With those words, senior Apple executive Eddy Cue stuck to his take-it-or-leave-it business model of a 30 percent revenue share payable for transactions through the iTunes service. Despite my arguments to Mr. Cue in Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., offices last year on behalf of news publishers seeking different terms, to him there was no difference between a newspaper and an online game.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The difference is that at Lufkin’s last job, running the home page for Yahoo, she helped shape the daily media diet for hundreds of millions of people a month. Now she’s chief content officer at Trapit, a recently launched news aggregator that attracts some 25,000 visitors a day.

Trapit is tiny, but the real challenge for Lufkin and the start-up isn’t the company’s size. It’s the competition: There are roughly one gazillion services that say they will filter the Internet’s endless waves of stories into something personalized and manageable. Some, like Google news, use unfathomable algorithms; others, like News.me, say they do it using social cues from your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

Trapit’s pitch, essentially, is that it does a better job than the rest because it is built on the bones of a DARPA-funded artificial technology project. It says it isn’t interested in the social Web but the real-time Web, and in the way individual users respond to the stories it serves up, so it can get better at predicting their tastes over time.

I don’t have any way to vet those claims based on my brief demos of the site (above, the top results for “greek yogurt,” in case Dick Costolo is interested). But I can note that hiring Lufkin to help sort and display content is an acknowledgment that even the smartest computers need an assist or two.

In addition to her editorial work, Lufkin is also supposed to help Trapit build a business. Right now, the company simply points users to publishers’ original stories (surrounded by a framebar) and there’s no revenue in that. But Lufkin and Amra Tareen, the site’s new biz dev head, are supposed to go out and create partnerships with publishers so that Trapit could help them sell subscriptions or a la carte articles.

It’d be great if they could get a couple of those deals hammered out in the next month or so, when Trapit’s new iPad app is supposed to launch. But Lufkin and Tareen just started at Trapit this month, and if you’re betting on publishers to move quickly, you’ll lose lots of money, fast. Best to give this one some time.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, alleges Apple and the publishers reached an agreement where retail price competition would cease, retail e-books prices would increase significantly and Apple would be guarantee a 30% “commission” on each e-book sold.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

As part of the announcement, the retailer is also confirming that it will take a 30 percent cut of each transaction, which is the standard across Apple’s App Store, Facebook and Google Play (Correction: In an earlier version, it stated that Google takes 5 percent, which only applies to the Google+ game network.)

The announcement is not a huge surprise, since Amazon has been testing in-app payments over the past few months with a number of developers in the Amazon Appstore, which runs on the Kindle Fire and a number of Android handsets.

The payments platform utilizes Amazon’s well-recognized and trusted “1-Click” purchasing experience that so many consumers are familiar with from shopping online. By bringing it to mobile, it will make it easy for consumers to purchase a few more coins inside a game or to subscribe to a magazine.

But while the announcement sounds fairly basic, the rollout is important for Amazon to get right, since developers’ initial reception to the Appstore was a little strained — and stories of making money on the platform have been mixed.

That’s because, unlike other app stores, Amazon has decided to dictate how much an app sells for, and in some cases, the company elects to make apps free as part of its Free App of the Day promotion. In doing so, developers sometimes make less revenue than they would normally expect (especially since there was no potential upside from in-app purchases).

Developers and publishers will be able to set the price of the items within the store, including virtual goods or subscriptions, an Amazon spokesperson said.

Based on developers that participated in the beta tests, so far Amazon’s Appstore looks like it has been monetizing well.

Storm8, which was one of the game developers that participated in the beta test, told AllThingsD that it generated $700,000 in revenue from in-app purchases in March — before Amazon’s cut. The Redwood City developer said it has 10 free-to-play apps in the store, including such titles as Kingdoms Live, Nightclub Story and Farm Story; at one point, four of its games ranked among the five most popular free apps on Amazon.

Flurry, which provides analytics software to developers, also estimated  that Amazon’s in-app payment platform monetizes well, and that it outperforms Google Play, but falls short of the industry’s gold standard, which is Apple.

Still, it’s unclear whether Amazon will be able to woo developers, given that it is so much smaller than the other players. Last month, after celebrating its first year in business, Amazon confirmed that it had more than 31,000 apps in its store, which is far fewer than either Google or Apple.

It’s also unclear how many devices the Appstore is installed on, since Amazon does not share much information, including how many Kindle Fires it has sold.

According to a report by IHS iSuppli, Amazon shipped 3.9 million Fires in the fourth quarter, to claim 14.3 percent of the market. That makes it the world’s second-largest tablet vendor, surpassing Samsung, which has been in the market far longer, with many more devices.

In the future, what could potentially be even more interesting for developers than in-app payments is if Amazon will let them use apps to sell merchandise, such as Rovio’s plush toys, or DVDs and other cross-promotional items.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the possibility.

Apple Inc., another target of the investigation, and two publishers appear reluctant to settle on the terms sought by antitrust authorities in both the U.S. and Europe, those people said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Several of the parties have held talks to settle the antitrust case and head off a potentially damaging court battle, these people said. If successful, such a settlement could have wide-ranging repercussions for the industry, potentially leading to cheaper e-books for consumers. However, not every publisher is in settlement discussions.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The numbers of readers signing up so far suggest that at many papers, “paywalls” aren’t about to reverse publishers’ deteriorating finances. Yet the results aren’t discouraging industry executives, who say their efforts are succeeding in shoring up the core print business after years of declines.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

9:34 am: We’ve arrived. Here’s the scene outside the Guggenheim Museum.

9:43 am: As we wait for the event to get started, here are some “CliffsNotes” on what we might see from Apple today.

9:45 am: Hi there, from Peter! Lauren Goode and I, along with a couple hundred other people, are still stuck in the stairwell of the museum, waiting to be seated.

9:50 am: Line is moving slowly now.

9:52 am: Hello there. Apple has let us into the Guggenheim’s basement auditorium.

Just spotted McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw in the audience. Not sure if he’s sitting with us, or will be popping up onstage.

9:54 am: Ah. I see that the American corporate mandate to play Adele at every event has continued into 2012. So we are still rolling in the deep.

We could have had it all, you know.

9:57 am: Lights down. Adele still belting.

9:58 am: First up: Apple marketing head Phil Schiller.

“Education is deep in our DNA, and it has been from the very beginning.”

Apple has a unique understanding of learning, student achievement. “We’re so proud to take part in anything we can do to help students learn.”

New change in schools via iPad is “profound and remarkable.”

Shot of toddler watching Dora on iPad, which looks very familiar.

But education has challenges, “which are pretty profound.”

Life is tough for high school kids in the U.S. Freshmen have a 70 percent chance of graduating. In “hard-hit urban areas,” that’s 60 percent.

Even if you do graduate, you probably won’t be prepared to compete internationally. List of poor showing by U.S. in world education rankings.

Now a video reel of teachers bemoaning the state of affairs, backed up by swelling music track.

Basic message: Schools are in lousy shape. “We need a reset. We need a way to find out what’s wrong, and fix it,” says last teacher, in a nice sweater.

Schiller is back. “No one person or company can try to fix it all.” But Apple can help. Specifically with “student engagement.”

Of course, kids like iPads, Schiller says. Extolls virtues of iPad, which we don’t need to tell you about here. “Affordable, not only for families but for schools.”

20,000+ education apps built specifically for iPad.

And lots of iBooks would work very nicely in schools, too.

1.5 million iPads in use in “education institutions.” We want to accelerate that. So we’re announcing two initiatives:

10:06 am: 1) “Reinventing textbooks.”

Books are awesome. They’ve transformed society and will always be with us. But they’re not an ideal learning tool for kids. Cumbersome, get dog-eared, “written-in, worn, just not the ideal teaching tool.” Image of badly-beaten book.

Books aren’t portable enough. Not durable enough. Not interactive. Not searchable. Can’t be updated. “The content is great,” though.

10:07 am: But the iPad? That’s awesome. It’s all of those things that a lowly book is not.

But “can you get amazing content turned into a new generation of digital books?”

10:08 am: So here is iBooks 2 — a “new textbook experience for the iPad.”

“These are beautiful books.” Here’s a demo, with Roger Rosner, who has helped build the new product.

Biologist E.O. Wilson introduces a new digital textbook, which features multitouch, video, navigation via thumbnails, etc. “These are gorgeous, gorgeous books. They’re really in a class by themselves.”

“Clearly, no printed textbook could compete with this.”

Lots of pinchy-zoomy. “Again, nothing like that on the printed page.”

So here I will point out that the most obvious issue is the same one that magazine publishers faced during the initial iPad launch — someone needs to figure out how to pay for a system where you can build all this new cool digital stuff, while you continue to publish your old paper-and-ink products. After some initial experiments, most magazine guys have retreated to more or less republishing the existing product, with a few bells and whistles.

Okay, back to Rosner, still demoing cool stuff like interactive text that lets you access a glossary by highlighting a word. “That is so much better than a paper glossary could ever hope to be.”

10:14 am: Hopefully, the pictures that Lauren Goode is taking give you a good idea of what Rosner is showing off. This stuff does look gorgeous, of course.

Half the crowd applauds.

10:15 am: Still demoing. Quizzes and review questions built into book. “The bottom line is immediate feedback.”

Can highlight text with finger, change color, etc. Add notes.

10:17 am: Turn notes into study cards. Can turn glossary terms into study cards. “No more ever having to make paper flash cards, right?”

More applause for card demo. “I don’t think there’s a textbook that’s ever made it this easy to be a good student.”

New textbook category in iBookstore.

10:20 am: Demo over, Schiller back up. Summarizes selling points.

10:20 am: Now on to creation. “That’s just as important.”

iBooks Author (i.e., what people have been calling “GarageBand for books”).

“Easy to use, feature-rich,” will work for any kind of book, not just textbooks. But “focused most of all” on textbooks.

10:21 am: Rosner back up. “Traditionally, creating electronic interactive books has been really hard.” We can fix that.

Uses some familiar iWork workflow. Drag and drop. Can type into editor or bring in Word files, etc.

More applause after program reformats and flows Word doc.

This looks very slick and easy. No surprise there.

Ah. I can now see that McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw is in the audience, soaking it in with the rest of us.

Can integrate Keynote into text. More applause for that.

Rosner still demoing. If you’ve ever been involved in making e-books before, “you know that this is a total miracle in terms of time savings.”

More applause for fast turnaround between creation and working book showing up on iPad. “I just think that’s totally awesome, right? In just five minutes flat, we created a totally interactive book.”

More applause, and some excited hoots.

10:29 am: Schiller back. “Anyone can create stunning, interactive books.”

Authoring tools “often cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.” But we want to make sure that anyone can use this — even teachers. New iBooks Author will be free.

Available today on Mac App Store. More applause.

Reminder that iBookstore will have new textbooks category.

Partners (this is key part).

High school textbooks. Will launch at $14.99 or less.

Names of publishers? Have yet to hear from Schiller.

Here we go: “We have had some phenomenal companies really work with us”: Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “They have been great partners with us.”

McGraw-Hill, for instance, wil be providing algebra, biology, chemistry books, etc. “They are incredible.”

“Can’t overemphasize” how important it is for publishers to work with us.

Also working with DK Publishing. Four new kids’ books.

Another partner: E.O Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. “If you don’t know E.O. Wilson, you should.” More applause.

First chapters of “Life on Earth” are available now, for free. Future chapters will be available at low price.

And now, a video. “We couldn’t help ourselves … I hope you enjoy it.”

More hopeful teachers and music this time out.

So while video is rolling, let’s review: By far the most important announcement today is that Apple has partnered with three of the big textbook publishers. Don’t have details on that, but the fact that this isn’t a flat-out end run around the textbook industry is crucial. Obvious parallel here is iTunes music launch in 2003, when Apple worked with the big labels instead.

Eddy Cue, who many of us thought would be at event, shows up in video, instead.

And Terry McGraw is in the video, as well.

So is Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino.

John Deasy, superintendent for Los Angeles Unified School District.

10:44 am: Video over, more applause. Ah. Schiller has more. Here comes Eddy Cue.

10:45 am: As John Paczkowski noted early this month, Apple is overhauling iTunes U.

700 million downloads of iTunes U content in the last four years. So far, mostly used to download college lectures. (I’m responsible for one of them! A Robert Shiller talk I keep meaning to listen to.)

“We want to let teachers do a whole lot more.” Create entire classes online. Via all-new iTunes U app.

Jeff Robbin, VP of iTunes, for demo.

Not just books, but “new complete, online courses.” Here’s a chemistry course from Duke University.

Some of this is gunning at Blackboard, the college standard for online education software, which lots of people (users and would-be competitors) would like to disrupt.

Ability for teachers to post notes for students, download videos to iPad or stream, etc.

Demo over, more applause. Hard to explain/see how this will work unless you’re actively using it within the context of school, I think.

Cue rattles off list of colleges using iTunes U already. Six of them have used the new software — Duke, Stanford, Yale — and have created more than 100 courses already. “All of it for free.”

So far, mostly used for higher education. But now available for K-12. More applause.

10:54 am: Cue off, Schiller back.

Love of education “has been instilled in Apple since the very beginning. And it’s as true today as it ever was before.”

“We hope that educators will look back on today’s announcements just as fondly” as past Apple education initiatives.

“I hope you’re as excited about these announcements as we are.” Schiller finishes up, event over.

Thanks for tuning in. We’ll now get a chance to play with some of this stuff hands-on, and I’m going to talk to at least one of the publisher partners Apple talked about today. More in a bit.

At least it should be, based on the $35 million that investors just plowed into Outbrain, the content recommendation engine that works with AllThingsD and lots of other publishers. Index Ventures led the round, joining existing investors Carmel and Lightspeed; the New York-based company has raised $64 million to date.

Outbrain makes money helping funnel traffic from one publisher’s site to another. It gets paid whenever someone clicks on its sponsored listings (those are the ones labeled “From the Web” at the end of this story), and gives the originating publisher 60 percent of the revenue. Publishers (again, like AllThingsD) also benefit, because Outbrain provides recommendations for other stories that will keep readers on the original site.

Like most of the Web, this is a business that’s supposed to work at scale, and Outbrain says it has that now, generating 200 million clicks a month. Earlier this year, Outbrain bought former rival Sphere from AOL.

(Image courtesy of Shutterstock/The Bezz)

At a congressional hearing, Sharis Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting antitrust chief, said: “We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The program will be limited, at least at the beginning, in what is available to borrow. Amazon will initially offer slightly more than 5,000 titles in the library, including more than 100 current and former national bestsellers, such as Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” None of the six largest publishers in the U.S. is participating.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In March, Denny Chin, now a U.S. Circuit Judge in Manhattan, rejected a revised $125 million deal to resolve separate lawsuits over scanning books for online distribution by Google via its Google Books site. In his decision, the judge found the pact would give Google the ability to “exploit” books without the permission of copyright owners.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

It’s unclear how much traction the proposal has, the people said. Several publishing executives said they aren’t enthusiastic about the idea because they believe it could lower the value of books and because it could strain their relationships with other retailers that sell their books, they said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

It’s a little bit like Groupon Now and LivingSocial Instant, which offer deals that can be redeemed immediately and are based on your location.

But the comparisons with the industry’s leaders and TownHog end there.

Lilia Martinez-Coburn, TownHog’s VP of product and marketing, explains that since getting into the business in late 2009, the company has shifted its focus away from building up a huge sales staff and competing one on one with the giants in the space.

Instead, it is offering the platform it built for its own deals to third-party publishers.

Today, its platform is being used by several companies, which already have the distribution and the sales force, including CBS Local Offers, OpenTable, Cumulus Broadcasting’s SweetJack.com, the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate and others.

TownHog’s consumer-facing site now primarily operates in San Francisco only, where it continues to help SFGate source deals.

This is the second time the company has shifted businesses. Previously, it was called DotBlu, a social games company that didn’t work out. But since the company still had some money left in the bank, it tried the daily deals business.

Many started to think TownHog was again on the downturn earlier this year, when it started scaling back the number of employees it had.

Martinez-Coburn explains it has been reducing the number of people on staff because it didn’t need as many salespeople, since its publishing partners were increasingly sourcing the deals directly. About a month ago, TownHog had 40 employees; today it has closer to 30.

“As our partners ramp up and are getting the hang of how to sell this, the hope is for them to take on the role and source their own deals,” she said.

Other companies providing white label platforms in the daily deals space include Tippr and Group Commerce.

TownHog’s mobile product, which it unveiled today, is called Express Offers. It will allow partners to quickly launch a standalone iPhone app to publish offers.

Unlike traditional deals that run for 24 hours and make you wait to redeem them, consumers will have the chance to purchase these offers immediately from the phone or online.

Going forward, Martinez-Coburn said she hopes that all offers on their network will be offered instantly because of the benefits to the consumer and the publisher.

Publishers gain the opportunity to run more than one offer at a time, instead of providing just one deal a day. In addition, Martinez-Coburn said, it will help with conversion rates. Right now, many publishing partners promote deals on the radio or in the paper, and when people see it or hear about it, they immediately want to go and get 50 percent.

When they realize they have to wait 24 hours, the conversion drops off.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two platforms will be cost.

According to multiple sources, Google will take less than a 30 percent cut of the revenues, which will break the industry standard created over the past few years by both Facebook and Apple.

The launch of a games network on Google+ may provide a couple of immediate benefits to game developers if the Internet giant actually pulls everything off.

The obvious one is that it will give developers another outlet for its games. But the other perk is that it could provide a small way for developers to get back at Facebook after learning earlier this week that it has a complicated – if not favorable – relationship with Zynga, the industry leader.

More favorable terms, and that, could bring game developers flocking to Google.

I am also hearing that the game network will have significant technical differences. Two people described the platform as a “native client,” which means that Google will host the games on its own servers, rather than on the developer’s.

The expectation is that this could lead to faster game play for users, with shorter loading times and fewer bugs than in games found on Facebook.

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

Last month, I reported that a games network was likely coming next on Google+.

At the time, a spokesperson issued this statement: “It’s important to keep in mind this is an ongoing project and this is just the beginning. We plan to add a lot of features and functionality to Google+ over time. We’re just excited to get started.”

Timing of the launch is still unknown; however, at Casual Connect this week in Seattle, publishers were buzzing (albeit quietly) about the upcoming launch. Everyone I spoke to was under the impression it was coming soon. One enthusiastic source said it will launch this month, while another said it was taking longer.

Details on the revenue split are also unknown, but there have been hints at what it could offer.

Two days ago, Google launched In-App Payments, which allow developers to integrate payments within any Web application, which is exactly the kind of technology it would need to monetize a social game network. What’s even more important is that Google disclosed it only charges five percent for the payments service.

There’s no evidence that in-app payments are connected, or if Google would ask for the same cut. But, at such a low starting point, it is probably not too far off the mark, since most of Google’s time and attention is focused on advertising.

So far, Google’s in-app payments are available to developers with a U.S. bank account, and work in more than 140 countries.

Of course, Google’s game network will not support developers without hundreds of millions of consumers to play the games.

So far it has delivered on that front, too.

Already, 10 million users have signed up for Google+, despite requiring an invitation. The user base has also been particularly active, sharing and receiving one billion items per day.

What Google’s network won’t be is a haven for developers who are seeking to get away from Zynga, which is larger than its next five competitors on Facebook combined.

Google is one of Zynga’s major investors.

But many of those same companies tend be much more optimistic about smartphones: The platforms seem manageable and finite, and consumers seem willing to pay for stuff on an iPhone or Android that they’d never shell out for on their laptops.

I think that conventional wisdom is overblown — more wishful than realistic. Still, it’s the conventional wisdom among many media executives I talk to.

Here’s a nice illustration of that, via a new Accenture survey. The consulting firm asked “130 leaders and decision-makers in the Media and Entertainment industry” about their digital content plans, and found a pretty strong consensus — they think consumers and dollars are going to flock to mobile in the next couple years.

What about the iPad and any other tablets? We’ll assume that the big media guys are including tablets in the “mobile/wireless” answer in the second poll question. But note that they’re clearly less enthusiastic about tablets, compared to phones, in the first question.

Accenture notes that if you carve up responses by industry, things change a bit. For instance, publishers who embraced the iPad (and the Kindle, and the Nook) from the get-go think that tablets will be the favorite device for 36 percent of their customers in the near future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the three-day show, which unofficially kicks off tomorrow and ends Thursday, hardcore gamers will get a preview of all the big-budget productions that will be released in time for the holidays.

But this year, in addition to the regular dose of blood and guts and first-person shooters, expect the videogame industry’s softer side to be on display.

Game companies are starting to recognize that in order to attract larger audiences, they need to appeal to a broader set of people.

The trend is being fueled by Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, which will be looking for ways to extend the life cycle of the major game consoles, all of which are about five years old now. The shift is also gaining acceptance as big companies are finding large audiences on digital platforms, like the Internet and Facebook.

Ubisoft’s SVP of Sales and Marketing, Tony Key, said they are pushing three things this year at E3: core, casual and online.

It will be talking about a wide range of games, including several Facebook games in the works, hardcore titles like the latest Assassin’s Creed, and casual titles like Rocksmith, which allows players to connect a real guitar to a videogame console to learn how to play the instrument. ”Online is just another point of excitement for the business–it’s just another platform,” he said. “I think this is the best E3 for publishers, like Ubisoft, to showcase how they are viewing the space and what the right strategies are at the moment.”

But while more traditional publishers will be announcing digital strategies, there are some purists in attendance, too. In fact, a contingency of more alternative companies at E3 are jokingly calling themselves “That Other Platform.”

In a message sent to reporters, the companies write:

You’ve been to all the press conferences. Now, please join us as we celebrate:

• the one that DOESN’T have an army of PR people and a $50 million marketing budget.
• the one that DOES have an installed base of greater than 1.5 billion.
• the one that DOES have the world’s best developers.

All jokes aside, the show would not be complete without some hardcore talk. Here’s what to expect on the hardware side of the business:

• Nintendo will unveil its new Wii console on Tuesday.
• Plenty of new games for Nintendo’s recently released 3DS, a handheld game player, which has been slow to take off.
• Microsoft and Sony’s respective motion-controlled systems, the Kinect and Move.
• Sony’s new NGP, which is its latest handheld gaming device coming soon.

This year’s E3, short for the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is the 17th annual event thrown by the Entertainment Software Association, which is dedicated to companies that publish games and develop video game consoles. This year, the association said it is expecting 45,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

One of the companies that will be a prime example of shifting its focus from a hardcore audience to an entertainment focus is Microsoft’s Xbox.

It has sold more than 53 million Xbox 360 consoles and has more than 30 million Xbox LIVE members who access content digitally over the Internet. It has also sold more than 10 million Kinects to date.

Tomorrow at the company’s early morning press conference, it will discuss how its not just a gaming device, but an entertainment hub for your living room.

Already, 40 percent of all Xbox activity is non-game with video with video consumption hitting an average of 30 hours a month per Xbox.

As the console makers run out of new reasons for strict gamers to buy them, diversification is key.

In advance of its press conference tomorrow, Microsoft provide this chart from NPD to show the trend lines for consoles during their lifespan (and how Xbox is doing relatively well because of its focus on entertainment):

The company, founded by former Google and DoubleClick executives David Rosenblatt, Jonty Kelt, and Andrew Glenn, has now raised a total of $18.5 million.

Group Commerce’s CEO Kelt confirmed the ink was still drying on the check. “We only recently came out of stealth mode. The topline is that things are going really well. We wanted to accelerate what we were doing.”

The round was funded by the company’s current investors: Spark Capital, Carmel Ventures, Lerer Media Ventures, and Bob Pittman, the founder of MTV Networks and now chairman of media and entertainment platforms at Clear Channel. This publication also reported on the funding.

Kelt said there was a lot of investor interest and they could have raised more but they decided to stick with insiders.

Unlike Groupon and the hundreds of clones sprouting up all around it, Group Commerce is building a white-label platform that can be used by publishers and media companies that have traditionally been in the local commerce business, but have been left out of the Groupon phenomenon. Some of its early customers include: DailyCandy, Meredith Corporation, Thrillist and the New York Times.

Seattle-based Tippr is a direct competitor. Having been in the market for longer, Tippr has about 70 partners, including Fox and NBC affiliates in some local markets. Tippr has raised about $9 million, and has 120 employees.

Kelt said the money will go toward supporting its current customer base as well as additional media partners in the pipeline. Two months ago, they had 35 employees. Today, they have 50 with sales members in six cities; they want to be at 100 employees by the end of the year and in 15 markets.

Group Commerce gives its partners the choice of using its own sales force to sell the daily deals, or relying on Group Commerce’s sales force. Additionally, it tries to match relevant deals to the readers of the different publications. “As a general comment, I’d say we are getting better at it, and therefore our partners want us to be more aggressive.”

The funding market for daily deals is hot right now. Gilt Groupe, which also has a daily deals business called Gilt City, just raised $138 million, and Groupon is eager to file for an initial public offering. Last month, LivingSocial raised $400 million.

Amazon.com Inc.’s top 50 digital best-seller list featured 15 books priced at $5 or less on Wednesday afternoon. Louisville businessman John Locke, for example, a part-time thriller writer whose signature series features a former CIA assassin, claimed seven of those titles, all priced at 99 cents.

“They’re training their customers away from brand name authors and are instead creating visibility for self-published titles,” one senior publishing executive who asked not to be identified, says of Amazon.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

BigDoor, which is vying for a leadership position in the so-called gamification space, is announcing a new platform today that acts as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers.

Co-Founder and CEO Keith Smith calls it the equivalent of Google’s AdSense for gamification.

Gamification operates under the premise that people are often motivated by rewards, so integrating game-like tasks into everyday things–like reading the news or watching videos online–will ultimately increase engagement and monetization.

Smith refers to it as turning “lurkers” into “regulars.”

Seattle-based BigDoor builds tools for publishers to make rolling out game play within their online properties easier. Some of its customers include AccuScore.com, DevHub.com and MySportsIQ.

But creating a new AdSense platform is clearly a lofty ambition.

To put it in words the company can understand, the achievement is still far off, and in the near-term it will have to work hard at leveling-up to get there. But in this world, where Zynga has introduced millions of consumers to playing simple games like FarmVille on Facebook–and paying nominal amounts of money for virtual goods–it doesn’t sound too far-fetched.

Along with the platform being announced today, the company is revealing the first of its 20 private beta partners.

Its first publishing partner is UGO.com, a Hearst-owned property aimed at the 18 to 34 year old male audience. The site, which provides daily coverage of videogames, has dedicated a good chunk of its homepage to integrating advertising-based “quests.”

A quest over the weekend gave visitors a chance to interact with the new Universal Pictures comedy, “Your Highness,” starring Natalie Portman.

In the quests, visitors must interact with the advertiser’s content in order to earn points. A quest is competed after 11 clicks. Points can be typically redeemed for virtual badges (i.e. bragging rights), but in UGO’s case, it is sending out real patches that they hope will become collector’s items.

With the new platform, Smith is hoping to create a new ad unit called Cost Per Quest. So far, he thinks the ad unit will range between $1 and $2.50 based on the fact that consumers are readily engaging in the quests as if they are content. Early response rates are revealing that 20 to 45 percent of people who begin a quest finish one, he said.

BigDoor plans to provide the platform for free and will take a percentage of the revenue. “We want gamification to be a profit center, not a cost center,” Smith said. “We don’t charge UGO anything. We get paid when they get paid.”

Now that Universal’s promotion of “Your Highness” has run its course, UGO has moved on to offering different quests, including one from AXE, the men’s deodorant body spray.

Founded in June 2009, BigDoor was started by Smith and Jeff Malek, who both previously founded Zango. Also known as 180solutions, the company was associated with spyware and adware, but grew to $50 million from $1 million in revenues over two-and-a-half years.

BigDoor, which is still in its infancy, has raised more than $5 million in two rounds from Founder’s Co-op and Foundry Group, and has 20 employees.

One of BigDoor’s competitors is BadgeVille, which recently partnered with Bluefly, a small publicly held online retailer. Through the relationship, Bluefly is rewarding shoppers who watch videos, create wishlists, write reviews or read blog posts.

The investigation is examining whether the app makers fully described to users the types of data they collected and why they needed the information, such as a unique identifier for the phone or its location, the person familiar with the matter said. Collecting information about a user without proper notice or authorization could violate a federal computer-fraud law.

On Monday, online music service Pandora Media Inc. said it had received a subpoena related to a federal grand-jury investigation of information-sharing practices by smartphone applications.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »