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Honest: Jessica Alba's Now an E-Commerce Geek (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:05:48 +0000

From the Web 1.0 Matt Damon-Ben Affleck debacle to the stunt-casting of Justin Timberlake as a Myspace impresario and everything in between, I have been more than dubious about any online effort by a celebrity.

Not surprisingly, it is usually a lot of special effects but little in the way of substance, from an entrepreneurial point of view.

So it was nice to be actually impressed by actress Jessica Alba’s fledgling effort to break into online commerce, via a new site called the Honest Company.

Using an interesting online subscription model and aimed at the modern mom, Honest sells its own private-label, eco-friendly and hipster baby diapers and biodegradable wipes, as well as organic bath/skin care and green cleaning products.

Alba, who is Honest’s president and one of its co-founders, was inspired to bootstrap the start-up after having kids and being confused as to how to find nontoxic products for them in a marketplace of questionable offerings.

Thus, she and Christopher Gavigan, author of “Healthy Child Healthy World,” hooked up with an experienced entrepreneur — Brian Lee, co-founder of ShoeDazzle and LegalZoom — to create Honest, which just launched.

Selling its own products using a monthly “bundle” model differentiates Honest from comparable sites, such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, which focuses on classy recommendations of a wide variety of similar fare.

Right now, the online-only Honest effort is using Alba’s high profile and online clout — many millions of fans and followers on social sites like Facebook and Twitter, for example; and also viral marketing, via mommy bloggers — to get noticed.

But the proof will be if Honest can keep its customers coming back every month for more, as it expands its line. (So far, the reviews of the products have been raves, such as this one from salt & nectar.)

Here’s Alba talking about Honest with Lee, in a video interview at the company’s Santa Monica, Calif., HQ:

[ See post to watch video ]

Rackspace Is Not for Sale, but Thanks for Asking

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 14:00:20 +0000

Practically everyone who meets him asks Lanham Napier when his company is going to be sold. He’s the CEO of Rackspace, the Web hosting and cloud computing concern that’s one of several thought to be acquisition targets following the recent buyouts of Terremark by Verizon and NaviSite by Time Warner.

So many people have asked Napier about the possibility that Rackspace might be taken out, it’s not hard to detect that his answer is well rehearsed. Rackspace is not for sale, he says, and he won’t comment on any approaches by larger companies it may be fielding. But he clearly doesn’t mind the speculation.

The market certainly is working on the assumption that an acquisition is coming. I talked with Napier on Friday, the day after Rackspace reported quarterly earnings that grew 50 percent over the same period in 2009, which was enough to send Rackspace shares up by more than $3, or more than 8 percent, closing at $40.07–more than twice what it traded for a year ago.

Rackspace will be a giant all its own, Napier insists, before it gets taken out by one of the lumbering tech giants that might like to drop a few billion dollars to absorb it. Ask him Rackspace’s chances of being acquired in the next several months, and he insists the company is not for sale. It sure sounds like he means it, as the growth opportunity that lies before him is just so good. But it’s also clear that he enjoys being in the position of being asked.

It’s a nice sentiment, but organic growth is only going to get you so far. Rackspace will cross the billion-dollar mark in revenue for the first time this year, and it has only $105 million in cash, so the only acquisitions Rackspace can make without going into a debt are small ones like the one last week of Anso Labs that NewEnterprise reported exclusively. The smart money says we’ll get a chance to see how serious Napier is about remaining independent before the end of the year.

NewEnterprise: Let’s talk about your business against the backdrop of the industry you’re in. In the last few weeks we’ve seen both NaviSite and Terremark acquired by larger companies. Clearly there’s some consolidation going on in the Web hosting and cloud services hosting business.

Napier: There is a shift in technology market around cloud. The market is shifting from one where companies do things themselves to buying technology as a service. We think of it as a world that’s going from buying inputs to buying outputs. We think this is a nascent trend and we’re in the first game of a seven-game series. On a macro basis we see this as the biggest growth opportunity in technology. Our strategy is to win the most valuable segment, which we believe is going to be the service segment. So if you look at how the market is developing, you have players like Amazon that’s offering a do-it-yourself cloud. For people who want the lowest price, and can do the work themselves, Amazon is an incredible pick. What we’re focused on is trying to be a service leader. We want to serve companies that want to run a critical app and who want us to run it for them and take accountability for it so they can sleep well at night. Over the past six quarters or so we’ve found ourselves in a crazy good spot. The growth opportunity ahead of us is expanding.

Let’s talk about growth. You don’t have all much cash on the balance sheet, about $105 million or so. You can grow organically, or you can acquire. You’ve made some small acquisitions recently. Is that going to continue?

We are an organic growth company. We have been since inception. The acquisitions we’ve done have been about technology and talent to improve our portfolio and the way we serve customers. We will remain an organic growth company. There are, I think, really two kinds of companies. Those that can grow organically and those that can’t, and so they grow by acquisition. Some companies are good at growing through acquisition. We’re just not. We’re organic growth folks here, so we’re going to stick to that. But we’ll still buy technology, capabilities and talent that we think is critical. As to the consolidation that’s taking place in the industry, it’s a great validation of the growth opportunity. There are some legacy tech and telecom companies that are behind and are trying to buy their way into the game. There was a similar wave of consolidation eight years ago and a lot of our competitors got taken out.

So let me ask the question you’re getting a lot lately. I’ve had three conversations with different people who have each picked three different large technology companies they think should acquire Rackspace. Have you been approached by anyone?

We have a policy not to comment on anything like that all. What I will tell you is that we’re not for sale. We feel like we have a tiger by the tail. I’ve been lucky to be at the company for 11 years and I think the next 11 years look better than the last. We’re not building the company to flip it. We think the market opportunity is such that new giants are going to emerge, and we want to be one of those giants.

Absent a scenario that someone shows up with eight or 10 billion in cash to buy your company, what are your strategic priorities for the year?

There’s a couple. We are making big investments in our product and service portfolio. That’s one. And then number two, we think we have a chance to improve the fundamental economics of our business model. As we make these investments, we’ll add more services and capabilities on top of our basic compute service. This drives up the average revenue for our basic compute which creates better outcomes for our customers and increases our economics. It’s a virtuous cycle. Our average revenue per server has increased for six consecutive quarters.

What are your biggest costs, and what kind of gross margin do you tend to run?

I think of them as investments, but I know that’s just semantics. Our no. 1 investment is technology and the Rackers [employees] that serve our customers. So if you look at the cost of revenue line, a year ago it was 31.5 percent. As of the end of 2010 it was 31.1 percent. We made some improvement. But we’re more focused right now on developing customer loyalty than we are in driving efficiency. It’s early in the game, and anytime a market is going through a period of rapid growth like this, it’s all about winning as many loyal and profitable customers as we can. When the growth slows down someday we’ll focus more on improving efficiencies throughout the business. Even so, in 2010 we grew faster, increased our margin and and improved our return on capital. Those are all difficult things, and we pulled it off.

Abe's Market Raises $3.4 Million to Target E-Commerce Niche

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 12:35:46 +0000

Investors are betting they’ve found the next Diapers.com, Etsy or ModCloth, but instead of being a niche marketplace for baby products, crafts or independent designers, this one’s focused on natural and organic products.

Accel has led a $3.4 million round of funding in Abe’s Market, with Index Ventures and other angel investors also participating.

The Chicago-based company was founded by Richard Demb and Jon Polin, who wanted to replicate the idea of a farmer’s market online by selling natural and homemade items and letting consumers get to know the merchants.

“The Web is a great place to learn about products. It’s like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, but they don’t sell online,” said Demb, who had previously started an all-natural popcorn distribution company.

Abe’s Market, which launched in October 2009, works with about 300 small businesses, ranging from a New Zealand company that sells organic nail polish, to a woman who was previously a private detective and now sells homemade jam, to three skater dudes who make all-natural play dough in a former funeral home.

Demb said in addition to the homemade and organic products, it introduces the merchants through online videos. “We are trying to be as innovative as possible. We want you to be proud to buy our products. Organic nail polish is something I want to tell my friends about. It’s not Revlon.”

Those willing to share their checkout cart with a few of their friends get 10 percent off their whole tab. Sales at the company have been growing 50 percent month over month.

The company, which has seven full-time employees and had raised only $1 million prior to this round, will use the money to expand the number of merchants it can support.

In a release, Accel’s Adam Valkin said, “We have seen tremendous growth in specialty e-commerce. With its fragmented base of passionate sellers and a fast growing population of motivated buyers, we see natural products as a particularly attractive category.”

Password Manager LastPass Acquires Xmarks

Kara Swisher — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 10:10:01 +0000

LastPass, a cross-platform password manager, has acquired the social bookmarking and browser synchronization service Xmarks.

The San Francisco-based Xmarks has been in the midst of some tumult of late, as it closed down in September and then quickly opened back up again in an effort to keep its service running for a large group of active users.

That happened after user outcry, spurring the company to try to stay afloat.

SInce then, Xmarks has been trying to land itself safely.

The start-up had multiple offers to keep the operation running, as well as pledges from almost 30,000 fans willing to pay $10 to $20 a year for a new “freemium” business model.

Enter LastPass, based in Vienna, Va., whose CEO Joe Siegrist said in an interview that he wanted to help keep the service operating.

“They had a large dedicated audience, but their free offering and advertising model was not working,” he said. “We really want to figure something out that could keep it going.”

Siegrist said LastPass offered a robust free service, but relied on a small group of users who pay to upgrade to a premium offering.

The browser add-on for cross-platform synchronization operates in the cloud.

And that is going to be the fate of Xmarks–which had been called Foxmarks initially.

It had been seed-funded in 2006 by well-known entrepreneur Mitch Kapor and also got an additional investment from First Round Capital.

Xmarks garnered another $5 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures in 2008,

That year, it also hired Silicon Valley entrepreneur James Joaquin as CEO, whose job it was to carve out a business with Xmarks’ assets, including using its mass of data.

Xmarks had certainly been growing its user base and bookmarked Web addresses strongly, via a browser widget that recorded bookmarking information.

Earlier this year, it tried out an advertising product called SearchBoost, which gave advertisers additional analytics about their ads, as well as organic search results.

But all that ultimately did not translate into a viable business for Xmarks.

“We think this will make a great ending and beginning for Xmarks,” said Joaquin.

Both Xmarks and LastPass declined to provide financial details of the transaction.

Here is the blog post by LastPass and Xmarks about the integration:

Today we’re excited to announce that Xmarks has been acquired by LastPass, makers of a leading cross-platform password manager. It’s a great opportunity that ensures the survival of Xmarks as the same service that you know and love.

In the last few years, we’ve attracted over 4.5 million users syncing more than 1 billion bookmarks across 5 million computers. Most importantly, we’ve provided a simple solution to help people easily access their bookmarks, wherever and whenever they needed to. We’ve had thousands of users tell us that Xmarks has become an integral part of their browsing experience. You can rest assured that LastPass will continue to build upon the service in the coming months.

We’re also committed to keeping Xmarks free while implementing a viable long-term plan. Xmarks is transitioning to a “freemium” business model, the same model that allowed LastPass to grow into a thriving, profitable business. The browser add-on and the vast majority of what users have enjoyed remains free. Users can then opt to purchase Xmarks Premium for $12 per year, which includes new enhanced features like Android and iPhone mobile phone apps, priority support, and more. The Xmarks and LastPass Premium offerings are also available bundled together at a reduced subscription rate of $20 per year. For those of you who pledged your financial support, you can make good on your pledge today and upgrade.

The restructuring of the Xmarks offerings will accelerate the introduction of new features and service improvements. The two services will continue to require separate downloads and will be administered through two distinct extensions and websites, although there are plans to integrate them in the future.

We believe the acquisition will prove to be a success because of the common mission shared by LastPass and Xmarks. Xmarks complements LastPass’ vision of secure, universal access to the information that gives you entry to your digital life. By joining LastPass, Xmarks will also be able to accelerate the introduction of new features and developments. As the ultimate cross-browser, cross-platform team, Xmarks and LastPass will work together to help more people simplify their digital lives and access their data from anywhere, at any time.

We’re excited to join forces with LastPass and be a part of a team that will continue to provide the best data-syncing tools out there! We hope you will support both of these great services through your business and your Premium subscription. For more information, please see the FAQs.

The Xmarks & LastPass Teams

The Long Goodbye: Xmarks Tried to Sell Twice, Before Closing Down With Class

Kara Swisher — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:15:39 +0000

Yesterday marked the end for Xmarks, the Mitch Kapor-backed social bookmarking start-up that was founded in 2006.

What was most remarkable to BoomTown was the classiness and honesty of the goodbye, especially in Silicon Valley, which is loath to call a failure just that.

That was certainly clear in a terrific blog post about its history, titled “End of the Road for Xmarks,” written by its CTO and co-founder Todd Agulnick.

After noting Xmarks’ substantive growth as a browser synchronization service, he wrote:

“Tomorrow, however, will hardly be anything but typical, for tomorrow one of our engineers will start a script that will email each of our users to notify them that we’ll be ceasing operations in around 90 days.”

In the fascinating post, Agulnick did note that the company came close to selling recently. Actually, I heard it had gotten close twice and to no avail.

The San Francisco-based company–which had been called Foxmarks initially–had been seed-funded by Kapor, the well-known tech entrepreneur, and also got an additional investment from First Round Capital.

Xmarks garnered another $5 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures in 2008,

That year, it also hired Silicon Valley entrepreneur James Joaquin as CEO, whose job it was to carve out a business with Xmarks’ assets, including using its mass of data.

Xmarks had certainly been growing its user base and bookmarked Web addresses strongly, via a browser widget that recorded bookmarking information.

Earlier this year, it tried out an advertising product called SearchBoost, which gave advertisers additional analytics about their ads, as well as organic search results.

But all that ultimately did not translate into a viable business model for Xmarks.

At the time of launching this money-making effort in April, Kapor said that after growing its user base of actives, this was the next logical step for Xmarks.

“This is the effort to move from that category to the category of sustainable enterprises,” he said. “And that is certainly a good thing.”

But, as Agulnick concluded:

“We built it and it put it front of potential advertisers. Many were interested, but ultimately the feedback was negative: our user base was too small to be worth their time and attention.”

After thanking investors, employees, users and others, Agulnick ended:

“In the words of Douglas Adams, so long and thanks for all the fish.”

Indeed.

Looking back to happier times, here is a video interview I did with Joaquin in late 2008 about Xmarks’ prospects:

Exclusive Video: Bill Gross Talks About TweetUp and Gives a Tour of Idealab

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:01:33 +0000

Bill Gross is widely considered the man responsible for the invention of paid search advertising, which heralded such Web powerhouses as Google (GOOG).

Now, in a can-lightning-strike-twice effort and armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, the well-known entrepreneur has decided to monetize Twitter on his own.

Thus, Gross has just launched a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to the innovative Overture/Goto.com he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets from the microblogging site.

Coincidentally, Twitter is now aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers. It is also expected to announce some kind of advertising system of its own this week.

Tweet fight, anyone?

Here are two video interviews I did with Gross last week at his Idealab offices in Pasadena, Calif. The first is an interview about TweetUp and the second, below it, a tour of the well-known incubator where he came up with his latest scheme:

[ See post to watch video ]

Paid Search Inventor Bill Gross Moves to Monetize Tweets With TweetUp–And Without Twitter (Plus Screenshots)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:00:45 +0000

Just as Twitter finally prepares to announce its plans to make money–after what has seemed an eternity–the man responsible for the invention of paid search is beating the microblogging site to the potentially profitable punch, and without its involvement.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross is launching a public beta of TweetUp, a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

Gross will be the CEO of TweetUp, which will also offer an organic search service to surface the best tweets, a move that seems to put it in competition with Twitter’s own search service.

This comes just as Twitter is aggressively moving to take over key parts of its ecosystem, which has largely been left to third-party developers.

TweetUp could now give these developers a chance to make money on Twitter without relying on Twitter.

TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures, betaworks, Revolution LLC, First Round Capital and other investors, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

And TweetUp has struck a number of distribution deals with well-known Twitter search clients and Web sites–such as Seesmic, Answers.com and others–and will pay them half its revenue.

Gross has been working on the service since February at his Idealab start-up incubator in Pasadena, Calif.

He said he got the idea after he was struck by how hard it was to sort through good tweets from the TED conference, as well as how quickly a substantive tweet he posted, which was related to the global climate change event, disappeared as more recent ones replaced it in real time.

Said TweetUp in a press release about its system:

“In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.”

Twitter is also making several moves to monetize itself of late, with most observers expecting an advertising system to be announced soon.

The company has also been adding tools, which puts it in direct conflict with outside developers. On Friday, for example, Twitter announced it was purchasing Tweetie, maker of a popular Apple (AAPL) iPhone client for the messaging service.

The start-up has traditionally relied on third-party developers to build apps for the service, much as Facebook did at its start.

But Twitter management and key investors have recently been signaling that the company would be taking over key aspects of its business. This has caused tensions, obviously, in the wider Twitter ecosystem.

Thus, it will be interesting to watch how Twitter reacts to what Gross is doing with TweetUp.

(BoomTown also did an exclusive video with Gross about it all, which is posted here, as well as a tour of Idealab.)

Here are a few screenshots of TweetUp (click on images to make larger):

TweetUp Client

Answers.com

Business Insider

Business Insider Search #1

Business Insider Search #2

And here’s the official press release from TweetUp:

TweetUp Establishes Twitter Marketplace Where the Best Tweeters Rise to the Top

Unique Combination of a Relevance Algorithm and Bidding System Increases Number of Followers and Improves the Quality of Twitter Searches

PASADENA, CA–APRIL 12, 2010–TweetUp, Inc., announced today a new Twitter marketplace designed to showcase the world’s best tweeters and enable them to grow a highly targeted following. TweetUp is a new patent-pending platform that combines the popularity, relevance and influence of tweets and tweeters with a bid-based marketplace. Major partners, including leading Twitter search clients and top web sites, will display the results, enabling users to easily find the best tweets and tweeters in the world.

TweetUp was founded by Bill Gross at Idealab, where he also devised the first model for paid internet search, Overture/Goto.com, over a decade ago. TweetUp is backed by Index Ventures (investor in Skype, last.fm, Myheritage and Playfish), betaworks (investor in Twitter, TweetDeck, Bit.ly), Revolution LLC (founded by Steve Case, investor in Zipcar, LivingSocial, Everyday Health), First Round Capital (investor in Mint.com, StumbleUpon, CoTweet), Jason Calacanis (founder of Mahalo) and Jeff Jarvis (founder of BuzzMachine).

“Twitter has such tremendous potential as a real-time information network far beyond what has been realized to date,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO of TweetUp. “For most people, though, 80% or more of the tweets that fly by them when they’re searching for something are useless noise. For serious tweeters, the task of attracting interested and relevant followers is equally daunting. TweetUp will change all of that.”

TweetUp has addressed the needs of both users and tweeters in a single search mechanism. In addition to an algorithm that combines a variety of factors to determine relevance, tweeters can bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to what now occurs at Internet search engines. This sophisticated combination of factors pushes the best tweets to the top of the results of users’ searches, allowing them to find the most compelling tweeters, and it enables serious tweeters to expand their following quickly and cost-effectively. TweetUp search will work alongside Twitter’s traditional search to provide a richer array of results.

Danny Rimer, a partner with Index Ventures, TweetUp’s lead investor, said, “TweetUp is an opportunity to bring real-time information to the entire Web, and to do it in a way that creates value for everyone concerned. We feel that TweetUp can dramatically improve both the utility and ubiquity of Twitter, and in doing so build a monetization mechanism for real-time search that rivals that of traditional Internet search.”

TweetUp’s search results will be available to hundreds of millions of individuals through revenue-sharing distribution agreements with leading Twitter clients, including one of the leading multi-platform clients, Seesmic, one of the leading Android clients, Twidroid, the leading source of tweets, TwitterFeed, and the leading social media authority and influence ranking system, Klout, as well as popular web sites including BusinessInsider.com, Answers.com, and PopURLs.

Together, these clients and web sites will bring TweetUp search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than half a billion impressions per month.

“Increasingly, people looking for answers want more than just black and white facts, but also real-time insights relating to the issues surrounding their questions,” said
Bob Rosenschein, Answers.com CEO. “We are at the forefront of meeting that demand, and partnering with TweetUp is an exciting new way to add value to the
Answers.com user community.”

“I have been sharing in social networks and blogs for ten years and realized the power of having a true community,” said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Seesmic. “This is why
I was immediately attracted to working with Tweetup. People who are serious about sharing and having a community around themselves are also often those who have the most interesting ideas to contribute.”

“We believe that the impact of the real-time web, and of Twitter in particular, has only just begun,” explains John Borthwick of betaworks, a major investor in TweetUp, as well as in TweetDeck and Bit.ly. “Because TweetUp will be accessed on mainstream websites across the world, Twitter will be introduced to hundreds of millions of new people. Furthermore, these new users will experience thoughtful tweets, in context, targeted to them according to their areas of interest, and delivered from serious tweeters who care about building a passionate audience.”

“When we created AOL 25 years ago, we believed in the power of community and built a significant company around it,” said Steve Case, AOL co-founder and founder
of Revolution LLC. “Twitter is proving the power of community continues to thrive, and I am excited to be backing Bill Gross and TweetUp as they innovate in the social
media space by making Twitter more useful to a mainstream audience.”

With today’s announcement, TweetUp launches a public beta period in which tweeters can open an account and begin adding search keywords to their profile. For the first 1000 who sign up, the company is providing a $100 in credits to allow tweeters to see how TweetUp’s network can improve their standing in search resultsand attract more followers.

Xmarks the Spot? Kapor Says Start-Up Can Find Buried Treasure in Bookmarks for Advertisers.

Kara Swisher — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:19:41 +0000

Social bookmarking start-up Xmarks, which has been growing its user base and bookmarked Web addresses strongly, launched a new advertising product today called SearchBoost, which it hopes will finally give it a viable business model.

Using a tool that displays user ranking and review information from the free synching service, Xmarks Chairman Mitch Kapor said in an interview with BoomTown that the ad offering essentially “decorates” a paid search ad, thereby boosting click-through rates by 15 percent.

Xmarks, which was founded in 2006 and offers a browser widget to record bookmarking information, will also give advertisers additional analytics about their ads, as well as organic search results.

With detailed usage data on over one billion bookmarks rated and reviewed by users, this information will be attached to the end of search results from both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) Bing on Mozilla’s Firefox and soon, on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome browsers.

Xmarks said the service will cost from $29 to $99 a month for advertisers and that it will also offer more elaborate plans.

In the interview, Kapor said the company is simply enabling the addition of existing and valuable information already gleaned from its millions of users and giving advertisers the ability to show it off.

Different colors–which you can see below, with orange for paid and blue for organic results–is used to distinguish between them.

“These reviews show up where they show up and advertisers can’t buy a ranking or a rating,” said Kapor. “If advertisers want to decorate their ads to increase their conversions by showing what users think, that’s a good thing.”

Added Xmarks CEO James Joaquin: “We are allowing advertisers a tool that is already reflecting what the user base is saying is valuable…the real benefit is for brands that already have a high rank to declare that.”

Launching its business model, Kapor added, after growing its user base to four million active users, is the next logical step for Xmarks.

“This is the effort to move from that category to the category of sustainable enterprises,” he said. “And that is certainly a good thing.”

Here is Joaquin’s entire blog post on the move:

Today’s a big day at Xmarks. We’ve launched a new service for search marketers called SearchBoost, designed to increase the performance of paid search ads by displaying relevant Xmarks ratings and reviews next to sponsored links on Google and Bing search result pages. SearchBoost is a premium service with pricing starting at $29 per month.

SearchBoost is the primary business model for Xmarks, allowing us to keep our browser synchronization service completely free. While we obviously devote resources to this business, we’ve also recently launched Xmarks for Chrome and a new Tab Sync feature for Firefox. You can count on us to continue innovating and improving our sync products.

SearchBoost is also a natural extension of our vision for Smarter Search: displaying crowd-sourced ratings and reviews to help users identify the highest quality results on their search page. A small but vocal minority have told us (and may tell us again on this blog ;-) that they’re not interested in this feature. That’s OK with us: we’ve made it very simple to turn the Smarter Search feature off in Xmarks Settings. Many other users have sent us kudos for this important enhancement to web search.

We hope you’ll find ratings and reviews on ads as useful as they are on organic search results. It’s important to note that Xmarks ratings and reviews are completely crowd-sourced from our users. Advertisers cannot pay $ to improve ratings or alter reviews.

Finally, quick shout-outs to our chairman & co-founder Mitch Kapor who has kept us focused on his orginal vision of aggregating bookmarks to improve web search, and Xmarks advisor Eric Ries who helped us think through the early concept stage of what is now SearchBoost.

Top Microsoft Infrastructure Exec Chrapaty Heads to Cisco

Kara Swisher — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:39:07 +0000

One of Microsoft’s top execs, Debra Chrapaty (pictured here), who heads its infrastructure business, is leaving the software giant to take a top job at Cisco (CSCO), sources said.

Chrapaty–whose title is corporate VP of Global Foundation Services–is also one of increasingly few top women tech execs at Microsoft (MSFT), where she has worked for seven years.

The job put her in charge of, as a Microsoft site notes, “strategy and delivery of the foundational platform for Microsoft Live, Cloud and Online Services worldwide including physical infrastructure, security, operational management, global delivery and environmental considerations. Her organization supports over 200 online services and web portals from Microsoft for consumers and businesses.”

In other words: A lot of plumbing.

She was featured onstage with other key execs at Microsoft’s Financial Analysts Meeting earlier this summer.

Sources said Chrapaty will now shift to products at Cisco, running the collaboration software group.

That unit’s former exec, Doug Dennerline, recently moved to Salesforce.com (CRM) to take a job as its EVP of sales for the Americas.

At Cisco, as had Dennerline, Chrapaty is likely to play a large role in forming the networking giant’s cloud computing and software-as-a-service strategies.

Chrapaty has worked at a lot of tech companies, including Organic, AllBusiness and Etrade Technologies. She was also CTO of the National Basketball Association.

Microsoft's Project Granola–Facebook Tastier Than Yahoo?

Kara Swisher — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:02:15 +0000

Project Granola?

Apparently, that’s the jokey nickname that’s been given by some in the company to Microsoft’s (MSFT) new online strategy, in the wake of its failed efforts to acquire Yahoo (YHOO) that ended in a big heap of mess this past weekend.

Now, sources tell BoomTown, it is all about “organic”–hence the image of a healthy handful of granola (except for the fact that, in my experience, nobody really likes granola after eating it as much as they think will before).

In any case, it is a word Microsoft folks have been slipping into the conversations with BoomTown over the past few days, so much so that I have started to feel like I was talking to execs from Whole Foods.

Now Microsoft’s greenness has gone public.

Case in point: Brian Hall, Windows Live General Manager, who trotted out the organic word in front of Merrill Lynch analysts yesterday, as reported by CNET’s Ina Fried, saying: “We’ve withdrawn the offer and moved on, and now are focused on how we grow as fast as possible organically.”

But what does organic mean exactly?

Two things, it seems.

First, stepping up spending on marketing, technology and research to try to find ways to differentiate from Google (GOOG) and get into the No. 2 spot now held by Yahoo.

Of course, that plan has not worked out so well as yet for the software giant, with Microsoft spending billions of dollars with no profits and little gain in online search or ad market share, while its archrival Google keeps growing stronger.

Even so, while in Korea today, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates backed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s do-it-yourself path and his move to walk away from Yahoo.

“The key decisions on that will be made by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who took a look at Yahoo and decided that, on our own, he likes the stuff that we’re doing,” said Gates.

Gates also added what amounts to the second option for Microsoft. “I wouldn’t rule out some partnerships, but we don’t have anything imminent there,” he said.

While a return to Yahoo is a possibility, in fact, buying up Web 2.0 stars is likely to be a bigger focus of the company.

“Yahoo can twist,” said one source. “Microsoft has lots and lots of other options.”

According to sources close to the company, for example, Microsoft’s bankers had been putting out subtle signals to Facebook to see if it would be open to a full buyout.

Microsoft already invested $240 million in the hot social-networking site, an investment that gave Facebook its kooky $15 billion valuation.

And its execs have long told Facebook execs they wouldn’t mind a bigger bite–um, like all of it.

“We just wanted to gauge their interest, more than any real effort,” said another source, who expects Facebook to stick to its longish path to an eventual IPO.

But, as is no secret, Microsoft has selections all over Silicon Valley to help it improve its Internet chances.

Those would include buying bigger vertical sites in strong categories like autos or jobs or finance, and also scooping up smaller but fast-growing socially oriented sites like Digg, Meebo, Yelp or focusing on ad plays like Spot Runner (which just got another big dollop of funding).

There might even be some sense in spinning some of these and all Microsoft Web units off into a separate Internet company, which would be another way of integrating even bigger deals for properties like Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL or News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace (which are longer shots, I think).

In a post I did in February right after Yahoo rebuffed Microsoft for the first time, I suggested such a course for the company.

As I wrote:

Here’s a list: LinkedIn. Digg. Flixster. Slide or RockYou. Veoh. WordPress. Sphere. Sugar. Some international stuff. And more.

Then, some noted, Microsoft would have to give massive financial incentives to those entrepreneurs to stay and thrive. Most importantly, it would have to keep its Redmond hands from interfering.

Now that would send shivers up the spine of Larry and Sergey.”

And that, most of all, would be more like icing on the cake for Microsoft and be much more tasty than a bowl full of granola.

And, as Martha Stewart says: It’s a good thing.