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On Twitter (and elsewhere), Instagram Growth Zooms

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Market research, Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

I have some news for Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, co-founders of Instagram, a San Francisco-based, photo-oriented, social network: They are the fastest growing photo sharing service on Twitter. I’m not surprised. As you know, many folks take photos and share them via Twitter, thanks to services like Twitpic, Yfrog and even Twitter itself. However, Instagram is slightly different; if you’re an iPhone user, you take a photo, upload to Instagram, then share it on Twitter.

Skylines, a Dutch startup focused on real-time photo search, has been analyzing the Twitter feed and has some unique insights into the market. From May 23 to June 26, 2011, Skylines found Instagram usage has gone up 38 percent: from 538,000 photos shared weekly to 740,000 photos shared each week.

Instagram CEO Systrom had recently observed that only 11 percent of Instagram members were using Twitter and by that metric, Instagram members might be adding about a million photos a day to Instagram. Add those two data points together, and one can extrapolate that Instagram is gathering steam. The service recently passed the five million subscriber mark. This level of engagement is one of the reasons why I believe Instagram has a chance of becoming the mobile social hub.

Skylines also shared some other data for the five-week period analysis.

  • From May 23rd to June 26, 2011, there were 33 million photos shared on Twitter via Twitpic, Yfrog, Instagram and Mobypicture (the four services indexed by Skylines).
  • Twitpic is no slouch. It was responsible for sharing of 3.295 million photos during the week of June 20, making it the largest photo-sharing service.
  • Yfrog was used to share 2.98 million photos during the same week.
  • The growth in the total number of photos shared in the five-week period measured was 17 percent.
  • Only 4 percent of the pictures are geo-tagged, while 15 percent have a hashtag.
  • Not surprisingly, weekends are the most popular days to share photos.

As the data shows, while Twitter might have launched its own photo sharing service via Photobucket, the independent photo-sharing services have not seen any kind of slowdown, though there are some dark clouds looming ahead for the likes of Twitpic and Yfrog.”

Read more here.

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The individual entrepreneur – social shopping to take off.

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Community, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Investments, IPO news, Market research, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

As a technology scout, I often look for new behaviors of consumers in order to predict technology evolutions. After some time looking into the GroupOn trend, I have started to form a mental understanding of sorts. The stakes are high and the social shopping trend presents a new prosperous businessmodel and most large online companies are making the move to harness the trend. Let me explain the separate parts that forms my picture and what it all means.

1. eBay – the online fleamarket.

Looking at what today is widely accepted as a stunning success and moneymachine – eBay took the private entrepreneur online. Craigslist and similar services continue to provide broad audiences for the private seller. The shift from paper to online generated a larger audience and more interest for the second-hand market.

2. Facebook – networking our life.

Through the introduction of online social networks like Friendster, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and Facebook, personal networks got joined together online. The effects of “Faceboking” you social life is a transparency that newer been visible before. New “check in” services from GPS enabled mobile devices further expose our location and automatically connects us with unknown people on the same location.

3. iPhone – making applications smarter.

As mentioned above, “check in” services like “Places” on Facebook, Loopt, Gowalla and Brightkite brought the social context to the mobile device though their “check in” features. Together with Twitter and Facebook mobile, the social and contextual dialogue is more and more becoming a way of using the technology.

The New, New Market!

So, based on these three separate innovations,a new market is emerging – Social Shopping. Sure, not all new in its core – Amazon have for long had recommendation and 3:rd party providers of used products. But, if I look closer on the trend, and take into consideration the companies that have announced that they are testing similar products – it will be a fierce battle ahead.

GroupOn is the one stealing all the headlines right now, IPO rumors are spreading and the race is on for becoming the leader of the pack. Nr. 2 on the market – Living Social are playing catch up. Recently I was invited to sign-up for Facebook Deals, a service originally launched last year and currently going through updates similar to GroupOn and Living Social. Goggle is testing its Google Offers. Microsoft is using it´s Bing to for similar services.

What does it mean?

What does all this mean you might think. I fell it’s a contextual shopping trend that moves the web 2.0 into a truly social value experience. If you are shopping for something and have the mobile device, you will be able to utilize your location and seek out good deals close to where you are, when you want it. The technology evolution exemplified by iPhone and Android phones with location awareness embedded is the technology enabler. Facebook networks are the social context and audience for spreading the word and eBay entrepreneurs can chase deals and post them on the social shopping sites to generate a self-serving ecosystem that becomes a machine in it self.

One might think that this technology trend, contrary to social networks of relationships (which are personal and limited) like Facebook, have enough room for more than one or two major services. As the trend relies on action rather than relation, its a active usage and active user who drives the equation – on Facebook, it’s all a matter of who you know.

Implications

The biggest question for me is if Facebook will succeed in incorporating their Facebook Deals service into the private social networks as a natural extension of smaller, often local groups of a few hundred people, as seem to be the norm of the personal networks on Facebook. If they succeed, they will steal the market from the pioneers like GroupOn and Social Living and further solidify their position as the premier social destination on the net, if not Facebooks value will decline as a result and focus might shift. Google, Amazon and Microsoft will steal their fair share of the market place, as they own large audiences and often “host” a mature audience searching for little less cool and less hip offerings – with high trust and reliability.

The race is on!

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Venture fund to help social-networking startups

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Mobile, Social Networks, Strategy, Uncategorized, Venture Capital, Web 2.0 on October 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Article from SF Gate.

A partnership backed by Facebook, Amazon.com, Comcast and other major technology firms on Thursday established a $250 million fund to invest in startups that hope to capitalize on the growing reach of social networking.

The “S Fund” will be led by powerhouse Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an early investor in Internet companies such as Amazon, AOL and Google.

The fund’s backers are betting that the success of Facebook, which has more than 500 million members worldwide, is only the start of the next wave of “incredible and disruptive innovation,” Kleiner Perkins partner John Doerr said.

So the investors want “to find and fund and accelerate the success of these new kinds of social entrepreneurs,” Doerr said during a news conference hosted by Facebook.

The six initial investors are Facebook; e-commerce giant Amazon; cable TV and broadband service provider Comcast Corp.; social games leader Zynga Games Network Inc.; communications and entertainment giant Liberty Media Corp.; and investment bank Allen & Co. LLC.

Joining Doerr on stage at the event were Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus and Bing Gordon, former chief creative officer of video game publisher Electronic Arts. Gordon, now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, will lead the fund.

“Social is going to be a breeding ground for great CEOs,” Bezos said.

Bezos also said he wants to find startups that will use his company’s platform of cloud computing services, called Amazon Web Services.

“These social apps do tend to be very viral, and when they hit, they hit fast and they can grow violently,” Bezos said. “That really does play to the strengths of Amazon Web Services.”

Zuckerberg said the fund will help entrepreneurs who are trying to build social applications and services “from the ground up.”

“The opportunity is there in the next five years or so to pick any industry and reimagine it in the social Web,” he said.

The fund’s first $5 million investment went to CafeBots Inc., a Palo Alto startup that is working on a “friend relationship management” platform to help consumers make better use of their social network.

The startup, the brainchild of three Stanford University graduates, hasn’t released its product and is still in stealth mode.

CafeBots co-founder Michael Munie, 28, said that in addition to the money, inclusion in the fund gives his startup access to the entrepreneurial expertise of Kleiner Perkins, Facebook and the other investing companies.

As examples of the kind of “social Web” firms that could be funded, Kleiner Perkins trotted out representatives of several companies it previously invested in, including Flipboard Inc., which earlier this year launched a popular iPad app that creates a personalized magazine-style display of Facebook, Twitter and other news media feeds.

Read more here.

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Tech firms making S.F. new home

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, internet, Investments, Market research, mobile 2.0, Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0, Wireless 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is a SF gate story that talks about high-tech growth.

“The technology industry is playing the white knight of San Francisco’s struggling office market, as startups and growing companies ink deals and scour the market for space emptied out by the financial meltdown.

Many of the tenants are swelling homegrown businesses like Twitter, while others are relocating from Silicon Valley or outside the Bay Area. As of June 15, 83 technology companies were in the market, seeking 1.5 million square feet of space, up 51 percent since the financial crash in fall 2008, according to brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which regularly tracks the market.

To be sure, that demand alone won’t turn around a market facing more than 13 million square feet of total vacancy, according to a first-quarter research report from Cassidy Turley BT Commercial. But it’s a big step in the right direction for San Francisco’s office market and employment.

“The greatest areas of job growth in San Francisco and the drivers for economic activity across a whole host of related sectors will come from those innovative industries,” said Michael Cohen, director of the mayor’s office of economic development.

One of the largest potential deals in the market is Zynga, the maker of popular social-networking games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. The company is looking for anywhere from 150,000 square feet to 300,000 square feet of space, according to various industry sources, who asked to remain anonymous because disclosure of such information could affect their business.

Zynga was on the verge of signing a lease for approximately 140,000 square feet last fall, but that deal fell apart.

“Zynga doesn’t have an update on our expansion plans right now,” a spokeswoman said in an e-mail response to a Chronicle inquiry.

Expansion

Twitter, the popular microblogging service, expanded its San Francisco space by nearly six times in the past year. It had been looking for still more space, as much as an additional 100,000 square feet, but that effort seems to have gone quiet, sources say.

An especially encouraging trend for San Francisco business boosters, who have long lamented the exodus of companies to surrounding regions, is the relocation of a handful of Silicon Valley firms to the city in recent months.

Industry blog TechCrunch and video-streaming site MetaCafe moved up from Palo Alto, while Webcasting service Ustream and tech-consulting firm Encover Inc. arrived from Mountain View. Mobile application company Booyah Inc., also of Palo Alto, recently signed a lease to shift its headquarters to San Francisco.

In addition, gaming companies like Playdom Inc. and Playfish opened satellite offices in San Francisco, and Yammer Inc. moved to the city from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, there are a handful of out-of-state, and even out-of-country, companies touring space in the market right now, sources say.

Real estate and technology observers believe San Francisco is becoming a more attractive place to start a company or move to for a variety of reasons, including: South of Market rents that are about half of Palo Alto’s right now, the desire to cluster near success stories like Zynga and Twitter and the broader shift to the Web 2.0 world.

As Internet companies become as focused on social media and entertainment as they are on underlying technology, they want to locate near a different set of partners, customers and talent pools, several executives said.

It’s all about layering

“Tech is still the core of what we do, but you’ve got to add layers on top of this,” said David Rice, chief operating officer of MetaCafe Inc.

The company’s new address, at 128 King St., with exposed brick and a view of AT&T Park that puts their previous business-park space to shame, made it easier to tap into marketing, media and advertising expertise in the city, he said.

Other companies’ leaders say they opted for San Francisco because that’s where today’s engineering talent wants to be as well.

When David Sacks, chief executive of Yammer, asked his developers whether they should relocate the microblogging service for businesses to Palo Alto or San Francisco, the latter won hands down. This represents a distinct shift from a decade earlier when he was chief operating officer of PayPal in Palo Alto.

“There’s a lot more engineering talent living in San Francisco now,” he said. “The balance of power may have shifted.”

Web 2.0 firms also don’t need the massive research and development facilities required by the computer manufacturers and chipmakers that gave rise to Silicon Valley.

“Companies like Twitter can have incredible reach with a relatively small workforce,” said Kelly Pretzer, director of new media for the mayor’s office of economic development. “San Francisco has been able to complement that development in the industry nicely.”

Read more here.

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Google puts Apple on notice over mobile ads

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Community, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, google, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here is an article from SF Gate.

“Google Inc. executive Mike Steib is courting customers such as Progressive Corp. and touting tools that let marketers create the snazzy, interactive ads that rival Apple Inc. has been using to snatch mobile-ad business.

“We have a significant investment in mobile, and competition is going to push us to be really, really good,” Steib said in an interview the day Google closed its $750 million acquisition of AdMob, which places ads on mobile programs and Web pages.

As Google’s head of mobile advertising, Steib leads the effort to build his company’s next $1 billion business from sales of ads on wireless devices – and lessen its dependence on Web-search ads. With a team based in a former cookie factory in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, Steib is striving to persuade advertisers they will win over more consumers by working with Mountain View-based Google than with Apple.

“It’s safe to say Google will respond to iAd and respond very strongly,” said Michael Collins, chief executive officer at Joule, a mobile-ad agency that’s part of WPP Plc. “They have too many assets to pull from, too many arrows in their quiver.”

Staying ahead may not be easy, now that Apple is luring advertisers to iAd, a service that places ads inside applications that run on its iPhones and other mobile devices. Apple has sold more than $60 million in advertising on iAd since it was announced in April, CEO Steve Jobs said at a conference Monday. That represents about half of the mobile display-ad market for 2010, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Tension between the companies escalated Wednesday when AdMob accused Apple of barring developers from using Google ad services to create ads for the iPhone – a move that may threaten AdMob’s ability to get revenue from the device.

This year, AdMob and Google together may generate more than $100 million in U.S. mobile-ad sales, according to IDC in Framingham, Mass.

Apple won business as Google awaited a green light from the Federal Trade Commission for its $750 million AdMob acquisition, announced in November, Joule’s Collins said.

Introducing iAd “gave Apple the opportunity to suck all the oxygen out of the room,” he said. “Apple is on a tear these days with the iPhone, iAd, the iPad.”

As sales of smart phones rise, more users are viewing ads on handheld devices in addition to – and sometimes instead of – computers or televisions. Spending on mobile ads in the United States is expected to reach almost $500 million this year, from $220 million in 2009, according to IDC.

In the next three years, as much as one-third of global digital ad spending will be devoted to mobile, according to Alexandre Mars, who oversees mobile ads for Publicis Groupe SA.

“You’re seeing advertisers who see mobile marketing as a significant business driver,” said Steib, who joined Google in 2007 from NBC Universal. “This is a big part of the conversation.”

Google’s strategy includes creating tools that help developers embed videos and make ads more interactive, similar to what Apple’s iAd can do. Google also wants to sell more ads tied to a user’s location and deliver coupons for nearby deals, said Steib, Google’s director of emerging platforms.

The company is keen to make money from delivering coupons for nearby businesses and selling ads alongside a tool that lets customers take photos of an item and search for it on the Web, said Steib.

That way, a bistro could offer free appetizers to a nearby customer who’s searching for a place to eat, and the user could later see where to buy a bottle of the wine paired with dinner. The restaurant and wine seller would pay Google for the ads.

Google and AdMob together had 21 percent of the U.S. mobile ad market in 2009, said IDC analyst Karsten Weide. Quattro Wireless, which Apple acquired in January after losing out on AdMob to Google, had 7 percent.

‘Short-term disruption’

Steib says iAd may create “short-term disruption.” Still, Google can contain the fallout in part because it has experience letting customers manage campaigns on multiple Web sites and it can change ads on the fly based on performance, said Steib, who himself is an avid user of Apple products. He owns about a dozen iPods, iPhones and the new iPad.

Bank of America Corp. went from buying an occasional mobile campaign to paying Phonevalley, the agency run by Publicis’ Mars, a $1 million annual retainer. Google’s AdMob is among the ad-placement companies used by the financial institution, the largest U.S. bank by assets.

“We did take a hard look at iAd and we passed on it,” said Kathryn Condon, a vice president of digital marketing at Bank of America. She said she’s not convinced it will provide more value than AdMob and the other companies the bank uses.”

Read more here.

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