Posts tagged Just
Just Checking…How Many of Foursquare’s Reported 20 Million Users Are Active?
Apr 16th
On the face of it, the statistics are impressive: 20 million registered users and 2 billion check-ins. But as location check-in app Foursquare celebrates 4sqDay (16 April = 4 squared, geddit?), how many people still regularly use the service? After all, manually checking in to places is going out of fashion isn’t it? Aren’t next generation location apps like Highlight and Glancee the New New Thing in location? What’s more, Instagram grew faster than Foursquare and it is, in a sense, a location app too (you typically take photos when out and about). So is Foursquare really as popular as the statistics the company released today suggest?
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I’ve given Google+ grief over how active its millions of registered users are. It seems to me the same question should be asked of Foursquare. Particularly because many of Foursquare’s original users (this author included) have drifted away from the service over the past year. Foursquare doesn’t release active user numbers, probably for the same reason Google+ doesn’t: it’s likely a small percentage of registered users.
There is another reason to question Foursquare’s active user base: it has done a mini-pivot. Last year Foursquare released a mobile feature called Explore, which is basically a search engine for location. It turned into a Web feature in January of this year, at which point it became clear that Foursquare sees Explore as a key part of its future. Indeed, Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told ReadWriteWeb in February that Foursquare “isn’t about points and badges anymore.”
The implication is that check-ins alone aren’t a good enough reason for its 20 million users to come back and keep using Foursquare. The company needed to find a way to entice its users back, again and again.
2 Things Foursquare Failed At Over 2011
Foursquare has clearly grown well over the past year, from about 9 million users this time last year to 20 million now. But it has also dropped the ball in a couple of areas – which I believe has directly impacted on its active user numbers.
Firstly, the initial promise of Foursquare was to make virtual check-ins and badges meaningful. Becoming the mayor of a cafe should entitle you to discounted coffees. Checking in five times in a bookstore (the ones that still exist, that is) ought to lead to some kind of reward: like 15% off your next purchase. While some of this commercial potential in Foursquare was unlocked, so to speak, it hasn’t been widespread enough.
The second ball that Foursquare dropped was automated check-ins. New so-called ambient location apps like Glancee and Highlight have taken that ball and run with it, enabling people to make new social connections via automated location tracking. Admittedly, this is still early stage and these new generation location apps are plagued with battery life and other performance issues. Also the privacy implications have not been fully explored yet. Even so, Foursquare should have led the way with automated check-in technology. It should have at least experimented with it, to head off the likes of Highlight (the most successful of these apps at SXSW last month).
Explore May Be The Promised Land
So far I’ve presented a fairly pessimistic – maybe unfair – profile of Foursquare. With over double the user numbers from one year ago, clearly Foursquare is doing very well for itself. Even if the number of active users isn’t as impressive, 20 million people registered to use Foursquare is nothing to be sneezed at.
Actually Foursquare has innovated on a number of fronts over the past year: a daily deals partnerships with Groupon in July 2011, revamped brand pages in August, tips lists later that same month.
But its biggest new feature was the one I termed a mini-pivot: Explore, which turned Foursquare into a discovery engine. Want to know the most popular nightclubs in a city you’re visiting? Explore will tell you. The reason Foursquare is even able to offer this feature is its massive database of check-in data. So the Explore product may well be the next step in Foursquare’s maturation as an Internet company. Perhaps it will even take them to the level of a Twitter, which has over 100 million users.
Wait, How Active Are Those 20 Million Users?
And yet… what motivation is there for Foursquare’s 20 million users to keep checking in? I don’t claim to be a typical Foursquare user, but my own usage of the product has tailed off significantly over the past year. I check in to my local cafe still, but only because I have been mayor there for a long time. There’s no reward for being the mayor there – in fact I have to remind the baristas to click my paper coffee card.
Explore really is critical to Foursquare’s future, because the value of Foursquare has morphed: from being a fun app to collect check-ins, to being a useful service where people can find interesting new places. Judging from the growth in user numbers, Explore does seem to be bringing in new users and reigniting the interest of users who had drifted away. Portland resident (and ex-ReadWriteWeb intern) Justin Houk told me that he started using Foursquare again “after I needed to find a lunch spot in a part of Portland that I seldom go and it came through.” Foursquare is banking on more people using its product like that, as a kind of real-time location search engine.
So Foursquare is not a sinking ship. In fact it continues to steam ahead, into uncharted and exciting waters. The big question though, is whether Foursquare can get people regularly using the service. I’m one of those 20 million users Foursquare is celebrating, but I’m far from active on it. Frankly it needs to do more, for me to become an active user again. How many of you are in the same boat? Or are you a regular Foursquare user? Let us know in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Becoming a YouTube Partner Just Got More Rewarding
Apr 16th
YouTube is updating partner eligibility across 20 countries where the YouTube Partner Program has launched. Content creators in these countries can become partners by enabling their YouTube accounts, and monetizing at least one of their videos.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
(SALES) Are You Marketing or Just Selling? – Radio Ink
Mar 26th
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(SALES) Are You Marketing or Just Selling?
Radio Ink SEO: Try searching "advertising success stories" online. You'll go through page after page about Twitter, Facebook, SEO, and even newspapers long before you'll find anything about radio. Fortunately, when you Google "radio advertising success stories," … SEO Inc. Launches All New Website Complete with New Services and Internet … |
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Google Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com – Just One Of Several?
Mar 26th
The battle between Google and those trying to artificially manipulate its search results is an ongoing battle. Google on March 19th took down one of those blog/link networks named BuildMyRank.com. BuildMyRank.com confirmed Google has deindexed an “overwhelming majority” of their network…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
“Green Button” Open Data Just Created an App Market for 27M US Homes
Mar 22nd
Earlier this year, influential venture capitalist Fred Wilson encouraged entrepreneurs and VCs to get behind open data. Writing on his widely read blog, Wilson urged developers to adopt the Green Button, the project that former United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra launched in 2011 to unleash energy data.
Today, the Obama Administration announced that nine major utilities and electricity suppliers have committed to using and extending the Green Button to enable some 15 million households to access data about their energy usage. As with the Blue Button for healthcare data, the White House asserts that providing energy consumers with secure access to information about energy usage will increase innovation in the sector and empower citizens with more information.
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“This is the kind of innovation that gets me excited,” Wilson wrote.
The Green Button is like OAuth for energy data. It is a simple standard that the utilities can implement on one side and web/mobile developers can implement on the other side. And the result is a ton of information sharing about energy consumption and in all likelihood energy savings that result from more informed consumers.
The thinking here, as with Blue Button, which enables veterans (and soon all federal workers) to download their personal health data, is that broad adoption by utilities and engagement with industry will lead to new opportunities for software developers and civic entrepreneurs to serve a new market of millions of consumers who want better tools to analyze and manage their energy data.
Chopra challenged the energy community last September to model the Green Button after the Blue Button. According to the White House, a common standard for the data in Green Button will be further developed in collaboration with a public-private partnership supported by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Companies are already developing Web and smartphone applications and services for businesses and homeowners that can use Green Button data,” Dr. John P. Holdren, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a White House blog post. “These tools can help consumers choose the most economical rate plan for their energy use patterns; deliver customized energy-efficiency tips; provide easy-to-use tools to size and finance rooftop solar panels; and conduct virtual energy audits that can cut costs for building owners and speed the initiation of retrofits.”
“If you’ve got a smartphone or tablet, you know how clever and convenient some of the apps are, and how they can transform the way you manage your time, your finances, and the way you work,” said Tony Earley, PG&E Corporation’s Chairman, CEO and President in a prepared statement. “The more apps that are available on the energy side, the more chance our customers will have to find an easy way to similarly manage their energy use.”
Dr. John P. Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy The electricity suppliers and utilities that are making this new commitment serve, in aggregate, 15 million households. They include American Electric Power, Austin Energy, Baltimore Gas and Electric, CenterPoint Energy, Commonwealth Edison, NSTAR, PECO, Reliant, Virginia Dominion Power.
In service of that goal, the administration announced that Itron, Oracle, and Silver Spring Networks will join Aclara and Tendril in developing Green Button software and a new Apps for Energy contest to try to catalyze the development of new Web and mobile tools.
Open Data and Smart Disclosure
The Green Button is a good example of data for the public good and “smart disclosure,” whereby a private company or government institution provides a person with access to his or her own data in open formats.
Smart disclosure is defined by Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office for Information and Regulatory Affairs, as a process that “refers to the timely release of complex information and data in standardized, machine-readable formats in ways that enable consumers to make informed decisions.”
For instance, the quarterly financial statements of the top public companies in the world are now available online through the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Why does it matter? The interactions of citizens with companies or government entities generate a huge amount of economically valuable data. If consumers and regulators had access to that data, they could tap it to make better choices about everything from finance to healthcare to real estate, much in the same way that Web applications like Hipmunk and Zillow let consumers make more informed decisions.
“I’m a big fan of simplicity and open standards to unleash a lot of innovation,” wrote Wilson.
APIs and open data aren’t always simple concepts for end users. Green Buttons and Blue Buttons are pretty simple concepts that most consumers will understand. I’m hoping we soon see Yellow Buttons, Red Buttons, Purple Buttons, and Orange Buttons too.
Let’s get behind these open data initiatives. Let’s build them into our apps. And let’s pressure our hospitals, utilities, and other institutions to support them. I’m going to reach out to ConEd, the utility in NYC, and find out when they are going to add Green Button support to their consumers data. I hope it is soon.
ConEd doesn’t look to be on board with the Green Button quite yet – but they may soon have more incentives to join.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Best Wiki Ever? Hackpad Just Might Be
Mar 12th
After catching a note about the wiki for SXSW being edited with Hackpad, I thought it might be worth a look. Then I caught the tagline, “best wiki ever.” Well, that’s a bold statement. Then I noticed that Tomboy creator Alex Graveley was part of the team behind it and thought maybe it really is. After a short test drive, I’m even more impressed. Hackpad combines the simplicity of Tomboy with real-time collaboration features that make it a great lightweight tool for teams.
Tomboy, for folks who haven’t spent much time on Linux, is a wiki-like desktop note-taking application written in Mono. It’s been ported to other platforms, but has been most widely used on Linux. For many years, Tomboy was one of my go-to apps. As I’ve used more and more Web-based software, I’ve gotten out of the habit of using Tomboy.
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Trying Hackpad
Hackpad is open for sign-ups. You can register with your email address, Facebook or Google accounts. I was going to use my Google account, but Hackpad wanted access to my Google Contacts info too.
Once you’re signed up, you can start creating new pads. Hackpad provides most of the features you’d expect from wikis, and a number of features that you wouldn’t expect.
The collaboration features allow you to invite users to your “pads” and edit documents in real time. There’s a very slight lag when another user is editing the same pad, but it’s negligible.
If you’re working on code of some sort, Hackpad offers syntax highlighting for HTML, JavaScript, C, SQL, Java, CoffeeScript, and a number of other languages and markup syntaxes.
You can create a new pad while you’re editing another one by using “@” symbol. This makes it really easy to create new pads and you don’t have to use the normal annoying wiki syntax for pages. You can also “notify” people who have Hackpad accounts with the @username syntax, which will send them an email.
Hackpad also supports to-do lists, just by dropping in a “[]” you can add a checklist item. This makes it dead easy to create a checklist for a team, or just for yourself.
Hackpad supports rich media, if you drop in links from supported sites. For instance, drop in a link to a YouTube video and you’ll get a preview of the video. This also works with Vimeo, SoundCloud, Flickr, Slideshare, Google Maps, TED, and a number of other sites.
The privacy settings are pretty straightforward. You can have private pads, pads that are open to anyone with the link, or public pads. It is possible to un-invite folks, so if you have a team member leave the company, they can be removed from each pad.
You can also create collections of pads, which makes it easy to collect and share documentation or other materials without having to slap everything into one pad.
Want to bail on Hackpad? Unlike Tomboy, Hackpad is not open source. But they do allow you to grab all of your pads as a zip file. Unzipped, you get pretty standard (if unpleasantly formatted) HTML. So there’s not too much concern about lock-in, since it shouldn’t be ridiculously difficult to import Hackpads into a different wiki.
Evolution of Hackpad
The Dropbox integration is an interesting idea, but it doesn’t quite work flawlessly just yet. You’re supposed to be able to attach a file from Dropbox by typing “@filename,” but in my testing of Hackpad it didn’t find many of the files I wanted to attach. With any luck, this is a feature that they’ll have worked out before too long.
I like Hackpad enough that I’d be more than happy to pay for an account, if only I could. Right now they have a sign-up to get into a limited test for Pro accounts, but you can’t just sign up for one and offer the company some money. Here’s hoping they’ll have that bug fixed pretty soon. The Pro accounts should allow companies to sign up with their own address (like “yourcompany.hackpad.com”) and import MediaWiki and Google Sites Wikis. The Pro accounts will also come with admin tools and 24/7 support.
If you need a lightweight collaboration tool, or just a personal wiki, I’d recommend checking it out. The tour of Hackpad is the best place to start.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Is Readability Just an Instapaper Ripoff or Something Bigger?
Mar 2nd
Like the rest of the iOS device-toting, lots-of-stuff-reading geekosphere, I rushed to download the Readability app pretty much as soon as it dropped yesterday. The service has long existed as a Web browser add-on, but its presence on the iPad and iPhone had been delayed after a public dispute with Apple over subscription revenue sharing. The startup initially threatened to go Web-only and skip the iTunes App Store, but evidently had a change of heart that led to yesterday’s much anticipated launch.
At first glance, Readability is a very attractive app. Like its chief competitor Instapaper, it strips down text-based content from the Web and presents it in a clean, easy-to-read format. It forgoes the sharing widgets, banner ads and varied CSS styles of the originating site and presents everything in the same simple format.
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Readability is beautiful. From the fluid, responsive UI and flyover menus to the premium typography, the app’s designers have taken care to ensure that the user experience is a pleasant one. This is one area that Instapaper could stand to improve.
Other than that, though, this offering mostly feels like an Instapaper copycat, but without the content discovery, social sharing and organizational features of the original.
As Instapaper creator Marco Arment himself said, there’s no reason that there shouldn’t be multiple competitors in this space. After all, the way content is formatted on the Web is not always conducive to an enjoyable reading experience. That’s why Apple added its Reader feature to Safari in Mac OS X and iOS (which, it’s worth noting, uses some code developed by Readability).
But as an avid user of Instapaper for the last three years, I fail to see what about Readability could conceivably draw me away from the service I know and love (and admittedly, paid for). Readability’s UI is very nice, but it’s going to take more than a pretty interface to get users like me to dump Instapaper and leave behind folders upon folders of saved articles and a user experience that, while less polished, is still a pretty solid one.
Of course, not everybody agrees with me. For some users, the extra design polish in the UI is enough to make the experience markedly more enjoyable than that of the competition. Also, there are those that appreciate the shorter feature list. As my esteemed colleague Jon Mitchell said to me earlier today, “It’s different in what it left out.”
If Readability seems like it’s late to this party, there are good reasons for that. First, there was the subscription revenue dispute with Apple. Then, once the app was submitted, it took quite some time for it to be approved and arrive in the App Store. Along the way there was some internal rethinking that needed to be done, including about where to pivot and ultimately, whether they could continue to partner with Arment. It’s not like the Readability folks woke up one day last month and decided to make an iOS app. This has been a long time coming.
The Readability folks are presumably working on upgrades and enhancements, as this is only the service’s first iteration on iOS. In its current form, it might not be compelling for many seasoned Instapaper users, but for those who are just getting started with this type of service, it might just have enough potential to make for a compelling first choice.
Lead photo by Alexandre Normand
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Vimeo For iPad: It’s About More Than Just Watching Videos
Feb 27th
Vimeo pushed out an update to its iOS app today that includes compatibility with the iPad. The video hosting service has long had a presence on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but this upgrade brings it to the screen for which it is perhaps best suited, aside from one’s television.
As one would expect from Vimeo, the interface features a clean, effective design. The iconography on the navigation will look familiar to existing users, but this is not a mindless port of the desktop website onto a tablet. They’ve optimized the experience for the form factor, as one should. Naturally, that means that the UI is stripped down considerably, but the same cannot quite be said for the functionality, which remains robust.
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Much of what Vimeo is capable of on the desktop is included here. Yes, that means browsing and watching videos made by amateurs and professionals alike. Interactive features such as liking videos, sharing them on social networks and commenting on them are all built into the app, much as you’d expect in this day and age.
On top of all the standard fare, the service makes analytics available for video publishers from within the iPad app. That’s a feature they could have left out of this application, and few would have complained. They still would have seen massive usage. After all, the tablet is a natural home for video content, and numerous studies of consumer behavior have demonstrated that. In addition to reading and gaming, consuming video content is one of things people do the most on their tablets.
Analytics isn’t the only publisher-centric feature here. Far from it. In fact, the Vimeo iPad app is as much about content creation as it is about consumption. Alongside Vimeo’s huge library of video content sits basic video-editing features. They’re not much less sophisticated than what’s available in stand-alone editing apps like Avid Studio for iPad. And while the feature may not be quite as capable as desktop video editing software, it’s more than YouTube’s iPad app has going for it.
If there’s a complaint to be made about the app, it’s that the editing features are even more stripped-down than they need to be. For example, when adding a text title to a video, you have five colors to choose from and what appears to be only one font. The positioning and size of the text is more customizable, but not by much.
In addition to adding text, you can do all the basic video-editing tasks you’d expect: loading and trimming clips, adding transitions and zooms and adjusting the audio. At this point in personal computing history, people who are serious about creating professional-grade quality videos are still going to do it on a desktop or laptop. In the meantime, tablets continue to mature into devices that are capable of creating and publishing content.
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Cable TV’s Erosion is Real, It’s Just Very Slow
Feb 9th
The disruption of cable television at the hands of the Internet and its premium video streaming services has been predicted for some time now. Perhaps there’s something about the size and demeanor of the cable industry that makes some people long for it to be conquered by the free and open Web. Maybe that skews the imminence of the predictions. Either way, to many, cable’s disruption just feels inevitable.
Cable is indeed losing subscribers, but it’s happening very slowly. According to the latest data from Nielsen, the number of U.S. homes with cable subscriptions has declined 4.1% in the last year. Meanwhile, TV service provided by telephone companies like Verizon increased 21.1%.
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So, it’s not that traditional, non-Web television service in general is going down. Cable subscription rates are dropping slowly, while satellite and other pay TV services are on the rise. Web TV may not be exploding in the way that many might have expected, but it is on the rise.
Nielsen reports considerable growth in the sector of consumers who watch a combination of Web-based and non-cable broadcast television. This is the crowd that Boxee hopes to target with its live TV antennae dongle. They watch half as much TV and stream twice as much online video as the general population.
It’s a group that has grown quickly, but still makes up only 5% of consumers. By comparison, nearly 71% of households subscribe to both broadband and cable television. Cable’s penetration rate alone is more than 90%. In short, it’s not going away anytime soon.
The cable industry faces real, longer-term threats from the likes of Netflix, Hulu and increasingly, Amazon Prime, as well as from set-top boxes and connected TVs. Trends in technology, coupled with the high prices of cable subscriptions, are slowly making cable less attractive to consumers Realizing this, the cable companies have put a renewed focused on innovating for a hyper-connected, multi-screened future.
TV content – wherever it may originate – still takes up an extraordinary amount of our lives. On average, Americans watch 33 hours of television per week. Television has long dominated the media diets of consumers, but what’s changing is when and how they access it.
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For Many Artists, Spotify and Rdio Just Aren’t Cutting It
Feb 9th
For music fans, all-you-can-stream music services like Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG and Rdio are kind of dream come true. Signing up gives you instant access to a library of millions of songs from major label and indie acts from around the world. Most services are now free, with some limitations on usage. For paying users, as long as you keep your subscription, there’s really no need to pay for most individual tracks or albums (unless you’re an audiophile). In the case of Spotify, you can even merge your local music collection with the service’s cloud-based selection of music. Awesome.
For artists, it’s another story. The dirty little secret of services like Spotify and others is that they are not particularly lucrative for artists. At all. Each of them has managed to court record labels with attractive enough licensing deals, but that doesn’t necessarily trickle down to the artists themselves. As a result, many artists have held back new releases from streaming services, or jumped ship all together.
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Paul McCartney became the latest artist to step back from the all-you-can-stream subscription model when he pulled his entire catalog from Rhapsody. Material by the former Beatle and accomplished solo artist was removed from Spotify in 2010.
Initially, independent artists such as bands on small metal labels started to question the value of Spotify and pulled their catalogs. Then bigger artists like The Black Keys and Coldplay followed suit.
Exact figures range (and are seldom made public), but it’s clear that streaming services simply do not pay out much money compared to physical album sales or paid downloads. According to CDBaby, iTunes accounts for 77.4% of digital revenue for indie artists, while sources like Spotify and Rhapsoy bring in about 2% apiece. Now, with iTunes Match, artists get an additional stream of revenue on top of their initial digital album sales.
In theory, the streaming services will grow their user bases and refine their monetization strategies to a point at which things are fair for labels, fans and artists alike. In the meantime, not everybody is willing to stick around and wait for their business model to mature.
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