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Twitter’s active flock reaches 100 million

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, FaceBook, internet, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, Twitter, Web 2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“Twitter use is growing, with more than 100 million monthly active users around the world and 50 million who log on every day, the San Francisco microblogging service said Thursday.

Chief executive officer Dick Costolo said the number of active users increased 82 percent since the beginning of this year, putting the company on pace to add as many active users by the end of 2011 as the combined 26 million that Twitter added from 2006 to 2009.

The increasing audience size is key to the company’s future because Twitter is now convinced advertising is “the horse they are going to ride” to generate revenue, said analyst Debra Aho Williamson, principal social media analyst for the research firm

“These are all positive trends,” Williamson said. “2011 has been a good year for Twitter in terms of getting more usage, not just awareness.”

Costolo revealed the new data during an informal “state of the union” briefing with reporters Thursday. Williamson was also prebriefed by Costolo on Wednesday.

Twitter has previously said it had more than 200 million registered accounts worldwide. But Twitter watchers had long questioned how many were multiple accounts registered by the same person and how many accounts were actually active.

So Twitter is now focusing attention on its active users, not just the overall base. Facebook uses the same strategy, touting its 750 million users who log on at least once a month.

The number of active users “can be a successful measure of the exchange of information that’s going on there,” Williamson said.

Many press releases

Still, Williamson said many of Twitter accounts are used by “corporations pumping out press releases, using it as a distribution service.” And she notes that media companies like CNN and The Chronicle have multiple Twitter accounts to distribute news headlines and story links.

“While it sounds relatively good that half of active users log in every day, I wonder what percentage of those active users are just entities putting stuff out and not people actively engaging,” she said.

According to Twitter, the data shows:

— An average 230 million tweets per day, up 110 percent from January.

— More than 5 billion tweets per month

— A 105 percent increase in the number of users who log on each day.

— More than 400 million monthly unique visitors to Twitter.com, up 70 percent from January.

— 55 percent are mobile users.

Twitter now has more than 50 percent of National Football League players, 75 percent of National Basketball Association players, 82 percent of members of Congress, 85 percent of U.S. senators, 87 percent of Billboard Top 100 musicians, 93 percent of Food Network chefs and all of the Nielsen top 50 TV shows.

But there’s one potentially negative statistic that sticks out – a huge portion of active users, 40 percent, have not tweeted in the past month.

“If you think of it as a social network, then 40 out of every 100 aren’t even being very social,” Williamson said.

Still, the overall numbers should be large enough to entice advertisers.

Maybe it’s not as big as Facebook, but “if you look at it from an advertising perspective, an audience is an audience,” Williamson said. “Twitter is really proving itself in terms of getting people engaged with the advertising.”

Ad revenue projections

Twitter hasn’t been successful generating revenue by licensing access to its extensive stream of tweets. Microsoft on Wednesday renewed a deal to license Twitter’s data “fire hose,” but Google has not.

Williamson said the company is continuing to learn from its Promoted Tweets advertising platform and has other programs in the pipeline, including a self-service advertising system.

Twitter is still a privately held company, but eMarketer has projected the firm will have $150 million in advertising revenue this year and $250 million next year. Williamson said she is examining how the newest data may change those projections.

“Twitter had a good year and they clearly have a lot of things planned throughout the rest of the year and in 2012,” Williamson said. “They’re hoping the growth trends will continue.””

Read more here.

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Google Kills Aardvark, Which It Bought For $50 Million Last Year (GOOG)

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Distressed IP, Economy, google, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , on September 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from SFGate.

“Google is shutting down Aardvark, the Q&A service it bought last year for about $50 million.

The founders just posted a goodbye letter saying that the project will be shut down in September.

This isn’t a total surprise: Aardvark was part of Google Labs, which new CEO Larry Page put on his hit list in July. The company is planning on putting similar Q&A features into Google+, and has reassigned most of the Aardvark team to that project.

Page has taken a sharp knife to a lot of Google appendages lately — last week, the company shut down Slide, the social-gaming company it bought for close to $200 million last year.”

Read more here.

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How Google plans to change the way you watch TV

Posted in boic, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, google, internet, Market research, tagged , , , , , on August 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOM.

“Google chairman Eric Schmidt was on a diplomacy mission last week, reaching out to broadcasters in the UK and urging them to embrace changes in the way that viewers watch TV, as enabled by the Internet. Giving the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Schmidt provided a view into how TV is changing and made a plea for broadcasters to work with the search giant to enable that future.

Reading the transcript or watching a video of the lecture (Schmidt’s speech starts about 36 minutes in), you get the feeling that this is no less than a manifesto, not just on the way things will be but also on the way they should be. There’s a feeling of inevitability to it. The message to broadcasters, in light of this, seems to be that they can either get on board with technological change or risk being left behind.

“You ignore the Internet at your peril,” Schmidt told the audience. “The Internet is fundamental to the future of television for one simple reason: because it’s what people want.” For Schmidt, people want the experience that the Internet brings, because it enables things that traditional TV cannot: “It makes TV more personal, more participative, more pertinent.”

The future of choice

While TV programming is limited by time and the number of TV networks, the Internet provides the possibility of a near-infinite amount of content to choose from. And, given the on-demand way that viewers are increasingly viewing content — through prerecorded shows on their DVRs, video-on-demand selections through their cable provider or streaming on the Internet — there needs to be a way to sort through those content choices.

For years broadcasters have largely tried to control viewer choices with lead-ins and other editorial hooks, but the vast number of content choices calls for a new way of discovering content. We’ve long argued that personalized recommendations will be vital to the way that viewers discover video in the future, and it seems that Schmidt agrees with us:

Online, through a combination of algorithms and editorial nudges, suggestions could be individually crafted to suit your interests and needs. The more you watch and share, the more chances the system has to learn, and the better its predictions get. Taken to the ultimate, it would be like the perfect TV channel: always exciting, always relevant — sometimes serendipitous — always worth your time.

Schmidt cites the success of Netflix, which doesn’t have a lot of new content and yet has survived and even flourished through a robust recommendations engine. According to Schmidt, around 60 percent of Netflix views are a result of Netflix’s personalized recommendations, showing that the one-size-fits-all approach to linear TV programming might not be the best way to reach audiences in the future.

The future of interactivity

While viewing is destined to become more personal, it’s also becoming more social. That might seem like a bit of a paradox, but at the same time that viewers are watching content that is more relevant to them, they are also sharing what they’re viewing with others.

This interactivity is not being driven by the TV screen itself but through second screens that viewers are using while watching TV. That includes tapping into social networks on laptops and on mobile phones, commenting on blogs and forums, and even chatting with friends in real time. Schmidt pointed to Google+ Hangouts as one example of how viewers can socially interact while watching video together, and you can see how the same type of technology could be incorporated into future versions of Google TV devices for live video viewing.

While viewers clearly want social interactivity, it’s also good for broadcasters, Schmidt said. “Trending hashtags raise awareness of shows, helping boost ratings. It can be metric for viewer engagement, a vehicle for instant feedback, a channel for reaching people outside broadcast times. It can also provide a great incentive for watching live.”

The future of measurement and monetization

Broadcasters can benefit not only from the way the Internet allows viewers to discover and interact with content but also from vast new opportunities for monetization. That includes selling directly to viewers through digital downloads or the ability to more profitably sell ads against content.

Today there’s a huge premium spent on advertising against the first airing of a TV show, in part because that airing is most likely to aggregate the largest audience. But Schmidt argues that it shouldn’t matter when viewers first watch a show. “If it’s the first time you watch a show, it’s first run to you, no matter how many times it has been broadcast. As TV becomes more personalized, ad models should adjust accordingly.”

Note also that this shift means a change in the way that viewing and ad effectiveness is measured. Nielsen, which provides the ratings currency that is used for selling TV ads in the U.S., is investing heavily in multiscreen measurement, but Schmidt said that Google is trying to understand how to measure effectiveness across multiple platforms as well.

Will broadcasters get on board?

There’s no doubt that the TV industry is in the midst of some fundamental shifts in the way viewers find and interact with video content. And there’s a huge opportunity for broadcasters to use Internet technologies to enable new experiences and better reach a more engaged audience.

Schmidt gave many examples of how content industries fought change over the past century, from newspapers fighting with radio stations in the 1920s and ’30s to Hollywood and broadcasters arguing that technologies like the VCR and TiVo would destroy their businesses.

Although TV viewing will inevitably change as the Internet enables new habits, Schmidt argues that broadcasters should see the opportunity and not the danger that such a change brings. “History shows that in the face of new technology, those who adapt their business models don’t just survive, they prosper,” Schmidt said.

But how soon those businesses will adapt, and how Google fits into their plans, is still very much an open question.”

Read original post at http://gigaom.com/video/google-schmidt-tv/

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Is the Google deal about Larry Pages’ desire to become the best strategist in the world?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Economy, Intellectual capital, internet, Investments, Market research, Social Networks, Strategy, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2011| Leave a Comment »

By Tony Fish, AMF Ventures and member of Gerbsman Partners Board Of Intellectual Partners.

The changing face of mobile

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Surprised at the latest Google deal to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5Bn, you should not be; Eric Schmidt was very clear back at MWC in FEB 2007 “Mobile Mobile Mobile” and since then Google has focussed both time and effort to deliver andriod (which was itself acquired).  When Schmidt stepped down in saying “ adult supervision no longer required” this left open the matured Larry Page to step up from being great at maths and a world leading entrepreneur, to take on the mantel of “world leading strategist and deal doer.”

This deal will be the discussion point for the next 3 months and already there are a lot of views circulating about what it means but there is no doubt that depending on your stance you can argue for change. However at Mobile 2 on 1st Sept in SFO – we get the first bite, why not join in. 

The Deal

Google purchased Motorola’s mobile business for $12.5 billion. In doing so, Google brought patents, hardware design, manufacturing and a seat at the patent table. However the context is… Oracle suing, Apple winning, eco-system struggling, Samsung annoyed and Microsoft attacking

Worthy of Note

Google has bought in cash and not shares.  This commitment will reduce their cash balance to $22bn from the mid thirties, but it is cash.  Given the issues that cash purchases delivered to telecoms in 2000/2001 this is an important fact as many ran into immediate issues and sold off key assets.  However, I expect the reason that this is cash is that Google are not expecting to hold the operational assets for long.  An equity purchase could have caused them problems from shareholders when they flip it assuming it completes in Q1 2012

Why now?

Porter 5 forces model is helpful here as it highlights the dynamic nature of the mobile market that Google faces.  Their power is low, their service fragmented and  they are being attacked.

Implications

This deal will be the discussion point for the next 3 months and already there are a lot of views circulating about what it means but there is no doubt that depending on your stance you can argue for change. However at Mobile 2 on 1st Sept in SFO – we get the first bite, why not join in.

Starting from the view of the world formed by ….

  • Operators – Deal does not change anything as we are the controllers of mobile – we keep all manufacturers below 30% market share and make sure it is a competitive supply market.  However, we are still worried about becoming bit pipe….
  • Oracle/ Sun/ Java – Defence needed as android has been beset with legal challenges from all sides, including a multibillion dollar lawsuit filed by Oracle, but Motorola patents are about wireless tech and unlikely to help.
  • Apple – By purchasing a manufacturer, Google has admitted it needs more than just a free operating system and loads of partners to compete with Apple: they need to duplicate Apple’s successes by totally controlling both the hardware and software of their devices.
  • OEM ‘s –  “Google has gone from partner to competitor.”
  • Media/ Content owners – According to Infonetics, Motorola Mobility was the leader in set-top box revenues last year, and was also tops in hybrid IP/QAM set-top boxes — that is, the boxes used by operators like Verizon that combine broadcast TV and over-the-top applications. By leveraging Motorola’s position with carriers, Google can better solidify its bid to expand Google TV and Android into the living room.”
  • Developers – At least there is one less system to deal with.

Scenarios and outcomes

  • The production shop – In this scenario Google keeps Motorola as is and starts to manufacture it owns handsets.  In reality this could provide short term stability to the fragmented andriod market place and show case devices and move into other screen based markets, but in the long run looks like a new Apple and being open is probably not a true option. Probability in long run 10% as this would not elevate Page to world class strategist who is just following Jobs view of the world.
  • The negotiator tactic –This is the company official line that the acquisition brings 17,000 patents (but are they relevant) to Google and enables them to robustly defend their mobile position and also expand.  It is a $12.5bn investment to get a seat at the table.  Strategically there is a lot of truth in this as mobile will dominate long term strategy and value. Probability in long run 25% as patents only last for a period….

Power to disrupt

Imagine Google takes the patents, yes they are useful to defend/ negotiate but also to empower others if free and open. This would reduce the power of others in the market and change the dynamics

Imagine Google keeps the patents and sells on production to Samsung to create a global partner across all screens

Imagine Google Wallet becomes the model – forget small transaction fees – lets go for user data in every model

Probability in long run 65% and Larry Page is now the best strategist in the world and did it without adult supervision.

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Guess who else wanted to buy Motorola?

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Business models, Economy, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , on August 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from GigaOm.

Google may not have had much of a choice when it came to buying Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. If it didn’t, someone else would have and that would have put the company in an even bigger patent hole.

Our sources say that Motorola was in acquisition talks with several parties, including Microsoft for quite some time. Microsoft was interested in acquiring Motorola’s patent portfolio that would have allowed it to torpedo Android even further. The possibility of that deal brought Google to the negotiation table, resulting in the blockbuster sale.

Motorola found a Google deal more digestible because Microsoft had no interest in running a hardware business and was essentially interested in Motorola’s vast collection of patents. Google moved aggressively, and at $40 a share, Google is now paying a 60 percent premium to Motorola’s recent stock price. The deal it struck gives it access to Motorola’s strong portfolio of 17,000 current patents and 7,500 patent applications across wireless standards and non-essential patents on wireless service delivery.

The high-level talks between Google and Motorola started about five weeks ago. Google CEO Larry Page and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha were talking directly, and only a handful of executives were brought into discussions. Our sources suggest that Android co-founder Andy Rubin was brought into the talks only very recently.

My view is that while Google might have won the battle, in the long run it has put the Android ecosystem at risk. Mobile industry insiders view this as a ray of hope for Windows Mobile Phone 7 to sign-up the disillusioned handset makers who at this point must be reworking their mobile OS strategies.

Read original post here.

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