OpenTable provides reservations for diners through its electronic reservation books, with subscriptions sold to about 25,037 restaurants worldwide, as of June 30. The company operates its namesake brand in Japan and Germany and runs the Toptable website in the U.K.

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“This is the bigger opportunity we see under real-time commerce, based on the adoption we’ve seen with our members and the feedback from the restaurants,” said Greg Mazanec, LivingSocial’s general manager for Takeout & Delivery.

The move is a big step away from the company’s roots of offering large discounts to draw patrons into a store or restaurant. But the step also raises the broader question of whether mobile commerce — as we’ve envisioned it for years — will ever take off.

For the past decade, mobile executives and others have promised that, someday, consumers will be alerted of nearby deals or specials on their phone as they walk by a coffee shop or a restaurant. For example, a free latte with a purchase of a scone, or free fries with a burger and milkshake.

More recently, LivingSocial and Groupon were considered clear front-runners for bringing that promise to scale, because both have a large user base and a dense enough footprint of local businesses for it to work. But now LivingSocial is downplaying the idea of location-based offers, a year after launching.

Groupon, which launched a competing product called Groupon Now soon after LivingSocial Instant, continues to offer these real-time deals.

Mazanec declined to say how Instant performed financially, but said it was the company’s first attempt at “real-time commerce,” and it turned out that the response for takeout and delivery had been extremely high. ”It was the repeat behavior that was important to us,” he said.

Now the value is centralized around convenience instead of discounts. That’s something merchants generally like more, too. Instead of offering discounts to people who may have already been looking for a latte or a burger, now they are drawing in more people at full price.

Mazanec describes the nearby Mexican restaurant that already had a long line during lunch. He said the only way for them to sell more food without expanding physically is to offer takeout and delivery.

“Consumers aren’t pulling their phones out to search for the nearest real-time discount on a car inspection or framing service. They are, however, looking for a faster and better way to order food from their favorite local restaurants,” he said.

Now, Takeout & Delivery will replace Instant on the LivingSocial apps.

The mobile app allows users to place and pay for orders for either pickup or delivery. On the back end, the restaurant receives the order by fax, and is able to say how long the order will take to fill. Consumers who show up for takeout are directed to a specific line and can pick up their order without having to pay. Restaurants that offer delivery are responsible for supplying the drivers.

Discounts can always be layered on top of the transaction if a merchant wishes, but it’s no longer the starting point. LivingSocial shares the revenue from the transaction.

“This helps broaden our offerings and puts us in a place where we can offer fast casual to five-star gourmet,” he said.

By adding the service, LivingSocial also starts competing with other delivery services that have declared this to be a big market opportunity.

Seamless, a New York company focused on online delivery and takeout, recently acquired MenuPages and booked more than $400 million in orders last year. And GrubHub, a Chicago-based company, recently raised $50 million and acquired Dotmenu and Allmenus. GrubHub projected that orders would hit $225 million in 2011.

The Washington, D.C.-based company will also be trying out a poorer-man’s option, called Instant Ordering, that offers takeout and delivery from a wider selection of restaurants.

Both services will be offered at full price, breaking the company’s tradition of offering deep discounts to restaurants, spas and other experiences.

Initially, the services will be available in LivingSocial’s hometown as the kinks get worked out of the system, but the company has ambitions to take it wider.

“We think it’s going to really resonate with people,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, co-founder and CEO. “If merchants can figure out how to expand their tables outside their restaurant, that’s a whole new revenue stream and introduction to people for them.”

The Instant Ordering service will leverage restaurants that already have existing delivery or takeout options, but Room Service will be for restaurants that have never tried it before. LivingSocial will provide the vans and the delivery personnel, and will drop off the food at a designated time. It will also pick up the plates the next day.

It sounds a little bit like Kosmo, the venture-capital-backed free delivery service that exploded during the dotcom boom, but Room Service is working with high-end restaurants, which probably have larger margins to play with than a movie rental or a pack of cigarettes.

In a description of the service, LivingSocial writes: “Along with an elegantly plated meal on ceramic dishware, we’ll provide you with everything you need, from a cloth napkin to candles. As for those dirty dishes? We’ll take care of those, too. Just place them in a LivingSocial Room Service container, leave them outside your door the next day, and we’ll pick them up.”

We hear there’s chocolate for dessert, too. Just not on your pillow.

Starting on Tuesday, 70 merchants will be participating in the company’s Instant Ordering service; Room Service will kick off on Thursday and Friday with just one. The service’s guinea pig is D.C.-based Kushi, a sushi restaurant co-owned by Ari Kushimoto Norris.

Kushi will offer two set menus for $66 each. The first offers several small plates, including shrimp and pork skewers, with a plate of sushi. The second offers vegetarian small-plate options, such as mushrooms and soba noodles with a plate of sushi.

Kushimoto said the price compares to a meal at the restaurant, with tip included. An undisclosed portion of the revenue will go to LivingSocial. O’Shaughnessy explained that the value of Room Service is not in the discount that the company is typically known for giving, but in the convenience and experience of the service.

Kushimoto said she believes it will be an attractive service for working families that don’t have a babysitter, but have the capacity to spend money on a regular basis in restaurants.

One of the challenges she dealt with in early trials involved retaining the quality of the food — in other words, keeping the warm plates hot and the cold plates chilled. But delivery is something Kushimoto has always wanted to try. Since LivingSocial is hiring the delivery drivers and promoting the service, she doesn’t have to worry about taking on the risk of hiring extra personnel before it takes off.

Both new services will be part of the company’s “Instant” offering, which include being able to buy a discount via a mobile phone and redeem it in a matter of minutes. Instant is currently live in 22 metropolitan areas.

So far, the variety of merchants offering deals in any particular neighborhood can be low, but by offering a list of options, where you can get take-out or delivery, the catalog will grow, albeit at full price. Of course, merchants will have the option of offering a discount, and users will be able to redeem prior offers.

As a result, Greystripe, a mobile ad network purchased by ValueClick in April, says that it has seen travel-related mobile ad campaigns increase by nearly 50 percent over the past year.

In a study, it found that the overwhelming majority of iPad owners, or 91 percent, used their device for a travel-related activity. The data was collected from Greystripe’s 971 users on a network of iPhone (including the iPod touch), Android and iPad devices during June.

Specifically, it found that 47 percent of iPad users booked hotel rooms, which seems to coincide with the boom of applications catering to this activity.

I’ve written in the past about how travel companies are flooding the mobile app stores, including Expedia, Kayak, Priceline and even start-ups, like HotelTonight, which will find you a room the night you need it. What’s more, InterContinental Hotels Group, the massive hotel chain that includes Holiday Inn, told me it recorded $10 million in mobile revenues in April, jumping from only $1 million in the same period a year earlier.

Following closely after hotels, Greystripe said 37 percent of iPad owners used the tablet to book a flight; 28 percent have used it to make a restaurant reservation; and 24 percent have used it to rent a car.

Although Greystripe found that applications were not required, in fact, 69 percent of iPad users were more likely to use the mobile Web compared to 49 percent of iPhone and Android users.

The publicly held company, which seats more than seven million diners every month, has partnered with a company called Savored.

Savored, which was previously called VillageVines, believes it has a solution for restaurants that like the idea of filling empty tables but are terrified at what a coupon deal might do to everyday business.

OpenTable has already begun working with daily deal providers such as San Francisco’s TownHog to provide discount offerings, but this works a little differently.

Savored gives people 30 percent off their dinners when they pay $10 upfront, unlike the typical daily deal, which gives people $30 for $15, or about half off. Diners must pay upfront and book a reservation at a specific time to receive the discount.

High-end restaurants, which may normally be afraid to offer blanket discounts, can designate the available times based on regular lulls.

The program debuts today on the San Francisco Bay Area homepage of OpenTable and will expand to other U.S. markets over time.

That’s when a merchant gets bombarded with unprofitable customers who spend no more than the coupon is worth and have no intention of ever returning.

A New York start-up believes it has a solution for high-end restaurants, which like the idea of filling empty tables but are terrified at what a coupon deal might do to everyday business.

The company has relaunched as Savored.com (formerly VillageVines) and is doubling the number of markets it serves to 10.

It may be on to something. In the past six months, the company has grown from six employees to 45 and has increased reservations by 335 percent and subscribers by 228 percent. Additionally, participating restaurants are on track to generate more than $25 million in sales this year.

Savored co-founder Ben McKean tells us how it works:

Members who sign up for the service pay $10 to book a reservation at a restaurant and in return get 30 percent off their entire bill, including alcohol. The restaurant keeps all of the profits.

That differs significantly from daily deals sites, which typically keep half of the revenue from a voucher that is already 50 percent to 70 percent off.

McKean said the model is completely different.

Restaurants alert Savored.com to a specific number of tables on specific nights that they know they won’t be able to fill on their own. Savored.com helps them fill those otherwise empty tables, just as Priceline helps hotels fill empty rooms or airplane seats.

“The restaurant knows it will have an empty table,” McKean said. “They know their traffic patterns really well.”

Some of the 500 participating restaurants are high-end names like Daniel Boulud, Jean-Louis, Peter Kelly’s Xaviars, Capital Grille, China Grill, Aquavit and the Patina Group. The service is live in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

An important part of the process is discreetness: The need to print out a coupon or even mention that the table was reserved through Savored is completely eliminated. McKean said restaurants like it because other patrons don’t know that some tables are receiving a discount, and patrons like that they don’t have to fuss with print-outs or disclose to their eating partners that they aren’t paying full price.

Since Savored.com is making only $10 from each transaction, its model is less profitable than the traditional daily deal. But McKean is okay with that because he believes he is building a much more sustainable business (plus, the company has raised only $4 million in venture capital.).

“We launched our current model seven months ago, in September of last year, and we are on track to help restaurants drive $25 million in sales this year,” he said. “The fact that 90 percent of restaurants have never done work with the deal sites means we are succeeding.”

Next up for the company is vertical expansion this year to new areas, such as spas and travel.

That’s what BlackboardEats, a Los Angeles-based company, discovered after implementing a $1 fee back in January.

BlackboardEats is Groupon or LivingSocial with a twist.

It sends restaurant deals to its members via emails that offer up to 30 percent or more off on meals. But instead of having to pay $10 for a $20 coupon, for example, it charges only $1.

Starting today, it is waiving that fee altogether.

Originally, the idea behind the fee was that it provided a big enough barrier that only people truly interested in the deal would bother to buy it. Before the fee was implemented, BlackboardEats members would quickly gobble up deals on the off chance they would use them.

But “it got in the way of the spontaneity and simplicity of it,” said Maggie Nemser, BlackboardEat’s founder and CEO. “It wasn’t an exponential revenue stream, and yet it was so clearly impacting the experience.”

Additionally, the fee didn’t change conversion rates, either.

Before users paid $1, on average 10 percent of the 4,000 coupons that were handed out would be redeemed. After the fee went into affect, redemption rates went up to 50 percent, but only 400 to 1,000 coupons would be sold.

That’s the difference of 400 people visiting a restaurant vs. a range of 200 to 500.

Nemser said the $300,000 in annualized revenues–and the impact on restaurants–didn’t justify the inconvenience to customers. “It was a no brainer. We will grow much faster and people will be much more excited about telling their friends about it. It’s now a simple elevator pitch.”

The change, while minor, seems completely unintuitive since charging for deals is how Groupon and LivingSocial have amassed such large businesses in such a short period of time. But unlike like the Groupon and LivingSocial sites, which are founded on being a platform for local businesses to advertise, BlackboardEats is based on editorial reviews.

Its staff of writers–who come from publications such as Food & Wine, Bon Appétit, Gourmet and DailyCandy–review establishments anonymously and don’t accept complimentary meals. In return for running the review, the site asks that the restaurants offer a discount to its readers.

“We aren’t a deal site,” she said. “We are more of an insider’s club for culinary enthusiasts. All of our content is handpicked by food editors…We send in reviewers anonymously and they [restaurants] don’t have approval rights. We don’t touch the revenue to ensure quality.”

Instead it makes money from advertising, which in addition to display units, also includes very clearly marked sponsored offers that are more similar to a Groupon offer.

The model is comparable to Travelzoo, which also offers its customers deals on vacations, but sells advertising.

Because it doesn’t keep a share of the revenue, Nemser argues BlackboardEats becomes very profitable for the restaurant. For example, a recent offer for a Los Angeles restaurant resulted in 1,661 visits, which resulted in revenue $415,000 to the restaurant over two months.

“That’s the key to our success–that’s what people like about BlackboardEats. They know they are going to have a great experience. It’s not random.”

The company, which has 10 employees and launched just a couple of months after Groupon in 2009, has so far been fueled by a small round of angel financing. Does Nemser feel like she’s missed the boat on building a very large company?

“It’s not about getting a huge valuation overnight, or about selling the company overnight. It’s a passion play. We are culinary enthusiasts and want to do justice by the restaurants and our subscribers.”

Just when you don’t think there could be any more, another emerging category is now targeting small-to-medium-size businesses by offering companies discounts on a range of products from a Lenovo laptop to office furniture or employee perks.

RapidBuyr and marketsharing are two companies competing in the space.

Yesterday, RapidBuyr launched a partnership with American City Business Journals, which will eventually be able to tap into its 10 million subscribers via 42 web sites and 64 publications. It’s live today in about seven of its markets, and was offering 42 percent off three sets of 1,000 business cards for $100.

Through the partnership, RapidBuyr will have access to the business journal’s regional sales staff to get access to local deals in addition to signing up national deals. The American City Business Journals represents just one partnership in addition to making its deals accessible directly from the its web site or through emails.

The company was founded by twin brothers, Tom and Darr Aley, who sold their last company, Generate, which created enterprise-focused social networking tools, to Dow Jones in 2008.

Marketsharing, too, is offering specials on small-to-medium business needs, but says it is differentiating itself by also offering discounts on employee perks, like hand massages, bowling parties and gym memberships.

The New York-based company has raised $1 million in seed funding from Kevin Wendle, the co-founder of CNET, and Daniel Klaus, who was behind Music Nation and Original Signal. Marketsharing’s founder John Amato previously was the president and co-founder of Show Media, one of the providers of taxi advertising in New York City.

While other sales positions have been hit hard by the recession, ranging from newspaper reps to real estate agents, it turns out not every one is losing out.

Fueled by hundreds of millions in capital and real revenues, the daily deal phenomenon is creating thousands of new sales opportunities–and the competition is heating up for trained workers with the contacts and experience.

Founded in 2007, LivingSocial has 1,350 total employees and Groupon, which has only been around since 2008, has more than 7,000. That’s not including all of the copycats, which also must hire local representatives in order to be live in a particular market. National providers are also flooding into the space, including well-established companies like Google, Facebook and Yelp.

But these aren’t the stereotypical door-to-door salesmen with briefcases full of samples. They carry iPads loaded with flashy presentations and are pitching something entirely new.

They are trying to sell local restaurants, spas, and yoga studios on the idea that in exchange for offering a steep discount, new customers will walk in their doors.

The frothy local sales market has been noticeable for Jessie Burrough and Harry Jigamian.

Burrough joined LivingSocial more than a year ago, becoming the company’s 24th employee after working as a commercial real estate broker for years. She is now responsible for some of the trendiest and most-trafficked neighborhoods in Seattle.

“It’s super fun, and it’s exciting when you believe in what you are selling. I remember thinking, this is a no-brainer, and that it is so easy to sell. I loved the idea,” she said.

For Jigamian, the decision was also easy, though he’d never heard of LivingSocial before they approached him.

He was a newspaper sales rep for the online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He now oversees LivingSocial’s local sales office as general manager. “I did not know what LivingSocial was, but I knew that online was where everything was going. Now the only two questions are, ‘Where does it go from here, and how high does it go?’ It was all too much to say no to.”

If you aren’t familiar, companies like LivingSocial and its larger competitor, Groupon, offer a voucher for a steep discount, usually amounting to 50 percent off. Customers pay upfront for the coupon. Half of that revenue goes to LivingSocial, and the other half goes to the advertiser, who will end up making 25 percent on the overall transaction.

Normally, deals aren’t valid until a certain number are sold, sort of like buying bulk at Costco. That’s where the “group-buying” term comes from.

While it’s a large chunk to swallow, the daily deal companies want merchants to look at it as akin to placing an ad in the newspaper–except instead of hoping people see the ad and come into your establishment, you will know exactly how many people paid for one and how many redeem it.

Mostly, the focus has been on local commerce; increasingly, it’s expanding into national brands and advertisers, opening the door to nationally-focused sales people as well. (In a separate post today, I wrote about LivingSocial’s latest nationwide promotion on flowers for FTD.com after its prior offer on Groupon failed.)

Mitch Spolan, SVP National Sales for LivingSocial, said he decided to leave his job at Yahoo and join LivingSocial because, with group buying, “there’s no modeling and no guessing. You know when someone buys a voucher that they are fundamentally buying a ticket to come in and see that store.” As Spolan helps to build out LivingSocial’s national sales team, he says the concept makes it easy to recruit. “The sales people understand that. There’s such a desire to be in this space.”

Still, closing a sale can be difficult on the national or local level.

Some merchants have been burned after selling thousands of vouchers, and then losing money on every customer who walks in the door. For a small retailer with low margins, it can run them out of business.

Here’s a look at a day in the life of Burrough and Jigamian as they make two sales calls, and a video in which they explain how they got into the business.

The first stop was at a restaurant called Re:Public, located in the hip new South Lake Union neighborhood that is being revitalized by Microsoft Millionarie Paul Allen, but has been slow to take off. Their second stop was at the Garage, a warehouse on Seattle’s alternative Capitol Hill, which has been converted into an over-21 pool hall and bowling alley.

Re:public, which is not yet a year old, has never done a daily deal before, but the Garage was a veteran of the process, having participated in a LivingSocial voucher a year ago and experimenting with a handful of smaller competitors since. It has not worked with Groupon.

Re:Public

On an early afternoon, before the happy-hour crowds start to filter into the bar and restaurant that serves upscale dishes like grilled octopus and oxtail ragu, Burrough and Jigamian make an appointment to see co-owner Matt Greenup.

To get the conversation rolling, Burrough tries to get to know him by asking about the business.

Greenup explains that they were one of the first restaurants in an unestablished neighborhood. They opened before the streetcar ran from the downtown core and before Amazon.com relocated thousands of workers to new buildings nearby. It’s been hard, but they’ve also done a good job at filling its 115 seats in the early evening and on weekends. But not late at night when the vibe goes from upbeat to lowkey.

Enough about Re:Public. Now, Burrough introduces LivingSocial to Greenup.

On her iPad, she breezes through a presentation, moving from one slide to the next with the swipe of a finger. She keeps it light by joking that next she’ll be performing an interpretive dance routine. It’s a joke that makes this more of a friendly situation than a business meeting.

Some of the highlights:

• We have 10-plus million subscribers.
• We have 200,000 subscribers in Seattle.
• Our subscribers are between the ages of 20 and 40 with extra money to spend.
• You get a check from us in addition to 24 hours of exposure on our site.
• You get great social media exposure through our “me plus three” offer, which encourages people to share a deal with others.

But Greenup has concerns.

Re:Public has stayed away from discounts because their food is one of their highest costs. ”It’s a financial decision for us as to whether we want to cut into our profits,” he said. “If five tables are getting 75 percent off, that’s a big difference in return.”

To resolve those fears, Burrough has solutions.

She said they could make dinner reservations mandatory to ensure that a large number of LivingSocial participants came in on the same night. The description could also encourage users to come late at night to fill empty tables.

Jigamian adds: “You are already offering discounts at happy hour.”

But the pressure stops there.

Burrough offers to keep in touch and to send some ideas to him over email.

The Garage

Now a hardened veteran of the process, owner Mike Bitondo was way beyond needing a flashy iPad presentation, and knew exactly what questions to ask.

Burrough acted as if they were friends who were catching up for the first time in awhile, and she had a lot to update him on with what’s changed over the past year at LivingSocial.

“We are better at managing the online redemption online,” she said.

Relieved to hear it, Bitondo said: “I’m sure that was the number one thing people asked for.” If only you could go back in time, he said, so that his 70 employees spread across six different bars wouldn’t have to continue manually checking off some of the 1,200 vouchers that still haven’t been redeemed.

“Only if you have a DeLorean,” she said with dead-pan humor.

Back to the future, she quickly adds that they do have smartphone apps, and secret shoppers who will report back on their experiences of being a patron. They also have free advice on how to update their Facebook page, or will even shoot a video for some of their best clients.

Overwhelmed by copycats calling him, Bitondo goes on a bit of a rant:

He’s heard from sites focused on families to ones that focus on giving back a percentage of the profits to good causes. The phone calls are nearly daily. “My big turn-off is that these people think they are geniuses, and that they have this really good idea. But in reality they want to take a large commission for sending out a mass email. It’s a transparent concept and they pretend to have this big facade about how great it is.”

Having said that, he’s willing to consider doing another deal in the slow season with someone he’s already dealt with. ”I have 40,000 square feet. It’s hard to fill a 1,200-person venue every day.”

He can only guess how many will sell this time now that LivingSocial is far less obscure. “I’m scared to think how much we might do this time,” he said.

For nearly a full day’s work, Burrough left empty-handed, but convinced that both would participate. The last we checked, she was still in discussions with Re:Public and The Garage with paperwork nearly completed for at least one of them.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110502/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-sales-person-on-the-front-lines-of-the-group-buying-frenzy/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110201/exclusive-livingsocial-adding-real-time-discounts-soon-to-mobile-apps/ http://allthingsd.com/20110201/exclusive-livingsocial-adding-real-time-discounts-soon-to-mobile-apps/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:24:26 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=2222 Over the next couple of weeks, LivingSocial tells us, it will be adding real-time discounts to its mobile applications to enable consumers to search for discounts at nearby restaurants on the fly.

Likewise, it will give merchants the tools to find customers immediately should business get slow.

The service represents a big shift in the way daily deals are sold.

Instead of having to commit to a restaurant deal at least a day in advance, consumers can search for a discount in real time, on the way to lunch or dinner. And for merchants, it solves an immediate problem–it can offer a service right away, rather than selling a discount voucher that can be redeemed at other times.

The idea of walk-in deals is the latest evolution of the rapidly evolving daily deals space, which is fueled by stiff competition and millions (wait, scratch that), billions of dollars in venture capital.

“This could be a big next step in how people interact with local businesses. It’s a more efficient marketplace, and whenever you can do that, there’s potential for a lot of success,” said LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy.

The concept is brand-new for LivingSocial.

Just yesterday, it started approaching merchants about “walk-in” deals and plans to launch them in Washington, D.C., first, over the next couple of weeks. Soon after that, it will roll out the deals steadily across the country.

The service, however, is akin to efforts by others in the space, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook.

But matching a critical mass of merchants who are willing to make an offer at a particular location and time with a critical mass of consumers is extremely difficult to do.

O’Shaughnessy believes LivingSocial can check both boxes.

“From the merchant perspective, there’s a reason we invested so heavily in a field sales team–it’s so we could try new initiatives. Getting a density of merchants is going to be easier for us than other check-in deals stuff,” he said.

As for customers, he said, “We have a really big mobile presence already. We are in the millions on iPhone or Android apps. They buy through us and redeem through us, and we have an active user base already.”

LivingSocial, which is backed by Amazon.com, will spend the next few months educating merchants as well, O’Shaughnessy said.

To make it all work, the company will be testing out different platforms, including giving merchants iPads and other proprietary hardware. During the pilot, LivingSocial will pay for that hardware.

By getting the tools in their hands, merchants will be able to  spontaneously decide whether their lunch crowd isn’t big enough and create a deal on the iPad that is designed to get people through the door within minutes. Once created, the deal will be instantly pushed out, and could expire a couple of hours later, based on the merchants’ preferences.

As with other offers found on LivingSocial or its competitors, like Groupon, merchants may ask the customer to pay $3 for a $5 sandwich or salad, and the customer must buy the voucher up front from the mobile application.

LivingSocial’s very lucrative business model will remain the same for walk-in deals, O’Shaughnessy confirmed.

That means, if a consumer pays $10 for a $20 dinner, LivingSocial will take roughly half, or $5.

Once inside the establishment, consumers can always choose to pay more for additional items–a drink or bag of chips with that sandwich, maybe?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110201/exclusive-livingsocial-adding-real-time-discounts-soon-to-mobile-apps/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110118/dont-want-to-sign-in-to-yahoo-thats-ok-use-your-facebook-or-google-id/ http://allthingsd.com/20110118/dont-want-to-sign-in-to-yahoo-thats-ok-use-your-facebook-or-google-id/#comments Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:12:52 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2436 Yahoo this week will begin allowing users to participate on its properties without signing in to a Yahoo account. It’s a significant move for the company, which had for a long time incessantly popped up login screens (as pictured) whenever visitors tried to do seemingly anything on the site.

Now, users will be able to share articles, leave comments and play fantasy sports on Yahoo by signing in to accounts they’ve created on Facebook and Google. They won’t have to create a Yahoo profile or associate their Facebook or Google ID with an existing Yahoo one (though a Yahoo account is being created in the background that’s associated with the other site’s credentials).

Other properties included in the new login regime (or lack of a regime) are Yahoo! Finance, as well as pages for users to rate movies, music and restaurants. (Obviously for some properties, like Yahoo! Mail, users will still need to plug in Yahoo-specific credentials to create a full-fledged Yahoo ID.)

The beleaguered company is playing this as a move toward openness. And there is some precedent for the move. Yahoo had previously allowed users to log in to Flickr using OpenID logins from Google, and had partnered with Facebook to give users an option, through Facebook Connect, to integrate their accounts on the two sites and send information back and forth between them.

But this latest announcement is different from Facebook Connect; what Yahoo is now offering is a wholesale substitution of another site’s account system. Yahoo for a long time had the coveted advantage as a Web portal of having a large percentage of its visitors logged in at all times to a consistent account across all its properties; that doesn’t seem to be a top priority for the company anymore.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110118/dont-want-to-sign-in-to-yahoo-thats-ok-use-your-facebook-or-google-id/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20101215/putting-social-to-work-sustainable-seafood-mapping/ http://allthingsd.com/20101215/putting-social-to-work-sustainable-seafood-mapping/#comments Thu, 16 Dec 2010 03:00:52 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1328 For the last 10 years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has distributed wallet cards that give an at-a-glance guide to which types of seafood are sustainably fished and which are not because of overly depleted populations, destroyed habitats or some other reason.

Last year the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program launched an iPhone app that does the same thing on a searchable and localized scale.

And it’s been downloaded 325,000 times. So, this week, the Seafood Watch app got a social upgrade, which lets users contribute information about where they have actually found sustainable seafood for sale.

Like mobile social health applications such as RunKeeper, this is one of the more interesting interpretations of making a function social.

In the new Seafood Watch app, a feature called “Project FishMap” allows users to tag restaurants and markets across the United States to note what specific sustainable seafood is offered, and earn (of course!) virtual badges for their contributions. And users can also load up the app when deciding where to eat, so they can make their decision based on where sustainable seafood is available.

Eventually, perhaps, this user-generated seafood map could be made available for incorporation into other local apps like Yelp. But for now, the aquarium is just promising that an Android app will be released next year.

The idea behind the Seafood Watch project has been to enable consumers to show their preference by asking for sustainable options and voting for them with their wallets. But sometimes trying to make a better choice can get awfully confusing, when, for instance, the waiter at a restaurant has no idea where the cod came from (Atlantic wild-caught cod=”avoid”; Alaska longline cod=”best choice”).

However, the aquarium says the program has been effective in lobbying larger businesses–food service companies Compass Group and Aramark have committed to purchasing sustainable seafood, and Whole Foods Market has begun labeling its seafood with the project’s recommendations.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101215/putting-social-to-work-sustainable-seafood-mapping/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/google-expected-to-outgrow-apple-in-mobile-display-ad-market-in-2011/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/google-expected-to-outgrow-apple-in-mobile-display-ad-market-in-2011/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:48:32 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=53688 The mobile advertising market is ballooning, as is Google’s share of it. Of the $877 million spent on mobile advertising in the United States this year, 59 percent of it went to the search sovereign, according to an updated assessment by IDC. Meanwhile, Apple claimed just 8.4 percent share, Yahoo 5.6 percent, down from 7 percent last year, and Microsoft 4.3 percent, down from 6.3 percent.

Clearly, Google rules the mobile ad market in the States in much the same way it dominates search. That said, it’s important to note that the mobile ad market as defined by IDC includes both search and display ads and that the advertising business of some of the companies figuring in IDC’s report doesn’t extend to mobile search.

Apple, for example.

In the mobile display market, Apple claims an 18.8 percent share, which basically puts it neck and neck with Google with its 19 percent share. A short distance behind, Millennial Media has 15.4 percent. And behind Millennial, Yahoo has 10.1 percent.

And in front of them all: “Other,” with 20.5 percent (click image to enlarge).

So the leaders of mobile display advertising have yet to be decided, though Apple and Google have staked the largest claims to date. But while the the two companies are essentially tied right now, IDC’s Karsten Weide tells me Android’s growing presence in the mobile space means it will likely overtake Apple in display as well.

“Even if display was decisive for the war, I expect Google to outgrow Apple there in the coming year, primarily because Android devices will outsell Apple’s iOS devices,” Weide said. “More devices means more mobile Internet traffic, means more ad inventory that can be sold to advertisers, means more revenue. That said, search will remain more important than display in mobile and may well increase its market share even more. A lot of the mobile traffic is about finding things while being on the road: shops, restaurants, hotels…and that means search traffic, be it in traditional search queries or map searches. Google stands to benefit from this.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101206/google-expected-to-outgrow-apple-in-mobile-display-ad-market-in-2011/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100517/when-the-customer-is-in-the-neighborhood/ http://allthingsd.com/20100517/when-the-customer-is-in-the-neighborhood/#comments Mon, 17 May 2010 07:00:48 +0000 Diana Ransom http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=25116 Restaurant promotion is going high-tech.

Franchise restaurants have long tried to drum up business on the local level with newspaper ads and with mass mailings of coupons and other promotional offers.

But now franchisers have a host of new ways to drive business to individual stores, thanks largely to the explosion in recent years of technologies that recognize a user’s location.

Among others: Burger King Holdings Inc. (BKC) is test-marketing an iPhone application that helps users find its restaurants and view local deals, and Quizno’s Corp. and Applebee’s International Inc. are readying similar apps.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100517/when-the-customer-is-in-the-neighborhood/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091218/google-wants-to-gulp-yelp-as-part-of-a-1-5-billion-shopping-spree/ http://allthingsd.com/20091218/google-wants-to-gulp-yelp-as-part-of-a-1-5-billion-shopping-spree/#comments Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:54:57 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=14221

Say this for Eric Schmidt–he’s keeping his word. This fall, the Google CEO said his company was getting back into M&A, and he has indeed been making a slew of deals at varying price points.

The most recent: The company is in talks to purchase local review site Yelp, at a price that reportedly could top $500 million.

If the deal does go through, Google will have snapped up seven companies since August, for what I estimate is a total of $1.5 billion. That’s about what it dropped in one fell swoop on YouTube, more than three years ago.

Yelp is being repped by George Boutros from Credit Suisse First Boston, a source familiar with the negotiations tells me. The talks were first reported by TechCrunch.

When Google (GOOG) buys a company, it generally wants its technology and the people behind it and is less interested in the existing business itself or the audience it has accumulated.

Interesting to see if this is the case with Yelp, whose main asset appears to be a dedicated community of users who chatter about restaurants, stores, etc., and have churned out some eight million reviews in 30 cities.

Those reviews help draw local advertisers, and that’s a market that Google, along with everyone else on the Web, has been trying to crack for years, with limited success.

The major problem seems to be that local merchants are still most comfortable buying ads in venues they already understand, like Yellow Pages directories. And they like to buy them from humans–not from the self-serve platforms that Web players would like them to use.

I don’t know if Yelp has cracked the code here, either. But perhaps Google thinks the data Yelp generates is valuable enough to justify a big buy.

Of course, Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) are intensely interested in local advertising too, so they are logical bidders as well.

And normally, you’d include Yahoo (YHOO) in this list, but with a couple of exceptions, the Carol Bartz era has been about selling, not buying. Maybe that will change now that the company has a new M&A boss.

By the way: If Google does get Yelp, bear in mind that the deal will almost certainly generate some kind of regulatory review, as the company’s AdMob already has.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091218/google-wants-to-gulp-yelp-as-part-of-a-1-5-billion-shopping-spree/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091202/liveblogging-bing-new-features-demo-no-donuts/ http://allthingsd.com/20091202/liveblogging-bing-new-features-demo-no-donuts/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:10:33 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=21284

Earlier today, BoomTown posted about a visit this morning from a passel of top Microsoft search execs rolling into downtown San Francisco to show off even more new features for Bing.

I am here, but the donuts are not. Um, Google always has organic donuts!

In any case, the lineup included: Satya Nadella, SVP for research and development for the Online Services Division; Harry Shum, a corporate VP who is leading core search development; and Brian MacDonald, corporate VP for Core Search Program Management.

As I previously wrote:

“The rolling-stone-gathers-no-moss team at the software giant–which has been seeing some promising progress in its quest to raise its search market share with its snappy new service–has announced an ongoing series of features since Bing was launched earlier this year.”

It’s 10:07 am PT and I await new wisdom from Microsoft (MSFT).

10:10 am: Nadella, the point man on Bing technology, begins.

He kicks off the show with some stats and a main point: Microsoft’s search share has, as his first slide reads: “Still a long way to go.”

At 9.9 percent versus Google’s (GOOG) share of more than 70 percent, Nadella is correct. But that is up from eight percent in a short time, so not bad.

Unique monthly visitors are also up from 71.7 million to 83.3 million. And perception, which was low, is now 48 percent.

In other words, more consumers seem to know what Bing is.

Personally, if I were Microsoft, I would declare victory and quit now!

10:19 am: A demo dude arrives to show “task” pages, which cluster around intent of searchers.

These are cool, and he’s showing a John Mayer page, which includes concerts and more. I hate that whiny singing dude, demo dude. He was mean to Jennifer Aniston, so he is dead to me.

Phew, the demo dude moves on to Miami. I love Miami. Trying to gauge intent, there is a slideshow available, better weather (rainy but 82 degrees!) and flight info. Plus no John Mayer!

Next, demo dude does movies. He shows times for the freaky “Paranormal Activity” and then offers hi-def trailers. Demo dude’s wife wants him to see it. I advise against it, unless he wants to be looking under the bed for the rest of his life.

Now the cheeky Softies, showing off how good Bing’s info is about Apple, (AAPL); display financial info and even the customer service number. I contemplate ordering a Mac.

This is followed by moves through universities and diseases (with related drug cards).

10:30 am: The demo dude moves on to an early look-see of Bing’s its upcoming Facebook deployment, using its already-announced Visual Search.

It’s apparently going to be very easy to be a stalker on Bing!

On to Twitter, with access to tweets in a variety of ways, from the most tweeted to most popular. Ashton Kutcher pops up like an inevitable Twitter weed, of course.

Nadella comes back and explains that this is being done to “browse to your intent.”

And now it is time for a mobile search update.

Guess what? Intent and search completion in a mobile context is time-sensitive! Who knew?

Actually, I did know and so did the whole world. Here is my typical mobile search: “Where the *&%# is that restaurant/kid party/gas station?”

10:38 am: A new demo dude (let’s call him demo dude #2) is showing off the recent mobile app for Bing, which came out a few weeks ago.

Lots of maps, although he says, “it’s more than just finding something on a map.”

Demo dude #2 types a “T,” which stands for AT&T, and stock info pops up.

He talks into the phone now for weather in Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft has its HQ. Cold and rainy! Which is a shocker for the Seattle area this time of year.

Demo dude #2 does movies and sports, showing a lot of what is on the Web. This is not much different than many mobile apps, but it works nicely.

Nadella seems to be promising an iPhone app soon too, noting that Microsoft will have them for all platforms, but he does not say it outright.

10:47 am: Now, Nadella is onto spatial search, which I like to call “oooh-that’s-pretty search.”

Therefore, we need a third demo dude. Demo dude #3 has a beard!

But he has a real new feature! A new mapping technology, powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight video technology, in beta within minutes. You can see it in action here.

It includes a Google competitor that has been called “streetside” before, with several new twists, which demo dude #3 is calling a “mash-in” (compared to a mashup, which is done a lot with Google by third-party folks).

The demo appears very seamless in comparison, using 3-D modeling and photorealism by integrating its Photosynth research work.

He shows a cool look at a museum and then the French American International School in San Francisco.

In this demo, demo dude #3 was looking at restaurants, which shows reviews and also the whole scene around it, including info on the parking garage you can see.

There is now a Map App gallery, most of which made by Microsoft right now.

11:07 am: A Twitter dude is brought up to show how the microblogger is part of this new mapping stuff from Microsoft, which he calls an “ecosystem.”

Using new geolocating tools on the microblogging service, it shows all kinds of geospatial information of tweets.

Twitter recently signed a data-mining deal with Microsoft, as well as Google.

So, it looks like Microsoft and Google are really going to be duking it out in the online mapping of everyone’s lives. And I look forward to this fight and the eventuality that they will want to map my every move. Bing it on!

11:10 am: Nadella wraps up, essentially trying to keep differentiating Bing from Google.

“We do hundreds of experiments a day,” he says, releasing as many features as possible.

It’s a good stance for a lesser competitor to have: Bing, We Try Harder!

Big words for Microsoft: Intent versus query. Whole page versus blue links. Minimizing time versus task completing. Search hit-or-miss versus dialog.

11:16 am: Q&A!

A question about human versus technology in perfecting this intent goal.

MacDonald and Nadella note that humans are important, but Bing is built around the big computing systems that do this automatically.

Will the structured page be indexable? Meaning Google? No real answer! But I would love to see Microsoft go all Rupert Murdoch on the search giant!

Then comes a question about premium or “non-Google” content. Nadella avoids the question and instead focuses on the “scaffolding” the data.

“We’re not as focused on getting exclusive content,” he says flatly. Uh-oh, publishers! As I reported, Microsoft is not forking over the dough.

MacDonald also tries to stress that Google wants folks off its site and onto the query result and that Bing is focusing on delivering that result right.

Everything is not a command line, declares MacDonald.

On a question of openness and the need to use Microsoft Silverlight technology for some of the rich visual mapping, versus Ajax, Nadella points out the service is too small not to be. Good point!

But Microsoft execs, who often shove their tech right down consumers’ throats, are nearly apologetic about having to use Silverlight (except they add, of course, that it is better!).

Nadella gets another question about paying to de-index Google.

“There is no real intent here that is focused on getting a whole bunch of content that is de-indexed from Google,” he said.

Some more questions about Bing monetization (it had better make money!) and global share.

Since Google is cleaning the clocks of everyone even worse abroad, Bing is focusing on the U.S.

I ask about how the Yahoo (YHOO) deal is going. “Well!”

And while Yahoo seems to be losing some search share to Microsoft, Nadella said his company would provide any “core” technology Yahoo wants to use given that Microsoft will be providing the search platform.

It would have been nice if Yahoo search had done this itself, of course, but Nadella said Yahoo could use the mapping and even task pages.

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