Calling All Designers: Weebly Gives Users More Variety With New Theme Community
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Weebly, the startup that allows users to build rich websites using a straightforward drag and drop interface, is about to get a lot more colorful. The site has opened a new Theme Community, allowing any of its 3.5 million users to submit their own themes for use by other Weebly members. To help launch the new feature, Weebly is holding a contest where it’s giving $10,000 to the top submitted design, as determined by a panel of professional designers.

This is a pretty big deal for Weebly. Up until now, users have had around 80 themes to choose from, which pales in comparison to the number of themes available for some other site building platforms, like WordPress. You’ve always been free to use your own custom CSS styling, but many of the site’s users are using Weebly specifically because they don’t want to have to deal with that sort of thing. Now they’ll have a lot more variety to choose from, with no mucking around in CSS required.

At launch, Weebly’s theme gallery is still only going to consist of the 80 themes that already exist, since it’s just opening to submissions for the first time today. But CEO David Rusenko expects that to change quickly, in part spurred by the design competition the site is holding. He also believes that designers will be compelled to create themes for the site because of the large audience it reaches — Weebly now has 3.5 million site building users, who see 80 million page views per month from 17 million unique visitors. And he says that traffic is growing 20% month over month. It’s a bit surprising that it took this long for the site to roll out the feature (Weebly launched back in 2007), but Rusenko says that they “wanted to get it right”. Fair enough.

Users will be able to access the themes both through the site’s editor (which has been revamped a bit to accommodate the new gallery) and from this page, which you can view even if you aren’t a Weebly member. Themes won’t include attribution in their footers, but the gallery itself will allow designers to build up their own profiles, allowing users to see all of the themes they’ve submitted. At launch, all themes will be free, but Rusenko says that the site plans to begin allowing designers to sell premium themes in the future.

The design competition has a submission deadline of April 30, is open in any country where such contests are valid, and is being judged by Michael Cronan, Scott Thomas, Jason Putorti, Andrew Wilkinson, Dustin Curtis, and Rob Martin.

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Get Satisfaction Turns To Facebook To Socialize Customer Support
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Two years ago customer support startup Get Satisfaction turned its ear to Twitter to help its clients monitor Twitter for mentions of brands. Get Satisfaction makes a network of customer support forums where customers can post their own questions, ideas, problems, or conversations about a product. Companies can also claim their board and put their own employees on to moderate the boards. Tapping into the conversations taking place Twitter and other social media sites is now integral to brands and customer support, as we’ve recently seen with Southwest Airlines. Get Satisfaction is extending its social media coverage today by rolling out the ability to add a support tab to Facebook Fan pages.

As companies turn to Facebook Fan Pages to connect with customers, consumers are increasingly voicing their issues with a particular product or brand on the brand’s Facebook page. But often these complaints or opinions can get lost in the stream. That’s where Get Satisfaction comes in. The startup now allows brands to create a tab on their fan pages, which can be a portal for consumers to express their opinions, complaints or issues with the brand or product.

With the Facebook Social Engagement Hub, Get Satisfaction creates a tab (that can be labeled with any brand-specific name) on the brand’s Fan Page. Here customers can begin wall discussions in the form of four topic types: Ask a Question, Share an Idea, Report a Problem, or Give Praise. When customers begin to post a question, Get Satisfaction searches for and suggests similar threads to give consumers instant answers to commonly asked questions. All questions, comments, and answers are discoverable via Google and other search engine. People can respond to any thread — i.e. voice a similar problem, suggest a remedy, emerge as an advocate in response to another’s complaint, or offer a new twist to a product suggestion. Community members can also make their experience heard by simply clicking ‘me too’.

In turn, any question, idea or problem posted on a brand’s hub on Facebook will be automatically imported into the brand’s Get Satisfaction web interface, allowing marketers and customer support reps to access the conversation from their Get Satisfaction site.

Get Satisfaction’s co-founder Lane Becker says that the new offering is a part of helping brands distribute the conversations where the conversations are actually happening. And with 400 million users worldwide, Facebook is definitely a place where the conversations are taking place. Becker says that the startup is particularly focused on the idea of the “social CRM” and helping clients connect the conversations taking place regarding customers support on social media sites with CRM applications like Salesforce and Zendesk. Get Satisfaction currently has free app on Salesforce’s app exchange.

The Facebook offering is a paid feature and Get Satisfaction will have a number of pricing options. Today’s rollout is more targeted towards bigger brands, but a more scaled down offering will be introduced soon and will cost SMBs $99 per month.

Get Satisfaction recently raised $2.3 million in funding, which Becker says is being used to scale out its team. With only 20 employees, Get Satisfaction currently has 20,000 customers (10,000 of which are paid customers). Zappos, Mint.com, Procter & Gamble, and Nike have all created customer support communities on the site. Currently there are over 25,000 communities that have been created on the platform.

Example:

Mighty Leaf Tea uses the Get Satisfaction Social Engagement Hub to engage with its loyal customers, driving both word of mouth marketing and peer advocacy.

Link: http://bit.ly/buxE6B

Get Satisfaction’s Web 2.0 customer service and support platform launched in 2007 and has grown exponentially. More than 35,000 company communities have been created on Get Satisfaction, and upwards of 20,000 organizations are actively engaging with 1.4 million community members. Organizations of all stripes — from Nike to Four Square — engage in conversations with their customers, increasing loyalty, retention, collaboration, and customer-driven innovation, while reducing repetitive support costs.

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Mobile App Directory Mplayit Adds Recommendations From App Gurus
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Facebook-based mobile app directory Mplayit is launching a new way to discover mobile apps today: App Gurus. The new feature draws recommendations from experts in the mobile space. The experts, which include blogs and technology writers, will rate and comment on apps in Mplayit’s catalogs.

Last year, Mplayit launched its Facebook app that allows users to discover, share and recommend a variety of mobile apps back in November and covers apps available for the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Mobile (Java) devices. Mplayit’s directory of apps includes a dedicated page for each app where Mplayit will post videos of the app (created either by the developer or pulled from YouTube), a detailed description of the app and reviews. You can also click to buy the app from various app markets, including Apple’s App Store and the Android Market. Once you start clicking on various app and downloading apps, Mplayit will begin to recommend apps to you based on your behavior on the site.

With the feature, consumers on Mplayit will be able to see a feed of real-time activity of the Gurus within the app. Guru’s can also rank apps on a scale of one to five and apps rated by at least two Gurus with ratings or four or five stars get the top accolade, a “Guru Approved” badge. App Gurus include IntoMobile, iPhone Arcade, Androidandme and Stuart Dredge. The feature is similar in some ways to competitor Appolicious’ curated lists of recommended mobile apps. Mplayit also faces competition from AppsFire, 16Apps and others.

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Myxer’s MobileStage Now Powering Marketing for 125,000 Music Artists
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

We recently wrote about mobile content delivery company Myxer’s marketing offering, MobileStage. MobileStage is a suite of mobile marketing services aimed towards the music industry that includes app marketing, analytics, mobile website creation and fanlist management. In nearly three months, the platform is already being used by 125,000 artists. And MobileStage now counts rap artist Snoop Dogg as a client. Snoop Dogg is using MobileStage for the movile marketing around his upcoming mini-movie and album, More Malice.

With this release, Myxer has created a More Malice MobileStage content channel which features exclusive videos of the making of the Malice N Wonderland mini movie, ringtones, and wallpapers, and will be accessible to music fans within the Myxer community. Additionally, Myxer has created embeddable widgets that will be featured on major music, hip-hop websites, and Snoop’s social media profiles.

Myxer has previously said that MobileStage aims to be the “MySpace Music for Mobile.” Part of the deal is that Myxer will promote artist apps to its user base of 30 million customers via its own mobile site. Myxer has delivered 10 million ringtones to iPhone users (and 1 billion ringtones in all) and offers over 2 million free ringtones, wallpapers and videos. Users can also make their own ringtones, videos and wallpaper from music and files a customer already owns.

MobileStage is partnering with ReverbNation, Kedar Entertainment, Amie Street, SonicBids, OurStage, INgrooves,The Orchard, Audiolife and SellaBand and offer full-track downloads, streaming audio and video, as well as links to artist merchandise outposts, and concert ticket purchase options.

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SPIDERSS For Android: Browser, RSS Reader And Social Network Update Aggregator In One
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Tokyo-based jig.jp has been developing mobile browsers since 2003, claiming its “jig browser (which was downloaded over 4 million times so far) is the world’s first Java-based browser that made it possible to view PC sites on cell phones. And now the company has released an ambitious Android app called SPIDERSS, which combines a browser with an RSS reader and an aggregator for social network updates.

Available in English and Japanese, the free app’s main selling point is that all elements are accessible from a single screen: You can either choose to directly type in a URL or search term in the top bar (to then open a full browser window), check your Facebook newsfeed and Twitter timeline in the “Application Deck” under that or scroll through your RSS feeds in the bottom part. All feeds and web pages can be easily shared by SMS, Email, Twitter or Facebook with the push of a button.

The Webkit-based browser supports HTML 4.0.1/XHTML 1.1 and JavaScript 1.5, provides native support for the VGA and QVGA resolutions and can be used with Android OS 1.5 or higher (full specs). Feed formats supported include RSS (0.9, 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0) and ATOM (0.3 and 1.0). Users can bookmark pages, use tabs, choose between four different search engines, keep a record of links visited etc.

The browser is pretty hard to use though, as it “magnifies” websites, displaying the top left part first (skip to 1.00 in this video to see what I mean). SPIDERSS does offer different layouts and a zoom-out function (50% maximum), but still, most of the times you need to scroll in various directions to view a website in its entirety.

But SPIDERSS is still in beta, with jig.jp saying future updates will bring a better overall browsing experience and additional functions (versions for Nokia (Ovi) and Windows phones are scheduled for release in the near future). The app is free, so take it for a spin if you’re not satisfied with your current Android browser.

Other Android browsers available or currently in development include Opera Mini, Steel, Dolphin, Firefox Mobile and Skyfire.

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Mediagazer: Techmeme’s Editors Will Help Us Watch The Death Of Print; Find What’s Next
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

To many in the industry, Techmeme is hands down the best aggregator of technology news. So it makes sense that they’d try to take their combination of algorithms and editors to other verticals. But they’ve tried in the past, and it hasn’t worked. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving up.

Today, the people behind Techmeme are rolling out Mediagazer, a new site focused on aggregating and serving up all the best media news from around the web. The timing seems perfect given the level of interest surrounding the slow but interesting death of print media. And the interest around exciting new devices like the iPad, which may or may not reinvigorate the industry.

But why chose to focus on media?

“Media news has several things going for it: lots of new coverage every day, lots of interlinking, a variety of subtopics (video, blogs, journalism, newspapers, etc.) and (we hope) a potential audience with interest in several of those subtopics,” Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera tells us.

Rivera has tried in the past to roll the Techmeme idea to other verticals such as celebrity news (WeSmirch), political news (Memeorandum), and even baseball news (Ballbug). All those sites still exist, but none have gotten the level of interest that Techmeme has.

So why will this be different? Aside from the interest in media, this is the first site Rivera has rolled out since switching over to using human editor curation. And actually, Mediagazer will be launched under the control of Megan McCarthy, the first human editor Rivera hired in late 2008. Rivera has since made other hires to round out a full staff that can work around the clock for Techmeme.

Says McCarthy, “Media is tumultuous. Some areas are growing, some shrinking, and there’s no clear path of where things are going. There’s talk about the future of journalism, consolidation of media ownership, bloggers, Twitter, etc. It affects daily life (look at how the Oscars were blacked out in New York City and how many people were touched by that). This is an industry that is filled with such disruption — you need to have a way to clearly view the big picture. Mediagazer does that.“

And a bit more about how it actually works from Mediagazer’s about area:

We gather all the important stories about media and present them to you in a timely, thorough, and organized manner. Our story selection method uses the power of our freakishly smart algorithm combined with direct editorial input from knowledgeable human editors.

We collect every relevant take on an issue and package them together in a comprehensive group of links. That way, you not only get the lead opinion on an issue, but you can easily see all the supporting, opposing, smart, controversial, notable, and previously unseen viewpoints. You get the big picture.

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Duckshead Revisited: Apple Approves DuckPhone App After Minor Changes
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Remember that guy who made the DuckPhone iPhone app? And how his app was rejected due to “Minimum User Functionality?” Well, Apple just approved his app after he added some news streams and a twitter feed from the stars of Jersey Shore. It just goes to show that one man’s dumb garbage app is another man’s acceptable piece of useful software.

Justice, friends, has been served.

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Replicators, Innovators, and Bill Gates
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

My last post triggered some interesting debates in the blogosphere about whether entrepreneurs were a product of nature or could be nurtured. It’s not black or white. People are a product of their upbringing and education. Average humans can achieve extraordinary feats when they really try. I’ll concede that, like some great athletes, some great entrepreneurs may have something different about them that gives them a special advantage (this is a topic that I am presently researching). But not every entrepreneur needs to reap the same fortune as Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to qualify as a success. You can build a good lifestyle business that pays the bills, or that does good for the world, and be considered a successful entrepreneur. (And you’ll probably be happier and gain more respect than most billionaires do.) Entrepreneurship isn’t all about the IPO.

I hold steadfast to my belief — based on my experience in building two great technology companies and in mentoring around 200 entrepreneurs over some years and on what I’ve learned from my academic research into the background and motivations of entrepreneurs — that entrepreneurs can be made. People born into entrepreneurial families may have the advantage of knowing the ups and downs of business, and, all else being equal, people from entrepreneurial families are certainly more likely to become entrepreneurs than others are. But the skills required to build, manage, and grow a business can be learned, and this education can level the playing field. VCs who judge entrepreneurs based on age, sex, ethnicity, or family background are doing their limited partners, and society, a great disservice.

There was one criticism of my last post that caused me to do serious introspection.  The question: was Bill Gates’s dad an entrepreneur? I cited Gates Jr. as an example of an entrepreneur who didn’t come from an entrepreneurial family. A number of readers, including Jason Calacanis, pointed, out that Gates Sr. was a partner in a law firm, and so an entrepreneur, arguing that my citation was therefore faulty.

I’ve debated and written about this issue before. The broader question is whether anyone who starts a business, whether it is a law practice, a computer consulting firm, or a dry-cleaning store, is an entrepreneur. Management guru Peter Drucker would have answered with a definitive No. He wrote, “Not every new small business is entrepreneurial or represents entrepreneurship… entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” Drucker didn’t mince words.

When I told this to some of my friends, I heard loud protests. Murali Bashyam, who started an immigration-law practice, insisted he was as much an entrepreneur as Bill Gates and his dad. Murali threatened, “if you decide that I’m not an entrepreneur, I might decide that the daily stress of growing and running a business, financial risks involved, and all the other headaches that come with creating something out of nothing is just not worth it. Maybe I’ll close up and go work for someone, where I can earn a steady and high salary and go home at 5 pm”.

Similarly, Sue Drakeford, who was Miss Nebraska 2001, had started a production company to host its own pageants and teach other African American women like her to gain the confidence and skills to compete in the real world. She wanted to provide a wholesome alternative to what she called the “cold-blooded cutthroat world of modeling and beauty pageants”.  But Sue was working full-time at a bank and ran this business on the side. Was she an entrepreneur?  Sue insisted she was.

After agonizing over this for weeks, I went to my friends at the Kauffman Foundation, and they referred me to their book titled “Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism”. Carl Schramm and Bob Litan wrote that all who take the risk are entrepreneurs, but that there are two types of entrepreneurs: “Replicative entrepreneurs”, who constitute the vast majority of small businesses (such as restaurants and dry cleaners), and “innovative entrepreneurs” — the rare few who bring new products/services to market or who pioneer new production methods (such as Walmart, eBay, and Dell).

Under the Kauffman definition, Sue would qualify as an “innovative entrepreneur”, because she is developing new services and pioneering new methods. In contrast, Murali would be a “replicative entrepreneur”, because he delivers a standardized service in a field that charges primarily by the hour for its time. Murali could well end up running a huge law firm and be worth many millions, but that doesn’t make him particularly innovative in his business model.

So Bill Gates Sr. was a “replicative entrepreneur”, and Gates Jr. was an “innovative entrepreneur” — whom Silicon Valley calls an “entrepreneur”. TechCrunch founder, Mike Arrington, who used to be a lawyer for Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, would qualify as an “innovative entrepreneur”, because he created a new product (a blogging site) and was a pioneer in the new-media world.

You can bring innovation to “replicative” fields as Arrington did. Take the example of SunRun. The company installs solar cells — which is as mundane or “replicative” a business as you can get. But its CEO, Edward Fenster, developed a new business model under which his company installs solar panels on a customer’s house for little to no upfront cost and only charges for the power that customers use.  SunRun also insures, maintains, repairs, and monitors the system, and provides a money-back guarantee on the system’s energy production. This has made solar power available to the masses at an affordable cost and the company has become largest residential solar company in the country, operating in five states, and growing at more than 400% per year.

Another great example I’ve seen of an entrepreneur who has innovated in a replicative industry is Nand Kishore Chaudhary. He brought automation, supply-chain management, and professional business practices to the mundane process of carpet weaving and distribution in the desert state of Rajasthan, India.  By implementing modern production practices and ERP technology, he was able to grow a small business, Jaipur Rugs, that he’d run from his home into a world-class production and distribution company, which employed 40,000 workers and generated $21 million in revenue in 2008. This is in a land where PCs were, until recently, as scarce as rainwater.

What’s the moral of the story? Don’t listen to the naysayers who are simply defending their informed views and biases by telling you that it’s nature or some special DNA that makes entrepreneurs or leads to entrepreneurial success. Don’t even be discouraged if you’re in a mundane, replicative industry. You can learn the skills needed to become a successful entrepreneur, and you can innovate.

Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

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Zynga Cofounder Andrew Trader Out
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

One of the cofounders of Zynga, the company’s executive vice president of sales and business development Andrew Trader, is no longer with the company, we’ve confirmed. He has been quietly removed from the company’s management page. Remaining cofounders – Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron and Steve Schoettler, remain.

As of a month ago Trader’s title had been downgraded to VP of Partnerships and Studio Services, although no top sales or business development replacement executive has yet been named.

Why is he gone? No one is saying. CEO Mark Pincus says only “AT [Andrew Trader] and zynga have parted ways. He made an awesome contribution. We need to continue scaling the company.” Trader hasn’t yet returned a phone call asking for his comment.

Zynga’s revenue growth has been nothing short of astronomical over the last 18 months, so it would be hard to blame him for not bringing in the dollars. Perhaps he took the fall for the Scamville saga although that has largely blown over now.

Trader was with Zynga nearly three years, so he’s vested on a lot of his stock. Given how much money is at stake, the whole story about why the first cofounder of Zynga has left the building may never come out. Zynga raised $180 million in December 2009, at a rumored valuation of above $2 billion.

And no, I have no idea why he’s holding a banana in the picture.

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The AOL Executive Shuffle Continues: Entertainment Chief Mike Rich Departs
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

There’s been a lot of churn in AOL’s executive and employee ranks since Tim Armstrong became CEO. The latest exec to head for the door is 9-year veteran Mike Rich, who is the senior VP in charge of AOL Entertainment (which includes AOL Music, Moviefone, and AOL Television). He joins a growing list of the old guard departing the company (Bill Wilson, David Liu, Ted Cahall, Grant Cerny) in the wake of Armstrong’s new hires.

For instance, former Googler David Eun is now president of AOL Media and Studios. Under him, David Mason, the co-founder of recently acquired StudioNow has just ben promoted to senior VP of the AOL Content Platform. And recently hired former Google engineer Jeff Reynar will lead the engineering efforts for that Content Platform, which includes StudioNow and Seed.

When Armstrong brought Eun on board, he told me that he was done making changes in the top ranks, but AOL is in the midst of reducing its entire workforce by one third. The shuffle will continue.

.
Mike Rich, Senior Vice President, AOL Entertainment

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Google Apps Now Disaster Proof
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue. Google has made an announcement today for any enterprise users of Google Apps; assuring IT admins that the suite is now fully prepared for disaster recovery. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps, tells us that as of recently, Google is prepared for disaster recovery for all of its products in the Google Apps suite, which include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video.

Google’s secret sauce is live and synchronous replication. So every action you take in Gmail is immediately replicated in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google will transfer data over to the other one. Traditionally, Google says, synchronous replication can be very expensive for companies. For example, the cost to back up 25GB of data with synchronous replication can range from $150 to $500+ in storage and maintenance costs per employee. Google says that exact price depends on a number of factors such as the number of times the data is replicated and the choice of service provider. Of course, Google replicates all the data multiple times, and the 25GB per employee for Gmail is backed up for free. And data from Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video, which encompass most of the applications in Google Apps, is also synchronously replicated for free.

The reason that Google can offer these services for free is because the tech giant already operates large data centers simultaneously for millions of users and also balances loads between data centers as needed. Google also claims that its high speed connections between data centers allows the company to replicate and transfer large amounts of data quickly from one server to another.

Google says synchronous replication is a more attractive option than the common practice that many small businesses take by backing up email by copying the data to a tape on a weekly or daily basis, which seems to be an arduous task. Larger companies opt for a storage area network (SAN) to back up data, which Google says is an expensive process.

Sheth declined to identify the timeline of when each app began to use the backup solution. Sheth did say that bringing all the apps together into replication was a complex process. Google Apps is currently being used by 2 million businesses with 20 million active users.

Photo Credit/Flickr/ClayIrving

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In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It.
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Editor’s note: Richard Wong is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive. In this guest post he argues that the fragmentation of mobile devices and platforms is here to stay, and offers some advice to entrepreneurs on how to deal with it.

Mobile data is on fire. Despite a few false starts, we are now in the midst of a transformative “Open Mobile 3rd Wave” (remember WAP, and J2ME?). We are just in the early swell of the wave; the iPhone itself is not even three years old, and thanks to continued improvements we’re now seeing in smart phones, mobile OS platforms and 3G/4G networks, the raw ingredients are just getting better every month.

Per the views of many mobile denizens and thought-leaders such as well-known internet analyst Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley, I certainly believe there will emerge new industry-transforming Facebooks, Googles, and Yahoos in this mobile wave.

FRAGMENTATION & COMPLEXITY

However, a key topic discussed by us mobile geeks and startups is the challenge of mobile platform fragmentation. There is an alphabet soup of protocols, standards, and regional differences by country which can be daunting for any entrepreneur. Just look at the range of technologies on handset platforms alone, from iPhone to Android to Blackberry, and even new platforms announced in last 30 days, from WinMo7, to MeeGo, to Samsung Bada, as if we need more platforms to deal with . . .

THE MAGIC BULLET—IT DOESN’T EXIST

One of the worst myths floating around the blogosphere is the wait by some for a “unifying technology” that will make things “simpler and easier” to develop services and apps for the global mobile market.  At times, some have claimed that Java (J2ME) was the answer, then Flash Lite, then Webkit browsers, and most recently HTML5. While each solution has its merits, there will not be any unification anytime soon. Even as HTML5 richness has improved substantially, browser support will still vary and many, many phones will not support HTML5 for 7+ years.

Anyone who is waiting for a single silver bullet to solve fragmentation issues in mobile will be waiting a very long time, especially if they want to go after the global mobile opportunity. As such, it is important for mobile entrepreneurs to wade in and sort it out for themselves.  No one is going to flatten the industry such as Microsoft did in the PC-era to make it simple.

THE REALPOLITIK: COMMON STANDARDS  = COMMODITY STANDARDS FOR MANY

The realpolitik is that Mobile is truly global, and serves an extremely wide range of countries and users. There will naturally be a wide breadth of technologies, from CDMA vs GSM protocols, J2ME vs BREW, Mobile Apps vs Mobile Web, xHTML vs HDML, SMS vs MMS and others to serve this market.
Ask former execs of PSINet (bankrupt operator), AST (bankrupt PC maker) & Packard Bell (bankrupt PC maker) about the impact of the WINTEL “standard” on other PC industry players, and you’ll get a sense why Nokia, Motorola,Verizon, & Sprint aren’t rushing to follow their PC-era predecessors. Common standards = commodity standards for many players in this industry. Sadly, whether or not there is an elegant technical answer, it will be hard to drive any single set of worldwide standards given the different economic incentives of the many players, however good it would be for developers.

OK, SO AS A MOBILE ENTREPRENEUR WHAT DO YOU DO?

What do you do as a mobile entrepreneur in the face of this complexity?  If you’re going to be successful, the winning entrepreneurs in mobile will have to learn to navigate these waters.  There’s no simple shortcut. Several thoughts:

1. Don’t wait for the Magic Bullet.  The first step towards progress is acceptance of reality. I actually do believe that Webkit browsers, HTML5, continued progression of J2ME, Android and iPhone are all positive trends that will help make things easier for many developers, but none of them will be a single-threaded answer. There are too many markets where these solutions are insufficient. For example, India, one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets is stilldominated by Nokia, which has 70%+ market share. I don’t think developing only for iPhones will be enough to dominate the India market given their < 5% share.
2. Bound The Problem & Get Down the User Learning Curve.  So, the critical next step is to limit the boundaries of the problem so you can actually solve it. Are you pursuing an enterprise app or a consumer app? Does your success require broad scale viral use, or is it perfectly good to have 2000 profitable users? Many developers focused on the consumer market are going to find that a blend of mobile web, and prototyping on iPhone-only or Android-only is the right first step and only then expand to broader platforms. Blackberry and WindowsMobile are similarly important in business applications. Rather than the costly efforts of chasing 4-5 platforms at once, focus in on the first one or two, prove your model, then expanding will help to bound the complexity.
3. Geography matters. That said, it turns out that there are major differences by country in the mobile ecosystem. Just as important as the use case, is which country/geography one is targeting first. In Europe, 3rd party retailers such as Carphone Warehouse play a major role, reducing the influence of operator controlled stores. In emerging markets, Nokia is still a major force to be reckoned with. In North America, iPhone is capturing a disproportionate profit share of the industry.  Look at the data sources I link to below and understand which handsets dominate which geography—it is very different by region.
4. Get a guide. It is difficult to explain the subtleties of the mobile ecosystem without a longer dialogue, but the good news is that there are quite a few battle-scarred mobile veterans around that can help you with the Cliff Notes on the industry. Find one to help you.
5. Resources To Tap Into.  Whether or not you agree with my opinions in this article, here are some great data sources to learn more.

• Admob Mobile Metrics—a good summary of trends in the mobile data ecosystem from the lens of Admob’s network. A good view of by-country handset types from their view.
• Chetan Sharma Consulting—Chetan, as an independent analyst publishes some great research on the trends in the mobile data space.
• Getjar Mobile Statistics—Getjar is the leading independent mobile app store, and publishes stats on download volumes, handset types, etc.
• Mobile Monday—great entrepreneur organized events getting the mobile community together in over 120+ cities around the world.  If you really are looking for a guide, this is a good place to start
• WURFL— wireless universal resource file—an open source project; a “config file that contains all info on every wireless device on earth”

DON’T WAIT

There’s an incredible startup and wealth-creating opportunity in this new arena of Open Mobile. The smartest entrepreneurs will not wait for these fragmentation issues to be solved but are figuring out now how to pick a use case, a core platform, and geography to bound their problem and get going. Once you have initial momentum, you can pick through these fragmentation landmines, and make a 2nd and 3rd step. Don’t wait for the unifying technology to solve these issues before diving in. Its going to be an exciting time to build great mobile companies this next 5-7 years. See you out there.

Reference Glossary

SMS – short message system otherwise known as text messaging

MMS – multimedia messaging system (originated as photo messaging from J-phone in Japan)

CDMA – code division multiplexing – pioneered and still very controlled by Qualcomm – Sprint, Verizon & MetroPCS use this protocol

GSM – Global System for Mobile, the standard in Europe and most of the world – AT&T & T-Mobile use this protocol

J2ME – Java Mobile Edition (often paired with class library profile called MIDP2)

BREW – Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless – a Qualcomm owned initiative as alternative to J2ME

XHTML – multi modality markup language

WML – the original markup language of the WAP Forum which allowed more efficient use of bandwith constrained mobile networks (i.e.. less chatty)

WURFL – wireless universal resource file – open source config file of wireless devices

MOMO – Mobile Monday community of mobile entrepreneurs supporting other mobile entrepreneurs

(@Rich_Wong is a Partner @Accel_Partners and works with mobile investements Admob and Getjar ( among others) and was previously an operating exec at mobile technology provider Openwave Systems. See www.accel.com/rpw_presos for additional data around the mobile ecosystem. Disclosure: Accel Partners is an investor in Admob, Amobee, Getjar, Mig33, Medio, MetroPCS, as referenced above)

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Microsoft Taps Navizon To Power Mobile Geolocation
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Microsoft will use geo-positioning startup Navizon to power geolocation for mobile users. Navizon said today in a statement that it had signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft to allow the tech giant to use Navizon’s global location database for its mobile technologies.

Navizon crowdsources GPS positioning with its community of more than 1 million registered users from all over world. The startup’s users build a dynamic database of Wi-Fi access points and GSM, CDMA and 3G towers. Navizon’s software triangulates signals broadcast from Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers to determine geolocation. Navizon also has the ability to run in the background, allowing the user to open other applications on a device at the same time.

Yahoo also uses Navizon to power geo-location for Yahoo Mobile. Microsoft just launched a new version of its Windows Mobile operating system a few weeks ago but its unclear exactly how Navizon’s technology will be incorporated into Microsoft’s mobile offerings. Navizon faces competition from Skyhook Wireless, which is used by Apple to help power geolocation on the iPhone.

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The Complaint: Apple’s Patent Lawsuit Against HTC Is All About Android
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Earlier today, Apple issued a press release stating that it is filing suit against cell phone manufacturer HTC for patent infringement. No mention of Android or Google was in the press release. But one of the actual legal complaint, which we’ve obtained and embedded below, makes no bones about it. As expected, this lawsuit is about the Android. HTC, of course, is one of the largest manufacturers of Android handsets.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware targets: “certain mobile communication devices including cellular phones and smart phones, including at least phones incorporating the Android Operating System (collectively, “the Accused Products”).” By going after the biggest Android manufacturer, Apple is putting all Android cell phone makers—and by extension Google— on notice. Is there any doubt now why Google CEO Eric Schmidt had to resign from Apple’s board last year? The battle lines are now drawn.

At least one of the patents (No. 7,479,949) lists Steve Jobs as an inventor, and describes a method to use a touchscreen as a graphical user interface “detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display” (i.e. multi-touch). The complete list of patents the complaint says are being infringed include:

• Patent No. 7,362,331: “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States”
• Patent No. 7,479,949: “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics”
• Patent No. 7,657,849: “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image”
• Patent No. 7,469,381: “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display”
• Patent No. 5,920,726: “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device.”
• Patent No. 7,633,076: “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices”
• Patent No. 5,848,105: “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality”
• Patent No. 7,383,453: “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor”
• Patent No. 5,455,599: “Object-Oriented Graphic System”
• Patent No. 6,424,354: “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods”

Another complaint was filed with the ITC and may include other patents, since there are only ten here and Apple claims 20 patents are being infringed altogether.

Apple vs HTC

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AOL To Pour $50 Million Into Patch This Year
Category: Technology>Techcrunch

Yesterday brought the news that AOL sold Buy.at, the affiliate marketing network it bought in early 2008, to UK network Digital Window. AOL acquired Buy.at for a rumored $125 million two years ago. Today, AOL filed a 10-K report that revealed that AOL only sold Buy.at for $17 million, taking a hit of a whopping $108 million.

Another fascinating tidbit in the filing is related to hyperlocal news site Patch. Patch, which currently offers hyperlocal news for 37 small towns and communities in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California, was acquired by AOL in June of last year. According the the 10-K, AOL plans to invest up to $50 million in hyperlocal news site Patch during the remainder of 2010. And it’s been reported that Patch will roll out to “hundreds” of communities in the future.

According to the filing, Patch was bought by AOL for $7.0 million in cash. AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, had previously invested $4.5 million in Patch back in his Google days via his private investment firm Polar Capital. Armstrong waived his right to receive any money beyond his initial investment back from the investment, accepting the return of his capital in AOL common stock. Armstrong then returned the $4.5 million back to Polar Capital in the form of AOL shares.

We know that Armstrong is not only bullish on niche content but is also looking for AOL to become a content powerhouse. The company has even developed its own CMS, Seed, which is a content machine that aims to redefine journalism. And AOL just bought internet video company StudioNow, which was integrated into Seed, to boost its video content on editorial sites.

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