Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg might still be trying to figure out the social networking giant’s mobile monetization strategy, but there’s one thing she has locked: The top spot on two of the most important bestseller lists at the same time.

This week, for the first time, her “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” ranked No. 1 on the influential New York Times list for hardcover nonfiction, as well as for combined print and e-book nonfiction. The list, which appears in this coming Sunday’s issue of the New York Times Book Review, actually reflects sales for the week ending March 16, 2013.

“Lean In” has been on Amazon’s top 100 list of all books for much longer — in fact, for 32 days. The tome on the many difficulties faced by women in the workforce reached No. 1 status several weeks ago.

The official release date of the book was March 11, which was followed by a publicity blitz of massive proportions, including the cover of Time magazine, huge takeouts in innumerable newspapers, and laudatory television pieces on “60 Minutes” and with Oprah Winfrey.

“Lean In” has also attracted a huge dollop of controversy, with everyone and their mother (and my mother, Lucky, too) arguing over its merits, as well as its message — including whether Sandberg blamed women too much for the lack of advancement in the executive ranks.

She doesn’t, actually — if you read it, which many pundits appear to not have done. But that has not stopped the rigorous and welcome debate over the important issue, which seems to be exactly what Sandberg was aiming for.

Sales appear to have been widespread, but seem to also be helped by big purchases by companies such as Cisco, which are encouraging employees to read it.

A trio of high-profile tech communications execs from Twitter (Sean Garrett), Facebook (Brandee Barker), and Skype (Brian O’Shaughnessy), have joined forces to create a new firm called the Pramana Collective.

While PR types don’t usually get a lot of the attention, the joining of these three top Silicon Valley players is enough of a news event to warrant some mention.

(If only to try to figure out a good joke to make about its name, which sounds like a line of skin care products at a spa you can’t afford. I do like to amuse myself.)

Actually, according to a blog post from Garrett, which is below, Pramana is “the means by which one obtains accurate knowledge or true perception.”

(Namaste, and let’s hope that means Barker will finally give me a real comment when I shove my video camera in her face — inside joke alert!)

In all seriousness, communications is a critical part of the digital ecosystem, and this is a strong group. Barker, who was Facebook’s first PR head, has been doing a lot of consulting work since she left there; she was a key part of the team involved in the launch of “Lean In,” the unavoidable book by the social networking site’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg. O’Shaughnessy has just left the owner-changing Skype, and before that, he worked in key PR roles at Google. Lastly, longtime communications exec Garrett led the PR team at Twitter through some of its bumpiest years.

Here’s Garrett’s full blog post, which will give you enlightenment on the whole thing:

Finding Pramana

Brandee Barker has the calming wisdom of someone who learned a lifetime of lessons in her four years at Facebook. She started the company’s communications team and was its leader during Facebook’s most formative, fast-moving years. Brandee recognized that when you are moving at mind-bending speeds, you have to make 100 decisions a day and, within those, a few mistakes will be made. Brandee recognized and learned from both these mistakes and the many more successes gained by her and her team. She was my inspiration during my own journey of mistake/success reflection after my similar ride at Twitter.

Brian O’Shaughnessy makes things look easy. Yet, once you get past his self-deprecating jokes and his insistence on shining the light on others, you realize that you came away from a conversation with him twice as smart as when you started. And, one of most complex communications job in the last four years was running Skype’s. During that time, the company was owned by eBay, was spun out to a private equity consortium and then was sold to Microsoft. Off the 30 original eBay/Skype management team when Brian started in 2008. He left in February as the last remaining one. This wasn’t easy. It reflects on Brian’s innate ability to bring disparate people and perspectives together to forge successful strategies through leadership defined by bullshit-free objectivity and a mastery of technical knowledge.

Brandee and Brian share an unwavering sense of loyalty, strength of character and a desire to apply their learnings to something meaningful.

I feel the same way. And I’m pleased to join these two people that I have so much respect for as partners and co-founders of The Pramana Collective.

Since The Pramana Collective comes from the same place as the philosophies that I’ve clearly, if infrequently, written about here, I won’t dive into our feelings about the state of communications and the great changes that all corners of marketing are facing as lines between disciplines blur. But, practically, this change will have us focused on client needs and not definitions of marketing terminology or dated dividing lines. For example, whatever ‘PR’ was and currently may be to some is not relevant to us now — nor was it when we ran teams at Facebook, Skype and Twitter.

The Pramana Collective is a project-focused communications consultancy. This means that we will work with an organization to help meet a specific opportunity or solve a particular issue for a finite period of time. Among the offering mix will be branding, messaging, campaign development, and road mapping communications functions. This is the type of work that Brandee and I have both enjoyed doing as consultants since Facebook and Twitter.

What we won’t do is stick around to be an agency of record that provides ongoing support. We will provide objective recommendations on next steps and, as needed, suggest and help attain ongoing solutions of all stripes (in-house hires, consultants, agencies) to see through strategies. We look forward to partnering with our network of industry colleagues to find solutions for our clients long term interests.

Despite each of us having 20-plus years of experiences, multiple stints running comms teams for high-profile companies where we had amazing internal and external teams; we all would have benefited in the past from having access to a partner peer set that provided actionable intelligence, straightforward advice and a pure project solution mindset like The Pramana Collective’s offering.

When you are moving at a blindingly fast pace while trying to grow a team that’s never quite big enough, it can be a constant battle to stay ahead of being reactive to both external and internal forces and create space to form proactive campaigns around important initiatives and big moments — be they known well in advance or appear suddenly. We look forward to working with all sizes and types of organizations that share our interest in substantive, transparent and integrated communications.

This brings us to our name — The Pramana Collective. For you logophiles the full definition of Pramana is here, but, in short, it’s the means by which one obtains accurate knowledge or true perception. We believe that an organization’s sometimes hidden or obscured truths are the most powerful messages to drive a conversation. And, the “collective” will be our employees, clients and partners who both feel and act the same way.

Our first priority is hiring like-minded people from both the traditional comms world and other marketing disciplines who command the respect of entrepreneurs and executives. Indeed, getting the word broadly out to top talent who may be mapping out next moves is our primary motivation to talking about our consultancy’s formation now. If you are interested or merely curious, find me at sean at pramanacollective dot com.

And know that we believe that the best people need to have dynamic careers. As our projects will be diverse in scope, so will be the professional paths of individuals on our team. We may be a long-term opportunity for some and, for others, we might be an opportunity to attain broad perspective in between in-house jobs. Indeed, we plan to borrow the entrepreneur in residence (EIR) model that venture capital firms use.

We’ve got a lot of work to do. Having a basic web site would be nice. Regardless, whether it’s teaming on the small stuff or the profound, getting to work with Brandee and Brian already has made this journey one worth taking.

(Photo of Garrett, Barker and O’Shaughnessy courtesy of Steve Maller)

There were, of course, the questions on his famously huge Facebook investment many years ago, and why he’s put money in Y Combinator to spur startup innovation.

But it’s clear from his mainstage interview at the SXSW interactive festival in Austin this morning that high-profile Russian investor Yuri Milner of DST Global has been striving to think much bigger thoughts of late.

While he’s gotten a lot of attention for his big bets in the social networking site, as well as with Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb and many others, he’s slowed his investing in the U.S. considerably to focus more on what he and many others in Silicon Valley are calling “moon shot” ideas.

“Somehow, we have lost interest in big ideas,” said Milner, in an onstage interview with Vanity Fair contributing editor Bethany McLean about shifting away from thinking — which he has funded, in part — that has gotten more short-term and pragmatic. “I think we still have a destiny as human beings.”

That has included starting up his Fundamental Physics Prize, which has now become the priciest academic award, last year. And, more recently — with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Genentech mogul and Apple Chairman Art Levinson, among others — the launch of the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation.

As Mike Isaac wrote when that initiative was announced less than a month ago:

“The first round of prize recipients includes 11 scientists from a range of research disciplines, including studies in genetics, cancer research and neural behavior. Each of the 11 prize winners will receive a $3 million award for their work, and Brin, Zuckerberg, Milner and the rest of the sponsors have agreed to a five-year commitment to awarding prizes.”

Milner, who was a physicist in his early career, said onstage that he has been disheartened to see that not enough younger people choose to go into fundamental science anymore. Thus he is aming to make it more attractive via his prizes.

“We don’t have enough heroes who are admired by a large portion of the population due to their scientific achievements,” he said, noting that it will require rewarding individuals in a “disproportionate manner.”

Still, in the Q&A session, the crowd in the Austin Convention Center wanted to know mostly about more earthbound questions, such as what tech company would last 100 years, as IBM has.

According to Milner: Google, Facebook and Wikipedia, due to network effects.

Another attendee wanted to know what he thought it takes to be an entrepreneur these days.

“It’s almost a heroic effort, and kind of goes against set ways of doing things,” answered Milner.

Then someone wanted to know how the political arena could be similarly transformed.

“That, I don’t know,” said Milner.

Moon shot, indeed.

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For nearly 14 years, since the simultaneous births of online forums and Tencent — China’s largest Internet company and owner of the country’s largest social networking platforms — Chinese netizens both within and outside of China have been experimenting with social media. Over the past few years, the surge in popular channels, such as Weibo, Renren, Weixin and others, have also revealed a transformation in people’s online behaviors as their ages, social statuses and offline needs change.

Online Social Lives Start Early

Many Chinese first encounter social media during their teenage years and sign up for a QQ and a Qzone account. Both created by Tencent, QQ is the top instant messaging platform in terms of the most active user accounts (784 million as of September 2012), while Qzone is a social networking site where users can write blogs, share photos and listen to music. Based on a May 2011 report released by Credit Suisse Bank, Qzone has the highest penetration rate across all user segments compared to its competitors. The most active users of QQ and Qzone are those below the age of 18. Young, open and enthusiastic, users during this age are usually outgoing and social, eagerly expanding their networks with classmates and people who share common interests. Students leading jam-packed schedules, trying to juggle their time between studying and school-related activities, spend a lot of time online, with the majority logging on through their mobile phones when not on a computer.

As some of the users enter universities, their online behaviors start to change. Influenced by their peers and aggressive on-campus marketing activities, college students start to view Qzone as childish and immature. Many migrate to Renren, the social networking site touted as the Facebook of China. In 2011, Renren reported 170 million registered users, of which about 95 million were active, with the majority being college students and recent graduates. College students love the features of Renren, as it serves as an ideal resource for accessing news about their respective universities, including curriculum updates, supplementary materials and class discussion boards. In many cases, the students will keep their Qzone and QQ accounts — usually, they will log in to QQ to stay in touch with their old friends, parents and classmates, but neglect their Qzone pages and use Renren instead. Based on Frog’s design research, college students filter their messages and feeds shown on Qzone and QQ (where their parents are online), while being more transparent and honest on Renren.

Sina Weibo, one of China’s most active microblogging sites, has seen a significant increase in popularity, with many Chinese youths opening new accounts. Rich in content and celebrity gossip, students browse the news on Sina Weibo and form networks outside of their immediate social circles. It is during these teen and young-adult years that students start gaining exposure and forming opinions about brands and public figures that are active on Sina Weibo, from local brands such as VANCL and Tsingtao to foreign players like Starbucks, LVMH and Adidas.

Same, Yet Different: Social Networking Among Young Professionals and the Working Class

When students graduate from college and enter the workforce, their social statuses, rising incomes and increasing maturity will start to shape their online behaviors more dramatically. As they become new professionals, these individuals tend to have relatively established social networks, comprising university friends, family, colleagues and clients. Young professionals also have a stronger sense of self-identity than students, and are careful of how that identity gets presented online. During this life stage, according to McKinsey, Sina Weibo emerges as the predominant social media outlet among consumers in higher income brackets (earning more than 8,000RMB monthly) who live in Tier 1 cities. These users seek more relevant news and topics concerning their interests, while curating the outbound content that is shared with the public.

As users’ incomes, educational levels and management positions rise, Sina Weibo increases in its stickiness and becomes a powerful outlet to help users connect, influence and engage with the community. Huawei’s CEO of Consumer Business, Yu Chengdong, uses Sina Weibo to communicate Huawei’s strategies and thinking directly to the public about its consumer electronics products. Dr. Lee Kai Fu, former head of Microsoft and Google China and founder of Innovation Works, leverages Sina Weibo to actively engage with China’s entrepreneur community. Foreign public figures, such as Gary Locke, U.S. Ambassador to China, use microblogging via Weibo to win the hearts and minds of Chinese netizens.

China’s Masses and the Next Generation of Social Media Users

While the majority of the press and brands focus on China’s educated class and users in the Tier 1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen), it’s also worthwhile to examine other user segments as they exert more influence on the connected world.

Given the significant inroads from local manufacturers and software companies such as Baidu, Oppo, Huawei, Qihoo and ZTE, more and more Chinese consumers outside the Tier 1 cities, including the rural population and blue collar workers, are getting their hands on low-entry Android smartphones (priced below 1,500 Yuan). According to a report released in July 2012 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), over 50 percent of the year’s new Internet users were from rural areas. For these emerging segments, the smartphones serve as their primary communication device. When Frog’s research teams observed the workers’ lunch breaks, we found people quietly sitting side by side, watching videos, chatting on QQ and listening to music instead of conversing with their colleagues. These lunch breaks served as rare windows of opportunity for the rural population and blue collar workers to connect with the outside world. With limited free time, and being somewhat ashamed of their working-class lifestyles, their usage of social platforms such as QQ and Qzone is mainly for one-on-one communication and less for sharing insights and information.

At the same time, as these working-class users become increasingly tech-savvy, many have already turned to microblogging sites to vent their grievances and disputes to the public. In 2011, the villagers and farmers in Wukan protested against the local government for selling land without fair compensation and for the suspicious death of Xue Jinbo, one of the village representatives. Several people from Wukan broadcasted the incidents on Sina Weibo, and when the word “Wukan” was censored, the villagers used the letters “WK” to continue to report the incident and leak the news to foreign media. Since the Wukan incident, other villages have followed suit, such as the recent uprising in Zhejiang province’s Cangnan country. During the end of July 2012, when Beijing was experiencing a major flood disaster, the residents of Fangshan, Beijing’s worst-affected district, took matters into their own hands and published their own deathtoll numbers using public and private chat rooms.

Embracing Openness Online

Chinese consumers across all segments are becoming increasingly connected. In May 2012, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that the number of mobile phone users in China exceeded 1 billion. Additionally, the number of Internet users in the country recently reached 538 million, with mobile Internet users now up to 388 million. As more users access the Internet, many are also accessing social media services and applications. McKinsey found that 95 percent of Chinese living in Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are registered on a social media site, and that Chinese consumers spend 46 minutes a day visiting social media sites, compared with only seven minutes in Japan and 37 minutes in the United States.

While the social landscape in China remains crowded with many different players, these rich communication channels are allowing Chinese consumers to connect in multiple ways. While censorship does kick in, if one tool suddenly becomes unavailable, it has been shown that the Chinese will simply find another means to interact with one another. As more and more Chinese go online, digital connectivity — which started off in the ’90s as an inevitable consequence and supporting tool for the “socialist market economy” — is now being shaped by a wide variety of consumers. As they find new ways to exchange dialogue, their voices will only become louder and clearer.

This article is from Frog’s publication Insights_China, a new report that offers direct, in-the-field discoveries of consumers’ habits and aspirations, combined with deep, data-driven analyses of contemporary trends in China. Emily Chong is Frog’s AVP of Marketing, Asia, and Rocky Liu is an associate creative director in Frog’s Shanghai studio.

Last week, I had a very erudite meeting with Louise Rogers, who runs one of the fastest growing social networking sites for educators — first in Britain and now operating in about 197 countries including the U.S.

The London-based TSL is a fascinating glimpse into how education is changing quickly online, catering to teachers who primarily share lesson plans, but also tips and techniques with others for free. It’s been signing up many thousands per month, who download 2.8 million plans weekly to help them better do their job — often in a resource-starved environment.

While running a number of English-language products, TSL struck a partnership called Share My Lesson with the American Federation of Teachers and its mainstay TES Connect service to expand here.

The company started a century ago as a newspaper supplement for teachers in the Times in Britain, which was owned by News Corp. at one point (which also owns this site) and was then sold to a private equity firm for $400 million and then sold again.

TSL, now largely online with $120 million in annual revenues garnered from a robust jobs listing service for teachers and other premium products, competes with other similar online services, like Curriki and LessonPlan.it.

Here is my video interview with Rogers about how it all works — listen and learn:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130303/in-the-ever-crowded-online-learning-space-tsl-education-aims-at-teacher-lessons-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130224/old-media-doesnt-get-new-media-chapter-203-the-sheryl-sandberg-attack/ http://allthingsd.com/20130224/old-media-doesnt-get-new-media-chapter-203-the-sheryl-sandberg-attack/#comments Sun, 24 Feb 2013 23:26:52 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=297779

Take one Silicon Valley exec. Who is rich. Who is a woman. Who seems, on the superficial surface at least, to have it all. Mix with high-profile book she has penned about gender issues in the workplace and a social networking effort to organize around. Sprinkle in some fear, some loathing and a generous dollop of startlingly ignorant assertions about how new media works. Bake in the spotlight for a millisecond.

Voila: Sheryl Sandberg Flambé.

Indeed, at this early point in the marketing game of the well-known Facebook COO’s new book, “Lean In,” the unusual level of vitriol aimed at her is, frankly, is eye-opening. While there is plenty that smart people can disagree with in her tome — after all, this is a very hot-button issue — the fact that it has ratcheted up this far before the March 11 publication date says a lot about a lot of things.

Not the least of which is that the relationship between old media and new media is, in the parlance of the huge Silicon Valley social networking company, complicated.

Consider Jodi Kantor’s New York Times article, titled “A Titan’s How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling,” which appeared at the end of last week.

As it was crafted, it immediately went right after Sandberg’s “carefully orchestrated media campaign” — leaving aside the pertinent fact that in this noisy day and age, every big media launch is carefully orchestrated — and then immediately took issue with her effort to start “Lean In Circles”

Oddly described by Kantor, the site is one on “which women can share experiences and follow a Sandberg-crafted curriculum for career success.” Actually, it was a little more complex than that, with major contributions from the highly regarded Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University to this effort.

Then, Kantor uses a sensationally arrogant-sounding Sandberg quote — “I always thought I would run a social movement” — from a recent video interview. As it turns out, though, it’s only a partial lift and almost totally out of context.

In full, it is about how Sandberg thought she would be a do-gooder who would doubtlessly not make much money: “I always thought I would run a social movement, which meant basically work in a nonprofit. I never thought I would work in the corporate sector.”

Then comes my favorite part from the Times piece: “With less than three weeks until launch — which will include a spread in Time magazine and splashy events like a book party at Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s home — organizers cannot say how many more groups may sprout up.”

Hmm. Hmm. They can’t say. Wow. Perhaps that’s because Lean In Circles have not started yet? You know, the service has not opened and therefore no one is using it.

Could Instagram have said how that piles of would use it before it started, especially since its first iteration was a dud? Nope! Could YouTube have known “Oppa Gangnam Style” was going to be a ginormous hit? Nope! Could the New York Times have known that it might have wanted to get ahead of this Internet thing before it decimated their business? Nope!

Here’s the thing — you can’t really fail before you start, but perhaps that’s just a Silicon Valley thing.

Let’s be clear, the “Lean In Circles” might turn out to be a big zero and perhaps Sandberg cannot compel women to use them. It could be an online ghost town. Or it could be very popular.

Who knows? All I am certain of is that it will — as the success of most online products depend on — be about whether people find whatever Sandberg is offering useful.

Also wrong is an account of Lean In essays that Sandberg has requested from some prominent women, which Kantor underscored asks for happy endings. True, but not quite if you read the whole document, which also says in part:

“Leaning in means pushing through the challenges and going down a path with an uncertain outcome. The path often leads to a positive internal result (newfound confidence, strength or determination) and often an external
reward (promotion, raise or goal achieved.) Leaning back means choosing to stay in a known or comfortable situation. This often leads to an internal
realization (desire to grow, change, consider leaning in the next time) and possibly a negative external result (stagnation, missed opportunities, loss of income.)”

After that, like many pieces so far, the article is all about how rich ladies with big houses and nannies should not lecture to other ladies without them. Perhaps that is so in some contexts and there is no question that her own massive success might be Sandberg’s most potent Achilles heel in trying to get her message out.

But in my reading, book as a whole is less grand and tsk-tsk than I expected and more about the plethora of depressing stats about women in the workplace, as well as some advice that has vaunted her to the top.

Lots of high-profile male execs have done this without the same level of anger directed at them. Thus, even though Sandberg is not the bilious and appalling as Donald Trump, she does not get to pontificate in any way that seems like, you know, she’s had some traction in the workplace — the Treasury Department, Google, Facebook — and might have some good tips to share.

Interesting, though it was not the only media account like this, the Times then followed today with one of the more bizarre and hyperactive columns I have seen of late by Maureen Dowd, who never met a pun she did not abuse mercilessly (and I love a good pun!).

“She has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women’s revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age,” Dowd wrote, also using the out-of-context Sandberg quote again to make her obtuse point. “She seems to think she can remedy social paradigms with a new kind of club — a combo gabfest, Oprah session and corporate pep talk. (Where’s the yoga?).”

Unpacking all those disparate images is a task for someone else with more energy than I have, but it becomes less comical when she goes all digital media expert.

“People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down,” wrote Dowd. “Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn’t mean you’re actually reaching people.”

Um, no, it does not — and I am not sure who said it did. Although I am certain Sandberg knows more than Dowd about reaching people online and the potential for getting them to act.

Still, it is just a start and Sandberg does not seem to be saying otherwise. And perhaps it is a good thing to debate whether book is pushing women meet goals they perhaps cannot.

Or — maybe, just maybe — it is a little more complicated. In fact, it is a lot more complicated — the issue of women at work is a thorny issue –which is why it will be interesting to see if Sandberg’s book and social network will have an impact or not.

To be clear, I have no idea if it will and neither does anyone else. No one thought Facebook would have a billion users (I definitely did not!).

That answer is to come, of course, after what will doubtlessly be a rollout where the turbulence is just beginning.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” wrote Sandberg in her book.

True that. That’s because, as it turns out, leaning in turns out to mean a very bumpy ride for those who do.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130224/old-media-doesnt-get-new-media-chapter-203-the-sheryl-sandberg-attack/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130218/adjusted-for-reality-neither-rackspace-nor-equinix-shine/ http://allthingsd.com/20130218/adjusted-for-reality-neither-rackspace-nor-equinix-shine/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:00:05 +0000 Tiernan Ray http://allthingsd.com/?p=295932 We learned during the dot-com boom, and the subsequent bust, that it takes real money to build the Internet, meaning that the growth of online advertising, e-commerce, social networking, and all the rest doesn’t offer a magic formula for profit.

But investors in recent years found a solution they like, plowing money into real-estate investment trusts that own the buildings housing the server computers that run websites. REITs pay out 90% of their pre-tax income in the form of dividends. So, despite heavy expenses on land and property, many investors consider it sort of a sure thing that these outfits will continually lever up and return money to shareholders.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130218/adjusted-for-reality-neither-rackspace-nor-equinix-shine/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130131/facebook-nabs-brunswicks-buckley-for-top-communications-job/ http://allthingsd.com/20130131/facebook-nabs-brunswicks-buckley-for-top-communications-job/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:00:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=290487

Brunswick Group’s Michael Buckley, who has been working with Facebook on a range of corporate and other PR issues over the last several years, will be joining the social networking giant as VP of business communications.

Buckley is essentially taking the job held by well-known Washington, D.C., player Joe Lockhart, who left the company last fall.

In his new job, Facebook said that Buckley would be in charge of the company’s international, monetization, corporate, consumer and policy communications.

Buckley has been with the global strategy and communications consultancy Brunswick Group, one of Facebook’s outside agencies, for a decade, most recently as a U.S. managing partner, where he represented a number of clients at once. In tech, that has included Groupon’s Andrew Mason, as well as Mike Lynch of Autonomy, which is battling Hewlett-Packard right now.

At Facebook, he will report to Elliot Schrage, who is VP of communications and public policy, where Buckley will be one of three top execs in that organization. The others are VP of tech communications Caryn Marooney, and Marne Levine, VP of global policy.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130131/facebook-nabs-brunswicks-buckley-for-top-communications-job/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130124/with-miiverse-apps-nintendo-will-finally-venture-onto-smartphones/ http://allthingsd.com/20130124/with-miiverse-apps-nintendo-will-finally-venture-onto-smartphones/#comments Thu, 24 Jan 2013 20:55:33 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=288269 Nintendo announced a slew of updates and new game titles for its Wii U console yesterday, with the bulk of the attention spent on the launch of “a virtual console.”

While being able to play classic games for a small fee will be a definite crowd-pleaser, an overlooked aspect of the announcements had to do with Nintendo’s plans for launching apps for smartphones.

The creation of any software for non-Nintendo hardware is groundbreaking for the company, which has been dead set against sharing its well-loved brands with any other device manufacturer.

But yesterday, Nintendo said that the Wii U’s social network, called Miiverse, will be expanding to smartphones this spring. And while initially gamers will be able to connect to the network from a smartphone browser, in the future Nintendo plans to create dedicated Miiverse apps.

Currently, Miiverse appears on the Wii U’s start-up screen as a virtual hangout, where avatars walk around a virtual “plaza.” Game players will be able to post their thoughts in “speech bubbles” that appear over their heads with text or drawings — sort of like status updates on Twitter or Facebook.

Over the past two years, Nintendo has made it abundantly clear that it is not interested in developing games like Zelda or Super Mario Bros. for any other platform. While the company still is not saying that its policy has changed on that front, a good experience with the Miiverse could help change its mind.

In what could be another sign of changing philosophy, the company confirmed last week that it is planning to bring together its console and handheld gaming teams in recognition of the trend toward the popularity of gaming on portable devices. The two groups will work under one roof in a $340 million facility in Japan.

But otherwise, Nintendo has been very clear about its aversion to other platforms.

A year and a half ago, Nintendo’s shares jumped on word that Pokemon was coming to the iPhone. But as it turned out, Nintendo, as a minority owner, had no influence on the decision, and it shot down speculation about its strategy, saying it “hasn’t changed and won’t change.”

Most of the opposition in developing for other platforms has to do with the business model.

For instance, the company is comfortable developing its own tablet-shaped controller for the Wii U, and it has its own mobile devices, like the 3DS, but it draws the line at free-to-play games.

“I’m not interested in offering software for free of charge,” Nintendo’s Global President Satoru Iwata told AllThingsD in June. “That’s because I myself am one of the game developers, who in the future wants to make efforts so the value of the software will be appreciated by the consumers.”

Iwata said the revenue that Zynga — and platform-makers like Facebook and Apple — is generating would not change his mind.

“If we are going to destroy the value of the game software — once we have done so, it’s a difficult job to recover from that situation,” he argued.

Nintendo did not disclose pricing for the Miiverse app.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130124/with-miiverse-apps-nintendo-will-finally-venture-onto-smartphones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130115/a-way-to-share-photos-files-and-money-in-black-white/ http://allthingsd.com/20130115/a-way-to-share-photos-files-and-money-in-black-white/#comments Wed, 16 Jan 2013 02:04:07 +0000 Walter S. Mossberg http://allthingsd.com/?p=285908

Say you want to quickly transfer a file, like a photo or a contact entry, from your smartphone to a friend’s. Most people would email or text the file. But a number of technologies have come along to make the process quicker and simpler.

On some Android phones, you can “beam” files like photos from phone to phone by tapping one phone to another, or bringing them very close. But that requires that both phones have a special chip, called NFC, which isn’t yet universal on Android phones and doesn’t exist at all in iPhones.

Another approach is to use an app called Bump, which transfers files between iPhones and Android phones when those holding them do a sort of sideways fist bump. It works pretty well, but you have to make contact with the other person.

With the Xsync iPhone app, you select an audio file, photo, video, contact or calendar appointment by tapping on the simple icon that represents each one.

This week, I’ve been testing a different approach — an iPhone app called Xsync. It doesn’t require any special chip and instead uses a free app and a hardware feature almost every smartphone possesses — the camera. While it is primarily meant, like Bump, for transfers between phones in proximity, it works over long distances. I was able to almost instantly send and get photos, videos and songs using Xsync between two iPhones held up to computer webcams during a Skype video call.

The key to Xsync is the QR code, that square symbol found seemingly everywhere these days—online, in print newspapers and magazines, on posters and other places. These codes typically just contain text—often, a Web address. But Xsync, a tiny company based in Seattle, generates QR codes that initiate the transfer of whole files, or in the case of photos, even groups of files. It has a built-in QR code scanner to read these codes using the phone’s camera.

The biggest drawback to Xsync is that it is currently only available for the iPhone. An Android version is planned for sometime this quarter. Meanwhile, you can use an Android phone with any QR code reader to receive, though not send, files sent via Xsync.

The Xsync app is something of a teaser for the underlying technology, which the company calls the Optical Message Service. The company’s goal isn’t to build its own apps, but to license the technology to cellphone makers so it becomes a built-in way to transfer files.

Here’s how it works. Once you install Xsync on your iPhone, you select an audio file, photo, video, contact or calendar appointment, each of which is represented by a simple icon. The app creates a QR code representing the intended transfer of that file and temporarily sends the file to Xsync’s server. Your friend uses Xsync to scan the QR code you’ve created with his or her iPhone’s camera, and the files are sent to your friend’s iPhone.

In my tests, it was easy, quick and reliable. I successfully used Xsync to send and receive all the included types of files with an iPhone 5, an iPhone 4S and an iPad mini. I was also able to receive files on an Android phone, a Google Nexus 4, via a QR code generated by Xsync.

The app generates QR codes that initiate the transfer of whole files, or in the case of photos, even groups of files.

You can even generate a QR code using Xsync that will allow you to transfer money from your PayPal account to another person’s, though that requires an added authentication step for security. But it worked, and would be a good way to, say, split a bill at a restaurant. (This PayPal feature of Xsync doesn’t work with Android, for now.)

The company says the file transfers are secure, for two reasons. First, they are encrypted. More important, each code is generated for a specific transfer and expires after a relatively short time. For instance, codes for photos expire after 24 hours, according to the company.

You can use Xsync to transmit certain kinds of files — including documents — you’ve stored in your Dropbox account, though, oddly, the Xsync app hides this document-transfer feature under an icon for sharing calendar appointments.

And you don’t have to be close to make the transfer. In addition to my Skype example, you can send a QR code generated by Xsync via email or text message, or even post the code to Facebook. Another person can then scan the code to get the file.

Xsync can generate codes that represent either existing files on your phone, or files you create on the spot. If you don’t want to use an existing one, the audio, photo, video and calendar icons in the app invite you to create a new file to be transferred.

On the iPhone, the receiving device displays the transferred files right within the Xsync app. If you’re using an Android phone to receive, you get a Web address that leads you to the file on Xsync’s server.

If you have an iPhone, Xsync is an effective way to transfer files like photos, songs, videos and more between phones.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130115/a-way-to-share-photos-files-and-money-in-black-white/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130114/special-projects-head-shakil-khan-moves-on-from-path/ http://allthingsd.com/20130114/special-projects-head-shakil-khan-moves-on-from-path/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 07:30:17 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=285399

Shakil Khan — the well-known head of special projects for the popular Spotify music service, who took the same kind of job at Path last year — is departing the personal social networking site.

He will remain a special adviser, and is also an investor in the San Francisco-based startup.

The globe-trotting Khan (pictured here), who arrived at the startup only last March, had worked with Path on a number of efforts, especially in expanding its international presence. Path recently hired Shindo Kimihiko to turbocharge the company’s efforts in the fast-growing Asian markets.

A Path spokeswoman confirmed the departure after I inquired, and the London-based Khan also emailed me this statement:

When I joined Path, the company was just 20 people, only available in a handful of languages and the resources were mainly U.S.-focused. During my time there, we launched in 17 languages, established great teams in marketing, localization, growth and international and doubled the number of staff. As more than 50 percent of Path’s usage is now international, I’d say that my original objective of helping Path to think in more international terms and capitalize on global opportunities is done :) Moving to the next stage of Path’s growth, I remain as a Special Advisor to the company, as well as continuing to spend time with my other investment companies, including Spotify, SecondMarket, Summly, Blackjet and a couple of exciting startups at incubation stage.

Path recently announced that the service — which has raised $55 million in funding — had five million users.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130114/special-projects-head-shakil-khan-moves-on-from-path/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130108/what-you-dont-know-about-sharing-photos/ http://allthingsd.com/20130108/what-you-dont-know-about-sharing-photos/#comments Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:39:27 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=283545 The visiting family members have left, the Christmas tree is out on the curb and the New Year’s Eve party confetti is all vacuumed up. If only sharing your holiday photos was as easy to manage.

After watching friends and relatives struggle to navigate the complications of photo sharing using Facebook, Apple’s Photo Streams and Google’s social network, Google+, I’m here to help. In this column, I’ve organized tips and tricks that might surprise even the most share-happy shutterbugs, and will serve as a helpful guide for people who want to feel more in control and comfortable while sharing photos. While there are numerous alternative methods for photo sharing, including thousands of apps, I zeroed in on Facebook, Photo Streams and Google+.

People can share albums from Google+ with anyone, including people who don’t use the network, by generating a link that can be sent to others.

Sharing With Friends Who Don’t Use the Network

Here’s an all-too-familiar scenario: You spend hours uploading, editing, captioning and “tagging” (identifying people by name) photos to create an album on Facebook, only to be asked by the one person who doesn’t use it if she can see the album. If you’re like most people, you say you’ll send the photos along, eventually. Then you change the subject to something more pleasant, like the cavity you recently had filled.

Unbeknownst to many users, Facebook, Google and Apple enable sharing with people who don’t use their services. Not surprisingly, these out-of-network sharing options are buried in an effort to force people into using the services. So where are they?

In Facebook, after creating an album, open the page that shows the album’s title and contents, select the small gear icon to the right of the album title and click “Share Album.” A Web link to the album will appear that you can copy and send to anyone, even if they don’t use Facebook or aren’t one of your Facebook Friends.

Facebook’s iOS and Android apps enable uploading multiple photos to existing albums, using the icon, above, or new albums.

Any Apple device running the company’s newest operating system, iOS 6, can create and view Shared Photo Streams. These are collections of photos on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch that you can share with friends via email. If your friends also use iOS devices, they can use them to view the Shared Photo Stream.

People who want to see these photos but don’t have an Apple device can still do so, as long as the album creator moves a slider labeled “Public Website” to the “on” position. This public album link is included in an email invitation, but it’s easily overlooked because it appears below a much larger blue button labeled “View this Photo Stream,” which only works on iOS devices. Be sure to click on the text at the very bottom of the email invitation that says, “You can also view this photo stream on the web.”

When people use Google+ to share photos, they’re immediately encouraged to click once and share to “Circles,” which are select groups of people within Google+. But they can also share with friends outside the network by adding their email addresses into the line that says, “Add names, Circles, or email addresses.” This enables sharing with friends who don’t use Google+ or don’t have Gmail accounts.

A Shared Photo Stream as seen through a public album link.

Entire albums can be shared outside of Google+: Within Albums, select one and click the “More” drop-down menu to find “Share album via link.”

Sync Mobile Photos as You Go

Facebook, iCloud and Google+ allow people to wirelessly synchronize their mobile photos with their accounts, saving them privately until they’re ready to be shared.

To set this up on Facebook, you can use the mobile app or the website. From the app, select Photos on the left-side panel, then Sync at the bottom right of the screen. Tap the gear in the top right to set whether your phone will sync over Wi-Fi or cellular or just over Wi-Fi. From Facebook.com, open your Timeline, select Photos, “Synced From Phone” at the top, then follow instructions to share images. People can sync up to two gigabytes of images.

Anyone who buys an Apple or Android device is prompted during setup to turn on Photo Stream or Instant Upload, as the companies call their respective offerings. Shared Photo Streams don’t count against your overall iCloud storage, nor do they work against your count of photos in Photo Stream, which syncs the last 1,000 images across your iOS devices. Google+ stores its synchronized mobile photos under a section called Instant Upload; these remain private until shared with others. Google+ has an overall limit of 5 gigabytes, but standard-sized photos like those captured on smartphones don’t count against this limit.

Other Helpful Tips

Facebook Camera is the free app that first made it possible for people to upload multiple photos to Facebook via iOS. Now, the main Facebook app also enables uploading multiple photos on Android or iOS, and images can be added to new or existing albums by selecting New or tapping a small album icon. Facebook also makes it simpler to post several photos at once in a status update using your Web browser: Users can now click a small “+” icon that appears beside uploaded photos to add more. Also, it’s now possible to drag and drop images right into the status box for sharing with Facebook friends.

If you’re ready to share your Apple Photo Stream with a broader network of friends, these can be uploaded to Twitter or Facebook, but the steps are practically hidden from view. Do this by opening Photo Stream and clicking the small, blue arrow to the right of the Stream you want to share. Make sure it has a link associated with it by switching the Public Website slider to “on,” then hit “Share Link” and select your preferred social network destination. Apple’s own message system, iMessage, is also a sharing option here.

Photo sharing should be more intuitive, and Facebook, Apple and Google are obviously still figuring out the best ways to pack multiple features into their websites and mobile apps. With any luck, your friends and family will have an easier time viewing your photos than you did sharing them.

Email Katie.Boehret@wsj.com

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130108/what-you-dont-know-about-sharing-photos/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/ http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/#comments Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:55:18 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=282763

Longtime digital exec Jeff Berman is joining Hollywood production company BermanBraun as its first president.

Berman — who is no relation to BermanBraun co-founder Gail Berman — comes to the firm from the National Football League where he has been in charge of its Web, mobile, social and non-console gaming efforts. While there, he worked on several new initiatives, such as its multi-party video chat for Fantasy Football.

Several years before that, he was a top exec at social networking site Myspace, finally ending up as president of sales and marketing, where he was in charge of branded advertising, sales operations, entertainment, content and marketing. Efforts there by Berman included the now defunct Web-only series “Quarterlife,” which also had a very short life on a major network.

The Yale Law School grad was also on the board of Buddy Media, which was sold to Salesforce.com last year.

He’s an interesting person, then, for BermanBraun, which focuses on content across multiple screens, including big branded Web sites such as Wonderwall for Microsoft’s MSN and also more traditional entertainment shows. Its juicy-looking television series “Deception,” for example, is set to appear on NBC this week. It now has about 130 employees, mostly working at its Santa Monica, Calif., HQ.

“We needed an exceptional leader to manage the company,” said BermanBraun co-founder Lloyd Braun, who was once a top media exec at Yahoo. “And Jeff is someone who has skillsets in a whole bunch of areas and an emotional intelligence that is as important to what we do.”

Braun said Berman would initially focus on his area of expertise — digital — but that he would become more involved in the television and movie arenas over time.

BermanBraun — which considered raising funding last year — is at an interesting juncture in its development, trying to form a new kind of independent Hollywood media company that straddles analog and digital.

Berman said he was attracted to the opportunity there.

“I had a great job, since there is nothing bigger than the NFL,” he said in an interview yesterday. “But Lloyd and Gail have an incredible vision across platforms for entertainment.”

He added that content was just at the beginning of development online, but was finally poised to explode with the popularity of tablets, smartphones, interactive TV and other such devices, as well as social and e-commerce tools.

“The mind reels, there is so much that has happened and can happen,” said Berman. “I don’t know if there is a better time to be at such a place to create these new franchises — [BermanBraun] is a laboratory, where stuff is actually working.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130107/former-myspace-and-nfl-digital-exec-jeff-berman-tapped-as-president-of-hollywoods-bermanbraun/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121206/facebook-in-talks-to-buy-microsofts-atlas-ad-platform/ http://allthingsd.com/20121206/facebook-in-talks-to-buy-microsofts-atlas-ad-platform/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 17:04:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=275729

According to sources close to the situation, Facebook is looking seriously at purchasing Microsoft’s Atlas Solutions ad-serving platform.

Sources said the social networking giant has been conducting due diligence on the media measurement platform, part of its efforts to create its own advertising network for third-party Web sites to compete with Google’s DoubleClick offering.

Atlas has been quietly on the market for some time and has been looked at by a number of companies, such as Adobe, said sources. But the effort to sell it got a jumpstart with recent interest from Facebook, which had been debating buy-versus-build options.

While there are some technological issues in taking over Atlas, sources said the prospect of starting from scratch was more daunting than picking up a platform that already delivers billions of ad impressions a day.

Atlas was acquired by Microsoft as part of its 2007 purchase of aQuantive for $6 billion. The new price for Atlas will be substantially lower, said sources, but could involve a more complex advertising agreement between Facebook and Microsoft.

Facebook declined comment and I am awaiting a response from Microsoft.

(Business Insider is also reporting that the pair are in talks.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121206/facebook-in-talks-to-buy-microsofts-atlas-ad-platform/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121205/facebook-wants-game-makers-to-develop-for-its-platform-or-else/ http://allthingsd.com/20121205/facebook-wants-game-makers-to-develop-for-its-platform-or-else/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:07:30 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=275172 Two new policies going into effect today on Facebook are making it a lot less convenient for developers to launch games outside the social network.

The policies, which were announced back in August, send a clear message to developers that, going forward, Facebook.com is the only place to play social games online.

Over the past few months, the social network has been working hard at wooing game developers, including hosting a sushi dinner with some of its top publishers. It also created a lot of goodwill last week when it signed a new agreement with Zynga that takes away some of the social game company’s special privileges. But the changes taking place today are more of a strong-arm tactic designed to ensure that game developers stay on their platform.

The new terms will only affect a small number of game developers, and interestingly, one of the companies that will be hardest hit is Zynga.

Here’s the deal: Starting today, game developers will be prohibited from accessing Facebook’s open graph on other platforms. For instance, if a game player has elected to log in using his or her Facebook credentials, developers won’t be able to access that person’s friend list. However, game developers will be able to continue publishing news items to a Facebook user’s stream.

Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said very few developers were using the provision anyway. “The majority of online social game activity is happening on Facebook.com and with Facebook on mobile platforms, and not on desktop Web sites,” she said. “As a result, we are putting our resources toward canvas [Facebook on the Web] and mobile gaming, where the most demand is.”

In a second provision, the social network is clamping down on the ability of developers to use Facebook.com to drive traffic to external Web sites. For example, when a person searches for a game on Facebook.com or gets an invitation from a friend, he or she can no longer be taken off the site. The exact wording of the provisions can be viewed here.

Clearly, these two steps keep developers focused on building for the Facebook canvas and not for other sites. It’s also worth noting that these new provisions only apply to games, which is how Facebook makes most of its revenue from payments. The provisions will not apply to other companies that have also integrated the open graph into their services. For example, if you log in to TripAdvisor with your Facebook credentials, you can see hotel reviews that your friends have written. A social commerce company like Wrapp, which allows you to send gifts to your friends, has done a similar integration with its mobile app.

Zynga will be affected most by these new provisions since it has worked the hardest at building out a standalone game network at Zynga.com. Zynga allows players coming to its site to log in using their Facebook credentials. Once signed in, Zynga asks players to invite their friends to play and frequently prompts players to send gifts to friends or to ask for help. Based on the changes being made today, Zynga will no longer be able to tap into a person’s friend graph, and instead will need to build up a network of gamers independently.

Facebook confirmed that Zynga will have more time to make the changes on Zynga.com “in order to ensure a smooth transition,” given that the ink is still drying on the contract the two companies signed last week.

Before last week, Zynga would have been exempt from these new provisions. Under the previous terms, Zynga had agreed to use Facebook payments on Zynga.com, which would give the social network 30 percent of all of its revenue. Facebook also was granted the option of handling all the Web site’s advertising. Now Zynga will have a lot more financial flexibility, but it will also now have to comply with the new terms like every other developer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121205/facebook-wants-game-makers-to-develop-for-its-platform-or-else/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121203/on-the-facebook-menu-at-zuckerbergs-recent-dinner-with-game-developers-sushi-and-a-sliding-pay-scale/ http://allthingsd.com/20121203/on-the-facebook-menu-at-zuckerbergs-recent-dinner-with-game-developers-sushi-and-a-sliding-pay-scale/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:00:29 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=274199 As mobile gaming gets hotter, Facebook is trying hard to keep more game developers, beyond Zynga, interested in its platform.

Last week, Facebook let its longtime dominant gaming partner Zynga out of a long-term contract that will allow the game developer more freedom to create games for other platforms. In turn, it levels the playing field for other developers, and should go a long way toward eliminating the fears of anyone on the platform getting special treatment.

That wooing has apparently included a dinner that Mark Zuckerberg recently hosted for the top brass in social gaming. Also present was Facebook games boss Sean Ryan.

The gathering included some of the top five to 10 social game companies on the platform, such as King.com, Kixeye, Disney’s Playdom, Electronic Arts and Kabam, and was held at the Fuki Sushi restaurant at Facebook’s new Silicon Valley headquarters. Facebook’s largest partner, Zynga, was not present, which is not particularly surprising for a partner it meets with essentially every week. Bloomberg also reported some details about the dinner last week.

A wide range of subjects was on the menu, sources said, with a lot of proposals and ideas floated. Developers did much of the talking, attendees said, with Zuckerberg and Ryan listening but making no promises.

One of the highlights was a discussion about new ways of monetizing games, including different revenue shares. Currently, Facebook charges 30 percent for virtual goods sold inside of games, just like Apple and Google. One idea was to have a sliding scale, so that developers just getting started on the platform would pay a lower rate, while the Zyngas of the world would continue to pay full price.

In other words, game developers would be taxed based on volume versus a flat fee, no matter how popular the game was. Likewise, the game execs argued that the rate structure would provide additional incentive to Facebook to market up-and-coming games.

A Facebook spokesperson was not immediately available for comment, but sources close to the company said that Facebook has no immediate plans to change the revenue share agreement for payments.

But the idea is not so far-fetched, given that most of Facebook’s payment revenue today is coming from a small percentage of large players. Specifically, Zynga contributed seven percent of the company’s Q3 payments revenue, down from 10 percent in Q2. Following that earnings report, Zuckerberg acknowledged: “Gaming on Facebook isn’t doing as well as I’d like.”

One thing Facebook could potentially do is build its own social games, which is now allowed, according to the contract it just signed with Zynga.

However, that idea was immediately shot down by a Facebook spokesperson: “We’re not in the business of building games, and we have no plans to do so. We’re focused on being the platform where games and apps are built.”

If Facebook is truly worried that a lot of its developers are ditching the social network for greener fields on Apple’s iOS or Google Play — and a lot of them are — then the dinner meeting was likely just the beginning.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121203/on-the-facebook-menu-at-zuckerbergs-recent-dinner-with-game-developers-sushi-and-a-sliding-pay-scale/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121128/myheritage-raises-25-million-aquires-geni/ http://allthingsd.com/20121128/myheritage-raises-25-million-aquires-geni/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2012 16:45:28 +0000 Matthew Lynley http://allthingsd.com/?p=273411 MyHeritage.com, the company behind an online application for researching and building family trees, has raised $25 million in its fifth round of funding.

MyHeritage is also announcing that it is acquiring Geni, a rival formerly run by PayPal alumnus David Sacks, who sold his enterprise social networking company Yammer to Microsoft for $1.2 billion. That acquisition adds seven million users to its network, along with a few extra tools to the service. Sacks joins MyHeritage’s board of directors.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121128/myheritage-raises-25-million-aquires-geni/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121127/using-a-self-made-app-for-family-ping-pong/ http://allthingsd.com/20121127/using-a-self-made-app-for-family-ping-pong/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 23:03:35 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://allthingsd.com/?p=273177 With hundreds of thousands of mobile apps out there, it’s easy to think they materialize out of thin air. The reality is a different story: App developers spend time and money researching operating systems before creating and testing apps. Then they often have to wait for an app store to approve the apps.

Given these obstacles, you would think it’s nearly impossible for average people to design a personal app.

Yet this week, I tested a tool that helps people make apps for events such as PTA meetings, church activities, fantasy football leagues or weddings. It requires next to no technical knowledge, no app-store approval and it’s free. It’s called Yapp — a mashup of “your” and “app.”

To use it, you open Yapp’s website, Yapp.us, in a computer browser, select an app design from about three dozen themes and enter whatever information you want to appear in the app, like text and photos. Pressing Publish generates a link or QR code to send to friends, family and colleagues for downloading the app. (Customized Web links, where you select the URL’s text, cost $5 each; the rest are randomly selected and free.)

But things get tricky the first time you try to download a finished app, which is also called a Yapp. When you receive an email with the Yapp link and click on it, you are sent to Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store to download YappBox, a free app that serves as an inbox for all of the Yapps a person might receive, much like Apple’s Newsstand on iPads and iPhones. Once you open YappBox, the new Yapp is there for you to use. This process is initially confusing and will intimidate some people. After that, the process of receiving apps made by friends is much smoother.

Yapp Inc., the New York start-up behind the Web site, takes advantage of a method Apple has used for years: Combining user-friendly software with beautiful design yields elegant results that look far more difficult to create than they actually are. Other app-making services either involve higher fees, or focus on certain events, like Appy Couple, which creates wedding apps.

For special events like a holiday party, users can create Yapps for guests that include Invitation and Gallery pages.

It took me as little as five minutes to make a simple Yapp. I went on to make seven, including one for my church’s holiday greens sale, one for a family ping-pong tournament and one for a holiday party. Though the functionality of these Yapps is relatively basic, they look polished and professional. And they include links that interact with other features on a mobile device, so selecting a street address links out to Google Maps or selecting an email address opens the compose email screen.

Preloaded pages in each Yapp include Invitation, Schedule, News Feed (where Twitter feeds can be imported) and Gallery (for photos). Extra pages can be added, as well as pages for People and Simple Text.

I found a theme called Underground, which had playful fonts and a loud red and brown design on its front page, to match the Yapp I made for my family ping-pong tournament. I uploaded a photo of ping-pong paddles for the Yapp’s front image. Its Invitation page included location and start time, and the Schedule page included times for three rounds of play. The News Feed included a Twitter feed and messages posted by family members using the app; the Gallery page showed family photos; and a People page listed players, titles, emails and phone numbers.

Each time I made changes to a Yapp, I pressed Publish to send updates to other users, and these people had to hit an OK button to implement these updates. This process is relatively simple and lets people keep adding features to their Yapps.

The Yapps can broadcast push notifications to other users, and these work the same way text messages appear on most devices. This is a big plus in situations like when a birthday party gets moved at the last minute because of rain or it’s the last day for wedding guests to book a hotel room. These notifications can be text-only or can include photos, and they get listed in the Yapp’s News Feed.

There are a few drawbacks, starting with the occasional sluggishness of apps. It’s missing a few features I wish it had, like the ability to add end times to events and let guests RSVP. And there aren’t many design templates to choose from.

I also wish I could collaborate with other people on a Yapp, but there’s currently only one administrator allowed per Yapp. Maria Seidman, Yapp’s CEO and co-founder, said these features and the ability to have more than one administrator are in the works.

Yapp users are asked to sign in using Facebook Connect, but Yapp never posts to Facebook on your behalf. Though signing into Yapp with Facebook credentials might be nerve-racking for people worried about privacy, I found it offered a quick way to log into Yapp via iPhone, Android phones or Web browsers.

Eight of the Yapp themes use designs that have matching stationery from popular stationery site Wedding Paper Divas, which is a nice touch if you want your wedding-app design to match your wedding invitation, program and thank-you notes.

If you’re looking for a fun way to coordinate with friends or family members, Yapp will do the trick. It has some growing up to do, but it puts app creation in the hands of real people, which is an exciting step.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121127/using-a-self-made-app-for-family-ping-pong/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/20121102/investors-plug-another-25-million-into-ipo-bound-flurry/ http://allthingsd.com/20121102/investors-plug-another-25-million-into-ipo-bound-flurry/#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:00:41 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=266137 Flurry frequently receives a lot of attention for the reports it publishes on the app economy. It even got its wrist slapped by Steve Jobs for peering into Apple’s iPad launch plans and posting the results.

But, for once, as part of announcing its fourth round of capital today, Flurry is talking about how well its own business is doing — and things aren’t too shabby.

In an interview, Simon Khalaf, Flurry’s president and CEO, said the company’s revenue is on track to hit $80 million to $100 million this year, up 300 percent over 2011. The company is also cash-flow positive, and is on track to go public as soon as next year.

Crosslink Capital led the $25 million round, with participation from existing investors, including Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest Partners, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Draper Richards.

Khalaf said Flurry selected Crosslink, in part, because of the firm’s experience in taking companies like Pandora and Omniture public. In all, the company has raised $51.6 million.

While many people may not have heard of Flurry because it is not a consumer-facing product, it is crunching numbers behind the scenes of some of the most popular apps running across Android, iOS and a number of other platforms. Today, 250,000 apps use its analytics tools for free, or are tapping into its ad network, called AppCircle, which helps developers acquire new users.

Khalaf said that two things are driving the company’s growth right now: The adoption of smartphones and tablets on a global scale, and a growing number of applications that need its services. In more mature markets, like the U.S., it’s mostly the growth of tablets. “It’s the trend that’s replacing laptops and 13-inch TVs and the gaming console and the magazine rack — all at the same time. It’s infinite growth,” he said.

Today, 65 percent of the company’s revenue comes from the U.S., with the bulk of international revenue coming from Europe. Next, Flurry plans to expand to Asia and Latin America. Its advertising platform reaches more than 700 million monthly unique visitors, and with the adoption of more devices, Khalaf estimates it will soon hit more than one billion.

Currently, the bulk of the apps using Flurry’s platform include gaming, social networking and dating, but increasingly, he expects that to change, with more interest coming from the traditional entertainment industry.

While there are many opportunities for growth, the CEO admits that there are still challenges ahead — the primary one being what kind of ad formats will be dominant on mobile. Since smartphones have smaller screens, banner advertisements don’t always work as well. Khalaf said Flurry is having some luck with video advertisements, but a lot of work still has to be done in figuring out the best way to catch a user’s attention.

“We can find really cool ad units that can engage consumers,” he promises.

Here’s the full release:

Flurry Raises $25 Million Series D to Solidify Mobile App Measurement and Advertising Leadership

San Francisco, CA — November 2, 2012 — Flurry, a leading mobile app measurement and advertising platform, today announced that it has received $25 million in an oversubscribed Series D round of financing led by Crosslink Capital. The round of funding, which included full participation from existing investors Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest Partners, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and Draper Richards, brings the company’s total funding to $51.6 million.  Nick Mignano, Partner at Crosslink Capital, will join Flurry’s board of directors.

Flurry will use the financing to accelerate the adoption of newly introduced platform products Flurry AppSpot, its supply-side platform, and Flurry Ad Analytics, its advertising effectiveness solution. Flurry will also use funds to grow its team and expand internationally.

“Flurry is powering a new wave of digital advertising with big data for the mobile app economy in an exciting way,” said Nick Mignano, Partner of Crosslink Capital.  “The scale at which the company is operating in terms of data volume, ad serving and revenue generation impressed our team. This enables one of the most innovative uses of data for business customers since our private investment in Omniture in 2006.”

Flurry has grown significantly over the past year, quadrupling the number of data points it measures, now over 32 billion per day.  Each day, the company measures 1.9 billion application sessions across more than 250 million unique smartphone and tablet devices. Over the last year, Flurry has doubled the number of applications using its services from 120,000 to more than 250,000.  In total, more than 80,000 companies now use Flurry services across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, HTML5 and JavaME platforms.

Flurry AppCircle, the company’s data-driven ad network, has grown by more than 3 times in volume over the last year. AppCircle now delivers over 120 million completed monthly advertising conversions, including first-time app downloads, user app re-engagements and completed video views.

“Flurry is excited to welcome Crosslink to our board as we expand the reach and adoption of the Flurry platform,” said Simon Khalaf, Flurry president and chief executive officer.  “Flurry is a unique, mobile-first company playing at the intersection of big data, mobile applications and digital advertising. We look forward to using this new round of funding to significantly accelerate our growth in one of the fastest growing technology markets in history.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20121102/investors-plug-another-25-million-into-ipo-bound-flurry/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20121030/lolly-wolly-doodles-brandi-temple-talks-facebook-fueled-real-time-retail/ http://allthingsd.com/20121030/lolly-wolly-doodles-brandi-temple-talks-facebook-fueled-real-time-retail/#comments Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:30:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=264237

When you have a name like Lolly Wolly Doodle, it’s hard not to get some kind of attention.

And, in fact, the online retailer of personalized, monogrammed children’s clothing has gotten a lot of it, mostly on Facebook, in what is one of the more successful efforts to take advantage of e-commerce on the social networking platform.

The company was founded by a North Carolina stay-at-home mom, Brandi Temple, who sewed clothes for her four kids. She started to branch out locally with simple A-line dresses for girls, then moved online at eBay and elsewhere, eventually almost primarily using a system on Facebook to sell her goods.

Essentially, Temple is doing a modified version of a flash sale, but with just-in-time retail elements. Customers fan the Lolly Wolly Doodle site, which puts daily sales alerts into the news feed. Once a new item comes up, the buyer comments on it with the size, the monogram desired and an email. The first people to comment get the item and pay for it immediately.

Only then is it actually made, in a kind of real-time social cycle. Unlike most retail, which is made and then sold, Lolly Wolly Doodle knows just how much demand is out there, and improves it with easy personalization.

It does not always work out on any individual item, but the fans have added up to 400,000, as have sales. With that success, Temple has raised $1.7 million in funding.

She was out in San Francisco recently, considering more investment to expand to new categories and improve on distribution arenas such as Pinterest, although she is definitely wary of taking too much money from venture capitalists for something that is already working well.

In other words, Temple is one sharp cookie.

You can hear all about it in the video interview I did below, explaining how she has turned shoulder bows and ruffles into an online phenom:

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