Kutcher (@aplusk) is one of the most popular Twitter users, with 6.8 million followers. UberMedia, meanwhile, is Bill Gross’ Twitter ecosystem company that has a bad relationship with Twitter.

Earlier this year, Twitter suspended access to various UberMedia Twitter apps for a few days, citing repeated terms of service violations. That conflict is part of why Twitter declared that third-party developers should stop making Twitter clients. (Did Ashton not get that memo?)

Twitter clients are often used by active tweeters who want a more customizable and powerful version of the service that’s accessible from various devices. UberMedia spent the last year buying up Twitter apps for mobile and desktop platforms such as UberSocial, Twidroyd and Echofon, and it recently tried to buy TweetDeck, the ultimate power-user app.

Now Twitter is expected to close the TweetDeck deal instead, as soon as this week.

So why is Kutcher, aka Mr. Twitter, working with UberMedia? Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but you have to wonder if Twitter slighted Kutcher by not thanking him enough for his endless promotion of their service.

Also, it’s probably safe to say that Kutcher–who just scored a gig to replace Charlie Sheen’s role in “Two and a Half Men”–reaches a more mainstream audience than most Twitter clients.

Flips are Flipboard’s swiping motion utilized to view additional content, so the figure could be taken as a loose equivalent for page views.

Two months ago, Flipboard got three to four million flips per day, McCue said.

McCue attributed the jump in usage to various factors that made his company’s iPad app faster. March 10 was the release date of Flipboard’s 1.2 version, which among other improvements boosted speed. That was also the day before the launch of the iPad 2, which Apple has said is up to two times faster than the first iPad, with graphics that can be nine times as fast.

Plus, after all the hype around Flipboard, many iPad 2 owners probably downloaded the app first thing after picking up their new device–I know I did.

McCue said the number of Flipboard users has doubled in the same time period, but he did not specify a number.

Flipboard, which syndicates and prettifies content from publishers, curators, and users’ friends, is hard at work on its first iPhone version, which is planned for release this summer.

The iPhone version will be catered to power users more so than the iPad app, said McCue.

I mentioned to McCue that Flipboard might now be part of my weekend routine but it’s too lightweight for my weekday thirst to tap into real-time news and conversation. McCue responded that the new iPhone app is designed to be a weekday tool for people like me.

So if Flipboard for iPhone is a power-user social news tool, will it replace the leader of that category, TweetDeck–which Twitter is now reportedly close to buying?

McCue, who happens to be on the board of Twitter, said for some users that may indeed be the case.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Flipboard recently raised $50 million at a $200 million valuation.

Got me. The last time I reported on the Twitter start-up, it was supposed to have been acquired by UberMedia for $30 million.

I’ve asked all the relevant parties and aside from a public non-comment from Twitter, have yet to hear back.

Here’s what I do know:

• In February, after TechCrunch reported that UberMedia had acquired the Twitter client, I asked around and was told that the deal hadn’t been closed but was “pretty far along, with signed term sheets, etc.,” and would be worth $30 million in cash and UberMedia stock.
• Following that report, I heard that some TweetDeck investors were grousing that the company had sold too early, for too little.
• Last week, a person familiar with TweetDeck told me the deal still hadn’t closed because there were “valuation issues.” That explanation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Or more precisely, it sounds more like a polite way of saying “something came up that moved this thing from ‘almost done’ to ‘in limbo.’”
• It’s worth underscoring that the original TweetDeck/Uber deal was going to be paid for primarily with UberMedia stock. If you’re bullish on UberMedia, that’s a good thing, because it could end up being worth much more down the road. On the other hand, it would be no sweat for Twitter to hand over $50 million in its own stock for this deal. And if you’re an investor who’s eager to turn that paper into cash via secondary market sales, it would be easy to do so–much easier than selling UberMedia shares.

So now that we’ve moved from known knowns, let’s move to known unknowns:

What was UberMedia going to do with TweetDeck, anyway?

The two answers you hear most often is that Bill Gross and company were rolling up Twitter-related startups so they could either: Do what Twitter hasn’t done so far, and make real money selling ads against Tweets; or gather up enough users to create a Twitter-like platform that they could run on their own.

But neither of those answers makes much sense to me, either.

Because by all accounts Twitter CEO Dick Costolo seems to have a real problem with Gross, which makes a partnership unlikely. And because splitting off a chunk of Twitter’s users and creating a better/more reliable/whatever service sounds like the kind of thing that appeals to tech pundits. But not real people.

What would Twitter do with TweetDeck, anyway?

This one seems a little easier to figure out: TweetDeck is one of Twitter’s most popular clients, and the service has become increasingly interested in owning its own distribution.

On the other hand! Twitter has been asked about TweetDeck’s role in its ecosystem several times in the last year or so, and each time, the company has responded with the same answer: We love TweetDeck, but it’s not for us–the people who use that thing are hard-core power users, and we’re aiming at a broad audience. (Fun/frustrating game for new users: Boot up TweetDeck and try to find the “search” function.)

Twitter founder/product guru Jack Dorsey is the most recent Twitter official to say something along those lines, in a  Q&A last month. TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth found his statement worth highlighting for his own Twitter followers, though he only called out the first paragraphs of this exchange:

Q: So are you saying there shouldn’t be all of these other clients out there? I love TweetDeck, and I like it better than Twitter.com. Is your job as product director to make Twitter.com as good as TweetDeck?

A: I think the biggest challenge is to build a cohehesive user experience, and at the same time, enable and allow for multiple views on the same thing. TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

But I think that’s maybe five percent of the Twitter population. That five percent of the Twitter population are some of the most high-value publishers that we have, and they’re using the service at extreme velocity. So of course we have to pay attention to that, and I’m not saying we need to rid ourselves of interfaces like that. We have to embrace them.

But, we also need to speak to the 80 percent that will not be using an interface like that, that don’t really understand what Twitter is and that see Twitter as mainly a consumption experience. We spend a lot of time on people tweeting but a lot of the value that one gets out of Twitter is being able to follow their interests, and not necessarily tweet about it. But just consume it. So we need to put a lot more effort into the consumption experience and the consumer experience.

So maybe Twitter changed its mind and decided that it’s worth owning that small slice of power users, after all. Or maybe TweetDeck’s owners ended up looking for more money and less risk (and less upside). Or maybe both, or something else. Positively Rumsfeldian.

TweetDeck is one of the add-on programs that help Twitter users view and manage short messages carried by the service, which are known as tweets.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment. TweetDeck’s chief executive, Iain Dodsworth, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

So it would be unfair to expect him to make more news today, when he appeared at Columbia University’s journalism school for an hour-long talk.

But Dorsey’s mannered, thoughtful responses to my Dow Jones colleague Julia Angwin’s questions are still worth studying. This is the guy who had the original vision for Twitter, and this is the guy now charged with helping it navigate from a tech toy that a lot of people feel passionate about to a mainstream product that everyone uses.

Oh. And he’s going to do it while he simultaneously running a second start-up, too.

Here’s an edited excerpt of Dorsey and Angwin’s Q&A:

Julia Angwin: What’s going on with Twitter and its ecosystem of developers? Isn’t part of the problem that there’s a lack of clarity around your intentions and what your business model will be?

Jack Dorsey: We do have a business model right now, and we do have a revenue stream right now. You see [it] on the service, with promoted products, which give really, really useful introductions to content that you would not otherwise discover. They’re doing fantastically well.

I think we can be better at communicating exactly where we’re going. In terms of the ecosystem, I think it’s up to any good platform company to really guide its developers in the right way, and to inspire them to create very interesting and useful applications.

I think when someone looks at Twitter–as a developer myself, my first instinct is to build a client. And that’s why we have 100 clients out there. And they’re all doing different things in different ways, but it doesn’t necessarily provide the best user experience.

As a developer, there’s far more interesting things to build on top of Twitter than just a client. That’s been done. That’s a problem that’s been solved. So how do we inspire our developers and our ecosystem to really work on the tougher problems, and to work on more interesting companies and products?

Like what?

The best part of that is, I have no idea. You can’t build an electricity grid and say, “You should go out and invent vacuum cleaners. Or keyboards or toaster overs.” You have to give the right tools and primitives to folks, so they can build what they want, and what they want to see in the world.

The interesting products out on the Internet today are not buildling new technologies. They’re combining technologies. Instagram, for instance: Photos plus geolocation plus filters. Foursquare: restaurant reviews plus check-ins plus geo.

There’s a lot of sensors on the mobile phones that we’re all carrying with us, and there’s a lot that has not been explored, that one could use Twitter to push even faster. So that’s what would excite me as a developer: “There is this great unknown. And I don’t know what to build, but I’ll play with the data and I’ll figure it out.”

So are you saying there shouldn’t be all of these other clients out there? I love TweetDeck, and I like it better than Twitter.com. Is your job as product director to make Twitter.com as good as TweetDeck?

I think the biggest challenge is to build a cohehesive user experience, and at the same time, enable and allow for multiple views on the same thing. TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

But I think that’s maybe five percent of the Twitter population. That five percent of the Twitter population are some of the most high-value publishers that we have, and they’re using the service at extreme velocity. So of course we have to pay attention to that, and I’m not saying we need to rid ourselves of interfaces like that. We have to embrace them.

But, we also need to speak to the 80 percent that will not be using an interface like that, that don’t really understand what Twitter is and that see Twitter as mainly a consumption experience. We spend a lot of time on people tweeting but a lot of the value that one gets out of Twitter is being able to follow their interests, and not necessarily tweet about it. But just consume it. So we need to put a lot more effort into the consumption experience and the consumer experience.

So is that what you’re focused on?

One of my first acts will be to really listen to what’s happening in the company and what needs to be fixed. We’ve been around for five years now and we’ve built a lot of interesting technology. I think we need better lines around the products, so it’s more approachable, so that people can get into it immediately, and it’s extremely relevant right way.

We have a lot of mainstream awareness, but mainstream relevancy is still a challenge. It’s something that people can’t immediately get their head around: “Why is Twitter valuable?”

The answer is it’s not that Twitter is valuable, it’s that you can follow what’s unfolding in Egypt right now. That’s valuable. You can follow your favorite company or organization. You can also mix that in with your family and your social network and talk about all these interests in real time. That’s the value, not the brand “Twitter.” Twitter just provides the venue for it. So we need to refocus on the value. That’s my goal in the next few months.

It seems like you could really use some filters for all this information that’s on Twitter.

I think it’s the technology challenge for the next five years. We built very easy ways to input information. But extracting that information in a relevant way, in real time, is still a big, big challenge. So we need to build technologies that immediately surface what’s most revelant and most meaningful to you.

And that’s still a very, very large challenge, and difficult. You have to follow all of these accounts, and sometimes you miss some tweets that were extremly relevant to you. We can solve that through technology,  and we will solve that, but it is going to be quite difficult to do.

You left Twitter in 2008, when you were asked to step down as CEO. You’ve said that felt like you were punched in the stomach. Now you’re back. Have those feelings changed?

I have a greater context for it. But I would not change anything. Because one amazing that happened out of that was we created this amazing company called Square. And I think it has the potential to have just as large, if not larger impact, than Twitter does.

And in that process, I’ve learned an immense amount about building products, and building something that’s approachable to consumers. And more importantly, managing teams and managing humans. And making sure that we’re focused on the right things.

Twitter has made clear its intent to clean house of third-party apps, last week telling developers not to build new ones and warning existing app makers that they’re on watch.

To downplay the impact of its stance on users, Twitter said 90 percent of its active users use Twitter’s official apps at least once a month. This includes the Twitter.com Web site and mobile Web site, as well as software clients for iPad, Android and other devices, according to a Twitter spokesperson who replied to a request for comment after this story initially published (it has been updated to reflect her comments).

Sysomos analyzed 25 million tweets sent on March 11, the day Twitter clarified its policy. It’s possible that Sysomos’ tweet sample was not representative; Twitter has released the total number of tweets sent on March 11, and it was 177 million.

But if Sysomos’ measures hold true, Twitter’s cherry-picked stat of 90 percent doesn’t tell the full story. Just because these active users visit an official app over the course of a month doesn’t mean that’s where all their tweets come from.

In fact, it seems highly weird that any active user *wouldn’t* visit the Twitter Web site at least once a month.

Sysomos shows that active Twitter users who do not use Twitter’s apps are among the most active. Many of these third-party apps have been around longer than Twitter’s official alternative and continue to offer more advanced functionality, so it’s quite natural that early adopters and power users will prefer them.

Also, I’d imagine third-party apps are probably often the choice of automated Twitter accounts. Perhaps bots comprise much of that 10 percent of active users who *don’t* visit Twitter apps.

On the whole, it’s possible that with ongoing growth, the dynamic of the company’s user base will move away from power users to a more mainstream audience that prefers Twitter’s basic, consistent official clients.

But as the Sysomos data shows, that doesn’t seem to have happened yet.

The company found 35.4 percent of tweets came from Twitter.com, 8.8 percent from Twitter for iPhone, and 5.5 percent from Twitter for BlackBerry.

Of the non-official apps, those owned or soon-to-be-owned by UberMedia have the largest market share. UberSocial generated 16.4 percent of tweets originated on such clients, followed by TweetDeck with 13.1 percent and Echofon with 9.2 percent.

Ryan Sarver, who leads the company’s platform team, said in an announcement on the company’s developer discussion group that existing third-party clients can continue to operate but they will be held to rigorous standards of privacy and consistency. The micro-messaging company said it now makes the top five Twitter clients (including its Web site) and says 90 percent of its active users use its apps at least once a month.

The key quote is:

Developers have told us that they’d like more guidance from us about the
best opportunities to build on Twitter. More specifically, developers ask
us if they should build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream
Twitter consumer client experience. The answer is no.

In point of fact, there aren’t a ton of independent Twitter client shops anymore because UberMedia has bought many of them up, including UberTwitter and Twidroyd, and is in the process of buying TweetDeck. You have to wonder if Accel Partners knew this was coming when the firm led a $17.5 million round for UberMedia last month. Since then, Twitter shut down two of its apps for three days, citing policy violations.

And now this.

Sarver said developers are welcome to continue to work on Twitter publisher tools, curation, real-time data signals, social CRM and content verticals.

But, as for the heart of the Twitter experience: Leave it to us.

APIs (application programming interfaces) are a sort of must-have accessory for young start-ups, even though they seem a bit presumptuous before a product really takes off. Instagram competitor PicPlz just released an API on Feb. 7, and that evening Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom took to the company blog to promise that he’d have one very soon.

The Instagram API is different from others, Systrom said today, because it’s built as to push out updates rather than wait for developers to pull them in. Developers can subscribe to a specific user, tag or location to get every new photo associated with it as soon as they come through.

The real-time concept is similar to Twitter’s user streams, an overhaul of the message-sharing service’s APIs that launched last year and made third-party clients like TweetDeck much quicker and more reliable.

Instagram has accumulated more than 2 million users since launching in October, but so far it only has an iPhone app and limited Web access.

Systrom said he hopes to see developers create an Instagram experience for the iPad, and for browsing photos on the Web (there’s already an effort on that front called Insta-great, and Instagram made a demo site that live-updates with new geo-tagged photos (pictured above)).

I asked Systrom what would happen if a developer were to build something that Instagram then wants to make part of its own product down the line (say, an iPad app). Given that Instagram is sort of a photo version of Twitter–a company that continues to clumsily alienate its developer ecosystem–you could imagine it might have parallel conflicts with developers if the service does end up getting huge.

Systrom said he doesn’t have that stuff figured out yet. “I’m not sure what would happen,” he said, but said he does have some clarity around Instagram’s short-term roadmap. “We’ve stated pretty clearly we’re going to work on Android and the Web.”

So why is the leading Twitter application–the one that many of Twitter’s most ardent users rely on–selling itself for $30 million?

That’s the question lots of people are mulling over since Friday’s news about the UberMedia/TweetDeck deal.

The tech investors and observers I’ve chatted with in the last couple of days generally land in one of two camps. Either:

• TweetDeck is the biggest Twitter client not owned by Twitter, and they sold too early.
• TweetDeck is the biggest Twitter client not owned by Twitter and, given the circumstances, they did okay.

This is basically a more muted replay of last year’s Twittersphere freakout, when it became clear that Twitter wanted to own much more of the Twitter ecosystem itself, and would place more limits on everyone else.

One important variable here is the way you view Bill Gross and UberMedia. A big chunk of the TweetDeck payout–the majority, according to multiple sources–will be in UberMedia stock. So if you think that company–which just raised another $17.5 million itself–has an upside, then the deal looks that much better.

That’s hard to figure, though, because Gross seems to be doing two things: Buying Twitter apps that compete with Twitter’s own products, and building a Twitter advertising system that will compete with the one Twitter is trying to build itself.

And Twitter doesn’t seem any more receptive to any of that now than it did 10 months ago. But Gross and his backers argue that they’re going to pull it off in a way that makes Uber become the Zynga to Twitter’s Facebook–a smaller company built on another bigger company’s platform, that makes both of them more valuable. So if they’re right…

Meantime, this seems like a good time to revisit Twitter investor Fred Wilson’s “inflection point” essay from last April.

That’s the one that precipitated much quaking among third-party Twitter developers and investors, with good reason: In part, it explained that Twitter would be buying or building “hole-filling” services, which meant there wouldn’t be much reason for many of the Twittersphere’s existing apps to exist.

A year later, though, it’s the second part of Wilson’s essay, where he calls on developers to build new apps and services that “create something entirely new on top of Twitter,” that seems more striking.

Because if Twitter really does end up being worth $10 billion or more, it seems like someone ought to be trying to do that. I’m not sure I’ve seen any, though.

Am I missing something? Feel free to weigh in below.

The valuation for the Pasadena, Calif., start-up founded by well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross (pictured here)–which was actually struck some month ago–is $40 million.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will join the board of UberMedia, maker of social media reading and posting tools, which is currently largely aimed at the Twitter ecosystem.

“We are hoping to work very closely with Twitter, which is certainly our goal, as well as other social media platforms like Facebook,” said Breyer in an interview with BoomTown this morning, answering a question about previous tensions between Twitter and UberMedia. “There will be a lot of efforts to monetize Twitter and there is no silver bullet.”

Index Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures also participated in the round.

The company did not reveal the amount raised, nor the valuation for UberMedia.

But many like him are trying to find a way to monetize the huge microblogging platform–including Twitter–and take advantage of its enormous scale.

Gross founded the start-up last spring.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, including Index, Revolution, betaworks, First Round Capital and angel investors such as Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

Started in Gross’s Idealab start-up incubator and called TweetUp (and then PostUp), it was initially cast as a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

TweetUp also offered an organic search service to surface the best tweets. This put it at odds on several fronts with Twitter, which began to aggressively move to take over key parts of its business that had largely been left to third-party developers.

That still remains UberMedia’s essential goal, and Breyer hopes that the new investment will show Twitter that UberMedia hopes to work in harmony with it, as other developers have done successfully with Facebook. (Accel and Breyer himself are big investors in the social networking giant, so he should know.)

“Like Twitter, we want to drive the customer experience,” he said, pointing out successes such as the Zynga gaming service. “This is a lot like Facebook several years ago and cooperation worked out well for everyone.”

Here’s the official press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

And here are two video interview I did with Gross last April when the company was founded:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/ubermedia-raises-17-5-million-from-accel-index-and-steve-case/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:02:48 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29687 UberMedia, the holding company that specializes in Twitter-based start-ups, has added its highest-profile company to date: TweetDeck, the biggest Twitter application not owned by Twitter itself.

UberMedia, run by Internet pioneer Bill Gross, will pay $30 million in cash and stock for the London-based company, which has raised less than $5 million from investors in the last two years.

The deal, first reported by TechCrunch, isn’t done yet, but it’s pretty far along, with signed term sheets, etc. All of TweetDeck’s investors will take a portion of their payout in UberMedia equity, I’m told.

Both Gross and TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth (pictured here) have been trying to build businesses within the Twitter ecosystem, though it’s never been clear how Twitter felt about that.

Gross, in particular, has had an uneasy relationship with Twitter: Last year, an earlier incarnation of his company tried to launch an “AdSense for Tweets” product at the same time that Twitter launched its own Google-like ad product, and that didn’t go well.

The two companies have other things in common as well. TweetDeck has been shepherded along by Betaworks, the New York-based holding company/platform/incubator that also specializes in the Twittersphere. And Betaworks is also an investor in…UberMedia.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Dodsworth last April, when the Twittersphere was particularly confused about the prospects of Twitter apps, like TweetDeck, that weren’t owned by Twitter itself. Looks like this one turned out just fine.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/local-tv-news-talking-heads-via-twitter-nbcs-the-20/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/local-tv-news-talking-heads-via-twitter-nbcs-the-20/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:16:39 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29521 If you’re reading this, there are decent odds you don’t watch your local TV news broadcast. Would you be any more inclined if it featured a dollop of Twitter?

NBC will find out. Its Local Media unit, which owns 10 stations around the country, is integrating Twitter into its programming, bringing a select group of Twitterers to chat about the day’s news within the broadcasts themselves.

“The 20″ starts this week on NBC’s Washington, D.C., and New York stations, and you can see a demo of what it looks at the bottom of the post. But it’s a pretty straightforward concept: Use Twitter to find 20 (get it?) newish, youngish talking heads to liven up the show.

And that’s supposed to set up a virtious cycle–the Twitterers that NBC features already have people paying attention to what they’re saying, so perhaps their offline followers will tune in to see them on TV, too. And exposure on TV should increase “The 20″‘s online following. Repeat.

A couple of thoughts:

• Lots of people are already watching TV and using social media at the same time. But it’s pretty hard to effectively integrate Web/social commentary into TV news. Think of that weird CNN segment that used to feature women reading blog posts out loud, or TweetDeck’s awkward appearance on multiple TV news reports last month. And when news anchors read people’s tweets aloud on “The 20″ segment below, that seems odd, too. But the other part of the bit, where the commentators actually show up on TV, via Skype, and start commentating, is a much more promising notion.
• NBC does seem to have done a pretty good job of finding interesting people to bring on their shows. Or at least they have by my self-interested standards: I’m already following about a third of NBC’s New York crew (congrats, Anil).
• Regardless of how this plan turns out, it’s interesting to see NBC working to bring a younger, tech-savvy demo back to its local news broadcast. That’s a switch from an earlier strategy, where Comcast’s broadcast unit essentially gave up on trying to get Web users to pay attention to its TV news, and set about creating a local news site that more or less ignored the stations altogether.

Untitled from Peter Kafka on Vimeo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/local-tv-news-talking-heads-via-twitter-nbcs-the-20/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101220/twitter-list-service-tlists-becomes-sulia-raises-3-5-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101220/twitter-list-service-tlists-becomes-sulia-raises-3-5-million/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 20:42:27 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27254 Ah! You can still raise money for a start-up whose fate is tied directly to Twitter.

Here’s Sulia, which is dedicated to finding and sorting the most relevant Twitter users into related groups, so you can follow them.

The New York-based company has raised $3.5 million in a round led by FirstMark Capital. Other investors, who had previously put in $1 million, include Bo Peabody’s Village Ventures, Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures, Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective and Ron Conway’s SV Angels.

If Sulia sounds vaguely like TLists, which did something similar, there’s a good reason for that. It’s the same company, rebranded and tilted slightly–can’t call this one a pivot.

The main difference is that while TLists was primarily supposed to be a tool for Web publishers and Twitter clients–it already works with TweetDeck, Flipboard and Mashable–Sulia is supposed to do that and provide a destination Web site. That is, it is becoming a publisher itself.

How will Sulia make money? The same way Twitter wants to: Act like a media company, and sell ads against the eyeballs it collects.

CEO and founder Jonathan Glick knows that world pretty well, given a work history that includes stints at iVillage and the New York Times. Prior to the start-up, he was director of research at Gerson Lehrman Group, which is both the subject of legal scrutiny and the world’s largest “expert network.”

At one point this summer, when the company was still called TLists, the start-up had a working relationship with Twitter, where it powered a grouping feature on the service’s profile pages.

From what I can tell, that feature disappeared with Twitter’s redesign, but I’m told the companies are still working together and may have something to show off within a few weeks.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101220/twitter-list-service-tlists-becomes-sulia-raises-3-5-million/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101213/shocking-bieber-upset-oil-spill-tops-twitters-2010-trends/ http://allthingsd.com/20101213/shocking-bieber-upset-oil-spill-tops-twitters-2010-trends/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 08:00:33 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=1147 Although World Cup tweeting caused record high volume and infrastructure demands on Twitter, the most-discussed topic on Twitter in 2010 was actually the Gulf oil spill, said the San Francisco-based company tonight. The South Africa-hosted World Cup came in at No. 2.

(Of course, Twitter hasn’t revealed the secret formulas that helped it aggregate, tabulate and rank these topics.)

In the Twitterverse, after the BP oil spill and soccer, the next most popular topic of conversation in 2010 was the movie “Inception,” followed by the Haiti earthquake and the vuvuzela. The iPad, Android, Justin Bieber, Harry Potter and Pulpo Paul round out the top 10. It’s an odd list, indeed.

The person most discussed on Twitter in 2010 was obviously he of the dedicated servers, Mr. Bieber. (It’s somewhat shocking that world events and tech gadgets were able to keep the teen phenom out of the overall top spot.) Beating out her royal highness Lady Gaga, the No. 2 person on Twitter was Brazilian president-elect Dilma Rousseff (pictured).

Here’s the full 2010 list, courtesy of Twitter, followed by 2009′s list for comparison.

2010 Twitter Trends

Overall Top Trends:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. FIFA World Cup
3. Inception
4. Haiti Earthquake
5. Vuvuzela
6. Apple iPad
7. Google Android
8. Justin Bieber
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
10. Pulpo Paul

News Events:
1. Gulf Oil Spill
2. Haiti Earthquake
3. Pakistan Floods
4. Koreas Conflict
5. Chilean Miners Rescue

People:
1. Justin Bieber
2. Dilma Rousseff
3. Lady Gaga
4. Julian Assange
5. Mel Gibson

Movies:
1. Inception
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
3. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
4. Despicable Me
5. Karate Kid

Television:
1. MTV Video Music Awards
2. Pretty Little Liars
3. True Blood
4. Walking Dead
5. Grammy Awards

Technology:
1. Apple iPad
2. Google Android
3. Apple iOS
4. Apple iPhone
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops

World Cup:
1. FIFA World Cup
2. Vuvuzela
3. Pulpo Paul
4. Dunga
5. Diego Maradona

Sports:
1. LeBron James
2. Wimbledon
3. Manchester United
4. Brock Lesnar
5. Celtics

Hash Tags:
1. #rememberwhen
2. #slapyourself
3. #confessiontime (hash tag started by Usher)
4. #thingsimiss
5. #ohjustlikeme

2009 Twitter Trends

News Events:
1. #iranelection
2. Swine Flu
3. Gaza
4. Iran
5. Tehran
6. #swineflu
7. AIG
8. #uksnow
9. Earth Hour
10. #inaug09

People:
1. Michael Jackson
2. Susan Boyle
3. Adam Lambert
4. Kobe (Bryant)
5. Chris Brown
6. Chuck Norris
7. Joe Wilson
8. Tiger Woods
9. Christian Bale
10. A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez)

Movies:
1. Harry Potter
2. New Moon
3. District 9
4. Paranormal Activity
5. Star Trek
6. True Blood
7. Transformers 2
8. Watchmen
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. G.I. Joe

TV Shows:
1. American Idol
2. Glee
3. Teen Choice Awards
4. SNL (Saturday Night Live)
5. Dollhouse
6. Grey’s Anatomy
7. VMAS (Video Music Awards)
8. #bsg (Battlestar Galatica)
9. BET Awards
10. Lost

Sports (Teams, Events, Leagues):
1. Super Bowl
2. Lakers
3. Wimbledon
4. Cavs (Cleveland Cavaliers)
5. Superbowl
6. Chelsea
7. NFL
8. UFC 100
9. Yankees
10. Liverpool

Technology:
1. Google Wave
2. Snow Leopard
3. Tweetdeck
4. Windows 7
5. CES
6. Palm Pre
7. Google Latitude
8. #E3
9. #amazonfail
10. Macworld

Hash Tags:
1. #musicmonday
2. #iranelection
3. #sxsw
4. #swineflu
5. #nevertrust
6. #mm
7. #rememberwhen
8. #3drunkwords
9. #unacceptable
10. #iwish

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/shocking-bieber-upset-oil-spill-tops-twitters-2010-trends/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101018/live-apple-earnings-call-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20101018/live-apple-earnings-call-2/#comments Mon, 18 Oct 2010 22:58:07 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24788 Steve Jobs made a rare appearance during today’s Apple’s earnings call and spent most of his time beating up his rivals, past and present. Summary: The iPhone has left Research in Motion’s BlackBerry in the dust. And while Google’s Android phones and tablets-to-be looked impressive, they weren’t.

Great fun to listen to for Apple watchers. But not that meaningful, really–mostly positioning and spin. There was at least one important nugget, though: Apple has a specific shopping list, with some very big-ticket items on it.

Jobs wouldn’t lay those out, of course. But when asked if he planned on spending any of Apple’s $51 billion (!) in cash via a dividend or stock buyback, he explained that he had something else in mind. From my notes, a combination of direct quotes and paraphrase:

“We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along that we’re in unique opportunity to take advantage of because of our cash,” and we want to keep our powder dry “because we feel that there are one or more” opportunities in the future.

M&A guys, start your engines!

The “what will Apple do with all its cash” speculation story is a time-honored tradition–I seem to remember writing one four or five years ago, when Apple had $6 billion or so lying around, and discussing whether it made sense for Jobs to buy a music company like Universal.

But I don’t remember Jobs every signaling his desire to go shopping quite as openly as this before (feel free to correct me in comments if I have this one wrong). Two caveats:

• Jobs is famous for saying one thing and doing…something else. So don’t get too riled up about this.
• Just because Jobs is talking about spending money on “opportunities” doesn’t mean he’s talking about buying a company. He could be talking about big, hairy capital expenditures, like the billion-dollar server farm Apple is finishing up in North Carolina.

Still. It’s hard not to read or hear that quote and not think that he’s thinking about some very big buys. Like what?

A lot of folks will assume that Jobs is talking about buying a big content producer. Music doesn’t make any sense, because there’s little value left in that business. But if Jobs wants to make headway in the TV business, perhaps it makes sense for him to snag a big broadcaster or programmer to give him the leverage he needs with the Comcasts, Viacoms and Time Warners of the world.

Or you could make the same argument for other content makers, like game studios. The biggest one, Electronic Arts, has a market cap of a mere $5.21 billion. Jobs could give ERTS shareholders a hefty premium and still have plenty of walking-around money.

Or perhaps it makes zero sense for Apple to be in the content business, because it’s done just fine not being in the content business to date.

So then what?

Feel free to throw your own guesses in, but I’ll kick off with my own: It’s a company that has yet to compete with or brush up against Apple in any significant way. And it’s one that Apple seems unlikely to be able to move aside, even if it wanted to. And it’s one that’s already competing directly with Google, which has to make Jobs like it even more.

And, if you believe this L.A. Times report, Jobs is already strolling around Palo Alto with its CEO: What do you think of Apple buying Facebook? Discuss….

Earlier

Apple investors who got their first look at the company’s earnings numbers don’t like them–AAPL is trading down seven percent after hours. Let’s see if Apple executives can soothe their concerns during the earnings call.

You can listen in for yourself via this link, or follow along in my liveblog below:

Live Blog

Apple or Apple’s IR company trying some very, very mellow string and piano stuff while we wait.

CFO Peter Oppenheimer kicks off. “Outstanding results” for September quarter. Highest quarterly revenue, earnings.

Mac products and services: 3.9 mm Macs. Record quarter. 27% y/y growth. Double market growth for Q.

IMac, Macbook, Macbook Pro all good. Asia/Pacific performing best.

IPods: 9.1 million.

ITunes revenue more than $1 billion.

IPhone. “Extremely pleased” with 14.4 million unit sales; basically doubled y/y.

$8.6 billion in sales value of iPhones alone.

Heaping praise on iPhone 4 (justified) and stressing iPhone’s move into corporate market, rattling off blue-chip customers.

IPad. “Thrilled” with momentum. “Great enthusiasm” from customers.

65% of Fortune 100 deploying or piloting iPad. Lists some of them.

125 million iOS device sales last month.

200,000 registered iOS developers.

“Very happy” with results of iAd so far.

On to Apple stores. More records here.

Expects to open 40-50 stores next year, 50% of them outside U.S.

IPhone sales mix “better than expected”–boosted overall margin.

$51 billion cash hoard. [Deep, longing sigh from everyone in media, tech business.]

For the year: 5x revenue and 10x earnings compared with five years ago.

“Very enthusiastic” about lineup, “extremely confident” in new product pipeline.

Rare appearance from Steve Jobs!

Had to drop by for first $20 billion quarter.

“We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up to us in the foreseeable future.”

They have to move into software/platform development, and I don’t think they can.

So what about Google?

Apple is activating 275,000 iOS devices per day on average over the past 30 days; peaked at 300k iOS devices some days. 300,000 apps in app store.

Unfortunately, there is no solid data on how many Android handsets sold each quarter.

Google loves to characterize Android as open, Apple as closed. “We find this a bit disingenuous.”

Windows is “open.” But Android is “very fragmented.” OEMs like Motorola install own stuff to make their phones stand out. We don’t do that.

Shout out to “Twitterdeck” ( I think he means Tweetdeck) and their challenges running 100 versions of Android client. “Compare this to iPhone, where there are two versions of the software…to test against.”

Meanwhile, at least four app stores on Android. “This is going to be a mess for both users and developers.”

Apple’s app store has 3x apps compared with Google marketplace.

“Even if Google were right, and the real issue was closed vs. open, it’s important to remember that open systems don’t always win.”

For instance: Microsoft’s [miserable] “PlaysForSure” strategy, RIP.

Google’s “open” argument is a “smokescreen.” Real issue is what’s best for customer–”fragmented vs. integrated.”

Integrated is a huge advantage for us, because it’s better for customers, and better for developers. “We are very committed to the integrated approach no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as closed.”

Now! On to our tablet competitors:

First of all, only a few credible competitors.

Second, most of them are pushing 7.5″ screen. That means they are just at 45% size of our 10″ screen. “You heard that right….This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps.”

Extolling features of iPad size vs. teeny tiny tablet competitors: They’re “tweeners”–too small to compete with iPad, too big to compete with smartphones.

IPad has 35,000 apps. New crop of tablets will have “near zero.”

Competitors having a hard time coming close to iPad pricing, even with their puny screens. We make our own everything, and this results in an “incredible product, at a great price.” Our competitors will “likely offer less, for more.” They’ll be “DOA. Dead on arrival.”

Questions and Answers

Supply constraints on iPad?

COO Tim Cook: We’ve got a handle on it. And note that we’re expanding distribution in the U.S. and internationally, with more countries to come.

Question about margins I didn’t quite catch.

Oppenheimer: Sold more iPhones than planned, and commodity prices came down, so that helped.

Q for Steve. Please talk about “iPad opportunity.” Size of business, etc., two years or more down the road?

Jobs: “The iPad is clearly going to affect notebook computers. The iPad proves it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when.” Already seeing “tremendous” interest from education and “much to my surprise, from business.”

“The more time that passes, the more I am convinced that we’ve got a tiger by the tail here.” We’ve trained tens of millions of people on this OS via the iPhone. “I see it as really general purpose, and I see it as very big.”

Could it be the second biggest business after the iPhone?

“I try not to predict, I try to report.” We’re selling more iPads than Macs.

What about Flash? Any update?

“Flash memory? We love flash memory” [hohoho]

A question on iPhone demand, which I missed.

Q: Steve, “You are the tablet market.” Do you see tablet competitors cutting into your market in the same way you cut into RIM’s market? Won’t that fragment the market?

“I have a hard time imagining what those strategies…are.” Pricing won’t work. “Flash hasn’t presented any problem at all; as you know, most video on the Web is now presented in HTML5.” The iTunes store is dominant and “we’re not done” working on stuff for the future.

Q: Smartphones–”Do you see that as a zero-sum game?”

Jobs: As you know, most phones in the world aren’t smartphones. They’ll convert over time, so there will be room for multiple competitors, but “eventually it will turn into a zero-sum game, or close to that.”

Q: For Oppenheimer: Another margins question.

A: We do see a small sequential decline. Higher-than-expected mix of new iPods and new iPads. We’ve been very aggressive on pricing there, and that’s what’s pushing down margins.

Q: Steve, how’s your Apple TV “hobby” coming? And what’s up with streaming media?

Jobs: We don’t talk about unannounced products, but I’m happy to tell you what we know about Apple TV. We have moved to streaming. It’s all streaming. Everything is rented, and/or soon to be streamed from iPad or iPhone.

So far we’ve sold 250,000 new Apple TVs. “I’m thrilled with that.” And with Airplay set up, “it will give people another big reason to buy it.”

Another margin/guidance question. Seems to be the same one repeated each time, with the same answer.

Q for Steve: Key risks for company?

The goal is to make the best devices in the world. “It’s not to be the biggest. As you know, Nokia’s the biggest… but we don’t aspire to be like them.”

Android is the biggest competitor. Outshipped us in June quarter as we transitioned. We’re waiting to find out what happened in this quarter. “I don’t know how we’ll find out” though.

Our approach is to create products that “just work” and “their approach is very different from that.”

Questions for Steve and Tim: Aspirations for iPhone and iPad. In Mac, you didn’t aspire to high market share; in iPod, it was the opposite–you own that market. In the past, Tim you’ve described iPhone business as closer to the iPod model. Steve, you sort of said something different. Please resolve that difference: Biggest, or best?

Jobs: “Nokia makes $50 handsets. We don’t know how to make a great handset for $50.” We want to make “breakthrough, best products,” and “drive costs down” while making them better through “relentless improvement.”

We have a very low share in the phone market. Single digits. And a very high share in tablets. But we don’t think about it that way.

The reason we won’t make a seven-inch tablet isn’t because of price point, “it’s because we don’t think you can make a great tablet with a seven-inch screen.” And as a software company, we think of software first. Developers don’t want to build for all these different platforms and devices, and on this small screen. “It’s not about cost, it’s about value, when you factor in the software.”

Q: Okay, but if the market moves toward lower-functionality smartphones and “dramatically lower price points,” then you’ll cede share, right?

Jobs: “You’re looking at it wrong.” You’re looking at it as a hardware guy who doesn’t really know about software. You assume that software “can come alive on this product that you’re dreaming of. But it won’t” because developers want to build for better products, with faster processors and better screens.

Q: You have about $50 billion in cash. What are you going to do with that? Why not return it to shareholders?

Jobs: “We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along that we’re in unique opportunity to take advantage of because of our cash” and want to keep our powder dry “because we feel that there are one or more” opportunities in the future.

Missing next question about iPhone and iPad penetration into corporate market.

[Market not sold on Apple's story yet, btw: Stock still down 5.84%.]

Question for Oppenheimer. Guess what? It’s about gross margins. Any change in manufacturing, etc? Any color at all?

Oppenheimer: Don’t provide product-specific gross margins. Always trying to lower costs, though. “We were happy” with gross margins for quarter. Down slightly because of product mix, as I’ve said over and over.

Q: Talk about demand from carriers to pick up iPhone 4.

Cook: The pressure I’m feeling is about supply. That’s the problem. At the country level, we have 166 relationships in 89 countries. In many countries, we went to more than one carrier. Latest one of those is Germany.

IPhone 4 in 85 of 89 countries. Will be in all 89 by end of year.

What happens to margins and subsidy when you go nonexclusive?

We don’t give information out on specific markets, but you can see that our ASPs have stayed above $600.

For Steve: Why do you have advantage in price on iPad, as opposed to PC?

Jobs: We engineer so much of it ourselves. Everything from chip to battery to enclosures. We’ve learned so much. We’ve learned a lot, developed a lot of our own components, where competitors have to go through middlemen. “This is a product we’ve been training for for the last decade.”

Call is over. You can hear the whole thing on a podcast later this evening.

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