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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.”

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Zynga S-1 highlights cloud as competitive advantage

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, FaceBook, internet, IPO news, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“In some cases, cloud computing is merely a means to avoid investing in “undifferentiated heavy lifting,” but when done right, it actually can be a source of significant competitive advantage. So says Zynga, at least, which highlighted its unique cloud infrastructure, as well as its advanced analytics efforts, as part of its core strengths in the S-1 statementit filed this morning.

According to the form, Zynga views its “scalable technology infrastructure” as a core strength, stating, “We have created a scalable cloud-based server and network infrastructure that enables us to deliver games to millions of players simultaneously with high levels of performance and reliability.” In describing its cloud infrastructure as an important aspect of its business, Zynga’s S-1 says:

Our physical network infrastructure utilizes a mixture of our own datacenters and public cloud datacenters linked with high-speed networking. We utilize commodity hardware, and our architecture is designed for high availability and fault tolerance while accommodating the demands of social game play.

We have developed our architecture to work effectively in a flexible cloud environment that has a high degree of elasticity. For example, our automatic provisioning tools have enabled us to add up to 1,000 servers in a 24-hour period in response to game demand. We operate at a scale that routinely delivers more than one petabyte of content per day. We intend to invest in and use more of our own infrastructure going forward, which we believe will provide us with an even better cost profile and position us to further drive operating leverage.

Zynga has been touting its Z Cloud infrastructure for more than a year, which reverses the conventional approach to hybrid cloud computing. Whereas many analysts initially assumed companies would use private clouds as a gateway to public clouds, Zynga uses Amazon EC2 as a staging ground before ultimately moving games onto private cloud resources. Essentially, Amazon’s cloud lets Zynga scale elastically and determine average traffic load and other metrics, so that it can optimize its internal infrastructure for each game’s specific needs.

The goal of this strategy is efficiency: Zynga doesn’t have to invest in more resources than necessary upfront, nor does it have to worry about underprovisioning resources or otherwise inadequately configuring them when it brings games onto its private cloud. In many cases, private clouds can cost less than public clouds for applications with fairly stable usage patterns, and they help companies meet various requirements around security and compliance. Zynga uses Cloud.com for its private cloud infrastructure, as well as RightScale as a management layer that makes for a uniform experience in terms of managing both public and private resources.

As is the case with every leading web company, Zynga also highlights its big data strategy as a key differentiator. Describing its “sophisticated data analytics,” the S-1 notes, “The extensive engagement of our players provides over 15 terabytes of game data per day that we use to enhance our games by designing, testing and releasing new features on an ongoing basis. We believe that combining data analytics with creative game design enables us to create a superior player experience.”

Cloud computing and advanced analytics are double-edged swords, though. As Zynga’s S-1 acknowledges, relying on publicly hosted cloud computing resources makes it vulnerable to service outages like Amazon Web Services’ infamous April 2011 outage, which temporarily downed both FarmVille and CityVille. “If a particular game is unavailable when players attempt to access it or navigation through a game is slower than they expect, players may stop playing the game and may be less likely to return to the game as often, if at all,” the form states.

Relying on advanced infrastructures and analytics also means competing with companies such as Facebook, Google and others for employees skilled enough to keep Zynga’s operations on the cutting edge. Specifically, the company acknowledges, “game designers, product managers and engineers” are in high demand, making attracting and retaining them a resource-intensive process. In some cases, this has meant offering particularly attractive employees lucrative stock options, which could come back to bite the company. As it notes in the S-1, “[W]e expect that this [IPO] will create disparities in wealth among our employees, which may harm our culture and relations among employees.”

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Investors Provide Millions to Risky Start-Ups

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, Investments, Market research, Mobile, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from NYTimes.

“What if you threw a $41 million party and nobody came? A start-up company called Color knows how that feels.

In March, Color unveiled its photo-sharing cellphone application — and revealed that it had raised $41 million from investors before the app had a single user. Despite the company’s riches, the app landed with a thud, attracting few users and many complaints from those who did try it.

“It would be pointless even if I managed to understand how it works,” one reviewer wrote in the Apple App Store.

Since then, Color has become a warning sign for investors, entrepreneurs and analysts who fear there is a bubble in start-up investing. They say it shows that venture capitalists, desperate to invest in the next Facebook or LinkedIn, are blindly throwing money at start-ups that have not shown they can build something useful, much less a business that can provide decent returns on investment.

Color, which says it is overhauling its app, is just one of the start-ups that have set tongues wagging about bubbly excess in Silicon Valley. The Melt plans to sell grilled-cheese sandwiches and soup that people can order from their mobile phones. It raised about $15 million from Sequoia Capital, which also invested in Color.

Airbnb, which helps people rent rooms in their homes, is raising venture capital that would value it at a billion dollars. Scoopon, a kind of Groupon for Australians, raised $80 million; Juice in the City, a Groupon for mothers, raised $6 million; and Scvngr, which started a Groupon for gamers, raised $15 million. These could, of course, turn out to be successful businesses. The worry, investors say, is the prices.

They say they have paid two to three times more for their stakes in such start-ups over the past year. According to the National Venture Capital Association, venture capitalists invested $5.9 billion in the first three months of the year, up 14 percent from the period a year earlier, but they invested in 51 fewer companies, indicating they were funneling more money into fewer start-ups.

“The big success stories — Facebook, Zynga and Twitter — are leading to investing in ideas on a napkin, because no one wants to miss out on the next big thing,” said Eric Lefkofsky, a founder of Groupon who also runs Lightbank, a Chicago-based venture fund with a $100 million coffer.

A decade ago, in the first surge of Internet investing, it was not unusual for tech start-ups to raise tens of millions of dollars before they had revenue, a product or users. But venture capitalists became more cautious after the bubble burst and the 2008 recession paralyzed Silicon Valley.

Meanwhile, it now costs less than ever to build a Web site or mobile app. So this time around the general philosophy has been to start small.

“By starting out lean, you have the chance to know if you’re on to something,” said Mark Suster, a managing director at GRP Partners. “If you start fat and the product concept doesn’t work, inherently the company will lose a lot of money.”

Two of Color’s photo-sharing competitors, Instagram and PicPlz, exemplify the lean start-up ethos. They started with $500,000 and $350,000, respectively, and teams of just a few people. As they have introduced successful products and attracted users, they have slowly raised more money and hired engineers.

Color, meanwhile, spent $350,000 to buy the Web address color.com, and an additional $75,000 to buy colour.com. It rents a cavernous office in downtown Palo Alto, where 38 employees work in a space with room for 160, amid beanbag chairs, tents for napping and a hand-built half-pipe skateboard ramp.

Bill Nguyen, Color’s always-smiling founder, has hired a team of expensive engineers, like D. J. Patil, a former chief scientist at LinkedIn.

“If I knew a better way of doing it, I would, but that’s what my cost structure is,” Mr. Nguyen said in an interview last week.

Michael Krupka, a managing director at Bain Capital Ventures and one of Color’s investors, said Color needed to raise a lot of money because it planned to do much more than photo-sharing.”

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Groupon is no Google and here’s why

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Investments, IPO news, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , on June 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“The lofty language in Groupon’s initial public offering filing is prompting comparisons to Google’s highly anticipated premier seven years ago, as are the lofty valuations.

Various sources have pegged Groupon’s implied worth at $20 billion to $30 billion, dropping it squarely in the neighborhood of Google’s $27 billion at the time of its 2004 IPO.

Groupon is a fast-growing business, luring 83 million subscribers to its daily deal e-mails in 2 1/2 years. And it might end up a perfectly solid one. But for one simple reason and a lot of complicated ones, Groupon is no Google.

Here’s the simple one: Google reinvented an industry. Groupon tweaked one.

There are limits on how transformative a force the Chicago company can ever be, at least pursuing its current business model.

Why?

Strip away all the hope and hype surrounding Groupon and you’re left with this: It’s a coupon company. Its major innovation was to distribute them through e-mail instead of the Sunday paper.

Granted, Groupon does this very well, with a colorful corporate culture that has deservedly won it plenty of fans and attention. Andrew Mason is one of the most refreshing, entertaining and straightforward CEOs in the last decade. His letter in the IPO filing last week carried loud echoes of the “Don’t Be Evil” sentiment in Google’s S-1.

“We want the time people spend with Groupon to be memorable,” he wrote. “Life is too short to be a boring company.”

He added that the business is “better positioned than any company in history to reshape local commerce.”

But coupons have long had limited appeal among retailers and consumers for very specific reasons, and thus restricted sway over the larger retail market.

Small fraction used

In 2010, marketers distributed $485 billion worth of consumer packaged goods coupons, according to a report by NCH Marketing Services. But only about 1 percent of coupons are actually redeemed.

Everyone will occasionally take advantage of a deal that lands in their lap (or inbox), or wait for a sale on a high-priced item. But it’s a limited subset of people who routinely start their shopping by thinking, what can I buy, do or eat that’s on sale. Most people, most of the time know the brand, model or service they want and go from there. There’s no particularly compelling evidence that this is changing.

Here then is a key difference with Google: Thanks to the query you enter into its search engine, Google knows what you’re interested in at the precise point you’re ready to buy, and serves up ads to match.

Even its worst critics acknowledge this revolutionized advertising, bringing to the marketplace a level of scale and targeting never before seen. It unleashed a tectonic shift in how businesses spent their marketing dollars.

Since then, the Internet giant has plowed its huge profits into cutting edge research and development, pushing ahead the fields of information retrieval, language translation, image recognition, satellite imagery, self-driving cars and much, much more. There’s simply an order of magnitude difference in the respective levels of imagination and innovation on display at the two companies.

Reticent retailers

Groupon does remove some of the traditional friction surrounding discounts, by directly delivering deals that are increasingly personalized, while also – not incidentally – eliminating the stigma and hassle of clipping coupons. But the real sandpaper remains on the retail side.

Coupons are typically loss leaders, the discount a business is willing to swallow in order to get new customers in the door. By definition, such marketing tactics can only ever represent a sliver of the retail pie.”

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Amidst Spotify Rumors, Facebook CEO Talks Music & Media

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , on May 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

“As rumors of a pending Facebook/Spotify deal swirled, Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at the e-G8 Forum in Paris Wednesday and reasserted that he has no plans to become the CEO of an entertainment company.

“We don’t have the DNA to be a music company or a movie company,” Zuckerberg said in an onstage one-on-one with Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy.

The comments come just as Facebook is reported to have deepened its partnership with Sweden-based startup Spotify to roll out a more fully integrated music-streaming service within the social networking site, according to a Forbes report published Wednesday citing anonymous sources. The report claims the feature will be called either “Facebook Music” or “Spotify on Facebook.” The new service will reportedly not be available in the United States, as Spotify has not yet cleared regulations to be used in the US.

However, a source familiar with Spotify denied the deeper integration when reached by GigaOM. The company already has a “Spotify on Facebook” feature that allows Facebook users to share links to Spotify songs on their profile pages. A Facebook spokesperson responded similarly, telling me “there’s nothing new to announce” and pointing to the existing integration between the two companies. “Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations,” the spokesperson said. Both Facebook and Spotify have separately raised funding from telecom mogul, Li Ka-Shing.

Whether the Spotify/Facebook rumor du jour is true or not, Facebook is clearly keen to get more immersed in the media and entertainment industries. At e-G8, Zuckerberg noted that while Facebook had no ambitions to move the company from Silicon Valley to Hollywood, entertainment companies could do well to take advantage of all that social networking has to offer. “I hope that we can play a part in enabling… the companies that are out there producing this great content to become more social,” he said. “We’re going to see a lot of the transformation in these industries over the next three, five years.””

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