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StumbleUpon Gets a Face-Lift and Some Boldfaced Names

Lauren Goode — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:06:30 +0000

StumbleUpon, the social discovery engine that was famously acquired by eBay only to take itself private again two years later, is reinventing itself again.

The company is rolling out a newly redesigned Web site that features a new logo, new colors and an integrated “Explore Box,” or search engine, that had previously only been available in beta.

StumbleUpon has also signed up 250 partners for channels on the site, which will act as verticals users can “follow” in order to get the interesting content they want. The partners include such Web sites as Yelp, Gilt Groupe, Vanity Fair and Funny or Die, as well high-profile names like actor Jim Carrey, athletes Mariano Rivera and Paul Pierce, and late-night TV host Chelsea Handler.

While StumbleUpon is getting a face-lift and adding some boldfaced names, it isn’t changing any of its back-end technology: Users will still “stumble” from site to site, which will be served up to them based on StumbleUpon’s algorithm that factors in interests, likes and your friends’ interests.

StumbleUpon founder and CEO Garrett Camp said the redesign was spurred by feedback the company was getting from users in focus groups. Basically, while the users liked the site’s signature stumbling action (which I previously called a procrastinator’s friend and insomniac’s dream), they wanted easier ways to follow their favorite brands and content.

“Some of the words we used when describing StumbleUpon were surprising, adventurous, exciting, and when we put our logo in brand in front of test users, they weren’t saying that,” Camp said. “We wanted to make it that for them, while also simplifying the site.”

StumbleUpon launched in 2001 as a way for people to find interesting content on the Web. In 2007, the company was acquired by eBay for $75 million. Then, in 2009, Camp, his co-founder Geoff Smith and other investors bought the company back and took it private again. The site went through a minor refresh then, but these new updates mark the first major visual changes to StumbleUpon since it was created. The company currently claims 20 million users and more than 1.2 billion stumbles per month.

While recent data showed that StumbleUpon is now the biggest referrer of traffic to other U.S. Web sites — beating out even Facebook for that title — the changes come as giants like Google and Facebook are dominating the Web ad space, with other Web services clawing for more market share, as my colleague Peter Kafka reported earlier. StumbleUpon’s entire revenue model is advertising — around 3 to 5 percent of all stumbles will land on an ad — and the company is uncertain whether these new celeb channels will end up being new ad space.

It’s the Wild Wild Web out there, kids.

Lion, MacBook Air Refresh Will Spike Mac Sales

John Paczkowski — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 11:32:47 +0000

According to the latest sales data gathered by NPD, the Mac is indeed kicking ass, as Phil Schiller Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing observed at the company’s annual World Wide Developers Conference earlier this month. And when it’s finally reported, Mac sales for Apple’s June quarter will likely clock in well ahead of those of PCs.

Again.

Through the first two months of Apple’s third quarter (April and May), domestic Mac sales rose 15 percent year over year, a significant jump over April alone, during which they rose just 9 percent. That bodes well for June, says Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who notes that an easy comp for the month — sales rose 11 percent in 2010 — should make a nice year-over-year gain pretty easy.

And if the company happens to bring those rumored new Sandy Bridge-based MacBook Airs to market sometime this month, well, then it’s a different story entirely.

Another refresh of the Air will likely send sales into the stratosphere, just as it did last October. In fact, Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore figures it could cause units to ramp to as high as 1.5 million per quarter, which is about half of Apple’s MacBook business. Add the impending release of OS X Lion to this mix and Mac sales should rise even more, since OS refreshes have historically bolstered demand and accelerated sales.

“Past OS upgrades have resulted in average Mac unit growth of ~30 percent in the 2-3 quarters following the release,” Whitmore says. “In addition, in terms of broad feature set enhancements we believe the Lion upgrade most parallels Leopard which saw ~45 percent Y/Y Mac growth following the release and +81 percent Y/Y Software growth. In aggregate, we believe Lion will drive a strong upgrade cycle due to: 1) low ASP, 2) significant OS enhancements and 3) arrives in conjunction with MacBook Air refresh.”

MacBook Refresh Could Spur Already Unseasonably High Mac Sales

John Paczkowski — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:45:07 +0000

The second quarter is typically one of Apple’s weakest for Mac sales. Not this year, though. According to the latest data from NPD, Mac sales are already up more than 20 percent year-over-year this quarter, and they’re likely to rise higher still thanks to Apple’s recent refresh of its MacBook Pro line.

Traditionally, Apple launches its new MacBook Pros in April, well into its third quarter. This year, it didn’t. It launched them in the second, and that’s where the resulting spike in sales will be reflected.

And if the company sells enough of them, we could see a nice little bump in its earnings-per-share for the period, says UBS analyst Maynard Um.

“The refresh comes with about 6 weeks remaining in what is typically Apple’s seasonally weakest Mac quarter of the year,” Um said in a note to clients. “However, AAPL’s last three MacBook Pro refreshes came in FYQ3, so the accelerated cycle could provide upside to our estimates for this quarter. Every incremental 100,000 portable Mac units would add ~$0.02 to EPS in FYQ2 assuming slightly lower gross margins.”

ESPN Retools Its Radio App for a Super Bowl Push

Peter Kafka — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:33:07 +0000

Fox has the rights to the Super Bowl this Sunday, but every other media outlet in the free world will take full advantage of the game up until kickoff. Here, for instance, is an app launch from ESPN–not a new app, but a refresh of its Radio app at Apple’s iTunes store, featuring all sorts of personalization bells and whistles.

Most impressive: Searchable audio that lets you sift through all of the network’s daily audio output to find mentions of your favorite teams, players, etc. So you can leave work, head to the gym and download, um, all of the day’s Clay Matthews news, without having to waste time Web surfing through the day. (Yes, you’re going to Web surf, anyway.)

The Disney-owned sports network isn’t changing the app’s price, which will stay at $2.99. ESPN says it has sold “hundreds of thousands” of the apps since it launched in September 2009. 1-800-FLOWERS.com has signed on as the exclusive sponsor for the relaunch.

Meanwhile, ESPN.com’s audio ventures seem to be doing well across the board: ESPNRadio.com reaches more than three million listeners per month, while multimedia star Bill Simmons’s podcast racked up 42 million downloads last year. (I’m responsible for a couple hundred, at least.)

ESPN says a version for Google’s Android platform is on the way.

Dispatches From the Supply Line Stoke iPad, iPhone Chatter

John Paczkowski — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:44:53 +0000

With the first-year anniversaries of the iPad and iPhone 4 fast approaching, and both devices destined for an update per Apple’s annual mobile device refresh cycle, the Apple rumor mill is undergoing a refresh of its own.

Supply chain sources tell China’s Economic Daily News that Apple has lined up four new component suppliers for the iPhone 5, which they claim is scheduled for a summer launch. Meanwhile, Taiwanese trade pub DigiTimes is reporting that Apple recently bolstered its printed circuit board (PCB) supply chain in preparation for the next iteration of the iPad. Where the company once used just three PCB suppliers for the device, it’s now using seven. Not a surprise, really, given the 14.8 million iPads Apple sold in 2010. DigiTimes’ sources claim they’re scheduled to begin small-volume shipments next month, before going all out in April. Which jibes nicely with that annual refresh cycle I mentioned earlier and rumors of a spring launch.

As I’ve noted here before, the iPad 2 is expected to be thinner than its predecessor and manufactured with the same unibody approach Apple’s been using for the MacBook. It’s also expected to feature an LCD backlit display, a front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. Finally, some reports suggest it is powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.

Google Goes To the Cloud For New Idea In PC System

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 02:03:25 +0000

In the personal-computer industry, where things change fast, one fact has been a constant for years: There are two major, mainstream operating systems for consumers. One, Microsoft Windows, runs on many brands of hardware and dominates sales. The other, Apple’s Mac OS X, runs only on its maker’s Macintosh computers, and has had a resurgence in popularity in recent years. Other contenders, such as various versions of Linux, have remained on the fringes.

[ See post to watch video ]

Next summer, however, Google hopes to add a third broad-based computer-operating system to challenge the duopoly. It’s called Chrome OS, and is based on Google’s Chrome Web browser. With Chrome, Google isn’t just aiming to elbow its way into the OS business. It’s hoping to change the entire paradigm. Instead of storing most programs and files on your computer itself, the Chrome OS will mainly run programs from, and require you to keep your data in, the cloud—remote servers located on the Internet. In effect, it turns your entire computer into a giant Web browser, instead of treating the browser as just one among many local programs.

The Chrome OS isn’t finished, and isn’t ready for broad public testing. Google readily concedes it has lots of bugs and rough edges. But the company has designed a small test laptop with the new operating system installed and distributed “a few thousand” of them to outsiders to try.

A Cr-48 test machine, with Chrome OS installed. Chrome will be licensed to select manufacturers.

I have been using this machine, called the Cr-48, for about a week, and have some explanations and first impressions to share. This isn’t a formal review; that will have to wait till the product is finished and is on commercial computers.

I focused mainly on the software, which is built on a Linux underpinning. That’s because Google doesn’t ever intend to sell the Cr-48 hardware, an all-black, unbranded laptop with a 12-inch screen, a rubbery surface and a large, buttonless touchpad that resembles those pioneered on the Mac.

In my tests, I found this early Chrome OS machine to be fast, with decent battery life and almost instant resumption from sleep. It handled most Web sites fine, and worked almost exactly like the very nice Chrome browser on Windows and Mac.

I also liked the one hardware feature worth mentioning: a radically redesigned keyboard. Instead of function keys, or various legacy keys such as Caps Lock, Chrome OS keyboards feature dedicated browser-oriented keys, like ones for moving back and forth among Web pages and windows, refreshing a page, entering full-screen mode, or quickly opening a new tab and beginning a search.

The Chrome OS will have a big advantage. Because it is mainly a front-end-to-cloud service, if you lose your laptop, you can get another one and just sign into your cloud accounts. You should be able to find all your stuff waiting for you.

However, users of the Chrome OS will have a huge adjustment to make. They will have to give up the rich, local programs they have spent years learning to use and tweaking to their liking. You can’t install local programs on a Chrome OS computer. Instead, Google provides a Web Store inside the browser that allows you to download icons for “Web apps”—mostly websites designed to look and work like standard programs.

Some of these, like Gmail, are familiar and popular. Others are newer. For instance, the New York Times and AOL already designed Web-based news apps for Chrome OS, and there is a Web-based version of the TweetDeck program for Twitter. These apps, and the store’s own icon, appear on the new Tab screen of Chrome OS (and also are available in the current Chrome browser.)

In my tests, I found these apps generally worked fine. But most aren’t as rich and versatile as local Windows and Mac programs. For example, there was no way to play my local, personalized iTunes music collection, unless I spent many hours uploading it to some Web-based service.

I also had to settle for Web-based productivity programs—like word processors and spreadsheets—with many fewer features than standard local ones, such as Microsoft Office.

And I ran into plenty of frustrations. At this stage, Chrome OS can’t do anything with USB flash drives or SD memory cards, and can’t synchronize phones. And it has a very limited ability to store, or allow you to do anything with, email attachments or other files you might download and prefer to keep locally rather than on a server controlled by somebody else.

Printing was a chore, requiring a complicated setup on a Windows computer that Chrome used as a conduit to a printer.

Plus, Chrome OS is hardly stable yet. I suffered numerous crashes of Adobe’s Flash player, and even Google’s own Google Talk instant-messaging service, which appears in a little pop-up window on top of the browser. The company says it hopes to fix these problems by next summer.

Finally, the biggest downside: Because it’s a cloud-oriented system, Chrome OS is almost useless if you lack an Internet connection. Google says it plans to offer some limited offline functionality, and to encourage makers of Web apps to do the same. It will also eventually be able to make some use of some files stored on external hard disks. But the basic operating mode will require you to be connected to the Internet.

To help with this, the Cr-48 has a Verizon cellular modem built in, to supplement its Wi-Fi connectivity. Verizon is offering 100 megabytes of data free, but that is a small amount, and you have to pay for more.

Like the Mac OS, but unlike Windows or Google’s own smartphone operating system, Android, the Chrome OS will be deeply integrated with hardware. So, Google doesn’t plan to distribute or license the new operating system to every hardware maker—at least not at first. You won’t be able to install it on an existing computer. It will be available in 2011 on a limited number of computer models from selected manufacturers.

Google says this is because security is a high priority and requires special hardware designs that tightly bond with the software.

Also, Chrome OS computers will, in some respects, be more like iPads than laptops. They won’t have hard disks, just a limited amount of flash-memory storage, and they won’t have DVD drives.

They are an attempt to realize the old idea of a “network computer,” or one which is mostly a front end for network services.

Of course, many people already spend most of their time with their PCs and Macs connected to the Net. Many use Web-based email programs or streaming music programs instead of local software.

So the time may be right for a cloud computer, a change in the paradigm. Google certainly hopes so.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Another Wiif for Nintendo

John Paczkowski — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:51:29 +0000

Nintendo warned last month that its first-half results would be lousy, and this morning the company delivered on that promise, posting its first half-year loss in seven years.

For the six months to September 30, the Japanese gaming giant reported a $24.7 million loss as sales of hardware and software slipped. Nintendo sold 6.69 million DS units during the half, down significantly from the 11.7 million it sold during the same period last year. And it sold fewer Wiis as well–4.97 million, down from the 5.75 million it shipped last year. On the software side, things were equally dismal. DS software sales declined to 54.84 million units from 71.15 million units in 2009; Wii software sales fell to 65.21 million units from 76.21 million units in the same period a year earlier.

The beginnings of an ugly trend for Nintendo, which is fast losing momentum in a motion-enhanced gaming market in which its rivals are gaining it. With Sony’s PlayStation Move motion controller already at market and Microsoft’s Kinect for XBox 360 (Project Natal) headed there next month, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Wii–now about four years old–needs a full-on refresh.

Videogame Industry Suffers Massively Multiplayer Sales Decline

John Paczkowski — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:50:08 +0000

April was another lousy month for the videogame industry. With overall revenue down 26 percent and hardware down 37 percent, it was the worst monthly year-over-year sales decline since last July, according to research house The NPD Group. It was also the 10th time in the last 13 months that sales have fallen year-over-year.

Nintendo sold 277,2000 Wiis, down from 557,500 in March and 340,000 a year ago. The company sold 440,800 Nintendo DS’s, down from 700,800 in March and 1.04 million a year ago.

Microsoft sold 185,400 Xbox 360s, down from 338,400 in March, but up from 175,000 a year ago.

Sony sold 180,800 PlayStation 3s, down from 313,900 in March, but up from 127,000 a year ago. And it sold 65,500 PSPs, down from 119,900 in March and 116,000 a year ago.

What’s driving the drops? Blame the portable gaming industry, which contributed more than its fair share to the industry decline, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

“The portable business across hardware, software and accessories accounted for 25 percent of total industry dollar sales in April,” Frazier explained. “But declines in portable sales compared to April ’09 accounted for 61 percent of the total industry decrease.”

That’s just abysmal, even if April is traditionally the slowest month of the year for videogame sales. Consider this: At 440,800, sales of the Nintendo DS tanked by more than 50 percent from more than one million last April.

So what’s going on? Perhaps consumers are postponing new portable game system purchases in anticipation of Nintendo’s new 3DS. Or perhaps they’re finding that their smartphones make fine gaming devices.

It’s not yet clear. But what is clear, and painfully so, is that the hardware refresh promised by Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT), which are adding new motion technology to their players, and Nintendo, which is debuting the 3-D version of its DS handheld, can’t come soon enough.

Apple's Mac Business Headed for Another Big Quarter

John Paczkowski — Tue, 11 May 2010 11:55:22 +0000

We haven’t even reached the midpoint of the June quarter, but it already looks like Apple’s financials for the period will be as strong, if not stronger than they’ve been in quarters past. In a research note issued this morning, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu says his checks suggest that sales of the iPad and new MacBook Pros are strong.

Evidently there’s quite a bit of sales momentum in the iPad 3G, despite its $129 price premium over the Wi-Fi-only version and monthly data costs. Wu upped his forecast iPads to two million units from one million. Meanwhile, Mac sales have been ramping up thanks to the recent debut of new laptops.

“Our sources indicate that Mac momentum is strong helped by a recent significant refresh of the MacBook Pro to new Intel Arrandale processors, offering much better price-performance and an industry best 8-10 hours of battery life,” Wu writes.

“While it is still early,” the analyst adds, “we believe the Mac business is tracking to its third consecutive quarter of 20%+ Y/Y unit growth indicating further share gains.”

With that in mind, Wu has raised his projected Mac sales for the quarter to 3.2 million, a slight increase from his previous forecast of 3.1 million.

Apple (AAPL), as it always does, left plenty of room for upside surprises to revenue when it last reported earnings. Sounds like the company is more than likely to deliver on them when it next reports.

Nintendo Wiifs; iPad No Threat to DS, Says Exec

John Paczkowski — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:43:48 +0000

Surging sales of its Wii and DS led Nintendo to three straight years of record profits. But with the appeal of those devices now waning, the company needs to refresh them both lest it continue to post financials like those it announced today.

This morning, the videogame company reported its first full-year drop in revenue in six years, one in which revenue fell 22 percent to 1.43 trillion yen and operating profit dropped 36 percent to 356.57 billion yen.

Driving the declines: Wii sales that were down 21 percent year-over-year to 20.53 million. With global sales of the console expected to fall again this fiscal year–to 18 million units–the company is in desperate need of something to revive them.

Though it still leads in this generation of gaming hardware, Nintendo is struggling to maintain its momentum. With rivals like Microsoft (MSFT) working on Project Natal and other innovations, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Wii, now about four years old, needs a full-on refresh and not just new peripherals like the silly vitality sensor the company showed off last year.

With Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPad making big inroads in portable gaming, the new 3-D version of the DS Nintendo is planning can’t come to market soon enough, though the company’s executives insist it’s holding its own.

Said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime: “We have not seen any impact on our DS business [from the iPad]. In the first three months, we’ve set two new sales records for the Nintendo DS. We think that through April, we’ll have the best four-month time period to kick off a new calendar year that we’ve ever had with the device. So we’re certainly seeing momentum, they’re seeing momentum–I think two products can succeed at the same time.”

Intel's Hardcore Six-Core

John Paczkowski — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:10:24 +0000

Looks like the CPU refresh cycle is officially underway. This morning, Intel (INTC) formally launched its new six-core Westmere EP Xeon processor, and according to the company, vendors like Dell (DELL), IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are already gobbling them up.

Said Intel exec Boyd Davis: “We’ve already shipped hundreds of thousands of these (processors).” And for good reason. Built using the company’s 32-nanometer processor technology, these Xeon 5600 series chips promise to deliver greater performance and energy efficiency than their predecessors. With luck, they’ll help drive new equipment spending in enterprise, which would obviously be good for both the server and chip markets.

New FCC Report: Reaching the "Digitally Distant," but "Digital Hopefuls" Too (We'll Ask Chairman Genachowski About It and More at D8)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:42:37 +0000

The Federal Communications Commission–the regulatory ruler of all kinds of waves, from air to digital–is now ferreting away on a plan to get Americans better hooked up to the Internet, part of a newish government push to digitize this country.

It is set to be released next month and is a long, long time coming, of course, as the U.S. badly lags the rest of the world in high-speed Web access.

The plan will be the big first move by new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (pictured here), the longtime Internet exec who has just accepted our invite to appear as a speaker at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June.

There will be a lot to talk about with Genachowski, including the report the FCC is releasing today titled “Broadband Adoption and Use in America,” penned by John Horrigan.

The 52-page opus–which you can read in its entirety below–is the first of a series of working papers based on an FCC survey last fall.

It outlines a mostly wired country–as you can see from the detailed chart below (click to make it larger)–with two-thirds having some sort of broadband connection. On average, they pay $41 for that sometimes dubious privilege.

Incredibly, six percent of Americans still use dial-up access and four percent have no broadband at home at all.

Not surprisingly, poor people access the Web a lot less, although longtime gaps among races is closing, with African-Americans and Hispanics gaining in usage and access.

And what do people like to do? Well, for one, they prefer to socialize rather than watch stuff.

And they are becoming more digitally literate, with 61 percent understanding the words “reload” or “refresh.” Still, only 16 percent understand one of Silicon Valley’s favorite terms, “widget.”

Of the third without broadband access, or nonadopters, the FCC splits them into four categories.

The “Digitally Distant” make up 10 percent of the general population, finding the Internet, simply put, useless.

But eight percent are “Digital Hopefuls,” who “like the idea of being online, but lack the resources to connect using broadband.” As in, it is too expensive.

The “Digitally Uncomfortable”–also known as “BoomTown’s mother and Twitter nemesis”–are essentially afraid of having to understand what a widget means.

Finally, 10 percent are “Near Converts,” just one price point away from signing up.

Here is the full report embedded below, as well as one of two highlights videos from an interview Walt Mossberg and I did at D6 with former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in May 2008.

In it, we harangued Martin about all these issues, using a whole lot of charts showing how the U.S. had very poor but very pricey access.

As you might imagine, we are super looking forward to having Genachowski onstage at D8!

FCCSurvey –

[ See post to watch video ]

New FCC Report: Reaching the "Digitally Distant," but "Digital Hopefuls" Too (We'll Ask Chairman Genachowski About It and More at D8)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:42:09 +0000