the way YouTube made video uploading on the Web easier.

Zuckerberg’s goal is that all apps become social, which is also a virtuous circle for Facebook, of course.

A question about the deals offer. It seems for Zuckerberg that Facebook is not getting a cut from retailers right now, as Groupon does.

Ruh-roh, Andrew Mason!

Zuckerberg then notes that the Places offering is going well, without giving a lot of specifics.

At the end, PR maven Brandee Barker wraps it up by saying what I have been thinking this entire time:

“Go Giants!”

Update: Groupon's Andrew Mason on Clones, the Gap and Mugging Larry Page!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:24:10 +0000

Last week in Vancouver, BoomTown reunited with Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason, in an onstage interview at the Grow2010 conference being held in the lovely Canadian city.

While affable and unusually sweet-looking, Mason was cagey as can be about the really juicy stuff–revenue, IPO plans and acquisition interest–but he also had a lot to say about the spectacular growth of the social buying service.

That’s growth in all aspects–from cities served to sales to employees to, especially, giant piles of funding from VCs and a valuation of more than $1 billion.

But that’s not to say Groupon is going to have it easy, necessarily. While companies such as Google (GOOG), eBay (EBAY), Yahoo (YHOO) and even Facebook are obvious candidates to acquire the Chicago-based start-up, they all could just as easily decide to compete and try to replicate the service.

In fact, it is likely that at least one of them will.

In the video below, Mason tries to avoid these queries, but he gives a good update about Groupon, including its first national social discount offer at the Gap (GPS) last week.

Here’s the video, which is short:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is an older interview I did with Mason in March, when times were simpler:

[ See post to watch video ]

Questions for Tony of Zappos and Andrew of Groupon? Step Right Up!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:15:11 +0000

Later today, BoomTown will be onstage at Dealmaker Media’s Grow2010 conference in Vancouver, Canada, to interview Tony Hsieh, CEO and co-founder of Zappos, and Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon.

Hsieh has just written a book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose,” which is topping the best-seller lists.

It essentially chronicles how he built the customer-service-focused online retailer, which was sold for $850 million to Amazon (AMZN) last year.

Mason is also a bit of a phenom, having turned the social local buying service into a start-up juggernaut, garnering massive funding and a valuation of above $1 billion.

Yesterday, Groupon had a big day, offering its first national social discount at the Gap (GPS), which blew off the doors at the service.

I will ask both the usual questions, but feel free to suggest any for me to use.

Note to Tony: No trying to hug me or getting me to do a group cheer.

Note to Andrew: No, I do not want a 50-percent-off spa treatment today.

Of course, I will post video updates with both innovative–and unusually likable–entrepreneurs later, but here are the interviews I did with each earlier this year to enjoy until then:

Will Foursquare 2.0 Fend Off Facebook?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:00:41 +0000

The last time we chatted up Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley, he was running a buzzy company with some 50,000 users and had just raised a $1.3 million funding round that every VC wanted a piece of.

A year later, Crowley’s company claims 2.5 million users, and he’s fresh off a $20 million round that, well, you know.

So it’s a good time to get Crowley’s thoughts on what comes next, beyond a shiny new office space (just one flight up from Foursquare’s current, cramped Manhattan headquarters). Short version: Crowley and team are thinking through what “Foursquare 2.0″ will look like. Same goes for the actual business part of the business.

Foursquare knows it needs to update its “game mechanics”–the check-in/rewards system that it helped pioneer, now aped by every social service under the sun, Crowley says. But that will come as the company adds to its 27-person staff.

Meanwhile, Foursquare has put together a few high-profile hookups–with the New York Times (NYT), Starbucks (SBUX) and Gap (GPS)–that have brought in a trickle of revenue. But the service is supposed to be a local play, connecting users with nearby coffee shops, bars, restaurants, etc.

Right now, Crowley says, there’s no problem on the demand side–he says there are more than 30,000 local merchants waiting to connect with Foursquare. So the next step is figuring out how to get those folks into the service, fast.

Other challenges are approaching quickly. Facebook, which could have been a Foursquare acquirer, is going to be a Foursquare competitor in the near future, when it launches its own “check-in” system. And it’s reasonable to assume that Google (GOOG) will try its own version as it tries to build its own “social” service.

Daunting stuff. But first, there’s some empty office space to fill.

[ See post to watch video ]

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong Live at D8

Peter Kafka — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:45:03 +0000

Good news for AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: His predecessor, AOL founder Steve Case, thinks the Google veteran has a chance to turn around the company. The bad news: He has a very long way to go.

Liveblog

11:14 am: Apologies, technical difficulties–joining late.

11:15 am: Armstrong is traveling back in time, discussing AOL (AOL) prior to his arrival. The company was managed based on gross revenue and page views, and that may work for some, but those metrics didn’t make sense to me.

Kara: Such as?

Armstrong: The Bebo acquisition looked successful, because page views were shooting up, but unique visitors were dropping down. Photo galleries with 80 photos into it. That sort of stuff. We’re pulling back on that stuff.

Kara: You’ve been pulling back on a lot of stuff. Revenue is down, too. Not a bad idea to go to zero so you can build back up.

Armstrong: Hopefully we don’t go to zero. But (former Gap CEO) Mickey Drexler gave me good advice. He told me I’d be under a lot of pressure to move the numbers up and that I should resist it.

11:17 am: Kara–anyone from Google (GOOG) you didn’t hire?

Armstrong: We need people who are passionate, but also willing to play on a team. The analogy I use is “when I got to AOL, there were a lot of people playing golf.” We need people on an orchestra or a football team.

11:18 am: Kara–I’ve called this the best management team to run a digital lemonade stand. You have a big team and a small business.

Armstrong: Compared to Time Warner (TWX), it’s a small business. But it’s still a large business: 100 million unique users in the U.S., etc. Bigger point: We have the largest opportunity on the Internet. But I tell investors that they shouldn’t be expecting quarter-after-quarter results. That’s not what we’re doing.

11:19 am: Kara–Okay, so what’s the opportunity?

Armstrong: It’s melding technology and journalism. Local efforts via patch. “We believe the local marketplace for journalism is important, and the local marketplace for services online is important.”

11:22 am: Armstrong–Beyond local, there are other areas that we can move into to fill unmet needs. Like religion–big opportunity there.

Kara: So how are matching tech with journalism?

Armstrong: We’re marrying demand algorithms with…

Kara: Like Demand Media?

Armstrong: They’re more search-based. We’re trying something else. But also giving editorial people better data. When I was at Google, I used to go to meetings at publishers where sales people had reams of data, and the journalists had none. There’s a lot of fear that some journalists have about technology and data, but they can use them as tools. But “the fear is where the opportunity is….There’s no reason why technology can’t fuel opportunity.”

11:26 am: Kara–So how do you sell all this stuff?

Armstrong: We service a lot of large audiences, but have technology that lets you delineate that audience and just serve who you want. And we also have models that let brands get next to the appropriate content.

Kara: You mean putting brands in the story?

Armstrong: No. Church and state is important. Brands next to stories, getting brands in front of the appropriate audiences.

11:28 am: Kara–You’re selling off Bebo. Will anyone buy it?

Armstrong: We’ve said we will sell it or shut it down. We’ve had interest from people who are interested in buying it. We’ll see how that turns out.

Kara: What about other stuff you might sell?

Armstrong: We’re keeping stuff that’s valuable. Mail and communications are important to us.

Kara: Social networking, given that you’re selling Bebo?

Armstrong: Very valuable. But it will be a joint strategy. Being a principal in a social network is something that we’re clearly not focused on.

11:29 am: Kara–What about search? You helped sign that big Google deal.

Armstrong: Last week, we kicked off the process of the search deal. We are meeting with multiple partners.

Kara: So you’re not re-upping with Google?

Armstrong: Google has been a great partner for 10 years. There’s a disadvantage in that we know what works and doesn’t work, and so do they. So now we need to compare both our needs, with Google and others.

Kara: There are only two partners, right?

Armstrong: There are probably more than two that we’ll talk to [like who?]. We’re valuable to search partners because the AOL audience performs very well for search. We perform more strongly than our market share implies.

Kara: Will you want a guarantee like the original deal?

Armstrong: We have a rev-share deal. There may be upfront payments, there may not be. But either way, those upfront payments are usually about market. They’re not core to the arrangement.

11:33 am::Kara–How do you look at Google and what they’re doing?

Armstrong: One of the things that Google has done a really good job with is taking risks, and you know, push, push, push. Like a lot of successful companies.

On the outside, as a partner, you appreciate that innovation. On the partnership side, you have to realize that you’re one partner out of a lot of partners that they have. And that’s the piece of it where personal relationships really matter. With them or other partners.

11:34 am: Kara–What about risks they face?

Armstrong: Risk for any company that size is how do you keep innovating? When Mark Zuckerberg was up here and you guys were hammering him, that can make you want to retreat. And you have to keep innovating.

11:35 am: Kara–AOL used to be innovative and important. The brand is tarnished now. Can you revive it?

Armstrong: Two different brands. By the way, before I officially left Google, I had a lot of people telling me to kill off the brand. But then I traveled around. And I found that there’s the brand that media people know about, and the merger, etc. And then there’s the brand that everyone else knows, and they have warm fuzzy feelings about it.

11:37 am::Who are your competitors? What do you think of Yahoo (YHOO), etc.

Armstrong: We have partnerships with Yahoo; we compete with them for users and advertisers. But AOL is not in a situation where we need to give advice or comment to people about what they ought to be doing. Yahoo is a big, strong company, though their strategy is much more focused on what we’re doing now, which is great.

Q&A

Q: Are you doing anything about the Gulf oil spill? Are you doing anything with your local journalism to help people with that? (seriously).

A: We’re covering it nationally. But we actually are working with someone locally, where there’s a girl in a town, where she’s raising money for the Gulf, and it’s not a town on the Gulf, but we’re trying to help her.

Q: Can you talk about AOL culture and how it’s changed since you got there?

A: At Google, I was managing 2,500 people. Now I’m managing 4,700. So I’ve learned that cultures are okay when they’re moving–up or down–and everyone knows what the plan is. They don’t work when there’s no plan. So people who don’t want to stay and don’t like the plan need an opportunity to leave. This is “Full Metal Jacket.” Turning this company around is not going to be easy. It’s not going to be eight-hour days.

Q from Kara: Management style?

A: I’m collegial. But at the end of the day, sometimes I need to execute and get it done. Like when I came aboard, there was a $400 million check I had to sign for a distribution deal. And then I asked people at a meeting to speak up about it and tell me what they said. There have been many cases where I’ve had to make decisions without a collegial environment. But the culture is getting better and collegial.

Q&A over.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

New Way to Flit from Store to Store

Katherine Boehret — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:16:00 +0000

Imagine going to the mall in search of a new pair of black leather gloves. But this time, rather than starting the search by going straight to your favorite stores, which look familiar and carry recognizable merchandise at expected prices, you must walk to the center of the mall and sort through a giant bucket of gloves with few identifying marks other than price.

Wacky as this scenario sounds, it’s the way many people shop online every day. They look for specific items by searching Web sites like Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay.com (EBAY), where results are displayed in big lists without much association to stores. That means all the details a customer knows about a store—its ambiance, prices, style, quality and variety—aren’t put to use.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I shopped online with Flit.com, a free Web site owned by San Francisco-area company enterONCE LLC that encourages people to shop using the same method they use at the mall: Start inside familiar stores, not in a giant bucket of products. It’s designed so people will enter a search item once and receive multiple suggestions of places where the item might be sold. As shoppers “flit” off to those stores, Flit.com serves as a home base, remembering the original search so shoppers can flit back, choose different stores and shop from there again and again.

I used Flit.com to shop online for black high heels, a digital camera, the iPad (not yet available), a robe, running sneakers and black leather gloves. I found that using it saved me from having to manually enter multiple URLs, and I liked how it helped me shop from store to store, since I already associate certain styles with each.

Select from the list of stores carrying black dresses. The store’s Web site opens to reveal all the black dresses carried there.

A male colleague of mine explained that he doesn’t naturally shop according to stores, so it’s worth noting that Flit.com may appeal to women more than men. I wish Flit.com had a way of combining its store shopping with side-by-side comparisons of the same product; the company plans to add this in March.

The Flit.com shopping process works as follows: Type in a search item, such as “red dress,” then choose to search in Value or Premium stores and press the Enter key. This returns a list of stores from a pool of more than 300 that carry red dresses; store categories can be selected to return more accurate results. Select one store, and its Web site opens to reveal all the red dresses carried there. Search results include stores like Target, Best Buy (BBY), Bloomingdales, Sam’s Club and J. Crew, as well as popular shopping sites like Amazon, NexTag, Buy.com and eBay.

The value behind Flit.com’s method of flitting you out to individual store sites is twofold. First, you still get to shop on a store’s own Web page, many of which were designed to uniquely reflect the store’s spirit and style. Lots of shoppers have saved shipping and credit card information with a store Web site, or they have coupon codes or gift certificates to use there. Shopping on each store’s page rather than on a general shopping site lets them tap into that data.

Type in an item such as ‘black dress’ (above), choosing to search in Value or Premium stores.

Second, after you flit off to a store Web site, an orange button remains in a Flit.com toolbar at the top of the page; click there to return back to home base before flitting off to yet another shopping site. Flit.com will keep a breadcrumb trail of where you have gone in your shopping session, using store icons to represent each site that was visited. You can place a check mark beside sites to remember them.

Flit.com’s search results are only as good as each individual store’s search engine, so if a store doesn’t do a good job of querying its own inventory, you’re out of luck.

The Flit.com home page would benefit from offering more ways to sort stores, such as by price range rather than just by using Value, Premium or alphabetical order—especially because “value” and “premium” mean different things to different people. The company’s CEO says Flit.com will likely add sorting by price and other categories by this spring.

In a hunt for a robe using Flit.com, I was surprised to see that of the 12 top stores that appeared at the top of the list, seven of them didn’t carry robes, according to what the store sites told me when I linked out to them. I asked Flit.com’s CEO about this and he said that search returns don’t filter out some stores that may have limited or no selections, and that this is valuable because it shows shoppers that a certain store doesn’t carry an item—just like physical shopping. I had hoped that one advantage to Flit.com would be less virtual wandering in stores that don’t carry what I am looking for.

Banana Republic, Gap and Old Navy Web sites, all owned by the same company, didn’t display the orange toolbar button that returns shoppers to Flit.com because they use their own toolbar at the top of their pages.

It’s too bad that Flit.com’s breadcrumb trail, which tracks where a user has shopped, doesn’t hold specific items. For example, I found the same pair of running sneakers in my size after digging into Web sites for Road Runner Sports and Zappos, but I couldn’t save the shoes anywhere. Flit.com’s CEO says capturing individual products and merging them into the search trail will be offered in March.

Snipi.com, a free shopping site I reviewed last spring, uses a toolbar for holding items that are dragged and dropped into it so they can be remembered and revisited for buying at a later time. Flit searches can be saved or shared with others with the “save your shopping session” button. It prompts the user to enter an email address for sending a Web link of the saved session.

Flit.com is currently funding its operating costs from an original private investment and doesn’t have any formal relationships with the stores where it sends users. The site’s CEO says the company hopes to negotiate a system where it gets paid by the stores, or by third parties, for any business it generates.

After doing a lot of flitting, I noticed a screen between the Flit.com search results page and the store page that asked if I wanted to share Flit with friends, and offered to let me do so through email or a social-networking site like Twitter or Facebook. This screen pops up roughly every 25 flits, according to the company, but it includes a step to skip this and continue to the store’s Web page.

The people working at Flit.com seem to know what the site needs to improve, thus preventing it from being just another fleeting online shopping site. Its shopping trail needs a little help, as do its result categorizations, but the way it lets users shop online starting with familiar stores makes Web shopping comfortable and easy, much like visiting physical stores.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Almost Famous: Savings.com's Loren Bendele

Drake Martinet — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:43:01 +0000

A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: A lunch date with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Loren Bendele and his deal-finding social network, Savings.com, just in time for the holiday shopping wars!

Who: Loren Bendele

What: CEO of Savings.com.

Why: Savings.com combines a Web 1.0-style coupon site with social networking and crowd sourcing to create live lists of discounts offered by over 4,000 major online retailers.

And, gasp, the site is profitable.

Where: Savings.com/about (corporate bio); Santa Monica, Calif. (analog place); No Twitter profile (egads!).

Who else: couponcabin.com, retailmenot.com.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: Bag boy at a Tom Thumb supermarket outside Dallas, Texas. “I was good though. I always got awards for being the fastest.”

Has a Business Crush on: Yelp.

Gadget of the Moment: iPhone from Apple (AAPL). “I love the Flight Tracker app. It’s a game–all about control.”

Wishes There Was an App for: “I know exactly what I want: A simple app where I can assign levels of importance to contacts. The app would remind me when I haven’t called them in a while. Like, some people I want to call once a week, or a month or a quarter. Just something that helps me keep up relationships.”

Fails at: Details. “I hire others who are much better at that.”

Bio in 140 Characters

Born outside of Dallas, TX. Chem Eng @Texas A&M. Dow Chemical, then to Teleflora, via consulting firms. Became CEO of Savings.com in 2007.

The Five Questions

Isn’t your model a little too “Pets.com, Web 1.0 bubble” to work?

It is sort of Web 1.0. But really, it’s a social network connecting deal fanatics. So, connecting people who are passionate and knowledgeable about getting great deals.

Some people engage at a very deep level with their own blogs and interaction. We call them our “deal pros.” You can also just come to the site and see what deals are being [rated as the best] by those deal pros. It’s based on votes of the people in the community.

What is this I hear about you being profitable? Don’t you know the start-up rules?

Well, our revenue model was important from the start. We make money because we partner with the retailers whose deals show up on our site. When someone sees a deal on our site, they click the link and go to [for instance] the Gap (GPS) Web site and buy something, we get paid.

We have relationships with 4,000 plus merchants–all of the top online merchants, and when a deal gets uploaded to our site [by a deal pro] we attach a tracking ID to that deal and report it to the merchant. I’m driving over $4 million per month to our top merchants. I’m the top sales driver for a lot of them.

We’ve been profitable since September 2007.

What is the single biggest immediate growth area for Savings.com?

International. We opened a site in England that has been growing like crazy. We had been doing it all from the U.S., with no team over there. You can do a lot remotely, but you can’t make those partner relationships, being face to face, getting the exclusive deals.

You can’t take them out to lunch and make the connections. We’ve just hired a team there full time. We actually hired the guy who was in charge of partner marketing for Amazon (AMZN) in Europe. He was so big on the opportunity that we have, that he left them for us.

What businesses would the world be better off without?

Ugh, I can’t stand predatory online businesses; cashforgold.com or those payday loan places. There are lots of those check-out services where they offer you free magazine subscriptions and it turns out that they start charging you and you don’t find out until a year later.

They tell you they are going to do it, but they do it in tiny print and it’s just dishonest. We get offers to include those sorts of things on our site all the time. It’s just not what we want to do. It’s important to keep the community pure.

When did you get the business bug?

My parents had a popcorn and yogurt shop, so they could buy things wholesale. When I was in fifth grade, I guess, I started selling Blow Pops out of my backpack. Remember those things? I could buy them for like seven cents apiece and sell them for 50 cents.

I made a lot of money doing that until the teachers shut me down.

The In Living Color Interview

[ See post to watch video ]

How to Market an iPhone App: Get Apple to Market Your iPhone App

Peter Kafka — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:31:12 +0000

There are 85,000 apps* in Apple’s iTunes store. If you’ve built one of them, how do get yours to stand out?

If you’re lucky, you can get the press to do some marketing for you. And if you’re really lucky, you can get Apple (AAPL) to do your marketing for you.

The newest set of Apple ads focuses on apps made by big brands–Barnes & Noble, Pizza Hut, Gap, Epicurious and Zagat–that can certainly afford their own promotional pushes.

And certainly those guys paid cash or some other kind of compensation for the consideration, right? Not as far as Advertising Age can discern: The trade mag notes with a bit of dismay that there isn’t any kind of application process to get into Apple commercials and that “the marketers in question didn’t request to be in the commercial at all.”

As far as I can tell, this mirrors Apple’s overall policy for iTunes, whether you’re talking about music, movies or apps: Unlike traditional retailers or even competitors like Amazon (AMZN), there’s no way to buy shelf space at Apple’s digital store. If you want Apple to shine a spotlight on your stuff, you just have to hope that someone there likes your stuff. AdAge:

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the story, but it’s clear the company looks for apps that use as many aspects of the iPhone as possible, such as sound, shaking, GPS or the camera. It also seemed to favor anything that highlights features of the newest operating system, such as in-app payment. Additionally, it appears that brands are given more credit for good user experience than whether or not they can match Apple’s own cool factor.

Pizza Hut, for instance, doesn’t have many common associations with the tech giant but its app was the first from the quick-service industry that let users place delivery orders.

*Note that Apple’s app ecosystem has grown faster than its ad agency expected; the new campaigns announce that there are 75,000 apps, but that number is 10,000 short, according to a release Cupertino put out yesterday.

Yahoo's Nash Goes Back to Retail as Top Levi Strauss Flack

Kara Swisher — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:32:59 +0000

It looks like two years of relentless controversy and company upheaval have sent Yahoo’s former PR person back into the arms of a retail outfit.

Jill Nash, who said she was leaving Yahoo (YHOO) in early February, will be taking the top PR job at San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. She will be Levi’s chief communications officer and VP of corporate affairs.

Previous to Yahoo, Nash (pictured here) had been a top flack at the Gap, also based in San Francisco.

As BoomTown previously reported, Nash left Yahoo after becoming weary of the constant tumult, which began almost as soon as she was hired by then-CEO Terry Semel.

Let’s just say, the situation at Yahoo went downward from there, until what appears to be a possibility of revival after the recent appointment of new CEO Carol Bartz, which Nash did not wait around to see for herself.

Levi is also not a walk in the park, though. In its most recent quarter, the jeans manufacturer saw tougher results, and its CEO, John Anderson, warned that 2009 would be a rough year for Levi and the entire retail market.

Here’s the full PR release from Levi about the new PR head:

Levi Strauss & Co. Names Jill Nash as Chief Communications Officer and Vice President of Corporate Affairs

SAN FRANCISCO (March 3, 2009)–Levi Strauss & Co. announced today that Jill Nash has joined the company as chief communications officer and vice president of Corporate Affairs. Most recently, Nash served as chief communications officer at Yahoo!, where she led the company’s worldwide communications efforts.

“Jill is a dynamic leader with wide-ranging expertise in areas that are vital to the success of Levi Strauss & Co.,” said John Anderson, president and chief executive officer, Levi Strauss & Co. “We are pleased to have Jill at the helm of our corporate affairs efforts during these dynamic and challenging times. Her experience and knowledge will be great assets in guiding our media and government relations, employee communications and citizenship efforts as we continue to pursue new growth opportunities around the world.”

In her most recent position with Yahoo!, Nash led the company’s global communication efforts including media relations, consumer media, public affairs and internal communications. Prior to this, she was the vice president of global communications for Gap Inc., where she focused on reputation management, cultural transformation and strategic change at both the corporate and brand levels.

“I am excited to work for an industry leader, with global operations and world-renowned brands,” Nash said. “I look forward to being part of the team that helps this great apparel leader further strengthen its position in the marketplace.”

Previous to her tenure with Yahoo! and Gap, Nash was vice president of corporate communications at the Charles Schwab Corporation and helped position the company as a leader in technology and online brokerage.

Nash holds a B.A. in journalism from San Diego University. She has received numerous industry honors including multiple Gold Quill awards. Nash is active in a variety of community organizations.

Levi Strauss & Co. is one of the world’s leading branded apparel companies, marketing its products in more than 100 countries worldwide. The company designs and markets jeans and jeans-related pants, casual and dress pants, shirts, jackets and related accessories for men, women and children under the Levi’s® and Dockers® brands.

Yahoo PR Head Jill Nash to Depart the Company

Kara Swisher — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:44:21 +0000

Jill Nash, Yahoo’s chief communications officer, has told CEO Carol Bartz and other Yahoo staff this afternoon that she is leaving the company.

Yahoo has not made Nash’s resignation official, but is likely to do so quickly as Bartz tries to stanch incessant leaks (like this one; see below!).

In any case, sources said Nash does not appear to have any definite plans to move to another company immediately, so the reasons for her departure are unclear.

BoomTown would have to guess that Nash is simply completely spent from her past two years at Yahoo (YHOO), which have been very fraught from a public relations perspective, to say the least.

Nash, who was hired by former CEO Terry Semel, has had to deal with everything from management turmoil, after Semel was replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang, to poor financial results to a nasty takeover attempt by Microsoft (MSFT) to an even less friendly proxy fight to a failed search deal with Google (GOOG) to recent wrenching layoffs.

Not much good news to report, in other words, especially with a tough turnaround road ahead with newly installed CEO Bartz, who seems to have a very strong mind of her own about public relations.

(Including, several sources tell me, this week in an internal memo, offering cash rewards to employees who turn in other employees who leak to the press. Bartz has also initiated investigations to stop leaks. All I can say about these tactics–while it might seem reasonable to try to stop the leaking, from a management perspective, and I see why Bartz is focusing on it–is: Yahoo is not a prison and its employees are not snitches and–more to the point–they won’t leak to me if Bartz fixes the company.)

While I have not always seen eye-to-eye with Nash on this column’s coverage of Yahoo, I have found her to be a pro to deal with and fair, especially considering the often tense circumstances at Yahoo in the last year.

Nash is not the first top Yahoo exec to depart since Bartz got to Yahoo in mid-January and will not likely be the last, as the new CEO carves out her own path and chooses the team she wants.

Many Yahoos have told me, not for attribution and at all levels of the company, that they are bone-tired of the long-term struggle the company has been engaged in and want to move on, even in this weak economic climate.

Last week, this column reported the departures of Zimbra co-founder Satish Dharmaraj and marketing exec Eric Hadley, neither of which was necessarily due to Bartz’s arrival.

Now it’s Nash’s turn to say goodbye. According to Yahoo’s Web site, her duties were to lead its outward-facing efforts.

It reads, in part: “As a key member of the Yahoo! executive team, Nash will be responsible for the company’s worldwide communications efforts, including public and media relations, corporate reputation, corporate, financial and employee communications, and crisis and issues management.”

Nash came to Yahoo from the Gap, where she was the VP of global corporate communications. Previous to that, she worked at Charles Schwab (SCHW), KPMG and Transamerica Life.