To display the most relevant entries to you in priority,
vote for the stories you are interested in
()
and reject those that you are not interested in
()
Universal Music Group (UMG) is embarking on one of the most ambitious efforts yet to boost U.S. CD
sales, with the test of a new pricing structure designed to sell most new releases by current
artists at $10 or less at retail. The major's "Velocity" pricing program responds to
the continuing plunge in CD sales, taking aim at brick-and-mortar retail stores that have scaled
back on floor space dedicated to music. The pricing adjustments will also bring CD prices more in
line with what consumers pay for digital albums at online retailers like iTunes and Amazon.
"We think it will really bring new life into the physical format," Universal Music Group
Distribution chairman/CEO Jim Urie says.
On the
same conference call earlier this week in which it
talked about its new rewards program, GameStop Executive VP of Merchandising, Tony Bartel, said
that stores currently experiencing Wii and PlayStation 3 shortages probably
won't find relief very soon. While the retailer is always bugging Sony and Nintendo for more units, Bartel said that GameStop "could
sell a lot more hardware than what we have on both the PS3 and Wii platform," and that situation
probably won't change until early summer of this year.
He did say that the Wii is due for a re-supply first, but he believes that both Nintendo and Sony
are "still scrambling to catch up from
the surge" of the last holiday season. But a shortage
like this isn't unprecedented -- as we get closer to summer, we'll probably see new inventory
appearing on shelves, ready to go home to a caring gamer.
On the
same conference call earlier this week in which it
talked about its new rewards program, GameStop Executive VP of Merchandising, Tony Bartel, said
that stores currently experiencing Wii and PlayStation 3 shortages probably
won't find relief very soon. While the retailer is always bugging Sony and Nintendo for more units, Bartel said that GameStop "could
sell a lot more hardware than what we have on both the PS3 and Wii platform," and that situation
probably won't change until early summer of this year.
He did say that the Wii is due for a re-supply first, but he believes that both Nintendo and Sony
are "still scrambling to catch up from
the surge" of the last holiday season. But a shortage
like this isn't unprecedented -- as we get closer to summer, we'll probably see new inventory
appearing on shelves, ready to go home to a caring gamer.
We knew it was
only a matter of time before Lenovo finally started shipping the
larger and more powerful relatives of the ThinkPad Edge 13.
Available from retailers now and Lenovo's own webstore in early April, the 14- and 15-inch Edges
have the same design as the Edge 13 -- including the same spill-resistant chiclet keyboard we adore
-- but boast more muscle under the hood. While the $599 models pack Celeron processors, they can be
configured to your heart's content with Core i3 or i5 CPUs, 5,400 / 7,200rpm drives, Blu-ray and
mobile broadband options. And if having a red ThinkPad has always been a drunken fantasy of yours,
the Edge 14 and 15 come in a glossy black or red, and a matte black option is there for the
traditionalists. Wondering what the Edge 14 and 15 have to do with cupcakes? Apparently Lenovo sent
the Edge 14 to a true small business owner -- Lev Ekster, founder of NYC's Cupcake Stop -- a few
months ago, and he's been wearing out the AT&T 3G ever since as he gets work done on the go.
We've no icing for you, but you can salivate over the full press release after the break.
This week
we've got a book hot off the presses for your weekly dose of entrepreneurial reading as 37signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are back
with their second book in four months. Released earlier this month, Rework, a no-nonsense rethinking of how to successfully
start and run a business, comes hot on the heels of their first book Getting Real: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a
successful web application, which published in November of 2009.
Sponsor
This time Fried and Hansson take a more general approach to business by examining the ways that
new companies are disrupting traditional business practices and making a big splash. They cover
their entrepreneurial bases by reminding us that "no time is no excuse" and that "a business
without a path to profit isn't a business, it's a hobby," but then also elaborate on less
traditional practices that have helped them succeed.
The main theme of the book is to trim the fat and do fewer things better; simplifying every
aspect of your business and doing a smaller number of things at a higher quality is far better
than trying to do too much and a mediocre level. There were times when customers of their
products wanted more features and they refused to comply because it would slow them down and
decrease efficiency. They decry time-stealing meetings, lengthy contracts, childish office
politics and bloated inventories because they weigh down companies from reaching their full
potential.
Rework is a great read for entrepreneurs because it is very focused and
doesn't waste any time with lengthy use cases. The book itself is an example of the principals it
teaches; the quality of a written work is not based on it's length, so why should company be
judged by how many features it offers? Fried and Hansson admit that the book, which comes in at a
dense but brief 288 pages, was originally drafted to be nearly twice as long, but why say in 600
pages what you can say under 300? Another reason the book is a great read is because of the
authors' open and honest tone.
"Ever seen those weapons prisoners make out of soap, or a spoon? They make do with what they've
got," one passage humorously points out. "Now we're not saying you should go out and shank
somebody, but get creative, and you'll amazed with what you can make with just a little."
Other useful and easily digestible analogies for their unique business ideas include comparing
your company to a hot dog stand. They advise that the best way to trim down an inflated company
is to find the "epicenter" by asking yourself, "If I took this away, would what I'm selling still
exist?" The best hot dog stand doesn't worry about the decorations on the stand, or the
condiments - it worries about the hot dogs.
There are dozens of other valuable pieces of advice in Rework that are sure to inspire
any entrepreneur or small business owner. But as LeVar Burton famously said at the end of each
episode of Reading Rainbow, you don't have to take my word for it. Seth Godin, who has
authored several books on business and entrepreneurship including The Dip
which we profiled earlier this year, had nothing but high praise for Rework.
"Jason and David have broken all the rules and won. Again and again they've demonstrated that the
regular way isn't necessarily the right way," says Godin. "They just don't say it, they do it.
And they do it better than just about anyone has any right to expect."
This book is an obvious buy not only because the of the expert advice dispensed by the successful
founders of 37signals, but also because the book is an easy, quick and inexpensive read.
Personally, in a few short hours I was able to breeze through the audio version, which can be
found online for less than $10. But if you prefer reading words on a page, the Kindle version is
also $10, or a hardback copy is just $3 more at some online retailers.
It was a good run while
it lasted, but it looks like the video retail chain Blockbuster is finally on its way to the big
strip mall in the sky. Yahoo reports that the
video chain is close to filing for bankruptcy after a disastrous year, which saw them losing over
$500 million in 2009. The Texas-based company has been meeting with lawyers to discuss their
options, and even went as far as to
consult Pierpont Communications about how to break the news to the press, and more importantly
the stockholders, that the retailer had, "issued a regulatory filing claiming it may need to seek
federal bankruptcy protection if it cannot restructure its debt."
So how bad could it be? Well, just take a look at Blockbuster's record over the past few years:
they have closed hundreds of stores, sales have gone down by 20%, and profits are plummeting. The
retailer made
some attempts last year to get into the digital content game, but I think this is a case of too
little too late, because revenue from their new kiosks, online rentals, and streaming video hasn't
helped. Now compare that to a company like Netflix that has grown annually by 20 per cent
and is posting profits of $679.7 million for 2009.
Blockbuster had revealed that it was in negotiations with Hollywood studios for better financial
terms to provide their stores with DVDs when the bankruptcy story hit the wire. If Hollywood
decides that Blockbuster is too much of a financial risk, it could force the already cash-strapped
retailer to make up-front payments for their content, and with 'liquidity' being a real problem for
the video retailer, it could be the last nail in the coffin. So far, the financial melt-down is
focused in the US, and according to Blockbuster, Canadian and UK stores are just fine. But I can't
be the only one who thinks it's just a matter of time before what started out as a joke has gotten one
step closer to becoming reality.
Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for
WhitePages, a Top 40 Web and Mobile
Publisher. You can find him on Twitter,
and on the Whitepages
Blog where he writes about mobile, local, and social media.
While last year’s SXSW seemed to serve as the
“coming out” party for location-based services (LBS), maybe this year’s
conference signifies the migration of these platforms into mainstream culture. And perhaps the
only real “new” concept to emerge this year is the idea that there is finally a real
opportunity to make money via “location.”
Here are five things that companies should consider as they look to utilize location-based
services (LBS) as part their mobile strategy.
1. Location Shouldn’t be the Only Goal
From finding the nearest ski slope on REI’s Ski and Snow Report to a nearby movie on Flixter, there are
plenty of Top iPhone applications that have incorporated a “lead with the offer, not the
capability” philosophy into their mobile product offering to provide a better service.
Build the best service first, then add the bells and whistles.
With all the hoopla surrounding location, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that
location’s real appeal to advertisers is the fact that with this functionality, you can
reach the on-the-go user, who is ready to buy and consume. Just because Twitter and Facebook offer location doesn’t make
that valuable or new to advertisers. Location-targeting via IP address has been around a while.
For the same reason radio is a great advertising channel for retailers, LBS advertising is also
valuable: because it can reach the consumer near the point of sale.
However, if you apply any city’s share of the total U.S. population, the results show some
pretty low estimates of Foursquare users in individual localities. What emerges is a very
“long tail” — a steep, narrow graph — of local user adoption. This shows
why it is important to achieve scale if you hope to see return on investment in the location
marketing space.
For example, using these rough estimates of a city’s proportional share of the U.S. population, if a
local pet supply store wanted to target people in San Francisco, the estimated reach would be
1,310 Foursquare users. Even if you double this audience estimate, the number is fairly small for
even a local marketer. We had to hit around 4 million downloads of the Whitepages iPhone app to
achieve the minimum scale needed for advertiser geo-targeting. Today, 80% of our campaigns from
major brands are geo-targeted.
Editor’s Note: It’s important to remember that these are just rough estimates.
Because Foursquare was initially only available in a handful of major metro areas, the geographic
distribution of users may not precisely follow the geographic distribution of the
population.
3. Mobile Battery Life is Key
Battery life is the single biggest threat to location. With GPS on, the phone is asking the
network where it is, and this chatter can drain battery life — anyone with an iPhone knows what I am referring to. Thus, phone
manufacturers will play a critical role in the future of LBS. RIM, the manufacturer of BlackBerry devices, faced this problem early on with
the energy-tax of e-mail polling, and as a result, their devices now have some of the best
battery life.
Foursquare has helped us move forward here as well. “Check-ins” help to address the
issue as they offer efficient geo-triggers without having to keep battery-draining GPS features
on at all times.
4. Location Will Be the Battleground of the Mobile OS
Looking forward, I predict the mobile platform wars will be fought with location and maps. This
is an important feature that a platform can use as a point of differentiation for consumers and
developers.
In anticipation of that battle, Apple purchased mapping company Placebase, and Google is starting to provide unique
mapping features like turn-by-turn navigation on
its Android devices. The only hope I see for
Windows Mobile is if they do something
completely revolutionary on the mobile location front. A development like this was alluded to at
the recent TED conference with its augmented reality
layering of geo-tagged Flickr photos and real-time
video integration.
5. Location Pays
At WhitePages, we monetize our mobile services through a mix of premium, national display, and
sponsored links for local business. Our effective CPM (revenue per thousand ad impressions) for
sponsored local links is $30-$50 — double the effective CPM (eCPM) rate we see for premium
display ad campaigns from national brands. The eCPM multiple of local targeted ads over ad
network rates is a staggering 10x.
Location-based inventory will also become scarce as Apple recently
announced that iPhone apps will not be permitted to access GPS capabilities for advertising
alone. There now needs to be some consumer benefit and functionality in order to access a
user’s location. Geo-targeted inventory on mobile will continue to be at a high premium
with no excess supply or ad networks to drive it down.
Conclusion
It is my hope that by this time next year, SXSW –- the festival of
“emerging” music and technology –- will have finally moved on from
location. It’s clearly happening now, and if integrated wisely, location will be making
companies too much money to be called the “cool kid on the block” any longer
About five years ago, I wrote a detailed report on how one could have the choice between GNU /
Linux and other operating systems in Argentina. that was most surprising for French people, that
have always had the greatest difficulties in getting such a choice, despite the remarkable
efforts made by the Working Group Detaxe
and Racketiciels. It was even possible at that time in
Argentina to compare on the website of major retail chains (Fravega, Garbarino, the equivalent of
Darty or Boulanger in France) the price for the same machine with another operating system or
with a Debian-based, customised Argentinian GNU / Linux, developed by an SME named Pixart (not to
be confused with the studio Pixar!).
One may well ask why: this is not without reminding us of the situation here in France, where
after SFR placed on the market more thatn 250000 Netbooks all equipped with GNU / Linux about two
years ago, we can not find now a single netbook without Windows (yes, I write the name in full
letters now, because I am particularly upset: I wanted to buy one for personal use this
Christmas, but despite my efforts, I have not found a single model with a GNU / Linux
preinstalled in France).
The few remaining fans of software monopolies like to say that this sudden vanishement proves
that the other operating system is superior to GNU / Linux.
Well, I happen to have in my hands right now a copy of the appeal filed against Microsoft by the
little Argentine SMEs Pixart, and it is very helpful in understanding what really happened there
... and very likely what is happening here too.
The Windows For The Poor
Microsoft does not usually sit back when it loses market share, and I already noticed back then
that Redmond had put in place a strategy to counter the spread of GNU / Linux in emerging
markets. In Argentina, already in 2005 they had managed to convince the government to spend
taxpayer money on an operation codenamed 'Mi PC', which through a microcredit whose interests
were paid by the state, encouraged the public to buy machines that are sold with Windows SE
(Starter Edition, they say), better known today as Windows FTP (For The Poor). This edition
sports ludicrous limitations like the following: only recognises 256 Mb of RAM (with XP, It's a
little short), 80 GB hard disk (ditto), screen resolution was limited to 800x600, no local
network, and you cannot open windows for more than 3 applications at once (oh well, if there is
something that poor people have in abundance is time, therefore they will only run 3 tasks in
parallel, and no more).
This version was sold cheaper than the standard Windows editions , with the aim to compete with
GNU / Linux machines, but at that time this move made me laugh quite a bit because the early
machines with Windows FTP still costed at least 500 pesos more than the equivalent GNU / Linux
systems, which had no such ridiculous limitations: one really had to be poor in spirit to
purchase them!
The rear margins (or Market Development Agreements)
What I did not know in 2006 is that the Windows For The Poor was just a first step in the
strategy: The second step was to artificially lower the final price of computers running Windows,
and financially strangling Pixart, which could not charge anymore its service for
pre-installation of custom GNU / Linux on machines manufactured in Argentina.
In reading the appeal filed by Pixart, we learn that Microsoft would have started in 2008 to give
back large amounts of money to the whole distribution chain to convince them to buy exclusively
Windows, and these sums have been disguised in various forms.
For example, I heard that Microsoft would have payed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to
some distributors, officially for the Microsoft logo to appear on the leaflet advertising the
chain. Well, this kind of operation is called 'rear margin' here, and generally corresponds to an
abuse of dominant position from retailers who charge abusive fees to small suppliers for
purported advertising campaigns that hide forced rebates. But in our case, I have a hard time
thinking that a small retail chain in Latin America has a dominant position when facing a
multinational that generates profits of billions of dollars a year.
But why, you will say , is Microsoft complicatin its life like this? Was'nt it easier to simply
lower the cost of licensing Windows to, say, $ 5, rather than continue to charge $ 100 initially,
to repay $ 95 to distributors right after?
Well, no! Because, if we lower the cost of the officially licensed Windows FTP to $ 5, then it
must be sold $ 5 everywhere, and we can no longer pretend to charge $ 200 to large customers
(such as ministries in Argentina) for the full version .
It is much more interesting to pretend that the cost is 50 or 100 dollars, and find a way to give
back 45 or 95 dollars under the table: on one side the illusion is maintained that the price is
high and constant, on the other, one can happily strangle competition, by lowering prices only on
the competitive segment (the rebate is conditioned, of course, to stopping any sale of the rival
product).
The competition law
This wonderful monopolistic invention has one flaw, though: it brutally violates the rules of
competition, which are codified, for better or worse, in almost all countries, including
Argentina. To function properly, it must be carried out in the greatest secrecy, and stay safe
from prying eyes.
But it may well be that this discretion is not going to las much longer: using the laws on
competition in Argentina, Pixart filed appeal, describing what it thinks is the strategy followed
by Microsoft, and asking the judge to compel Microsoft, and distributors to provide all evidence
of purchases, grants, rebates, in short, an account of all financial transaction, even by means
of intermediaries, between Microsoft and distributors.
Pixart also suggests that the judge checks whether Microsoft properly pays tariffs for imports of
these licenses: it is well known that Microsoft
There’s been so much push for digital, downloadable content lately that we’ve almost
forgotten about our old friend, the compact disc. Even though CD sales are plummeting
each time our little planet makes another obit around that bright, flaming thing in the sky, the
big boys don’t seem to be willing to throw in the towel just
quite yet. In fact, UMG is working to implement a new pricing structure that will hopefully
bring CD prices down to a maximum of $10 a pop.
UMG plans to make up the difference with more units moved, and with a push for
“deluxe” versions of albums that will cost a bit more, but come with all sorts of fun
and exciting extras.
“We think [the new pricing program] will really bring new life into the physical
format,” Universal Music Group Distribution president/CEO Jim Urie
The new structure plans to keep a 25% wholesale profit margin. So an album you pay $10 for,
wholesellers will get for $7.50. We’ll see if that’s enough to get everyone on board
with the move. People already behind it include Newbury Comics CEO Mike Dreese and Trans World
Entertainment CEO Bob Higgins. The rest of the music industry doesn’t seem too excited
though.
But they’d better do something if they want to get CD sales out of their current nosedive.
2008 saw 360.6 million units, barely over half of the numbers in 2000. iTunes and other retailers
seem to have set 10 bucks as the magic number people will buy albums at. Granted, if people are
willing to shell out $10 for a digital album, a little more isn’t so unreasonable for a
physical copy. With art, liner notes, and all the rest.
Universal’s move here seems to show the music industry is finally starting to look into
some longer term solutions that just
suing everybody left and right. We’ll have to wait and see if any of the other big
labels make similar moves.
If you're looking to buy a PlayStation 3 or a Nintendo Wii, you might need to wait a few more
months--at least, if retailer GameStop's predictions are correct.
The e-book war between Amazon.com and Apple
is getting uglier. Dennis Johnson cites a report in
Publishers Marketplace (subscription required) that alleges that Amazon.com is
telling publishers that if they switch to an agency model (ala Macmillan) , they
will lose Amazon as a platform for both e-books and print.
This battle, which in many ways mirrors similar struggles between record labels and online music
stores, underscores some of the challenges that moving into widespread digital distribution for a
formerly non-digital product can bring.
The Agency Model Conundrum
Recently, Macmillian’s CEO John Sargent explained the agency model, as it relates to e-book
sales, in his blog:
“Starting at the end of March, we will move from the ‘retail model’ of selling
e-books (publishers sell to retailers, who then sell to readers at a price that the retailer
determines) to the ‘agency model’ (publishers set the price, and retailers take a
commission on the sale to readers).”
In other words, Macmillan wants to be able to control how much digital books are sold for on a
per-book basis. Much like music publishers fought (and eventually won) the right to sell certain
digital tracks or digital albums for more (or less, in some cases) than the $0.99 per track/$9.99
per album standard, publishers want that same control.
Amazon disagrees. And while it did acquiesce to
Macmillan’s position at the end of January, it apparently has no plans of making those
same concessions for future publishers.
In the Publishers Marketplace report, Michael Cader writes:
“At least one independent publisher of scale was told categorically by Amazon in a recent
phone call initiated by the retailer that Amazon would not negotiate agency selling terms with
any other publishers outside of the five initial Apple partners. This publisher was told that if
they switched to an agency model for e-books, Amazon would stop selling their entire list, in
print and digital form. In conversation, Amazon is said to have reiterated that as matter of
policy they are declining to negotiate an agency model with any publisher outside of the five who
have already announced agreements with Apple’s iBookstore.”
In other words, the agreements that have been made with the five publishers signed to work with
Apple — Macmillan, Harper Collins, Penguin, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster — will
not be passed on to smaller publishers.
It seems even the agreement with the other four publishers outside of Macmillan (known as Agency
Four) isn’t set in stone.
Cader also writes:
“The indications are that if the Agency Four have not finalized new digital sales
agreements with Amazon prior to the launch of Apple’s iPad, they could face delisting from
direct sale at Amazon, as Macmillan did.”
Translation: If those publishers don’t finalize a new digital agreement with Amazon before
the launch of the iPad, they risk being removed from
Amazon.com
Amazon Is Biggest Now, But For How Long?
Because it is both the biggest seller of e-books and print books, Amazon has enormous power in
the publishing industry. However, it’s unclear how long it will be able to play hardball
with publishers, especially as formidable competitors like Apple (with iTunes) and Google emerge.
Apple, interestingly, held a reverse stance with music executives for many years before finally
changing course in January of 2009 with the introduction of variable pricing. However, one reason
Apple was able to exert so much influence over record labels pricing was because until Amazon
launched its service (again, Amazon took the reverse approach with music, letting publishers set
variable pricing for tracks and albums), there was no real competitor in the digital music space.
Amazon isn’t quite as lucky. First, e-books have been around for years and are available in
a variety of formats from a variety of different storefronts. In fact, Amazon sold digital books
long before it introduced the Kindle.
The e-book market has evolved much more quickly than the digital music space, which leaves less
wiggle room for retailers, like Amazon, to exert pressure.
However, make no mistake, for smaller publishers, the risk of losing listings on Amazon.com is
still probably a big enough threat to have an effect.
We’ll keep following this situation as it develops.
In
continuing to look at the way that Facebook has become a driving force behind online news
consumption, Heather Hopkins of Hitwise has dove into the numbers again, this time examing
how Facebook users compare with others in return visits.
According to her article,
Facebook not only drives a high amount of traffic, higher than Google News, but its users are far
more loyal, as well.
Sponsor
Hopkins took a look at the data earlier this month, noting that Facebook drives
three times as much traffic to broadcast than Google News, and now we find that these users
are also repeat offenders. That is, they don't just visit once, they come back for more. From the
Hitwise
blog:
Hitwise data indicate that visitors from Facebook are more loyal to News and Media websites
than are visitors from Google News. In particular, among the top 5 Print Media websites in the week
ending March 6, 2010, 78% of Facebook users were returning visitors compared to 67% from Google
News. The figures are almost identical for Broadcast Media, with a 77% returning rate for Facebook
compared to 64% for Google News.
Why do we care about this metric? Because "visitors aren't as valuable if they don't come back.
Advertisers and retailers need some assurance that visitors will return again and again." Hopkins
notes that even visitors from Google.com, often the leading source of traffic to these sites, are
outpaced by those from Facebook when it comes to return visits. But why is this?
Hopkins doesn't get into the "why" behind the numbers, but we'd be willing to wager that it has
something to do with a few reasons. First, content posted by peers is more likely to be
compatible with an individual's world view. Second, their trust in friends as sources might lead
them to return for more.
Google, on the other hand, can give great results just the same as it can lead you to the most
worthless pages you've imagined. It doesn't offer that one thing we can all trust - the valued
opinion of a friend. It's also possible that the friend making the recommendation in the first
place is a return visitor who repeatedly recommends the articles they read.
Whatever the reason, the numbers tell us one thing for sure - news outlets need to focus on
making sure it is as easy as possible for readers and viewers to share content on Facebook. Or,
as Hopkins so succinctly puts it, "with recent Pew
Research showing that Newspapers have seen ad revenue fall 26% during the year and 43% over
the past three years, understanding where to find loyal readers is becoming increasingly
important."
I caught up with Kieran Hannon the other day. He was in the Bay Area for a meeting with the Irish
prime minister (he's on the board of Enterprise Ireland) and I realized it had been a good few
years since I had last seen him.
He used to be co-managing director of Grey Advertising, then had gone off to Texas to work as VP
of Marketing for Radio Shack, and then moved to Santa Monica, in Southern California. He's now
working as COO at a promising startup called Sidebar, which has
an interesting mobile technology that recommends content based on what people like, very useful
for online retailers and others.
Kieran and his family had spent 18 years living in San Francisco, and I was curious what life in
Southern California (SoCal) was like.
He said life was good, and that the startup scene was healthy and that there are a lot of
media/technology centers there. I often write about how Silicon Valley has become Media Valley,
because of all the media companies here (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, etc) so it makes sense
that SoCal, with its rich media history, would be a fertile breeding ground for media technology
startups.
...LA [is] the second largest city in the country with a population if 16 million. We have
universities like Caltech, UCLA, USC and many more. We have many seasoned entrepreneurs who have
built successful companies here and made a lot of money for investors and themselves. But LA is
not Silicon Valley and we don't need to aspire to be so. We will never be Silicon Valley in the
way that Toronto will never be Hollywood. But we have a great city for building technology
companies.
He goes into details about how LA is not like Silicon Valley.
- Funding is different, there are smaller "A" rounds of around $3m rather than $10m here.
- Recruiting is different. There aren't huge pools of engineers, but it is possible to build 100+
sized teams.
- Commuting isn't as bad as people think it is, most people live close to where they work. And
hey, commuting isn't that easy here.
- Lots of content creation skills. This is an interesting point to make because software
engineers can be found almost anywhere in the world today, but content creation skills are very
culture specific, you can't outsource this work.
- There are now larger numbers of successful entrepreneurs, many are on the their second and
third successful company.
Here are a few success stories:
There is a lot of innovation happening in LA from places like Eqal, Deca.TV, DemandMedia's
studios, Clicker, Filmaka and other initiatives.
. . .
The whole category of "sponsored search" came from a successful LA company, Overture. (my firm,
GRP Partners, was an investor). LA produced Applied Semantics that created AdSense and was bought
by Google. We were also an investor in the early local listing company, CitySearch - an LA
company. LA was a leader in lead generation (LowerMyBills), comparison shopping (PriceGrabber,
Shopzilla), social networking (MySpace ... I know, I know - Facebook won - but it was still a big
business). If we extend a bit North up the coast line we have many affiliate marketing innovators
including ValueClick, Commission Junction and FastClick. They also produced GoToMeeting and
CallWave.
. . .
A great team from MySpace has created Gravity. Gil Elbaz from Applied Semantics has now created
Factual. Zorik Gordon is tearing it up at ReachLocal. TechCoast Angels backed GreenDot should be
a major IPO this year. Frank Addante has created Rubicon Project. Douglas Merrill, the former CIO
of Google, is building his next company in LA. Scott Painter, founder of
CarsDirect has created two new generation LA startups (Zag and TrueCar, both backed by GRP
Partners). Brett Brewer (ex MySpace) has AdKnowledge, there is Adconian, Legal Zoom and many
more. Hautelook, Gogii, Magento - all very high potential companies building in LA.
Mr Suster is one of the organizers of Launchpad LA V2, which was announced today. This is a project aimed at helping
first-time entrepreneurs and helping to educate them and guide them in building successful
companies.
We will be selecting 10 startup companies to participate. There is no cost but you must
physically be based in or move to Los Angeles for the 6 months of the program. Applications are
due April 6th, 2010, the form is on the website and the Twitter address is@launchpadlad
A West Coast corridor of innovation...
It won't be long before we have a West Coast corridor of innovation stretching from Silicon
Valley to Southern California, and beyond.
In fact, if you fly from San Diego heading north along the coast you pass over tons of innovation
centers:
- The communications and biotech industries of San Diego;
- The electronics industries of Orange County;
- The media centers of Hollywood and Santa Monica;
- Then you reach San Francisco/Silicon Valley with its electronics, software, media tech,
biotech, cleantech industries;
- Then Portland with its thriving startup scene plus Intel's big presence there;
- Seattle with a thriving tech scene mostly spun out of Microsoft, and Amazon;
- Vancouver and its software industry.
Wow. 1400 miles of innovation. There's no other region like it, hundreds of
miles of world-class, industry leading, innovation and creativity.
Interestingly, it's all built on top of one of the most unstable fault lines in the world. A
disruptive reality. Is there a connection?
I've always said that innovation has to be disruptive otherwise it's not innovation.
"...I heard a song that I liked a lot.... The next day I was thinking to myself that perhaps
the rest of the album was worth getting.... So I went over to iTunes I saw that it was available
for $9.99.... [But] I... discovered that it was available on Amazon.com for a good bit
less...."
Dan Cohen at GearDiary has done a small comparison of MP3 album prices between Amazon and iTunes. His article points out some interesting differences between the two sites,
such as albums having differing number of tracks, which certainly surprised me! He concludes that
Amazon was the less expensive retailer, at least for the titles he compared. Frankly, I have
never downloaded an MP3 album, as I still prefer a "hard copy" (a CD, or LP...), but for those of
you who have, is Amazon or iTunes your vendor of choice? And is price the only important
distinction between the two? Or are there other retailers which offer even better bargains or
other advantages?
Updated March 19th, 2010 After being a USA exclusive last fall, the TomTom ONE XXL gradually made
its way to Europe, likely because the retailers where interested in offering a GPS system with a
large 5" screen. The news for the XXL series is the availability of a v9 update via TomTom HOME. It
s...
The fact that many people love games isn’t really that new. Retailers and even our own
governments have used our love of games to sell us products and hook us on lotteries and whatever
else they can think of to boost revenue. But the rise of online games such as World of Warcraft
and the social and “casual” games popularized by Zynga and other companies on
Facebook, such as Mafia Wars and Happy Aquarium, has arguably made gaming a far bigger part of
our culture than it has ever been — not to mention location-based apps such as Foursquare
and Gowalla, which have explicit game-like features built in. Online payment giant PayPal said
that Zynga was its
second-largest merchant last year, and PayPal does business with some of the largest
companies in the world. And get ready for even more games: Flurry Analytics says that its
research shows almost
half of the apps that are being developed for the upcoming Apple iPad are games.
What is the impact of all that gaming on our society? One academic, Lee Sheldon of Indiana
University, says the generation that has grown up with ubiquitous online gaming is bringing that
culture with it into the educational system, and ultimately into the workforce. “As the
gamer generation moves into the mainstream workforce, they are willing and eager to apply the
culture and learning-techniques they bring with them from games,” Sheldon, an assistant
professor at the university’s department of telecommunications, told
ITNews. He said older managers will have to “figure out how to educate themselves to
the gamer culture, and how to speak to it most effectively.”
Sheldon is already experimenting with that: over the last year, he started grading two of his
classes (both involved with game design) using a system based on “experience points”
or XP, similar to the way gamers in World of Warcraft and other massively-multiplayer games award
points for various tasks. Students started the year at level one, with zero XP and then gained
points — and higher grades — by completing “quests” and
“crafting,” which corresponded to giving presentations and doing exams and quizzes.
Students also formed “guilds” similar to the gaming groups that rule WoW and other
multiplayer games, and Sheldon says that his students seemed far more engaged than they had been
before.
A similar phenomenon was the topic of a panel at the
recent SXSW conference in Austin, where Christopher Poole, the founder of the controversial
discussion forum known as 4chan, and Web historian Jason Scott discussed the site and its culture
— which in some cases consists of offensive material, but also involves public advocacy
through offshoots such as the Anonymous group. According to
a description from Austin360, Scott compared the behavior at 4chan to a game, but one in
which the objective was to come up with something more shocking and/or hilarious than your
competitors.
Scott noted that another site behaves in almost the exact same way: Wikipedia. And he’s got a point — the
“crowdsourced” encyclopedia relies in many cases on unknown and unpaid editors and
writers to produce and structure and verify its content, people who to some extent compete for
the recognition of their peers on the site, and in some cases wind up “levelling up”
to become senior editors and members of the internal Wikipedia “cabal” of site
managers. Although Wikipedia doesn’t explicitly award experience points, the concept is the
same, and it motivates people in similar ways.
The moderation of comments at Slashdot is based on a very similar system: users are able to
gain “karma points” through
positive actions such as posting sensible comments, voting on other comments and flagging abusive
comments. When they get enough points, they are selected by the site’s algorithm to be
official moderators, and can then “spend” the points they have removing comments. In
such a system, it doesn’t ultimately matter whether someone is anonymous or not, because
there is an incentive for them to follow the rules and behave properly (although there are always
users who don’t care about the rewards and try to “troll” or disrupt any site).
The bottom line is that good games take advantage of people’s innate desire to compete with
each other, but balance that with their need to receive rewards, including the approval of their
peers — rewards that in some cases can be used to modify their behavior in certain ways.
Those are principles that don’t just apply to games. Jesse Schell, a former creative
director at Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, had a great presentation at the DICE 2010
conference last month in which he talked about the rise of social gaming and
what we can learn from it, which is embedded below.
Sports Direct made its £26m approach on Wednesday, and saw it promptly rebuffed by Blacks.
At 62p per share, the offer was only 3% higher than Blacks' share price, and came three weeks
after Sports Direct blocked Blacks'
efforts to raise £20m to help its recovery.
The board of Blacks told the City this morning that it had rejected the approach as "wholly
inadequate". It added that the company intends to keep working on a new fundraising move that
cannot be blocked by Sports Direct.
Sports Direct, which owns 20% of Blacks, said it was disappointed that its approach had been
rebuffed.
"[Sports Direct] continues to hope that the board will recognise the merits of an offer which, if
made, it believes would be highly attractive for Blacks shareholders, particularly in the context
of Blacks' share price performance over the past 12 months, providing certainty, in cash, at a
price exceeding the highest closing price for Blacks shares over that period," it added.
A serious dispute is brewing in the world of ebooks, pitting publishers and Apple against giant
online retailer Amazon. A significant part of the appeal of ebooks is that they are (or should be)
much cheaper than printed editions. In the publishing world, royalties paid to the author typically
represent just 10% of the retail price. Both publishers and retailers take their cut. Printing is
usually 30%, and then there are warehousing and shipping costs.
A serious dispute is brewing in the world of ebooks, pitting publishers and Apple against giant
online retailer Amazon. A significant part of the appeal of ebooks is that they are (or should be)
much cheaper than printed editions. In the publishing world, royalties paid to the author typically
represent just 10% of the retail price. Both publishers and retailers take their cut. Printing is
usually 30%, and then there are warehousing and shipping costs.
Orange and high-street retailer HMV will next week launch what they claimed is a first for a UK
mobile phone operator: an online games download store for Java-enabled phones....
A website that sorts everyday the most relevant information to you.
Vote for the news and Matoumba will learn your tastes and the information that you like the most.
It is all FREE!
Find here the history of the stories you found interesting.
Show this to people who share the same interests as you,
and if they use Matoumba, their own votes will fine recommandations to you.
We knew it was
only a matter of time before Lenovo finally started shipping the 
This week
we've got a book hot off the presses for your weekly dose of entrepreneurial reading as 
Rework is a great read for entrepreneurs because it is very focused and
doesn't waste any time with lengthy use cases. The book itself is an example of the principals it
teaches; the quality of a written work is not based on it's length, so why should company be
judged by how many features it offers? Fried and Hansson admit that the book, which comes in at a
dense but brief 288 pages, was originally drafted to be nearly twice as long, but why say in 600
pages what you can say under 300? Another reason the book is a great read is because of the
authors' open and honest tone.
It was a good run while
it lasted, but it looks like the video retail chain Blockbuster is finally on its way to the big
strip mall in the sky. 
Kevin Nakao is VP of Mobile & Business Search for
The 
In
continuing to look at the way that Facebook has become a 
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
