After AllThingsD.com reported earlier today that Facebook had been in advanced discussions with the federal government to allow it to disclose requests under national security laws, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), to the public, sources said that Google has appeared to be following its lead and is similarly engaged in talks to do the same.

This parallel effort would allow the Internet giants, as well as other digital companies, to disclose aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, as well as their scope.

This controversial issue has occupied Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. over the last week, after a series of news reports about the level of U.S. government scrutiny of telephonic and online communications of all kinds.

While sources noted that the discussions might not result in any action, it appears as if they are in advanced stages and could result in more robust disclosures being allowed if agreements can be made.

Pressure to take action has escalated ever since myriad allegations that top Silicon Valley Internet giants had given authorities unprecedented access to their huge stores of information via a National Security Agency program called PRISM. The companies, also including Microsoft and Yahoo, have denied that kind of “direct” access, but cannot escape the spotlight placed on how much information they are all compelled by the government to hand over legally.

That’s why all of them — facing consumer backlash and a big hit to their reputations — have called on the government to allow them to lift restrictions on reporting national security requests for information.

Google has been most vocal in calling for changes, while also taking to government officials behind the scenes, as Facebook had already been doing. The two companies, though, are not working together, and are having these discussions separately.

How much leverage the pair have together or apart is unclear. Collectively, they could threaten to sue the government to allow the disclosures, or be more publicly pugnacious about cooperation, as Twitter has done.

Instead, they are employing both public statements and private outreach to the Justice Department, the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The goal is to be able to release more accurate information, typically via a “transparency report,” which discloses legal queries received.

But strict non-disclosure rules for the most important ones, from FISA, prevent the companies from telling users what is being given to the government.

Earlier this week, Google’s top lawyer David Drummond published an open letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director Robert Mueller Tuesday asking to be able to publish information on such requests.

Drummond noted that the government should be able to “publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures — in terms of both the number we receive and their scope.”

He added: “Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.”

Maybe we will see soon enough, sources tell me, including the possibility that the numbers could be available within a few days.

The report, obtained in advance by AllThingsD, shows just how different the new generation of mobile games is from the gaming-only devices that previously reigned supreme. For context, back in Q4 2012, total consumer spending on games for iOS and Android devices surpassed spending on “gaming-optimized handhelds” (that is, Sony’s PSP and Vita, and Nintendo’s DS, DSi and 3DS).

But the real bombshell is in the new report, which covers Q1 2013: In that quarter, consumer spending on Sony’s and Nintendo’s handhelds declined significantly, while iOS and Google Play spending both increased, also significantly. Combined, the phone and tablet crowd spent nearly three times as much on games as handheld device owners.

(And bear in mind, of course, that a new 3DS or PS Vita game costs about $40, while even brand-new mobile games are typically free or 99 cents to download, with many offering optional in-game purchases.)

But wait, you say. This is the first quarter of the year, being compared to the lucrative holiday-driven fourth quarter. How is that fair to Sony and Nintendo?

Exactly. It’s not. With slower game production schedules and much lower device turnover, the holiday quarter matters a great deal to Nintendo and Sony. But for consumers with a steady stream of new games and newer, better devices on which to play those games, seasonality is mostly irrelevant.

IDC and App Annie’s numbers, then, amount to a double whammy: At both the best of times and the worst of times, new-school mobile games beat out their older counterparts.

A few other points of interest from the new report:

• The global install base for those “gaming-optimized handhelds” was about 200 million in Q1 2013. To put that in perspective, Gartner estimates that more than 2 billion phones and tablets are being/will be shipped this year alone. In other words, it’s through volume that mobile devices have closed and blown past the revenue-per-user gap.
• Although the total amount consumers spent on mobile games was far greater on iOS than on Android, gaming amounted to about 80 percent of all consumer spending on Android, vs. about 70 percent on iOS.
• The report splits consumers into four geographic zones: North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. For both Android and gaming-optimized handhelds, the Asia-Pacific share of total spending increased by more than 10 points (see the chart embedded below).

This report is the second such collaboration between IDC, which tracks videogame and entertainment hardware, and App Annie, which tracks mobile software and in-app revenue.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer recently met with top execs at Hulu, the premium video service whose big media company owners have been considering selling it for some months.

Sources said Yahoo is “in the process,” although the Silicon Valley Internet giant has not made any kind of formal bid. Other players whom sources said are considering purchasing all or parts of Hulu include: Former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who now has a successful and well-funded multimedia and investment company called the Chernin Group; Guggenheim Partners digital arm, which is led by former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn; and Amazon.

Sources said Mayer also had an extensive getting-to-know-you meeting, which was apparently not held at Hulu’s offices in Santa Monica, Calif., along with COO Henrique De Castro. The discussion is taking place in the wake of Yahoo’s failed bid — largely engineered by De Castro — to purchase a majority stake in France Télécom’s Dailymotion video service, after a top French government official said Yahoo could not own 75 percent of the company.

Had the deal — which was reportedly valued at $300 million — gone through, it would have been the most significant by Mayer since she took over at the company last July. Thus far, she has limited her purchases to small mobile startup.

While the meetings with Hulu are only preliminary, Yahoo has been to this video rodeo before, having seriously considering buying Hulu when it was previously being shopped by its owners, News Corp., Disney and Comcast. (News Corp. also owns this site.)

Of course, if Yahoo’s interest becomes more serious, Mayer will have to make important visits to top execs at those media giants, since they control the rights to critical content, and thus Hulu’s value.

As Peter Kafka noted in a previous post about Hulu’s possible sale, “much hinges on the licensing rights News Corp., Disney and Comcast would provide for the money-losing site, as well as what happens to the $300 million debt its owners have taken on in the last year.”

Without those rights, Hulu by itself is a very pretty Web site and video platform, but not worth the billions it would be with very long-term television rights, content that attracts users. Currently, sources said its media owners are offering two to three years of rights, with a lot of flexibility over removing content from the site, which is not quite as attractive a deal (to say the least).

But video is a key component of Yahoo’s strategy going forward. Along with mobile efforts, Mayer has explicitly told investors that video was a key to company under her tenure.

Coincidentally, today in an onstage interview at a Wired conference in New York, Mayer broadly addressed the video issue when asked a question about the topic, noting it was important across all of Yahoo’s properties.

“I think video is really important … video is something that we’re all innately designed and born to experience, everyone is born being able to watch and to hear,” she said. “Video is just this amazing format.”

Mayer would know that well, having been at Google when the search giant bought YouTube, ironically snatching it at the last minute from a competing bid by Yahoo, which was then led by Terry Semel. Since then, YouTube has become the most important and powerful player in the space by far.

Yahoo, despite being one of the largest video players on the Web, has mostly been a lackluster competitor in the arena, pinging over the years from creating original content to doing branded deals with media companies, but never establishing a major beachhead with consumers as Hulu did from scratch.

Short of a full acquisition, there may be a way for Yahoo to partner and invest in Hulu, instead of buying it outright that works for all sides — owners get a new owner to foot part of the bill and also increase distribution, and Yahoo can claim that it’s providing users with exponentially more content that would help Yahoo’s long-declining engagement problem.

Sources said News Corp. and Disney have mulled scenarios where one or both companies hang on to the site, while Comcast has no control over Hulu’s fate, having given up its management rights to the site as a concession to federal regulators.

But the strength of the Hulu brand is clear and it has had some success in building a more significant business. While a lot of its video offerings are free, about four million people are paying for a Hulu Plus subscription.

Still, Hulu’s strength might be lagging, especially given after talented founding leader Jason Kilar recently left. Last year, Hulu was a top 10 video site, according to comScore. No longer — in a report in March, it had dropped out of the top 10.

While this likely has more to do with methodology than real decline in Hulu ratings, it does show that while it’s the biggest thing Yahoo could buy or invest in, Yahoo itself has plenty of video views, many more than Hulu.

The question for Mayer then is how much of Yahoo’s multi-billon-dollar cash kitty she wants to bet on a big video play. She might also be considering buying several smaller ones, said sources, with Yahoo having also looked at some smaller video sites, including Blip and Grab Media.

A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment and Yahoo PR has not responded to a query for comment (if ever).

Apparently, you can get media satisfaction — as long as you are online as opposed to offline.

According to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group, consumers accrue more value from their online media usage than from their offline consumption.

The new research report — titled “Follow the Surplus: How U.S. Consumers Value Online Media” — calculated that the average U.S. online user got a “consumer surplus” of $970, compared to $900 from offline media.

BCG defines consumer surplus as “the value consumers themselves place on a media-related activity or product over and above what they pay for it.”

The report looked at seven categories — books, radio and music, U.S. newspapers and magazines, TV and movies, video games, international newspapers and magazines and user-generated content and social networks.

The largest chunk of online consumer satisfaction came from UGC and social, such as use of Facebook and Google’s YouTube, which makes sense since the actual cost is nearly zero — making any benefit essentially digital gravy.

Books were where the least consumer surplus was online. That’s not a surprise, said BCG senior partner John Rose, who coauthored the report, but it is likely to change soon with the increasing popularity and proliferation of a variety of devices.

That’s double from three years ago, with the average consumer now owning 2.9 devices, such as mobile smartphones and tablets. It will increase to 4.1 in three years, said the BCG report. Also up, of course, is the number of hours spent online, which — in turn — dramatically increases the value of online media consumption.

Advertisers still have not caught up with consumers, of course. “The value is from the consumers’ perspective and not the advertisers’ perspective yet,” said Rose, in an interview. “The business models are still not in place to support what consumers already know they want.”

Gender is not an issue, with men and women both consuming about 12 hours a week of online content. But men listen to more music, while women prefer social interaction more.

Another interesting result, read the report: “By a margin of some five to one, U.S. consumers are more excited about the Internet’s potential rewards than they are worried about the potential risks.”

In other words, they like online media, they really like it.

That’s why, said Rose, the medium and the business model will evenutally come together.

“Different people will say different things about when it will come together and not if it will come together,” said Rose. “Advertisers have always found ways to create value, even if they have not done it yet with online media.”

There are lots of other interesting findings and charts from BCG, some of which are embedded below (click to enlarge them and the whole report can be found and downloaded here).

Really funny:

Yahoo reported its fourth-quarter earnings today, with earnings higher than expected, but with a continued flattish revenue.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant aid its non-GAAP net profits were 32 cents a share, compared to 25 cents in the same period a year ago. But GAAP net earnings per diluted share were 23 cents in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to 24 cents last year.

Shares jumped just above four percent in after-hours trading to above $21 a share, given Wall Street analysts were estimating a profit of 27 cents per share in Q4.

Net revenue, without traffic acquisition costs, was expected to be $1.21 billion. It was $1.22 billion and which is essentially flat from a year ago’s $1.17 billion. Search revenue was up nicely, while display sales declined.

Overall the results showed a non-sinking but none-too-powerful ship and not very impressive given almost every other Internet company grew revenue significantly in comparison. For example, Google reported last week that core revenue was up 21 percent in the quarter.

Still, up is up, even if it is not up that much. “I’m proud of Yahoo!’s 2012 and fourth quarter results. In 2012, Yahoo! exhibited revenue growth for the first time in 4 years, with revenue up 2 percent year-over-year,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a statement.

In other words, she’ll take two percent, given the nearly persistent revenue declines of recent years. It is progress, of course, even if investors are looking for more robust increases ahead.

Also of note: Yahoo said it repurchased 79.6 million shares at an average price of $18.24 for $1.45 billion in the fourth quarter, which most definitely was one of the reasons for its recent stock run-up.

Yahoo did not release information on consumer engagement and traffic in the Q4 report, which it had done until Mayer took over. As AllThingsD.com had previously reported, most metrics in the quarter were down significantly over last year.

The fourth quarter was the first that was entirely under the new regime of Mayer, who arrive at Yahoo in July from Google.

She’s gotten a big break from Wall Street, which has sent Yahoo’s stock up in recent months on the hopes of her turnaround plans.

Last week, Mayer said the long-suffering Silicon Valley giant would be returning “back to its roots,” as part of an effort to finally turn it around. It’s actually part of a bigger plan which AllThingsD.com had reported on previously, to focus Yahoo on being a center of content discovery on the Web, across multiple devices, with wide-ranging and “very friendly” partnerships with other companies.

More to come at the 2 pm PT, conference call with Mayer, which I will be liveblogging as usual.

Until then, here’s the official press release and deck from Yahoo:

YHOO_News_2013_1_28_General

Q4’12_Earnings_Presentation.vsFINAL

This week in Las Vegas, the new management team running Yahoo — including CEO Marissa Mayer — is at International CES to schmooze with big advertisers and convince them that Yahoo is the place to put large chunks of their marketing budgets.

One of the longtime selling points of the company is the sheer size of its audience, especially for the key money-making parts of the site — the homepage, Yahoo Mail and search.

But private stats from comScore show that those three areas have continued their longtime decline over the last year, in some cases dropping significantly. In November and December, for example, compared to the same two months a year ago, U.S. search was down 28 percent and 24 percent respectively, while mail was down 16 percent and 12 percent.

This matters a great deal, since the troika of homepage, mail and search have been the critical driver of the Yahoo value ecosystem for advertisers.

The impact of those drops is felt all over Yahoo, whose music, movie, games and travel site have also seen massive drop-offs in traffic year over year in those same months.

Stopping the decline is critical for Yahoo, since Mayer herself has underscored the need for size in her pushing for new businesses at Yahoo that are 100 million users in size and/or have revenue prospects of at least $100 million.

While this is a lofty vision, the reality of traffic falloffs on key properties is a vexing issue, especially since they remain its main source of revenue and also an important element in launching future products Mayer is promising will turbocharge the company.

It’s not that Yahoo is not huge, especially compared to most sites on the Web.

As one of the top Internet brands, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average number of total monthly unique visitors for the longtime Silicon Valley Internet company in 2012 was 141.6 million, No. 3 behind Google and Facebook in the U.S. market. Similar rankings were reported by comScore, which placed Yahoo at the No. 2 spot after Google, with 171.4 million monthly visitors in November.

But, for many years, traffic to those important consumer destinations of Yahoo has been on a clear and unstopping decline, statistics (usually from comScore) that the company nonetheless always dutifully puts in its earnings slides — see below — for investors to get some idea of the major and vexing issues facing the company.

That was suddenly ended in the last quarter with the engagement slide removed from Yahoo’s public deck entirely. Not all companies include such stats, so when I inquired as to why the company had made the change, Yahoo PR never returned my phone call.

But it’s not hard to guess the reason for the shift — the numbers were not good and they called more attention to Yahoo’s glaring challenge, which is getting users reengaged with its products by creating what Mayer has dubbed several times “delightful” experiences.

According to numerous sources, that has also been the case within the company too, with the new regime restricting an internal transparency initiative pushed by former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving that shared product performance numbers with the top 100 leaders at Yahoo.

And while it’s an interesting strategic choice, several sources inside the company this week urged me to get ahold of increasingly worrisome numbers from comScore — available to its private clients — comparing November 2011 to November 2012 and also December 2011 to December 2012 at home and work in the U.S.

So I did, getting the same stats from numerous sources — numbers that a spokesman for comScore confirmed were correct.

And, as promised, they are worrisome indeed.

In November 2012, compared to November 2011, the monthly unique visitors to the homepage declined 17 percent to 91.8 million from 110.9 million; Yahoo Mail dropped 16 percent (from 92 million to 77.7 million); and Yahoo search dropped 28 percent (from 93.3 million to 66.9 million).

Also off significantly for all three areas, often by one-third, were a plethora of other stats: Percentage of reach, total minutes, total page views, total visits and more.

One of the only bright spots for Yahoo was the relatively small Flickr sites, which were up 37 percent — 26.7 million versus 19.4 million — in unique monthly visitors year over year. The photo-sharing site — which has been getting a much-needed refresh — was also up in all other stats.

But Flickr — which Mayer (pictured here) has laudably touted and supported after years of inexplicable neglect — is not a money-maker for Yahoo, even if its return does burnish the company’s tech and innovation cred.

In December 2011 to December 2012, the homepage was more stable, gaining four percent in monthly uniques from 109.4 million to 114.2 million, but with other key stats both rising and falling. Total visits were up 14 percent, for example, while average minutes per visit was down 13.6 percent.

But the trouble for mail or search continued, off 12 percent (89.9 million to 78.7 million) and 24 percent (88.7 million to 67.4 million) respectively in monthly uniques, with similarly major declines in all other stats.

Mail recently got a refresh too under Mayer, despite some recent security glitches, so new stats will show if that will help stem the declines. Search is another story all together, with Yahoo in what can only be described as a dysfunctional partnership with Microsoft that numerous sources tell me Mayer is seeking to end.

The homepage, too, is undergoing a redo, with a design that has a decidedly more mobile and social feel, and pushing an ethos of Yahoo becoming a hub for content discovery. It is hoped the new look will boost traffic relatively quickly from its current downward trajectory.

To be fair, there can be lots and lots of reasons for these declines, although most of Yahoo’s competitors are, at worse, seeing a flattening of growth and not outright declines.

And sometimes Internet sites complain that services like comScore undercount, although Yahoo had previously used the firm in its public documents. More to the point, as multiple sources within the company note, the stats are directionally correct in that they closely track with internal Yahoo numbers.

Which is to say, traffic is going down rather than growing. That is clearly why Mayer has loudly stressed mobile since arriving at Yahoo, an area not included in these numbers that many sources said has strong growth to about 70 million monthly unique visitors via its apps and mobile-enabled Web offerings.

But unlike the homepage, mail and search — which push and pull traffic all over Yahoo and are responsible for most of its current monetization — mobile also makes very little money now. And Yahoo — unlike Facebook, which recently did — does not break out mobile results.

So, it will be interesting to see if the company does so when it reports fourth-quarter earnings on January 28 and also if it says anything about continued traffic declines of its traditional Web business in the period and the impact on revenue.

Still, there are lots of ways to counter declining or flat revenues, even with declining traffic — via cost cuts, efficiencies, charging more and selling assets (as Yahoo did in the last quarter). And Yahoo has ably managed to keep its operating margins growing over the years, despite both the declines in traffic and moribund growth in its revenue.

But the real and only fix is the drastic fix to existing tentpoles Yahoo has and the creation or acquisition of products that excite consumers and, therefore, advertisers.

It’s not an easy thing, of course, as well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz recently wrote in his blog about the need to focus on products over building and improving culture — one of Mayer’s other big initiatives at Yahoo.

Wrote Horowitz in what I consider one of the clearest articulations of what it takes to win for startups, as well as big companies like Yahoo:

“The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something 10X better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does.”

If you want to take a gander, here are some more of those old Yahoo quarterly engagement slides, which were recently eliminated from its presentations:

(Note: I reached out to Yahoo’s outside PR firm — since they do respond to queries — and also some company execs to get a comment on this story, but so far there has been none.)

It seems like a month does not pass without another rumor about when Chinese Internet powerhouse Alibaba Group will have its much-anticipated IPO.

Today, in the latest loosely-sourced report, a newsletter quoted a Chinese-language site on a leaked memo that allegedly said the preparations would begin in the second half of 2013 for a public offering in late 2013 or early 2014.

Maybe not so fast, according to sources close to the situation, who note that incentives in a recent stock buyback with major shareholder Yahoo could drive a public offering to the end of 2015.

The timeframe is not a deadline, of course, but Alibaba benefits more if it does its IPO by then. Sources said the IPO will depend entirely on market timing and there is not a current plan to do so soon.

The news matters a great deal to Yahoo investors, especially because much of its market valuation is still made up of the remaining 22 percent stake it still holds in Alibaba, as well as its assets in Yahoo! Japan.

Yahoo completed the sale of half its stake in Alibaba earlier this year for $7.6 billion, netting the Silicon Valley Internet giant about $4.5 billion — most of which is being used for repurchases of shares.

As Alibaba noted at the time of that deal:

“Under the terms of the agreement with Yahoo!, Alibaba Group has the right to repurchase one-half of Yahoo!’s remaining stake upon a qualifying initial public offering in the future. Yahoo! originally acquired its stake in Alibaba Group in 2005 in exchange for US$1 billion and sale of its Yahoo! China business to Alibaba Group.”

Since then, Alibaba’s value has risen dramatically on a strong performance in its various units, including e-commerce giant Taobao.

At the time of its stock buyback with Yahoo, Alibaba’s value was $40 billion, which some think will rise strongly over the next few years.

That’s no guarantee, of course, and it depends how Alibaba’s business in China and elsewhere fares. That has not stopped some Yahoo investors, in fact, from flogging gigantic Alibaba IPO valuations, despite the fact that the company is mulling whether to keep it lower to avoid a Facebook-like debacle.

And while it’s clear the company is eventually headed for an IPO, those close to the situation said its management is not in any rush, especially with a recent influx of capital from investors such as Silver Lake, DST Global, Temasek and Yunfeng Fund.

“So many rumors have been floated on this IPO and we can expect a lot more until it actually happens,” said one source.

Here’s the official news from my earlier report about new Yahoo board member Max Levchin and the departure of two directors, Weather Channel’s CEO and Chairman David Kenny and Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit.

Levchin is the fourth director to be appointed as part of an mutually agreed-upon agreement between Yahoo and Third Point’s Dan Loeb, as part of a settlement of its proxy fight earlier this year.

He’s a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur, with stints at PayPal and Slide, a Facebook social apps maker that was sold to Google and later closed down.

Some sources close to the situation maintain that other current board members are also mulling eventual departure and that there will be more director additions, but that is not expected to happen for the next months.

Here’s the official press release:

YHOO_News_2012_12_13_General

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some stats from IBM about Thursday:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Late last week, I made my way down to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center to visit Brett Bullington, the always energetic and ebullient Silicon Valley exec and investor.

He had gotten into a serious accident last month while cycling across the country to raise money and awareness for a charity in Africa, and had been hospitalized with severe brain trauma.

And, indeed, it was severe, with initial reports about his prognosis — on a Tumblr blog about him — pretty depressing to read. As in most cases, progress is usually slow and sometimes discouraging.

Not in Brett’s case, as it has turned out. As Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote: “Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking.”

And as you can see from the video below, Brett is now walking and doing a very good job of it, considering. Most of all, he is getting better at it day by day.

Indeed, when I visited, I was a bit nervous to see him in a less-than-high-energy state I was used to. But while the room was dark when I walked in, because he was napping, the minute he awoke, he was the Brett I had always known.

He peppered me with questions about tech news, including on how Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer was doing, and what did I think of Facebook now, and how my partner, Megan Smith, was liking working at Google X.

Brett also felt badly about the accident, especially the toll it had taken on his family, but said few things that were not forward-looking.

As his wonderful wife, Diana, noted to me in an email, Brett is now “truly present.”

Let’s not kid ourselves — it will still be a tough road to recovery. Brett has a triangular-shaped head, due to the large part of his skull that was removed, which needs to be fixed via complex surgery. And he has some moments of forgetfulness and confusion — although they seemed rare when I was there. Most of all, this work is exhausting for him, especially since he is making major strides every day.

But, after seeing him, I am extraordinarily hopeful — Brett might not have recovered at all, and so it was a trip to have him ask me to help him organize a mani-pedi party when he gets home sometime in the first week of December.

Done.

In fact, Brett is going to leave the hospital this week for a day to be with his family on Thanksgiving, which is just the kind of thing to be truly thankful for.

Until he is out and about, here’s a video taken last week of him walking — the helmet is to protect his exposed head in case of a fall:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121119/something-to-be-thankful-for-brett-bullingtons-recovery-path-is-made-by-walking-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121118/yahoo-and-facebook-not-in-search-alliance-discussions/ http://allthingsd.com/20121118/yahoo-and-facebook-not-in-search-alliance-discussions/#comments Mon, 19 Nov 2012 04:48:43 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=270663

Yahoo and Facebook are not currently in talks about forming a search alliance or building a search engine together, according to my sources, who scoffed about such a deal reported in a thinner-than-tissue-paper post by the Telegraph earlier today.

In addition, Yahoo is not anywhere near ending its search partnership with Microsoft, although new CEO Marissa Mayer has been in touch with the software giant about improving performance that has been less than lackluster over the course of its history so far.

Despite this, it would be nearly impossible for Yahoo to extricate itself from the long-term contract easily — though there are certain, but very difficult, outs. But sources tell me Microsoft would fight any attempt to end it earlier.

Thus, while Yahoo and Facebook have had a very good relationship of late, after the pair stopped warring over patents, and have also had success with its various sharing initiatives, a substantive search collaboration is not now in the mix.

Could the pair do more in terms of sharing among its users? Sure! Could they more tightly integrate services? Yep! Could they do something jointly related to advertising? Why not! But will they build a search engine together? Not likely.

Indeed, I am not even sure what such a thing means, since it would now be nearly impossible to execute, given Yahoo has outsourced its core search technology long ago to Microsoft and has been largely focused on improving search experience since then.

Of course, it’s no secret that Facebook is likely to enter the search arena in a more substantive manner in the future — CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has said so publicly — because people expect a better experience and users have been asking for years for improvements.

So watch that space, for certain, as it could also be very lucrative for the company and perhaps give search leader Google a bit more of a race.

But the social networking site is likely to work on its own in such an effort — as well as approach the space in much different ways. Hooking up with Yahoo would bring it almost nothing it might need to make it a success.

There are some interesting what-ifs to ponder with the idea of Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo forming some kind of Avengers-style effort to battle Google, especially if it had a mobile element. But that’s the movie version at this moment.

(Speaking of movies, I am sorry it took me so long to get to this, but I was seeing the final “Twilight” with some All Things Digital staffers. I can report that the sparkly vampires of the film are also not in search alliance talks with Facebook.)

One unusual phrase in the Telegraph article did catch my eye though, which noted that “board members expect the talks to lead to much more substantial collaboration based around Web-based search.”

Such a Facebook search tie-up rumor would certainly do wonders for a Yahoo stock pop tomorrow for all the hedge funds now piling into the Silicon Valley Internet giant, would that it were so.

But it’s not.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121118/yahoo-and-facebook-not-in-search-alliance-discussions/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121106/one-more-election-prediction-from-no-not-nate-silver-or-karl-rove-surveymonkey/ http://allthingsd.com/20121106/one-more-election-prediction-from-no-not-nate-silver-or-karl-rove-surveymonkey/#comments Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:23:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=267092

As you head to the polls right now, you might be inundated by all the pundits and polls and pontificating.

I know I am.

But here’s one more, from a source that is new to the game — Silicon Valley’s SurveyMonkey, which did its own election poll for the 2012 Presidential race. The company surveyed about 1.2 million people from Aug. 17 to Nov. 2.

Its goal?

“With this data, we seek to show that Internet data is as good as phone data (if not better) at assessing public opinion.”

This report embedded below is from the 600,000 people who responded to its poll from Oct. 3 through Nov. 2, and looks at the data in three different models, all excluding weekends and using a seven-day trailing sum. Interestingly, all three SurveyMonkey models show fewer swing states than other polls.

In the first, called a RAW look, with no weighting or correction, Republican candidate Mitt Romney wins; in a HOW “correction,” which corrects for sampling method, Democratic President Barack Obama wins in a squeaker; in the WHO correction, which corrects for sampling frame, Obama is a much clearer winner.

SurveyMonkey is going with the third one — WHO.

Said the company:

“Model #3 accounts for the differential of polled and actual voters without getting caught up in the pros and cons of an Internet sample in particular. It is similar, but not identical to what other pollsters are saying and has shown itself to be consistently ahead of the curve of other polls for the past month.”

Well, we’ll all know soon enough, as the votes are counted in an election — which I think is the only safe prediction — in which the Internet plays a greater role than ever.

Until then, here’s the full SurveyMonkey report to chew over, as well as one on just the battleground states:

final models FINAL version

battlegrounds

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121106/one-more-election-prediction-from-no-not-nate-silver-or-karl-rove-surveymonkey/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121027/sandy-is-also-a-perfect-digital-storm-google-cancels-nyc-android-event/ http://allthingsd.com/20121027/sandy-is-also-a-perfect-digital-storm-google-cancels-nyc-android-event/#comments Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:24:20 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=264176

There have been storms before, of course. But few have gotten the kind of massive attention that tropical storm Sandy has gotten well before its expected arrival on Sunday across the Eastern seaboard.

Besides the high likelihood of the intense rain and winds downing power lines that will surely interrupt both cellphone service and Internet access, at least temporarily, the potential weather disaster is also felling a major tech event that was scheduled for Monday in New York: Google’s rollout of new Android products.

The search giant was expected to introduce its Nexus 10 tablet and possibly a new Nexus smartphone made by LG, as well as an updated version of the Android operating system.

But, at this moment, Android bigwig Andy Rubin will still be appearing at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference that is also taking place in Manhattan on Monday and Tuesday. Rubin is currently scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Coincidentally, Microsoft scheduled its Windows Phone 8 event in San Francisco on the same day, which is still on. Weather report for the Bay Area on Monday: 72 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny.

Also: Go Giants!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121027/sandy-is-also-a-perfect-digital-storm-google-cancels-nyc-android-event/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121022/why-zynga-should-have-seen-draw-somethings-fall-coming/ http://allthingsd.com/20121022/why-zynga-should-have-seen-draw-somethings-fall-coming/#comments Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:59:26 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=262238 A new report being distributed today breaks down how consumers use mobile applications differently over time, and in doing so, shows why it’s unwise to make a big investment bet based largely on a single game title, no matter how popular it is at the moment.

The study conducted by Flurry, a mobile-analytics provider, found that social games are among the most intensely used apps, but only for a finite period of time.

In a blog post, Flurry compared the characteristics of social games to mobile dating applications: “For most people, we can assume that finding a long-term ‘significant other’ is the ultimate goal of dating. As a result, the app maker should expect customer churn. While usage may be high during the time when a consumer looks for a suitable partner, once that person is found, usage stops.”

The same goes for social games, which consumers play frequently at first, but then tire of over a period of three months.

Based on a sample of apps used 1.7 billion times each week, Flurry determined that social games are played about 7.9 times a week on average, which is much more frequently than people check the weather (3.7 times per week). But while interest in the weather is abiding, loyalty falls off pretty quickly for games. After 30 days, 47 percent of players are still engaged; after 60 days, 34 percent are still engaged; and after 90 days, 29 percent are still engaged. In contrast, after 90 days, 55 percent of people are still checking the weather.

While this pattern may not be a surprise to some, the most public example of this trend recently was the game Draw Something. After Zynga purchased the company responsible for the mobile-gaming hit, usage immediately started tanking. In the month following the acquisition, Draw Something lost nearly five million daily active users, dropping from 15 million to 10 million. Today, it has closer to two million users. Zynga now expects to write down about half of the $200 million investment this year.

While some chalked up Draw Something’s instant popularity to a fad, it’s now pretty clear that the game was just following the same bell curve that other mobile games follow. In other words, churn and burn, baby!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121022/why-zynga-should-have-seen-draw-somethings-fall-coming/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/ http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 21:29:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=254410

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound familiar?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120927/what-will-marissa-do-heres-yahoos-2011-three-year-21-page-product-strategy-plan-that-reads-a-lot-like-mayers-new-vision/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120823/fenwick-vc-survey-q2-funding-valuations-shoot-the-moon/ http://allthingsd.com/20120823/fenwick-vc-survey-q2-funding-valuations-shoot-the-moon/#comments Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:00:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=244256

According to Fenwick & West’s latest Silicon Valley Venture Capital Survey, fundings in the second quarter of this year showed the highest valuation increases in more than five years.

Looking at 115 financings of tech and life sciences companies, in Q2 the well-known tech-focused law firm saw “up” rounds accounting for 74 percent, while “down” ones were 11 percent. Flat rounds were 15 percent.

That was a marked change from the previous quarter, which was 65 percent up, 22 percent down and 13 percent flat.

More importantly, it was the 12th consecutive quarter in which ups were ahead of downs.

Perhaps even more importantly, average funding prices for the quarter rose 99 percent, which is nearly double the 52 percent increase in Q1. Two big-ticket financings upped the Q2 number, which would have been 70 percent if they were removed.

Still, it is the highest amount increase since Fenwick began compiling the numbers in 2004.

Internet/digital media and software was the biggest beneficiary of the rise. Hardware was next, but life sciences and cleantech did not keep pace.

Fenwick said that VC fundraising is still lower than 2007 levels, noting that “venture capital continues to be a tale of two cities, where the Internet/digital media and software industries dominate other industries, and venture capitalists with proven track records can raise large funds but fundraising for others is much more problematic.”

The report, co-authored by Fenwick partners Barry J. Kramer and Michael J. Patrick, noted that Series B rounds were strong in the quarter, although the percentage of them has declined for three straight quarters, “perhaps indicating that companies are having difficulty securing Series B funding, but those that do are being rewarded with substantial valuation increases.”

Here’s the report for your personal perusal:

Q212_VC_Terms_Survey_Report _Spacing_

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120823/fenwick-vc-survey-q2-funding-valuations-shoot-the-moon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120806/web-stocks-catch-a-break-today-heading-up-in-overall-stock-rally/ http://allthingsd.com/20120806/web-stocks-catch-a-break-today-heading-up-in-overall-stock-rally/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:25:29 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=238436

Internet stocks got a much needed boost today, after the market rose to its highest levels in three months on solid earnings reports and less worry about the economic disaster in Europe.

The downhill-sliding of Facebook stopped again today, with a 3.9 percent rise to close at $21.92. While still off more than 42 percent since its May IPO, the social networking giant got itself back on the prettier side of $20.

Content portal AOL also had a 3.7 percent gain, likely due to news of a patent dispute settlement, to close at $33.83. It is up an impressive 124 percent for the year.

LinkedIn, one of the few Class of Web 2.0 winners, rose 2.8 percent to $111.55; the business network is up 77 percent for the year.

Better still: Zynga, which has been suffering badly of late, was up about 8.1 percent to close at $2.94 (the online gaming company is still down 69 percent year to date). The same was true of Groupon, another stock loser of late, with its shares rising more than 10 percent to $7.25, which is still down 65 percent for the year.

Also up strongly was recommendations site Yelp, which gained 8.7 percent to $25.43.

Also up smartly: Travel site Kayak, up 4.2 percent to $32.68; video service Brightcove, up almost 6 percent to $14.74; reservation site OpenTable, up 1.9 percent to $40.29; music streaming service Pandora, up 2.5 percent to $9.79; and collaboration software company Jive, up just over 2 percent to $19.11.

In contrast, Internet giant Yahoo gained less than a half of a percent in today’s trading, though it did finally remain above the $16 price barrier to close at $16.04. It is down a little more than a half of a percent for the year, despite the recent splashy hiring of new CEO Marissa Mayer.

Google, too, saw only a quarter percent rise, to $642.82. The search giant is also down a half of a percent for the year.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120806/web-stocks-catch-a-break-today-heading-up-in-overall-stock-rally/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120725/dear-internet-ipo-investors-so-very-sorry-but-not-really-after-you-see-our-next-fundings-signed-silicon-valley/ http://allthingsd.com/20120725/dear-internet-ipo-investors-so-very-sorry-but-not-really-after-you-see-our-next-fundings-signed-silicon-valley/#comments Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:11:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=233985

If you invested some of your money in the series of big, splashy IPOs that Silicon Valley has largely funded and churned out over the last year, you might be a little irritated.

Even irked. Possibly quite out of sorts.

And you would have good reason if you looked at the performance of many of the freshmen companies that have come out since early last summer.

That’s because of all of them, only three — business network LinkedIn, enterprise software start-up Jive and the recently debuted travel site Kayak — are your friends, up 9.8 percent since its May 27, 2011, debut; 26 percent since a December 15, 2011, opening; and about six percent since an IPO last week, respectively. In addition, video services company Brightcove is up a small 2.7 percent since its February 21, 2012, IPO.

Not so much for the other four, which have been much rockier, in order of their public offerings: music streaming site Pandora, down 29.6 percent since its June 24, 2011, IPO; Groupon, down 72.3 percent since the daily deals site’s November 7, 2011, IPO; Zynga, down 46.6 percent since its December 19, 2011, IPO; and Facebook, down almost 23 percent since its May 18, 2012, IPO.

But the stock weakness — as social networking giant Facebook preps to release its first earnings report as a public company tomorrow, after Zynga’s disastrous Q2 results from its online gaming business earlier today — does not seem to have stopped the frothy valuations for private start-ups from being even more foamy.

Along with a $2.6 billion new mega venture fund from New Enterprise Associates, comes a Wall Street Journal report that online storage company Box is raising a new round at a $1.2 billion valuation and hopes to IPO at a $2 billion to $3 billion one next year; and online payments start-up Square is looking at a $3.25 billion-valued round, according to the New York Times, which is 13.5 times higher than just two years ago.

Caveat: While there have been some good returns to private investors in the M&A space of late, such as social enterprise network Yammer’s recent $1.2 billion sale to Microsoft, not everyone is going to get such deals.

And definitely not public investors for whom hope either springs eternal — or just springs a leak.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120725/dear-internet-ipo-investors-so-very-sorry-but-not-really-after-you-see-our-next-fundings-signed-silicon-valley/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120710/merchants-say-fine-tuned-daily-deals-are-starting-to-pay-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20120710/merchants-say-fine-tuned-daily-deals-are-starting-to-pay-off/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:47:21 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=228869 It may have taken some fine tuning over the past four years, but merchants say that daily deals have started to perform better in recent months, according to a new survey.

The survey, which tracked 641 small-and medium-sized businesses during three time periods over the past year, found that the industry is performing better based on at least a couple of key metrics. In particular, it noted two areas of improvement: consumers are more willing to spend beyond the deal’s value and the amount spent by repeat customers on their next visit has increased.

The report was conducted by Utpal Dholakia, a professor of management at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

Most notably, his findings are in contrast with a study he conducted in June, which revealed a number of red flags, including a relatively low numbers of buyers who were spending beyond the deal value.

But in the report published last week, it was his goal to find out whether the industry’s performance was deteriorating as questions arose on the long-term viability of the business model. Dholakia explained the survey’s results in a video, saying: “We were concerned because of negative publicity that many of these daily deals sites have received that performance might be deteriorating.”

Indeed, over the past couple of years, there have been a number of recurring issues brought up in the media, ranging from deal fatigue (the phenomenon in which consumers become less enthusiastic about purchasing offers) to stories about merchants becoming overrun with deal-seekers to the point of exhaustion. Additionally, Groupon’s public offering was fraught with a number of problems, and the company continues to trade at more than half off. Today, its stock fell 5.5 percent, or 48 cents, to trade at $8.31 a share.

Despite all that, the professor added this surprisingly positive message: “On most measures, performance has remained the same or has improved.”

Both Groupon and LivingSocial have spent the past year or so fine-tuning the experience and working more closely with merchants to ensure that each deal is a success. Looks like the extra effort is starting to pay off.

Here’s some of the findings from the report, along with Dholakia’s video:

• Almost 80 percent of daily deal patrons are new customers, even for businesses running their seventh (or more) daily deal. Businesses continue to see equally stable conversion rates for both repeat purchasing and spending beyond deal value.
• The most profitable daily deal sectors in order: Photographers; health and fitness services;  tourism-related services; and doctors and dentists.
• The least profitable deals: Cleaning services; restaurants and bars; and retailers.
• The percentage of businesses making money remained fairly stable in Spring 2011 (55.5 percent) and October 2011 (54.9 percent), but jumped by 6 points in the May 2012 to 61.5 percent.
• Smaller businesses were able to retain customers better: Businesses with annual revenue below $500,000 enjoyed a 41 percent retention rate compared with larger businesses, which had a 15 percent retention rate.
• Daily deal site loyalty levels are low for businesses running multiple daily deals. For a business’ second deal, 54 percent used the same daily deal site they used the first time. By the time they have run seven or more deals, only 8.6 percent of businesses have used the same site for all their daily deals, whereas 27.5 percent have used four or more daily deal sites.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120710/merchants-say-fine-tuned-daily-deals-are-starting-to-pay-off/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120615/fewer-bigger-and-better-videogames-may-be-paying-off/ http://allthingsd.com/20120615/fewer-bigger-and-better-videogames-may-be-paying-off/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2012 16:38:25 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=220718 Over the past two years, publishers have focused on making fewer, bigger — and, in theory — better game franchises.

One example is Electronic Arts, which has eliminated 42 game franchises over the past two years, to focus on 25 of its best titles. Now there’s at least one data point that says the industrywide practice is starting to pay off.

In May, there were 27 percent fewer new game introductions, but the new console, portable and PC titles that did launch generated 188 percent more unit sales than they did a year ago, and 31 percent more dollars, according to NPD’s monthly game report.

“So, while there were fewer new item introductions this May, they collectively generated more unit and dollar sales,” said Anita Frazier, NPD Group’s videogame industry analyst.

One thing that helped drive positive results in May was the huge success of Activision Blizzard’s Diablo III for the PC.

NPD’s monthly game report primarily tracks new sales of hardware, software and accessories that occur at retail — in other words, it does not take into account game sales that happen electronically. Frazier estimates that the physical retail channel now only represents 50 percent to 60 percent of the total consumer spend on games.

But Frazier estimates that in May consumers also spent $155 million on used games and rentals, and $420 million on digital sales, including subscriptions, mobile apps, social games and downloadable content.

In all, she estimates that consumers spent $1.17 billion on both physical and digital games in May.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120615/fewer-bigger-and-better-videogames-may-be-paying-off/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120608/nearly-half-of-online-u-s-seniors-are-on-facebook/ http://allthingsd.com/20120608/nearly-half-of-online-u-s-seniors-are-on-facebook/#comments Fri, 08 Jun 2012 19:27:58 +0000 Mike Isaac http://allthingsd.com/?p=218268 Of the 20 million United States senior citizens who are online, nearly half have a Facebook account, according to a recent report from Forrester Research. Other online activities — shopping, single-player games and browsing photos — hover around 50 percent. But email use is the clear winner, with 91 percent of those 65 and older using it.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120608/nearly-half-of-online-u-s-seniors-are-on-facebook/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20120514/investors-told-that-facebook-ipo-range-will-be-at-34-to-38-range/ http://allthingsd.com/20120514/investors-told-that-facebook-ipo-range-will-be-at-34-to-38-range/#comments Mon, 14 May 2012 23:52:25 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=208076

According to several sources close to the situation, investors are being told that the IPO price range for Facebook will be from $34 to $38 a share.

That means the highest valuation will be just over $100 billion, fully diluted.

That is up from a much lower price of close to $31 a share last month, in filings related to its pending acquisition of photo-sharing start-up Instagram. Recent ranges have been pegged between $28 and $34.

Earlier today, reports surfaced about the possible rise in price, but it was slightly higher from $35 to $40.

The higher price is an indication that some reports last week saying there was weak investor interest were, well, wrong.

The official pricing for the blockbuster offering of the social networking site will take place Thursday, sources confirmed, with a public offering on Friday under the “FB” ticker symbol on the Nasdaq market.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120514/investors-told-that-facebook-ipo-range-will-be-at-34-to-38-range/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120502/look-men-shop-online-too/ http://allthingsd.com/20120502/look-men-shop-online-too/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 16:42:21 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=202490 As it turns out, for males, the Internet is not just about fantasy football and porn.

A new report by digital marketing agency iProspect finds that millions of affluent men are using the Internet for research and shopping — and spending a boatload of money.

It has long been assumed that women are the dominant shoppers online, and that if you were to start a company, it should be aimed at the female wallet. Well, here’s some testosterone to shoot down that argument.

IProspect identified a population of 19 million men over the age of 18 who make at least $100,000 and are frequently shopping online.

More of the report’s findings:

• 40 percent of respondents are shopping online at least twice a week, and those who are shopping multiple times are spending in excess of $30,000 annually.
• Luxury menswear in particular is benefiting, and is growing at a rate of about 14 percent every year.
• 70 percent of men in this demographic research and buy online, as opposed to researching online and then purchasing in the store.

Several e-commerce start-ups that have cropped up over the past couple of years are targeting this demographic, perhaps unknowingly. They include apparel sites like Gilt Groupe, Bonobos, Trunk Club, J. Hilburn and Indochino. The top Web sites visited are Amazon (41 percent), Yahoo (37 percent), Google (29 percent) and eBay (20 percent).

To put the market into perspective, here’s a pretty — albeit manly — infographic from iProspect:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120502/look-men-shop-online-too/feed/ 0