Martin Weigert
Posts
I have been pretty happy with my mobile operator TeliaSonera. It has Sweden's best coverage and did recently introduce relatively cheap roaming packages for other EU countries.
Nevertheless, the company has a track record of limiting P2P traffic which means that Skype calls via 3G (or 4G if you have a compatible handset) are a rather frustrating experience.
Today ArcticStartup reports that the operator plans to charge for mobile VoIP calls as of Summer in both Spain and Sweden.
I get it: Losing regular voice minutes to VoIP is a challenge for operators since it means lower revenue. Still, charging customers extra for something they already pay for sucks big time and is nothing but an evil move.
It's not complicated: I pay 149 SEK (about 16 Euro) for 1 Gig of data/month. That's not even a very competitive price, but ok, Telia has always been a bit more expensive than the competition, and the special roaming deals make up for it.
BUT: I want to be able to use those 1 Gig the way I want. It's one Gig of data/month I am paying for and I don't want Telia to come and tell me "You can use it for surfing, but not for VoIP, which costs more". All data has to be treated equally, at least if I pay rather a lot for that data.
For the price of 149 SEK I expect full freedom in using my monthly data.
Fortunately, there is competition on the Swedish mobile market. If Telia pulls through with their plan an starts to block mobile Skype calls entirely, I will switch to Telenor, "3" or Tele2.
Hehe, this is sooo true (in my experience at least):
But you know when you go into an Apple Store, and it’s filled with sometimes scary Apple fanatics who seem to have arrived at a holy place? That’s Google+ for Google.
Imagine you need quick help with a decision or an answer to a question. You pull out a mobile app on your smartphone, type in what you want to get feedback on, and within a few minutes you have 30 to 50 replies from the community - in form of votes (thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral) or free text comments.
This is what New York based iOS and Android app Thumb has managed to accomplish. I read about it in a recent VentureBeat article which stated that the app is twice as addictive as Pinterest. First I was sceptical, but after having played with Thumb this weekend I can state that it is in fact incredibly addictive. Proof: Within 48 hours I have voted on 722 items (and I have received 16 good advice stars from other users on my comments).
Yesterday I was at a party, and I think I made at least 6 or 7 people download the app, after I took a photo of the crowd and asked the Thumb community whether they thought the party was good or not. Seeing new replies coming in every few seconds is pretty amazing compared to the rather low engagement levels and user activities of most other social apps.
Voting on other peoples’ questions is quite entertaining. And even though some of the requests for opinions are rather silly, it’s hard to quit because one always wonders what the next question might be. That’s the most addictive part.
Also I haven’t stumbled upon a single vulgar or NSFW question, despite the fact that they are published immediately. The company must be running some automatic filter software that recognizes and removes questionable content.
I have no idea whether Thumb will be able to keep this high user engagement up. But if they do, this app will become huge!
Last week, Oink (a recommendation app I really liked) announced that it will be closing down - less than 5 month after launch. A few days later, All Things D reported that members of Milk Inc, the company behind Oink, including founder Kevin Rose were hired by Google.
So Oink is gone and Rose and some of his colleagues will work with Google+ in the future.
I imagine that the talk between Google and Kevin Rose went something like this:
Google: “Hi Kevin. We’d like some of you guys to work for us. You get 1 to 2 million Dollar signing bonus each, and of course your investors get they money back, including a little extra”
Kevin Rose (after checking with his investors): “Nice. Let’s do. But what about Oink?”
Google: “We don’t want it. But people are becoming increasingly hostile towards our company, because of the way we prioritize Google+ and close a lot of our less popular services. So that’s why we can’t communicate the deal as us acquiring Milk and then closing down Oink. You need to shutdown Oink by yourself, before joining us. So you take the blame, not Google”
Kevin Rose “Well, ok. I don’t want to put more effort into Oink anyway, so I can live with that"
Just for the record. Yesterday over at netzwertig.com I coined the term “Kony Effect” (in the style of “Streisand Effect”).
My definition would be something like that:
The Kony Effect is an online phenomenon where a highly emotional, slightly manipulative, factual possibly not fully correct information including a call for action is spread by millions of people online within a very short amount of time - before others had the chance to validate and question the facts presented.
Let’s see if it catches on.
I had some discussions with hardcore Google+ users lately (yes they actually exist). More than once their reaction towards my criticism of the project (which is technically sophisticated but struggles to find its real purpose) was something like “You are doing it wrong, so it’s no surprise you don’t see the potential”.
Even directors at Google use this kind of defence, as Google’s guy in charge of social, Vic Gundotra, showed at SXSW yesterday:
“The other answer popular with Gundotra was, “We’re misunderstood.” People aren’t using Google+ correctly. They don’t realize most sharing is done privately, for example, which is why many profiles look dead.”
Personally I think this is the weakest argumentation ever, because it suggests that people have an unlimited amount of time to figure out each of the thousands of social web tools and apps out there, in order to learn to understand them.
The opposite is true: The user’s time budget is extremely limited. If a new site wants to convince them that it’s worth to redistribute some minutes spent on other sites to the new contender, it needs to be able to make the value clear.
If users misunderstand Google+, then that’s Google’s fault, not the user’s.
The best thing Google can do for Google+ is to make sure people don’t misunderstand it.
I usually don’t write about smartphone games but yesterday my friend Viktor introduced me to Draw Something, and in the second I saw it I knew this will get me hooked immediately.
Draw Something, available for iPhone and Android, lets you play with your Facebook friends (or other people). The task is to draw a picture describing a word and to make your friends guess what it could be. If they guess right, you get points.
The concept is based on Pictionary, but of course it has been adapted to the smartphone format. The coolest thing is that after you have drawn your (in my cases usually very silly looking) picture, your opponent is seeing a recording of how you drew it, maybe erased it, started again, which makes the app feel a lot more interactive. And you witness how your friends struggle with their drawings.Here in Sweden Draw Something seems to go viral right now (almost 10.000 reviews) and judging from the 320.537 reviews in the US app store, it’s already pretty big over there. As usual (and probably due to the language barrier since Draw Something is only offered in English, although no advanced English skills are needed), my home country Germany lags behind, with only 172 reviews in total.
Try it. My username is “imartin”.
P.S. it's a bit too easy to cheat since you could simply draw the letters of the word you are supposed to describe in a picture. I think the app should get some intelligence to recognize and prevent drawings with letters in it.
...of this incredibly good track called "Moderation" by Australian producer Light Year.
It's a real masterpiece because the sound and video fit so perfectly together. I have been watching this clip now at least 10 times. It somehow touches me a lot, despite or maybe even because of the strange atmosphere it creates.
In a poll of 1900 people conducted by sodahead.com (via) about the new Facebook Timeline profile, only 10 percent of the participants over the age of 65 liked the new profile style, but 34 percent of those between 18 and 24.
Despite the fact that there might be a 1000 possible factors making such a poll not very meaningful (like the assumption that there probably weren’t to many participants over the age of 65 at all), it still confirms the general theory that, the older people get, the less they are able or willing to adapt to change.
Thinking about the increasing intensity and speed with what the world is changing in the digital age, my guess is that the capability to adjust to change and to see an ever transforming environment as neutral or even positive instead of negative might become one of the most important (new) skills of human beings.
In the past, it seems as if one could have a fulfilled life without the permanent need to adapt to change. I’m not sure but I’m afraid that won’t be the case anymore in the upcoming years and decades.
Thus, becoming older myself and reaching the age of 30 in about a year, I will do everything possible to keep a positive attitude towards change. Of course, not every change is good, and the Timeline profile might actually be less useful than the old profile page. So the deal is not to appreciate any change, even it is for the worse, but to give yourself some time to evaluate and to get used to it before you make your final judgement as well as to always see the theoretical potential for improvement that comes with changes.
One of my goals is to have a similar attitude towards change when I’m 60 as I do now. Not sure if I’ll manage, but it’s worth a try.
The whole Megaupload case is starting to look odd.
Here is what happened in chronological order:
First, in December, a viral music video appears, a commercial by Megaupload featuring a couple of high profile US artists supporting. The video was later removed from YouTube due to complaints by Universal Music - which didn’t own the rights to the clip. That led Megaupload to sue Universal.
Right before Christmas, Megaupload launched MegaBox, a music streaming service. According to the reports, the plan was to allow artists to sell their songs and to keep 90 percent of the earnings. I tried MegaBox without getting too impressed - I expected free full length songs but only found 30 second previews. And in order to upload your own music collection to the service, one had to download a special client, which I didn’t trust (it’s still Megaupload we are speaking about). Nevertheless, the thought of Megaupload and artists working together, removing the labels from the equation, sounds revolutionary.
A couple of weeks later, it was reported that multi-million selling hip-hop producers Swizz Beats was the CEO of Megaupload. Later, after the raid, it was said that he actually hadn’t signed a contract yet.
A day later, Megaupload was shutdown by federal prosecutors, the people behind the site (including Kim Schmitz) were arrested in New Zealand.
Then, yesterday, tweets by hiphop celebrity Busta Rhymes emphasized how Megaupload proved to be a working business model for artists who got paid by the site if their free songs got downloaded a lot - cutting out the middle man aka the labels.
Putting all those pieces together makes it look as if the Megaupload people were about to seriously attack the music industry - with the help and support of some very popular artists.
Before this could happen, the FBI stopped it.
Despite the fact that Kim Schmitz and the other Megaupload crew members definitely aren’t the most trustworthy people, and despite the fact that there hardly was any copyright protected media content that wasn't available through Megaupload, this case seems to be more complex than what it initially looked like.
A few days ago I was at the cinema, watching “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”. At several occassions during the movie (which is worth watching if you haven’t already seen the Swedish original), the characters work with MacBooks, with the bright Apple logo at the backside being very visible to the audience.
In 2010, Apple products appeared in 30 percent of the 33 movies that hit No. 1 at the box office. Although I’m not sure if Apple actually pays for these placements (according to this it doesn’t), many other companies do pay for having their products shown. The Wikipedia article about product placements cites an older forecast about spending on film placement which was supposed to reach 1,8 billion Dollar in 2010. Not sure how the actual figures look like, and it seems unlikely that product placement can fully finance a movie, but it’s still a revenue source for movie companies that shouldn’t negatively be affected by piracy. On the contrary - the more copies of a movie are being downloaded, the bigger the reach of the companies that have paid for showing their products. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of unauthorized downloads is increasingly affecting the prices of the placement. Like this: “We expect 20 million illegal downloads and eventually 80 million people watching the movie without paying. For that audience we gonna charge you XX percent extra for your product placement”.
This is no fact, just speculation based on obvious facts:
1. Hollywood movies are increasingly crammed with products that companies pay for to be shown.
2. Subtile marketing messages work whether the copy of a movie is pirated or not.
3. The movie studios would be stupid not to count those “inofficial” viewers. Hence, they will consider those when defining the prices of the placement.
I guess, nobody would go on the record with that. And again, there probably can’t be enough product placement to fully finance an expensive Hollywood movie without the movie having the feeling of a 2 hour commercial. But it’s something one should at least have in mind: Each pirated copy actually helps the movie studios to charge more for product placement. Because movies are increasingly becoming ads. And they probably will become even more.
Fanboyism is an interesting topic. Instapaper founder Marco Arment, an outspoken Apple fan, argues that the term usually is used by people who own another device or product and who feel insulted by that someone is casting doubt upon their choice of product. Hence, they start to discredit that someone by calling him/her fanboy (or fangirl).
From the accuser’s point of view, fanboy means - according to Arment - someone who is blindly and irrationally devoted to a product that I believe is inferior to what I bought when faced with a similar choice, and whose opinions and arguments can therefore be completely disregarded.
Not surprisingly, Arment is mainly referring to the never ending conflict iOS/Apple vs Android.
I think, Arment is missing something: Not everybody calling another person a fanboy is necessarily defending the "opposite party” or even owning their product. I use and enjoy the iPhone and iPad, still there are persons that I would undoubtedly call Apple fanboys.
In my eyes, a fanboy is simply someone who has an unbalanced positive view on a product and an unbalanced negative view on the competitor’s products. A real fanboy (or fangirl) is practically incapable of serious criticism to the company or product he/she’s devoted to - at least not without criticising the biggest competitor even more. Fanboys often turn into passionate bashers of the competitor.
So is Arment a fanboy? Not sure, but I think he’s close. As are lots of people who own Apple products. Though I actually don’t mean it as an insult.
There might even be two kinds of fanboyism - healthy (passion) and unhealthy (fanaticism) one. The latter is bad, because it makes people very predictable and hard to have a factual discussion with.
And something else, while we are speaking about Apple fanboys: In the lights of the latest “Is there value in blog comments?” discussion, it’s remarkable that those usually siding with Apple (like Marco Arment, MG Siegler, John Gruber) all have deactived their comments feature. The need for total control seems to be something Apple and it’s biggest, most emotional fans have in common.
For me, the most exciting new startup of 2011 was without a doubt ifttt, the San Francisco based service that lets you connect about 40 web services and functions with each other. It’s like digital duct tape and an awesome way to become more efficient by automating regular tasks.
I use ifttt for instance to add links in tweets I favour to Instapaper, to tweet articles from RSS feeds including specific keywords and to backup my Instagram photos to Dropbox.
I asked ifttt founder Linden Tibbets about what to expect in 2012. He replied that he didn’t want to go into details for now but promised that they are building “some really neat stuff for the first few month”.
So under the assumption that his hesitation to tell me more doesn’t mean that he’s about to sell ifttt (which I really don’t hope), there might be some really cool new stuff coming.
In fact I believe ifttt could become one of the rising stars of the next 12 month. Eventually I expect the service to widen its horizon by not only focusing on web services but to also include devices and things that are connected to the Internet. To begin with, ifttt could integrate with connected devices such as gaming consoles, Nest, Jawbone, Fitbit or Sonos hardware. Just as one example, by enabling Nest support via ifttt, one could change the settings of the intelligent Thermostat through email, tweets or even a phone call.
The Internet of Things is coming. In the long run, ifttt could partner up with all kinds of electrical appliances manufacturers to allow them to interact with other cloud services and to be controlled through them.
Establishing these kind of partnerships would require a lot of manpower and well connected people, so ifttt would need to grow and hire staff. Thanks to recent funding from Betaworks, resources to start with are available.
I’m not sure if this is the direction ifttt will aim at in 2012, but I see huge potential which also should help the service to get attention outside of the core user group of hardcore geeks.
Can’t wait to see what ifttt has up its sleeve for the near future!
During the weekend, I gave the TV show "A Good Wife" a try. I ended up watching 14 episodes almost in a row.
It's brilliant, and so is the main actor Julianna Margulies.
It's my discovery of the year. Together with "The Killing".
Over at netzwertig.com we have been conducting our annual poll, asking fellow tech bloggers from Germany/Switzerland/Austria and readers about their favourite online service of the year.
Based on the individual top 5 of 62 bloggers and readers with knowledge in the startup and technology field, we compiled a list of the 11 most-mentioned services. After that, readers had 5 days to vote for their favourite. 1674 people chose to do so.
Here is the result (number of mentions among the 62 experts in brackets)
01. Dropbox (17)
02. Google+ (20)
03. WhatsApp (9)
04. Instagram (11)
05. ifttt (13)
06. Wunderlist (7)
07. SoundCloud (6)
08. Evernote (10)
09. Reeder (6)
10. Instapaper (13)
11. Hootsuite (6)
Facebook, Google search and Twitter (but not 3rd party apps) were excluded to make sure the list doesn't become too boring.
There is a lot of discussion going on about Facebook's "frictionless sharing" feature after this CNET article stating that by automatically publishing any app activity (like songs listened to or articles read) to Facebook the social network is ruining sharing.
Personally, I'm not a fan of frictionless sharing (as described here in German), and I have difficulties to understand those who claim it is the future of sharing (like MG Siegler or Marshall Kirkpatrick - who criticises the feature for other reasons).
It's not that I doubt that sharing everything as default with the chance to opt-out on a item-basis could be in fact the future of sharing - if Facebook sticks to its plans and allows more apps than the initial launch partners to enable frictionless sharing, it might become the default way of sharing (if user and privacy advocates' protests aren't becoming too intense)
But what I haven't seen so far from the frictionless supporters' side is a reasonable argumentation where the real value for the user is. I doubt it actually exists.
Songs people listen to, articles they read or videos they watch aren't necessarily what they would recommend you. Often it's even the other way round: The crap gets most of the attention, which with frictionless sharing means it is also most visible in your network.
If a friend pushes the share or like button to recommend a piece of content I can be sure he/she really wants everybody to try it.
If a friend listens to the the latest release of Justin Bieber, it doesn't mean anything (of course I don't have friends who do). And even if five of my friends would listen to it, it still doesn't mean anything if they simply clicked on my first friend’s stream, out of curiosity or astonishment.
I would like to appreciate frictionless sharing, because I'm always open for seeing the digital world changing our behaviour in a meaningful way.
With frictionless sharing, I don't see it. It has no value for most users, (Scoble says "I’ve found new music over the past two months.I’ve found new news over the past two months" - I don't doubt that. Still there are billion better ways to find new music and "new news"), but it leads to oversharing and a lack of control about your privacy (I have already seen how hard apps try to get you to share your media consumption. In the future, it means one has to pay even more attention to the settings)
That's why I'm sceptical about it. That's why I switched off Spotify's auto sharing to Facebook (instead I switch it on when I listen to something I really want others to check out), and that's why I hardly look at the Facebook music dashboard to see what my friends have listened to.
So to sum up: frictionless sharing might be the future of sharing if Facebook wants so, but that doesn't mean it's the best way of sharing. I don't think so. As long as nobody convinces me of the opposite (I'm always open for that).
TechCrunch Europe editor Mike Butcher has just published a post outlining the changes the European tech blogosphere has been going through in the past years in conjunction with the flourishing of European startups and the emergence of tech hubs such as London and Berlin.
One of his suggestions is that more tech blogs covering local or national startup scenes publish in English instead (or in addition) to their native language.
Mike is not the first one two make this point, and he won't be the last.
Since I'm the editor of a tech blog publishing articles in German, I have been thinking a lot about this issue lately.
From my point of view, the language issue can bee seen from two different angles.
1. The European tech ecosystem supporter's perspective
From this perspective it's clear that Europe needs more tech blogs publishing startup reviews and tech news in English. One of the main barriers for Europe to create a strong Internet ecosystem with an international impact and the strength to build startups which can become more successful than their Silicon Valley competitors even in the Valley is the intransparency and lack of network effects leveraged caused by the different languages. In Slovenia people don't know what's going on in Spain, in UK people have a hard time following the developments in the Baltics, and so on. And in the US, Asia and Africa, they only know about European startups what's been written on the international Tech blogs (which is not a lot). Each country has its own little hypes and minor-scale successes, but apart from TechCrunch Europe, The Next Web (which is a bit broad for my taste to be seen as a pure European tech blog) and a few conferences there is not a lot to connect all those.
And reading articles in foreign languages with Google translate is not really a solution (although I can recommend Swedish to English translation, which is almost perfect).
2. The reader's perspective
From the angle of the reader, switching from a local language to English to support the European tech ecosystem and please its supporters doesn't automatically seem to be a good idea. At least in the German speaking countries there are lots of people who love to read about tech, who follow the big US sites and who still say that they enjoy reading tech news in German. And I'm confident that this is rather the rule than the exception.
Since most tech blogs are primarily written for the readers (at least they should be), it's not surprising that the blog landscape looks the way it does.
+++
So personally I believe there is a need for both: A real Pan-European tech blog in English with local reporters in most countries would be the best thing that could happen to Europe's Internet and startup ecosystem (TechCrunch Europe is from the content focus still more a TechCrunch UK, although Mike is traveling like a maniac throughout Europe to attend conferences and connect entrepreneurs and investors - and The Europas is a great effort to put a spotlight on the continent).
That being said, for the foreseeable future there'll always be a demand for tech blogs written in local languages - especially in the bigger countries of Europe.
Ideally, those sites would be the sources for the Pan-European tech blogs' reporters, which could pick up the most interesting pieces of news and most exciting startups and cover them in English (in addition to their own research and stories).
So in the end, what's lacking aren't only more local blogs in English, but the Pan-European player bringing their news to all other European countries + the rest of the world.
Updates
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Lachkrämpfe: "Das Internet Brazillionär MEGA GIGA System" http://t.co/tWsn7rzR
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Früher waren diese Typen alle Staubsaugervertreter, heute betreiben sie Schneeballsysteme.
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Dieses Video zum Nervthema "Geld verdienen im Internet" ist wirklich die Krönung http://t.co/TY0MuIjy! via http://t.co/bPHKefoR
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Vermutlich klangen die Zitate auf Englisch aber weniger vulgär.
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Schon krasses Interview mit Ryanair-Chef O'Leary http://t.co/x99R4ejz
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Verlust von Smartphone oder Tablet: Wenn mobile Geräte zum Sicherheitsrisiko werden http://t.co/zaC1cSS4
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Does Zuck have too much power? Spontaneously buying Instagram for 1 billion while an own photo app is on the way seems... bold.
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@marcelweiss Urheberrecht?
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Der war zu einfach :) RT @silberlicht: @martinweigert Weil dafür 1,50 pro Post anfallen würden #watchblog
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Wieso gibt's noch gar kein GEMA-Watchblog?
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Garantieunterlagen und Kassenzettel digitalisieren: Reposito und garanbo geben Lageberichte http://t.co/8B9AEEzm
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@vickks that too
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@vickks yep. still made me realize that owning a traditional clock with alarm wouldn't be a bad idea ;)
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Weird situation: Since my iPhone disappeared yesterday, I had no alarm clock at home. Still managed to wake up on time. #win
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@web_martin I can't keep track on all these days. Especially since there are appearing new ones all the time :)
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I need an app to tell me one day in advance to take with me a towel/a suit/a star wars costume
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@DanielaHinrichs true that.
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@KarstenWerner In Schweden: Wenig bis gar nicht :)
Posts
Groupon, das am meisten umstrittene Internetunternehmen seit dem Ende der New Economy, hat einen erfolgreichen Börsengang hingelegt und rund 800 Millionen Dollar eingenommen. Für die Branche ist dies trotz aller Kritik am Groupon-Modell ein Segen.
Der 19. Mai 2011 war ein besonderer Tag für die Internetwirtschaft: Erstmalig wagte sich in den USA mit LinkedIn ein Social Network an die Börse, was nach vielen Jahren Trockenzeit zudem eine neue Welle an Web-IPOs einleitete – mit variierendem Resultat.
Doch so groß die Signalwirkung des LinkedIn-Schrittes auch war: Auf den spannendsten Börsengang eines Internetunternehmens mussten Beobachter fast bis zum Jahresende warten. Am heutigen Freitag ist es soweit: Groupon wird zum ersten Mal an der Technologiebörse NASDAQ gehandelt.
Rund 980 790 Millionen Dollar erlöste das Schnäppchenportal aus Chicago mit dem IPO und wurde zum Handelsstart mit 17,8 Milliarden Dollar bewertet – weniger als die ursprünglich einmal kolportierten 20 bis 25 Milliarden, aber deutlich mehr, als zuletzt von Analysten erwartet wurde (und auch über den gestern angesetzten 20 Dollar je Aktie).
Größter Internet-IPO seit Google
Groupon vollbringt damit das größte Aktienmarktdebüt eines US-Webkonzerns seit Google im Jahr 2004 (via). Doch nicht nur deshalb ist der heutige Freitag von großer Bedeutung, sondern auch, weil noch vor Wochen unsicher war, ob Groupon seinen IPO überhaupt vollziehen können wird. Zu labil erschien die Lage auf den internationalen Finanzmärkten in Folge der europäischen Schuldenkrise, hinzu kamen formelle Fehler bei der Vorbereitung des Börsenganges.
Groupon braucht das Geld
Brisant dabei: Groupon benötigt unbedingt frisches Kapital, um sein laufendes, noch nicht profitables Geschäft aufrecht zu halten und seine Fühler weiter ausstrecken zu können. Da das Unternehmen bereits über eine Milliarde Dollar Risikokapital von Investoren aufgenommen hatte, die auf ihre Rendite warten, war der IPO im Prinzip der einzige Ausweg. Hätte Groupon diesen abgeblasen, wären schmerzhafte und radikale Kostensenkungen unumgänglich gewesen. Für eine Firma, bei der erst ab einer gewissen Größe und Marktmacht schwarze Zahlen erwartet werden, ist dies der Todesstoß.
Der geglückte Börsengang verschafft Groupon Bewegungsspielraum und stellt sicher, dass die eingeschlagene Expansionsstrategie nicht verfrüht abgebrochen werden muss. Ob Groupon sich tatsächlich eines Tages abseits von allen Zahlendrehereien zu einem klar profitablen Unternehmen entwickeln wird, ist zwar nach dem Debüt am Aktienmarkt genauso offen wie davor. Doch das Geld der Anlieger liefert dem Dealanbieter die Grundlage für weiteres Streben nach dem Erreichen dieses Ziels.
Für die Branche ist dies ein Segen!
Verhärtete Fronten zwischen Skeptikern und Sympathisanten
Seit dem Platzen der New-Economy-Blase vor zehn Jahren hat kein Internetunternehmen derartig die Lager gespalten wie Groupon. Demontagen und Verrisse des in einer schwindelerregenden Geschwindigkeit expandierenden, Ende 2009 gegründeten und heute über 9000 Angestellte beschäftigenden Unternehmens gab es in den letzten Monaten im Überfluss zu lesen. Das ungesunde und aggressive Wachstum, fragwürdiges Geschäftsgebaren, erfundene, eigennützige Geschäftskennzahlen bei weiterhin roten Zahlen, der fehlende Qualitätsfokus bei den angebotenen Deals, mangelnde Berücksichtigung der Händlerinteressen sind einige der Punkte, die Kritiker dem von Gründer und CEO Andrew Mason geleiteten Unternehmen anlasten (nachzulesen zB. hier, hier, hier und hier). Auch dass viele hundert Millionen Dollar an Venture Capital in die Taschen der Gründer und frühen Investoren statt ins Unternehmen flossen, kam in der Öffentlichkeit nicht gut an.
Andere wiederum glauben, dass Groupon das nächste große Ding im Handel werden könnte und halten die progressive Wachstumsstrategie für eine Notwendigkeit, um dieses Ziel zu erreichen (z.B. hier und hier).
Groupon erspart uns einen Diskussions-Evergreen
Man stelle sich vor, eine noch dramatischere Lage an den Finanzmärkten gekoppelt mit einem weltweiten Konjunkturabschwung hätte zur Einstellung der IPO-Pläne geführt. Wie beschrieben wäre dies das wahrscheinliche Ende des US-Rabattgiganten gewesen.
Die Konsequenz: Niemand hätte eine Antwort auf die Frage bekommen, ob das Modell Groupon – nicht das Geschäftsmodell an sich, auf das ja andere Anbieter ebenfalls setzen, sondern die Unternehmensstrategie als Ganzes – langfristig hätte funktionieren können oder nicht. Während Kritiker sich in ihrer ablehnenden Haltung zu Groupon bestätigt gefühlt hätten, wäre der Couponspezialist bei seinen Fürsprechern zu einer Art Märtyrer geworden: volles Risiko eingegangen und aufgrund von Ereignissen außerhalb des eigenen Einflussbereiches gescheitert – das Pech des Mutigen.
Die Debatte darüber, wie sich Groupon entwickelt hätte, wenn es nicht abrupt durch das Eintrocknen des Kapitalmarktes abgewürgt worden wäre, hätte ein erhebliches Irritations- und Nervpotenzial besessen und über Jahre für Konflikte zwischen Befürwortern und Skeptikern des von Groupon gewählten Business-Ansatzes gesorgt.
Glücklicherweise erspart uns das Unternehmen derartige Qualen. Groupon erhält das notwendige Kapital für eine Fortsetzung seines kompromisslosen Wachstumskurses und Branchenbeobachter haben die Gewissheit, eines Tages zu erfahren, ob man mit einem Milliardeninvestment innerhalb von drei Jahren eine globalen Infrastrukturanbieter für den Handel mit einer fast fünfstelligen Mitarbeiterzahl aufbauen kann, der danach fest auf eigenen Beinen stehen kann.
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- Früh aufstehen oder spät wachbleiben
- Führende US-Blogs wie Mashable, TechCrunch oder ReadWriteWeb querlesen
- Besonders breiteninteressante Beiträge übersetzen und leicht abgewandelt publizieren
Das ist aber graue Theorie, weil das in der Praxis nie vorkommt … ;)
Bestimmte Rechte vorbehalten von farleyj
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Abo + Austausch: Feed, E-Mail, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xing, LinkedIn
Ähnliche Artikel auf leanderwattig.de:
Google hat wie angekündigt seinen RSS-Reader überarbeitet und dabei die integrierten Social-Features entfernt. Das Resultat ist enttäuschend.
Zehn Tage nach seiner Ankündigung, dem Google Reader einen frischen Anstrich zu verpassen und einige der existierenden Social-Features zu entfernen, hat der Internetgigant Nägel mit Köpfen gemacht und die neue Version seines RSS-Readers lanciert.
Meinen damaligen Artikel zu der Meldung schloss ich mit erzwungenem Optimismus: Immerhin bestand ja tatsächlich die Chance, dass der Wegfall der von mir und anderen Viellesern geliebten Funktion zum Sharing von Beiträgen innerhalb des Readers und zum Abonnieren der von anderen Nutzern geteilten Texte durch die in Aussicht gestellte Verknüpfung des Google Readers mit Google+ gar kein Drama werden würde sondern ein ähnlich effektives oder noch besseres Informationsmanagement ermöglicht hätte.
Leider scheint dem nicht der Fall zu sein. Denn die Integration von Google+ in den optisch an andere Google-Dienste angepassten und um besagte Sharing-Features erleichterten neuen Reader beschränkt sich lediglich auf einen prominent platzierten +1-Button unterhalb eines jeden aufgeklappten Artikels.
Dort wo bisher der Google-Reader-Like-Button platziert war, prangt nun das +1 und schreit nach einem Klick. Dieser zieht ein öffentliches +1 nach sich und erlaubt zudem das Teilen des Beitrags mit ausgewählten Google+-Kreisen – analog zu dem +1-Button für externe Websites, der auch unterhalb der netzwertig.com-Artikel zu finden ist.
Der entscheidende Vorteil der Sharing-Funktionen war nicht das Teilen an sich sondern die Fähigkeit, die von anderen auf diese Weise hervorgehobenen Beiträge in einem separaten Stream innerhalb des Google Reader oder der an diesen angeschlossenen RSS-Apps wie Reeder zu konsumieren. Dies ist nun nicht mehr möglich.
Angenommen, alle von mir bisher im Google Reader abonnierten Nutzer gehen zum Teilen ihrer Beiträge über den +1-Button über (was nicht garantiert ist), würde dies bedeuten, dass ich jeweils bei Google+ vorbeischauen müsste, um nachzuschauen, welche Artikel sie empfohlen haben. Zumal dies auch voraussetzen würde, dass sie Inhalte nicht nur mit einem +1 versehen sondern aktiv mit ihren Circles teilen. Die Gefahr, dass diese Artikel dann im schnell fließenden Contentstream untergehen, ist groß.
Doch selbst wenn die in ihrer Zahl zugegebenermaßen kleine Google-Reader-Gemeinde es schafft, das bestehende Vernetzungsbild und den bisherigen Sharing-Prozess in Google+ nachzubilden, ändert dies nichts daran, dass diese Inhalte nur noch über Google+ selbst bezogen werden können und nicht mehr über den Google Reader oder dessen 3rd-Party-Anwendungen.
Für Google existiert derzeit ein wichtiges strategisches Ziel: Google+ Omnipräsenz zu verleihen. Alles, was diesem Bestreben auch nur theoretisch im Weg steht, wird platt gemacht. Dieser grundsätzliche Ansatz ist nachvollziehbar (wenn auch traurig).
Trotzdem wäre es wünschenswert gewesen, wenn Google bei der Integration einen Schritt weiter gegangen und das Darstellen der von einzelnen User via Google+ empfohlenen Artikel innerhalb des Google Readers (und damit auch über Google-Reader-Apps) erlaubt hätte – zum Beispiel indem es die persönliche Google+-Profilseite mit den +1-Empfehlungen mit einem Button “im Google Reader abonnieren” versehen hätte.
In seiner neuen Form ist der Google Reader eine ohne große Not deutlich beschnittene Fassung des Vorgängers, die statt einem Like-Button nun eine +1-Schaltfläche beinhaltet.
Was für eine Enttäuschung (wenn auch mit Ansage)!
In den nächsten Tagen werden Google-Reader-Freunde mit Sicherheit intensiv Alternativen diskutieren – die leider rar gesät sind. Karsten Werner empfahl jüngst Twitterlisten als Ausweichlösung zum klassischen RSS-Reader.
Reaktionen zum neuen Reader gibt es beispielsweise in den Kommentaren zu diesem Google+-Post. Falls ihr Vorschläge habt, wie man die jetzt weggefallene Sharing-Funktionalität anderweitig nachbilden kann, lasst es uns in den Kommentaren wissen.
Für die inoffizielle Google Reader API wurde “Shared Items” momentan noch nicht deaktiviert. Über Reeder konnte ich heute früh Beiträge teilen, die anschließend auf meinem ebenfalls noch erreichbaren Google-Reader-Profil auftauchten. Von Dauer wird dieser Zustand aber sicher nicht sein.
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At this point, it’s no secret: Gaopeng (Groupon’s nascent effort in China) is a train wreck. By September of this year, the seven-month old endeavor had already accumulated $46.4 million in net losses with just $2.1 million in revenue. Meanwhile, a number of competitors in the region are predicting profitability within months.
In today’s “Attack Of The Clones” panel at Disrupt Beijing, a few of Groupon’s fiercest Chinese competitors took the opportunity to, well, attack. While obviously a bit subjective, their words do provide some insight on how a company so massive in the US could tank so dramatically on the other side of the world.
Panel guests Yinan Du (CEO of 24Quan) and Xing Wang (CEO of Meituan) agreed on at least two points: Groupon rushed their entry into China, and failed to embrace the culture (or hire people who could). According to Yinan Du, “Groupon didn’t have a chance from the beginning”.
“For any startup to be successful, there has to be a magic team behind it. They hired magic, but no one who understands both worlds. You have to be bi-cultural, you have to have someone who really understands how things work in America and how it differs in China.” Amongst the noted differences: margins. While Groupon happily pulls somewhere around 40% margins on deals in the US, no competitor in China is seeing anything above 14%.
Both panelists also harped on Groupon for their partnership with Tencent, calling it shortsighted and clearly not properly thought out. “They were focusing on PR rather than the business itself.”
Alas, Groupon was unable to send a representative as they’ve recently entered their quiet period in preparation for their impending IPO. Had they been on stage, however, there may not have been much they could have said to dampen the onslaught.
Click to view slideshow.Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere. Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...
Each Facebook Timeline profile now has a tiny clock icon in the status window update, allowing you to place items on your wall in the past. This is a pretty significant Facebook update considering that, initially, Timeline defaulted to publishing posts in the present only. Now the decision to travel back in time is yours. This new feature mimics a blog platform's publish date option - except on Timeline, you can only pick the date, whereas on a blog platform, you can pick both the date and time.
With this new Timestamp update, along with everything Timeline-related, Facebook is hoping you will share more on its platform. We're edging closer and closer toward real-live lifestreaming. Timestamping new posts with an old date not only brings you closer to your Facebook past, it also encourages you to differentiate less between your offline and online lives. Timeline urges you to share more personal content, and make that content more social than it was on your old Facebook profile. Like everything Timeline-related, this update is only available to those who have used the Facebook Developer Timeline workaround. See the Timestamp update after the jump.
Click on the clock icon and you can input a year, month and date. Once you publish the status update, Facebook will position the update on your Timeline profile accordingly.
You'll be able to easily differentiate between what actually happened on Facebook in the past, and what you've timestamped with a past date. Maybe you want to remind someone of what you were doing with them on a particular day in the past? Just tag that person, the date and location in a status update.
The actual Timeline rollout has been delayed from the expected September 22 launch date; it's expected to go live on Monday, November 7, 2011.
DiscussFacebook bindet Internetnutzer in Deutschland wie kein anderes Ziel im Netz. Auf das Soziale Netzwerk entfielen im September 16,2 Prozent der Online-Zeit, wie eine Erhebung (PDF-Datei) der Marktforschungsfirma Comscore im Auftrag des IT-Verbands Bitkom ergab. Auf Rang zwei kam Google mit einem Anteil von 12,3 Prozent. Dabei wurden neben der Nutzung der Suchmaschine auch der Aufenthalt bei weiteren Google-Diensten wie E-Mail, die Video-Plattform YouTube und der neue Facebook-Konkurrent Google+ erfasst.
Die Nutzung von Facebook hat dabei explosiv zugelegt: Vor einem Jahr verbrachten die Internet-Nutzer dort den Angaben zufolge erst 4,1 Prozent ihrer Online-Zeit.
Die größten 20 Anbieter binden laut Comscore gut die Hälfte (51,3 Prozent) der Online-Zeit. Microsoft kam mit seinen Angeboten wie die Suchmaschine Bing, MSN oder Hotmail auf einen Anteil von 5 Prozent. Das Online-Auktionshaus eBay erreichte 2,4 Prozent, United Internet mit seinen Portalen Web.de und GMX 2,1 Prozent und die Deutsche Telekom unter anderem mit T-Online 1,4 Prozent. Comscore ermittelt die Anteile in einer Kombination aus Umfragen und Messungen. (dpa) / (anw)
Die Umstellung auf mitteleuropäische Winterzeit aka Normalzeit macht iOS 5 leicht zu schaffen: Die Kalender-App signalisiert mit ihrem Zeitbalken noch die Sommerzeit. Zwar scheinen bei mir heute alle Alarme regelgemäß zu funktionieren, doch morgen früh sollte man sich bei wichtigen Terminen sicherheitshalber nicht allein auf die Weckkraft seines iPhones verlassen - in der Vergangenheit hatten iOS-Alarme mehrfach mit Zeitumstellung (und Jahreswechsel) zu kämpfen. (Danke, Marvin!)
Update 0:15 Uhr
Inzwischen zeigt die Kalender-App den Zeitbalken wieder passend zur Uhrzeit an. (Danke @Frittenfett und @jnwbr!)
Gerade kam folgendes Problem auf:
Ich brauche dringend (und relativ spontan) für meinen Vater ansprechende Visitenkarten. Bis Donnerstag. Das Logo (thx @Ventylator!) wurde heute fertig, abgesegnet, etc...
Bei Jimdo nutzen wir seit Jahren Moo und sind sehr zufrieden mit der Qualität. Moo liefert leider aus UK und so braucht selbst eine Express Order ein paar Tage. Da es zu knapp werden könnte, war ich auf der Suche nach einer Alternative. Ergebnis: 0
Es gibt unzählige deutsche Anbieter um eine Visitenkarte zu erstellen, die Tools erinnern aber eher an das Internet-Mittelalter. Furchtbarer Crap.
Photoshop und co. habe ich heute nicht zur Hand und so fällt auch die Möglichkeit (und der Aufwand) die Visitenkarten am Rechner zu erstellen weg. Aviary möchte ich dafür nicht nutzen.
Werte deutsche Druckdingensversender,
schaut euch bitte noch einmal Moo an: unzählige Vorlagen, Kombinationsmöglichkeiten (Bsp: 50 Visitenkarten mit unterschiedlichen Rückseiten) innerhalb eines Visitenkartenbundles, Foto-Upload oder Import aus Flickr, Etsy, Picasa und Facebook. Verschiedene, Aufsehen erregende Formate und Style.
Was habt ihr im Angebot? Nüscht. Gruselige UI, altbackene Vorlagen, etc...
Hmpf.
Drückermethoden gegen Taxi-Apps
<div class="readspeaker"> <a href="/newsticker/meldung/Drueckermethoden-gegen-Taxi-Apps-1368617.html?view=audio"><img src="/icons/ho/vorlesen_download.gif" alt="Meldung vorlesen und MP3-Download" width="150" height="13" class="ISI_IGNORE" /></a> </div>Die neuen Taxi-Apps sorgen für Aufregung in der Taxi-Branche. Eingesessene Funkzentralen sehen ihre Felle davonschwimmen, denn die Apps knabbern am Umsatz. Der Fahrgast tippt nur dreimal auf sein Smartphone und der Taxibetreiber zahlt mit rund einem Euro netto nur einen Bruchteil der bei Funkzentralen üblichen Vermittlungsgebühr. Die bei Funkzentralen fällige Monatsgebühr im deutlich dreistelligen Euro-Bereich gibt es auch nicht.
Zwei Wiener Funkzentralen drohen Taxiunternehmen jetzt mit Kündigung und setzen angeblich auch Drückermethoden ein. Gleichzeitig droht ihnen selbst juristisches Ungemach. Verkehrte Welt in San Francisco: Dort droht die Behörde mit hohen Strafen, weil mit einer Taxi-App gerade keine Taxis gerufen werden.
In Wien gibt es rund 4500 Taxis, über die Hälfte wird von zwei großen Funkzentralen betreut. Die "Taxler" sind von diesen Vermittlungen wirtschaftlich abhängig, an Standplätzen und Straßenrändern ist das Fahrgastaufkommen zu gering. Die auch in Deutschland und Australien verbreitete Applikation myTaxi erfreut sich steigender Beliebtheit bei Fahrern und Fahrgästen. Doch die beiden großen Funkzentralen pochen auf ein Konkurrenzverbot in den Verträgen. Es soll als App-Nutzer getarnte Drücker geben, die eine Motordroschke herbei-appen, einsteigen und dann dem Chauffeur ungemütlich kommen. Zwei Taxibetreiber wurden bereits fristlos vom Funk abgeschnitten. Ihr Anwalt Johannes Stephan Schriefl sieht darin einen Verstoß gegen Wettbewerbsrecht.
Das Konkurrenzverbot ist juristisch doppelt problematisch: Einerseits könnte es an sich wettbewerbsrechtlich unzulässig sein. So haben es in Deutschland das LG und das OLG Frankfurt am Main entschieden (OLG Frankfurt, 14.07.2009 -11U68/08 - Kart). Doch die betroffenen Wiener Taxibetreiber sind machtlos. "Gegen die Funkzentralen vorgehen können nur Verbände oder Mitbewerber", so Anwalt Schriefl, "Die Taxler sind aber keine Mitbewerber, sondern Kunden." Die Taxi-Innung hat sich erstaunlicherweise auf die Seite der Funkzentralen geschlagen; die Wettbewerbsbehörde soll die Funkzentralen um Stellungnahmen ersucht haben.
Andererseits ist fragwürdig, ob die konkreten Vertragsbestimmungen auf myTaxi überhaupt anwendbar sind. In einem auf einer Taxi-Website veröffentlichten Auszug aus einem "Funk-Vertrag" heißt es: "Dieser Vertrag gilt für das Taxi (Kennzeichen) mit der Selektivrufnummer (Nummer), in diesem Taxi darf keine andere Selektivrufnummer verwendet und auch keine andere Funkanlage ohne schriftliche Genehmigung der Zentrale eingebaut oder betrieben werden." Die Frage ist, ob ein Handy als "andere Funkanlage" im Sinne dieses Vertrages gilt. Zum Zeitpunkt der Vertragsgestaltung hat niemand an Mobiltelefone und darauf installierte Software gedacht.
Zumindest eine der Funkzentralen versucht, mit einer eigenen App gegenzusteuern. Sie hat dafür praktisch den selben Namen und eine zum verwechseln ähnliche Domain gewählt. Hier sollen wohl Markenrechtsklagen provoziert werden: Dafür müsste sich myTaxi aber selbst als Konkurrent deklarieren. Allerdings ist die Nachahmer-App durch ihre Beschränkung auf Wien weniger attraktiv.
In den USA setzt Uber (ursprünglich UberCab) auf ein etwas anderes Konzept. Auch hier steht eine App im Mittelpunkt, doch gerufen werden nicht etwa schnöde Taxis, sondern schwarze Limousinen. Der (deutlich höhere) Fahrpreis kann gleich über die App beglichen werden, Trinkgeld ist bereits inkludiert. San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Seattle und Chicago sind bereits online, Boston und Washington, DC, sollen alsbald folgen.
Doch die Verkehrsbehörde von San Francisco (SFMTA) ist ungehalten. Sie hat schon vor einem Jahr eine Unterlassungsaufforderung übermittelt: Die damals UberCab genannten Limousinen träten als Taxis auf, hätten aber keine Taxi-Lizenzen und keine Lizenz für die einheitliche Farbgebung (schwarz). Daraufhin hat UberCab das "Cab" aus dem Namen entfernt.
Auch die Tarifstruktur stößt SFMTA auf: Der Zeit- und Weg-abhängige Tarif sei nicht von der zuständigen Behörde Kaliforniens genehmigt, die Taxameter nicht vom Landwirtschaftsministerium zertifiziert. San Francisco droht Uber und jedem einzelnen Fahrer mit Strafen von 90 Tagen Haft und 5000 Dollar je vermittelter Fahrt. Auch hier sind Anwälte am Werk.
Das hindert Uber-Gründer Garrett Camp und Travis Kalanick nicht daran, mit Millionenbewertungen ihrer App hausieren zu gehen. Camp ist als Mitgründer von StumbleUpon bekannt, Kalanick erregte mit dem P2P-Pionier Scour aufsehen. Bei der kalifornischen Gouverneurswahl 2003 ist er dann aber doch nicht angetreten. Im Sommer 2010 gegründet, flossen schon im Oktober des Jahres rund 1,5 Millionen Dollar an Wagniskapital an Uber, im Februar folgten weitere elf Millionen. Damals wurde die Firma mit 60 Millionen Dollar bewertet. Inzwischen preist sich Uber selbst mit 300 Millionen Dollar an (214 Millionen Euro). Auf dieser Basis wird derzeit mit weiteren Venture Capitalisten verhandelt. (Daniel AJ Sokolov ) / (cm)
Apple has apparently acquired a company called C3 Technologies that has sophisticated processing technology that can build 3D maps.
Here’s why: If there’s one thing Apple hates, it’s having to rely on technology from a competitor. And when you navigate or get directions on Apple iOS devices, such as the iPhone, you’re using an application from Google Maps — because Apple has nothing else.
That’s a big sore spot for Apple. And because it concerns Google, it’s a very big one.
Well, there’s evidence that Apple is secretly building out its own mapping technology, even if it’s not clear right now just how ambitious the effort is.
This acquisition of C3 is just the latest move. The deal looks worth about $240 million. (The terms are a bit confusing: There are reports that it was worth $1 billion, but there were more credible reports that it was less, based on the fact that the company’s biggest shareholder, SAAB AB, had a 57.8 percent stake in the company that was worth $150M). The acquisition was made last year, but it has only now come to light that Apple is the owner.
Here’s what’s interesting: C3′s technology can be used to seamlessly integrate 3D imaging into traditional 2D maps and other photographies. 9to5 Mac has the scoop, with more details.
You can see a video demonstrating the technology at bottom.
The acquisition comes after a string of moves that suggest Apple is building both a back-end mapping system to be able to compete with Google’s GPS offerings as well as a string of other high-tech layers — such as this 3D map offering — that will give it something special. Apple’s move to offer high-powered custom chips (A5, for example) keeps it on the bleeding edge and gives it a leg-up against other manufacturers when it comes to processing-heavy apps like maps. So Apple may be hoping to more than catch up with Google’s superior mapping offerings — it probably wants to surpass them.
In 2009, Apple bought Placebase, a mapping software development company, which appears to be the foundation of Apple’s mapping efforts. Then, last summer, Apple acquired web-based 3D mapping company Poly9.
Another reason Apple must make a move: Even though it licenses Google’s mapping technology for its users, the technology just doesn’t work as seamlessly only Apple’s devices as it does on Google’s Android phones.
Google’s Android supports maps with deeper integration with the phone and offers more bells and whistles. For example, while navigating on Google phones, Google will automatically update your next turn from your current location — in other words, operating like a standalone GPS device. Google’s Android offering also has offline caching of frequently used areas of the map, so you can find your way home if you lose connectivity. You can also more easily view location history, and there’s nice integration with cool features like Latitude and Places — including letting you rate places easily.
Expect to see more from Apple on mapping soon. C3 Technologies CEO Mattias Astrom, CFO Kjell Cederstrand, and lead C3 Technologies Product Manager Ludvig Emgard, as well as most of the former C3 team, all now work within Apple’s iOS division, 9to5 reports. The team is based in Sweden and called “Sputnik.”
“Yep, Sputnik, a clear reference to the “Sputnik crisis” of 1957 when President Eisenhower created NASA in order to catch up to the perceived advantage by the Soviet Union in space. For Apple, this clearly a big deal.”
Filed under: dev, mobile
- Gastbeitrag von Jonny Jelinek -
Im letzten Jahr wurde unsere Mark Zuckerberg Halloween Maske zum Hit im Web. Nicht zuletzt dank der Unterstützung von allfacebook.de (oder damals eben noch FacebookMarketing.de), die als erste darüber berichtet haben und dadurch maßgeblich am Hype um die Maske beteiligt waren. Es folgten unzählige Tweets, Facebookpostings und Medienberichte, weit über die Grenzen von Österreich und Deutschland hinaus. Zuletzt wurde die Maske sogar bei einem “Mark Zuckerberg Clubbing” in Prag gesichtet.
Grund genug für uns, dieses Jahr exklusiv für allfacebook.de eine Fortsetzung der Halloween Maske zu machen. Für alle, denen Mark Zuckerberg nicht gruselig genug war, haben wir in diesem Jahr unter dem Titel “resurrection” gleich drei Masken am Start! Gruseliger geht’s wirklich nicht mehr. Um es mit den Worten von Mark Zuckerberg persönlich zu sagen:
”Last year my Halloween mask was a huge hit! I even wore it myself at my own party! ^^ So to go the extra mile this year I‘ve got a real Halloween Treat for for you. Now you can not only be me, but you can be me as zombie, devil or vampire! Now THAT‘S even scarier, isn‘t it? Happy Halloween!”
Dem schließen wir uns an, und wünschen euch allen ein fröhlich-schauriges Halloween!
Mark van Suckerberg
Mark “666″ Satanberg
Mark Rotten
Der Klassiker aus dem letzten Jahr
Über den Autor
Wenn Jonny Jelinek nicht gerade dabei ist, Halloween Masken zu basteln, ist er als Mitgründer der Wiener Social Media Agentur webfeuer für Facebook & Co verantwortlich und betreut Unternehmen bei ihrem Weg in die Social Media Welt, von der Planung bis zur Umsetzung. Nebenbei ist das webfeuer-Team auch selbst sehr aktiv auf Facebook oder Twitter unterwegs und betreut eigene Projekte wie z.B. die Facebook-Seite Achtung: Virus Warnung.
Anyone who plans to enable Google+ features on their Google Apps account for work or school should make sure to note the privacy policy before proceeding.
Yesterday, Google began allowing customers of its Google Apps accounts — the company’s enterprise suite of web-based applications for documents, email and more — to sign up for its social network Google+. App accounts can then gain access to all of Google+’s features, like Circles, video chat Hangouts and more.
However, as The Next Web’s Matthew Panzarino notes, doing so will allow the Apps account administrator to both access and modify all of your Google+ activity. This is pointed out in Google’s Help Center, which states:
Because you’re signing up for Google+ with your corporate email address, your Google Apps administrator retains the right to access your Google+ data and modify or delete it at any time.
Basically that means anything you share — notes, status updates, videos, games, photos and more — on Google+ can be accessed by your boss.
The message from Google, at least to me, seems to be that you should either keep work and play in separate universes, or be extremely conscious that you’re mixing the two when you use Google+.
Filed under: security, social, VentureBeat
Click here to view the embedded video.
We’ve learned more about Google’s exciting plan to launch third-party Android and web apps for Google TV, available in the Android market.
Google spokesman Jacques Hebert tells Evolver.fm that the following apps will be included when the new Google TV rolls out starting next week. We can’t wait to try it out, because television will be an excellent platform for music and other apps:
The update to Google TV will include Android and web apps from over 100 different partners. Over 50 of these partners have developed new apps for the update. A few examples of these partners include CNN Money, Flixter, Fox Business, IGN Pro League, IMDB, Karaoke Channel, Khan Academy, Kraft Cooking, Motortrend, NPR, Plenty of Fish, Qello, QVC, the Big Picture (Boston Globe), Thuuz, and Wall Street Journal, to name a few.
Examples of music apps include Pandora, Google Music App, Karaoke Channel, Napster, Qello, Rhapsody, Classical TV, Vevo, Mosh Cam, Slacker Radio, TuneIn Radio, Baeble Music and LP33.
Here’s what each of these apps will do once the new Googe TV operating system starts rolling out next week, so far as we can tell, in alphabetical order. According to Hebert, Google’s music app offerings will include these 13 music apps (up from four), but we suspect that number will soon balloon as more developers realize they can tweak Android apps and build web apps in order to appear on Google TVs:
Baeble Music: Indie music videos produced professionally and submitted by bands and labels
Classical TV: This one brings not only classical but also jazz, opera, and a smattering of longer-in-the-tooth pop music.
Google Music App: At the very least, this will let you play tunes from your Google Music locker. And if Google launches a full-fledged music service, as some think it will, we imagine this app will hook into that too.
The Karaoke Channel: Alert the neighbors.
LP33.tv: Since 2008, this online music video repository has been gathering new music footage.
Moshcam: Go Australia! This antipodean resource, whose motto is “the gig is up” (nice), packs a healthy selection of live music by indie and other bands you may have heard of. We wonder how the worldwide licensing will work out for this, but that’s another headache.
Napster: Napster has been acquired by Rhapsody, so it’s not worth putting much thought into this one.
Pandora: Pandora, which is regularly used by approximately one out of every ten Americans according to what Pandora told Evolver.fm, will now also appear on Google TV. Like the others, it will let you access the same account you use on your computer and phone. (Pandora was already on Google TV.)
Qello: Qose there? This service charges $2 to rent you a single concert for seven days, or $5/month for access to everything on the service. Unlike some of the others listed here, it costs money, but in return you get to watch HD concerts by bands like The Rolling Stones, The Doors, Tupac, Eminem, Kenny Chesney, and Sugarland.
Rhapsody: For $10/month, users of this Facebook-compatible subscription service will be able to play just about any song or album on-demand, as well as playlists created on other platforms. In addition, they can probably read Rhapsody’s custom-written reviews and biographies.
Slacker Radio: Not only does Slacker serve up artist-themed radio stations with more control and granularity than Pandora does (much to the famous delight of industry critic Bob Lefsetz), but it recently added the ability to function as a full, on-demand subscription service along the lines of Rhapsody.
TuneIn Radio: Thanks to the inclusion of this popular terrestrial radio app, Google TV users will be able to pull in over 50,000 FM radio stations from all over the world, no rabbit ears required. (Google TV already had Tune In.)
Vevo: Stop complaining that “MTV doesn’t show videos anymore.” Vevo has a similar selection, and it’s all free and on-demand. (Vevo was also included at launch.)
Consumers won’t pay for recorded music in the future — but fans will pay for music experiences.
When the dust finally settles between the artists, labels, and distribution companies, everyone will finally realize fans are more valuable than recorded music. As traditional monetization models for recorded music sales slowly fade away, new monetization methods centered on the fan will emerge.
How do we know music will become free? The stats point to this trajectory. Total revenues for CDs, vinyl, cassettes, and digital downloads worldwide dropped 25 percent from $38.6 billion in 1999 to $27.5 billion in 2008, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The same revenues in the U.S. dropped from a high of $14.6 billion in 1999 to $10.4 billion in 2008.
As the stats show, sales of recorded music are headed one way — down. Sure, digital music sales have been on the rise in recent years, but they have only partially replaced physical sales, so the overall sales figures are still headed south. And it surely isn’t because people are listening to less music. It’s simply because the old adage holds true: why pay for something that you can get for free? In addition, artists, the ones with the talent, aren’t making money off digital sales. Artists get about $0.09 per song sold digitally on iTunes or Amazon. So for a million downloaded hits, an artist earns $90K. Subtract manager, lawyer, agent and other “fees”, and an artist selling one million downloads would barely make minimum wage off of the recording.
Already, there is a deluge of great (and legal!) sites providing free music — including Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, Grooveshark, MOG, Rdio, and other online destinations. This is a big change from the early days of online music, when free meant illegal. Today, music start-ups have caught on to the profit potential in “giving it away.” Companies like Pandora, which generated $67M of revenue in 2011 Q2, and Spotify with over two million paying users, don’t charge for entry-level service. Instead, these music innovators found a way to monetize music indirectly through advertising and other means. Music still comes at great cost — start-ups still pay high licensing fees to labels — but as the economics shift, licensing fees are likely to decline. (Yes, labels will do a lot of kicking and screaming.)
So how will labels offset the decline in recorded music revenue? How will artists capture more value for their creative work? The clear answer is from their fans. Musicians have really never engaged their fans, maybe every three years while they were on tour, but otherwise they just released albums and expected fans to buy them. Myspace was the first experiment with direct musician-fan engagement, and it started a trend that has continued. Now, over 300,000 musicians have BandPages on Facebook. Just about every musician has a Web site, e-commerce site, and a web strategy. Many are putting their music “out there” for discovery and promotion before it’s ever part of an album. Soundcloud has seven million users who upload their music and recordings, for example. YouTube’s most popular videos are music-related. Bands, managers, and labels understand this trend and are finding new and innovative means to monetize fans.
We anticipate a lot of “creative destruction” and changes to the value model based on fan-driven music marketing models. There are ways to make money from the music experience, and those channels — new and old, low- and high-tech — are creating opportunities for artists, labels, and music start-ups.
Here are some of the ways the music industry will make money going forward.
- Live Music
While recorded music sales continue to decline, live music revenue has increased in the past few years. The industry has been following this trend closely and focusing more and more on live tours and events. There really isn’t a way to replicate or pirate the live experience. As cellist Zoe Keating joked about piracy at the recent SFMusicTech conference: “Go ahead, try copying me! Just try!” - Patronage
In the Elizabethan era, artists were supported by wealthy patrons; we’re headed back toward that world. Two models are possible here, and will probably coexist as supplements to the live music monetization. The first is corporate sponsorship, which is already used widely. Take the OK GO music video “This Too Shall Pass,” in which the band discreetly thanks State Farm for making it possible, or the somewhat distasteful product placements ($500K worth) in Britney Spears’s “Hold it Against Me” video. The Black Eyed Peas have become so intertwined with brands that The Wall Street Journal dubbed them the “Most Corporate Band.”The other sponsorship model is direct fundraising from fans – also known as crowdsourcing. In 2007, Radiohead released its album “In Rainbows” for free, asking fans to pay as much or little as they pleased. And more recently, Nataly Dawn from Pomplamoose used a Kickstarter campaign to fund her forthcoming solo album. She set out to raise $20,000 but fans overfunded her project by $104,788. This may not seem like a huge sum, but crowdsourcing will make all the difference for indie artists worrying how to pay their rent.
- Curation, Discovery and Network effect
MP3 players were around for years before the iPod took them from the technophiles to the masses. Likewise, music services spread when they are easy to use and approachable. Pandora has managed to attract tens of millions of users to its radio service because of the KISS principal (keep it simple, stupid). While this sounds easy, it took them years to develop the music genome and “taste” algorithms that analyze billions of thumbs up/down votes to offer effortless music curation.Upstart Spotify made access and friends the top priority for its music service, and has unseated Rhapsody as the top dog in on-demand listening. Others like Turntable let listeners do the heavy lifting — letting anyone be a DJ and mix tracks via a competitive, social, cartoony environment. And still others, such as the Hype Machine, rely on the old-school expertise of hardcore music junkies, letting bloggers curate their own selections. The ad-supported model is all about building audiences, and it’s an ongoing cat-and-mouse game where new methods continue to emerge.
- Whales
One dirty little secret in the free-to-play online gaming world is that “whales” — to use a Las Vegas term for big spenders — often account for a significant portion of the revenue. In many examples in the free-to-play world, the top 10 percent often contribute 50 percent or more of the revenue for virtual goods, game play, tokens, premium versions and more. In one recent example, one happy gamer spent more than $76K on a single social game buying the accessories he needed to build his fortress. Would “whale” fans of Arcade Fire spend tens of thousands of dollars to sit in on a studio recording session? Yes, and I’m offering!And beneath the mega-whales, there is a larger base of dedicated fans willing to pay to be a part of the experience, even if they don’t have thousands to spend. “Baby whales” mostly tend to buy merchandise: T-shirts, caps, branded toys, etc. These baby whales are still a small share of any overall fan base, but collectively, an extra $50 each from a small percentage of fans can really add up.
- Unique Experiences
People love to engage with unique experiences — things you just can’t replicate — and will often pay top dollar for them. Concerts are one kind of unique music experience, but there are others. Nataly Dawn’s Kickstarter campaign offered big donors rewards, like their choice of a song for her to cover, early prerelease access to her album, and even a private in-house concert. In addition, there are now countless apps that let you be a part of the music, from the T-Pain auto tune app to ShapeMix’s tool that lets you remix songs yourself with isolated melody/bass/drums/vocal stems and post those to your friends. While, selling these extra experiences may not be a major monetization method, such methods do allow indie artists to generate income, and top artists to experiment with new avenues to engage and grow their fan bases. - The Bottom Line
Music is getting closer and closer to free. Distribution is becoming commoditized, so monetization must change. To this end, artists will have to pull out the stops to engage with fans more directly, and actively seek out fans and benefactors willing to pay more than usual for their work. The music startups that will make money over the long term are those that will connect artists with fans, help people filter and discover new music they love, and offer unique experiences. People will never stop listening to music — they’ll just change how they find it, hear it, and pay for it.
Source: CNN, Forrester as above
Hany Nada is a founding partner of GGV Capital (www.ggvc.com), a $1B venture capital firm with a dual focus on China and the U.S. Some of GGV’s investments include Alibaba Group, Pandora Media, YY, RootMusic, Buddy Media, Tudou, SuccessFactors, Square, and 21ViaNet.
“I don’t think Mike Arrington is a racist” – Angela Benton
It’s never a good day when people you don’t know are having a raging Internet debate about whether or not you’re a racist. But that’s exactly what’s happening, thanks to CNN.
In July CNN reached out to me and AOL to ask if I’d do an on camera interview with Soledad O’Brien. Not A SINGLE WORD about the actual topic of the interview. Here’s their pitch:
We are producing, what we think is the first major broadcast news documentary on the Silicon Valley accelerator phenomenon and start-up culture. In this culture, Michael Arrington is God and TechCrunch is the bible.
The CNN “In America” documentary unit, led by special correspondent and anchor Soledad O’Brien, has produced a number of award winning long form documentaries.
This particular documentary will be told through the experience of a group of digital entrepreneurs who travel to Silicon Valley to chase their dreams.
Obviously Michael is extremely knowledgeable about the valley/start up culture and the rise of accelerator programs, as chronicled minute by minute in Tech Crunch. We would like Michael to share some insight into the allure of tech entrepreneurship… what drives people to pour their blood, sweat and tears into these startups? Who succeeds? Who fails? and why?
We would love to have Soledad conduct a brief interview with Michael when she is in Silicon Valley in July.
This documentary will air in November.
Any questions – please let us know.
Kimberly Arp Babbit
Producer
CNN In America with Soledad O’Brien
I ignored the request as I do most press inquiries. Generally it’s a waste of time.
AOL was excited, though, and pestered me to do it. My internal response was “I really don’t like these things very much. But it may be good to have them at our july event, the party.” I was thinking they’d go to the party, shoot some footage, and go away.
But I was talked into it by AOL. And so I showed up for this thing, thinking that we were talking about accelerators – Y Combinator and the like. Nothing in their first email, or any subsequent email, told me that this was going to be about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley. I came prepared to talk about Y Combinator stats and how awesome these programs are.
In fact, CNN went to great lengths to hide the truth about the topic of the interview, as you can see from their email above.
So I sit down in the chair, with lights on me from everywhere and Soledad in my face and she starts asking me why there aren’t any black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
It took me a while to catch up.
Very early in the interview she asked me to name my favorite black entrepreneur. I thought about it, and I drew a complete blank. Nothing. So I answered honestly. “I don’t know a single black entrepreneur,” I said.
See, my brain database doesn’t categorize people in terms of skin color. Or hair color. Or sexual orientation. When I queried that database, under stressful circumstances, I got zero results.
The interview went on for 45 minutes or so after that, and I amended my statements. I talked about Clarence Wooten, the CEO of Arrived. Wooten has been my friend since the mid 90′s, and I was his lawyer for his first startup, a wildly successful company that made Wooten rich. I’ve followed his career and I’m now a shareholder in Arrived. And tons of other friends and acquaintances who are black popped into my head as well.
CNN has apparently edited most of that out. Or at least they’re not highlighting it along with the gotcha statement.
But mostly we talked about why there are so few non Asian minorities getting funded in Silicon Valley. My answer is that none are asking, nor are they asking for press on TechCrunch. When we met them, we wrote about them.
The problem, I said, was that there weren’t enough minorities getting computer science degrees, or otherwise finding entryways into Silicon Valley. To fix the problem, we need to fix that.
Soledad was following NewMe, an accelerator for black entrepreneurs, for the documentary. She wanted to know if I’d heard about it.
Nope.
But I said that sounded awesome, just like the accelerators for women entrepreneurs. That we always write about.
And after the interview I asked Alexia at TechCrunch to cover NewMe’s demo day, which we did, enthusiastically.
And I went on with my life, thinking that the interview as a whole would show my true enthusiasm for supporting startups founded by minorities and women.
Nope.
CNN used the quote and nothing else I said (apparently) in a clip of the upcoming documentary. And today they put this “controversy” as the top story on CNN.com, outranking all other world news, with a huge picture of me. Various CNN staff enthusiastically retweeted the story.
It’s been a strange day, dealing with racial hatred coming at me on Twitter from people who have no idea what I said or didn’t say. Having debates with some of the black entrepreneurs I know about why I blanked on them during the interview, and whether or not there is some hidden bias in Silicon Valley against black entrepreneurs. And my statement that there’s actually reverse bias because everyone is falling all over themselves to invest in minorities and women (which sparks new outrage).
Anyway, there are actually some great things going on which can really help solve this problem. At Google Zeitgeist I sat with Will.i.am, Ron Conway, Larry Page, and others over lunch. Will.i.am was proposing an ambitious new idea to help get inner city youth (mostly minorities) to begin to see superstar entrepreneurs as the new role models, instead of NBA stars. He believes that we can effect real societal change by getting young people to learn how to program, and realize that they can start businesses that will change the world.
I said I’d support that in every way I can, and to let me know when, to start things off, I can write about it.
So anyway, I just don’t feel like a racist. Even though many, many people are telling me that I am and that I just don’t know it.
I wish CNN had told me the topic of the interview so that I could come prepared. Maybe check out NewMe beforehand, and some of the amazing black entrepreneur role models that are part of Silicon Valley.
But, really, that isn’t what CNN wanted. Soledad told me afterwards how much she loved that killer question. “Everyone pulls a blank, it’s perfect,” she said. No one she interviewed had any idea that the real topic was about minority entrepreneurs.
“Perfect” meaning she could make hay out of it at other people’s expense.
Because the fact is that it’s awesome that I pulled a blank. It’s awesome that I don’t have a fucking perfect sound bite ready at the tip of my tongue for a question like that. Awesome because I don’t categorize people as black or white or gay or straight in my head. They’re just smart or not smart.
It sounds like a cliche but my reaction on camera proves I’m not just saying that. I know tons of black entrepreneurs and, clearly, it would have been in my best interest to name them (and if I had CNN would have cut that out and never aired it).
I may be the poster child for racial ignorance in Silicon Valley, but my motives are pure and I always have and always will do anything to help out the underdog. Frankly, I’ll invest my time in people like Will.i.am, who are actually trying to fix the problem at the root level. Soledad, not so much. Even the NewMe people are complaining that she turned their very serious effort to promote black entrepreneurs into a circus by lying to people they interviewed about the topic and then hyper editing the footage to grab all the gotcha moments. I feel bad for them, this is all at their expense.
Maybe now some of you can begin to understand why I never wanted to be called a “journalist” at TechCrunch. It is a shameful profession.
I’m turning comments off on this post.
Shared by Marcel Weiß
"Facebook is giving users another way to add Subscribers to their public updates by introducing a Subscribe button beside commenter names in its Comments Box social plugin. The move ties two products that already work separately to promote public discussion, and improves Subscription discovery which is otherwise limited to its personalized People to Subscribe To list and sidebar modules."
Facebook is giving users another way to add Subscribers to their public updates by introducing a Subscribe button beside commenter names in its Comments Box social plugin. The move ties two products that already work separately to promote public discussion, and improves Subscription discovery which is otherwise limited to its personalized People to Subscribe To list and sidebar modules
The Comments Box Subscribe buttons will encourage civil discussion on sites that use the commenting plugin because those who appear intelligent may be able to attract new Subscribers.
Facebook launched the Comments Box plugin for third-party sites in March and by June it was installed on 300,000 sites. It previously added the option for users to “Subscribe” to a specific comment thread, but that feature is now called “Follow Post” and its name has been reassigned to Facebook’s Twitter-like asymmetrical follow feature that was released last month.
As I see it, this new feature helps Facebook meet two existing goals: get more users Subscribing to each other, and make discussion in the Comments Box more civil to get more sites installing it.
Facebook offers a form of Suggested User List, but this is somewhat buried and mainly helps popular public figures grow what may already be a large subscriber base. By giving the average engaged commenter more opportunities to gain Subscribers through the plugin, the asymmetrical follow feature can develop a healthier community and not appear as something reserved for celebrities and journalists.
Comment moderators were temporarily given the ability to “Boost” comments they deemed as high quality to the top of a thread. This let moderators set up discussion role models and reward top commenters, but could also be used to drown out criticism, which may be why Facebook recently removed it. By incentivizing thought leaders to weigh in with the prospect of gaining Subscribers, Facebook can improve discussions without facilitating censorship.
Now, anyone that allows people to Subscribe to them will have a Subscribe button next to their name on their Comments Box comments and replies. In some cases Subscriber count is displayed as well. If the button is clicked, a user Subscribes to that commenter’s public news feed updates, and they can hover to select the volume and types of updates they receive.
Facebook may need to monitor for Subscribe solicitation spam. Some users may only comment to get exposure for their Subscribe button, or interrupt discussions with “SUBSCRIBE TO ME!” requests. If it can filter out or bury these types of comments, it may have found a way improve both Subscribe and Comments Box through cross-pollination.
We are happy to announce that we have teamed up with the world renowned Watergate to stream the BPitch Control label showcase on November 4th. All part of the Berlin Music Days week.
A huge step forward for us, we will be streaming the whole night of music going through to the early morning.
The line up will look something like: Kiki, DJ Red, Skinnerbox LIVE, Thomas Muller DJ, Dance Disorder, Aerea Negrot, Ellen Allien and Chloé! A phenomenal line up which we’re very excited to be part of.
If you can’t get your freak on inside the club, then all you gotta do is press play on our website and listen to the fantastic sounds of one of the finest labels around, BPitch.
Shared by Martin
Chuck Norris!
I knew there would be some interesting answers to the question.
And here they are... (Taken from Twitter responses and comments here.)
The dude from the I'm A Mac commercials. (Justin Long.)
A young James Stewart
Denzel Washington.
Noah Wyle.
Ben Kingsley. (Dressed as Gandhi.)
CNN already asked the question. (Darn!)
Charlie Sheen. (My own first choice.)
Jack Nicholson. (You can't handle the truth.)
Alec Baldwin. (In his Jack Donaghy role.)
Samuel Jackson. (John Travolta?)
Christian Bale.
Jack Benny.
Jack Valenti.
John Malkovich.
John Cusack.
Ewan MacGregor.
Boris Karloff (Is it a vampire movie?)
Justin Timberlake.
Leonardo DiCaprio.
Seth Rogen (as Woz).
Keanu Reeves. (Laurence Fishburne as Woz? Agent Smith as Bill Gates? The Oracle as Jony Ive?)
Ashton Kutcher.
Richard Dreyfus.
Ed Harris.
Tom Hanks.
Patrick Stewart. (With Data as Woz?)
Fake Steve Jobs. (Good one!)
Colin Farrell.
It should be animated, by Pixar. (Good one!)
Larry David.
Bill Gates. (?)
Ralph Fiennes in full-on sociopath mode.
The guy who plays Hitler in all the Youtube videos.
Johnny Depp.
Robert Downey Jr
Jason Statham. (Assuming it's a heist picture.)
Benedict Cumberbatch.
Humphrey Bogart in the Cain Mutiny.
The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones and Nexus One users have fared much, much better than most Android buyers.
I went back and found every Android phone shipped in the United States1 up through the middle of last year. I then tracked down every update that was released for each device - be it a major OS upgrade or a minor support patch - as well as prices and release & discontinuation dates. I compared these dates & versions to the currently shipping version of Android at the time. The resulting picture isn’t pretty - well, not for Android users:
Other than the original G1 and MyTouch, virtually all of the millions of phones represented by this chart are still under contract today. If you thought that entitled you to some support, think again:
- 7 of the 18 Android phones never ran a current version of the OS.
- 12 of 18 only ran a current version of the OS for a matter of weeks or less.
- 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
- 11 of 18 stopped getting any support updates less than a year after release.
- 13 of 18 stopped getting any support updates before they even stopped selling the device or very shortly thereafter.
- 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.
- In a few weeks, when Ice Cream Sandwich comes out, every device on here will be another major version behind.
- At least 16 of 18 will almost certainly never get Ice Cream Sandwich.
Also worth noting that each bar in the chart starts from the first day of release - so it only gets worse for people who bought their phone late in its sales period.
Why Is This So Bad?
This may be stating the obvious but there are at least three major reasons.
Consumers Get Screwed
Ever since the iPhone turned every smartphone into a blank slate, the value of a phone is largely derived from the software it can run and how well the phone can run it. When you’re making a 2 year commitment to a device, it’d be nice to have some way to tell if the software was going to be remotely current in a year or, heck, even a month. Turns out that’s nearly impossible - here are two examples:
The Samsung Behold II on T-Mobile was the most expensive Android phone ever and Samsung promoted that it would get a major update to Eclair at least. But at launch the phone was already two major versions behind — and then Samsung decided not to do the update after all, and it fell three major OS versions behind. Every one ever sold is still under contract today.
The Motorola Devour on Verizon launched with a Megan Fox Super Bowl ad, while reviews said it was “built to last and it delivers on features.” As it turned out, the Devour shipped with an OS that was already outdated. Before the next Super Bowl came around, it was three major versions behind. Every one ever sold is still under contract until sometime next year.
Developers Are Constrained
Besides the obvious platform fragmentation problems, consider this comparison: iOS developers, like Instapaper’s Marco Arment, waited patiently until just this month to raise their apps’ minimum requirement to the 11 month old iOS 4.2.1. They can do so knowing that it’s been well over 3 years since anyone bought an iPhone that couldn’t run that OS. If developers apply that same standard to Android, it will be at least 2015 before they can start requiring 2010’s Gingerbread OS. That’s because every US carrier is still selling - even just now introducing2 - smartphones that will almost certainly never run Gingerbread and beyond. Further, those are phones still selling for actual upfront money - I’m not even counting the generally even more outdated & presumably much more popular free phones.
It seems this is one area the Android/Windows comparison holds up: most app developers will end up targeting an ancient version of the OS in order to maximize market reach.
Security Risks Loom
In the chart, the dashed line in the middle of each bar indicates how long that phone was getting any kind of support updates - not just major OS upgrades. The significant majority of models have received very limited support after sales were discontinued. If a security or privacy problem popped up in old versions of Android or its associated apps (i.e. the browser), it’s hard to imagine that all of these no-longer-supported phones would be updated. This is only less likely as the number of phones that manufacturers would have to go back and deal with increases: Motorola, Samsung, and HTC all have at least 20 models each in the field already, each with a range of carriers that seemingly have to be dealt with individually.
Why Don’t Android Phones Get Updated?
That’s a very good question. Obviously a big part of the problem is that Android has to go from Google to the phone manufacturers to the carriers to the devices, whereas iOS just goes from Apple directly to devices. The hacker community (e.g. CyanogenMod, et cetera) has frequently managed to get these phones to run the newer operating systems, so it isn’t a hardware issue.
It appears to be a widely held viewpoint3 that there’s no incentive for smartphone manufacturers to update the OS: because manufacturers don’t make any money after the hardware sale, they want you to buy another phone as soon as possible. If that’s really the case, the phone manufacturers are spectacularly dumb: ignoring the 2 year contract cycle & abandoning your users isn’t going to engender much loyalty when they do buy a new phone. Further, it’s been fairly well established that Apple also really only makes money from hardware sales, and yet their long term update support is excellent (see chart).
In other words, Apple’s way of getting you to buy a new phone is to make you really happy with your current one, whereas apparently Android phone makers think they can get you to buy a new phone by making you really unhappy with your current one. Then again, all of this may be ascribing motives and intent where none exist - it’s entirely possible that the root cause of the problem is just flat-out bad management (and/or the aforementioned spectacular dumbness).
A Price Observation
All of the even slightly cheaper phones are much worse than the iPhone when it comes to OS support, but it’s interesting to note that most of the phones on this list were actually not cheaper than the iPhone when they were released. Unlike the iPhone however, the “full-priced” phones are frequently discounted in subsequent months. So the “low cost” phones that fueled Android’s generally accepted price advantage in this period were basically either (a) cheaper from the outset, and ergo likely outdated & terribly supported or (b) purchased later in the phone’s lifecycle, and ergo likely outdated & terribly supported.
Also, at any price point you’d better love your rebates. If you’re financially constrained enough to be driven by upfront price, you can’t be that excited about plunking down another $100 cash and waiting weeks or more to get it back. And sometimes all you’re getting back is a “$100 Promotion Card” for your chosen provider. Needless to say, the iPhone has never had a rebate.
Along similar lines, a very small but perhaps telling point: the price of every single Android phone I looked at ended with 99 cents - something Apple has never done (the iPhone is $199, not $199.99). It’s almost like a warning sign: you’re buying a platform that will nickel-and-dime you with ads and undeletable bloatware, and it starts with those 99 cents. And that damn rebate form they’re hoping you don’t send in.
Notes on the chart and data
Why stop at June 2010?
I’m not going to. I do think that having 15 months or so of history gives a good perspective on how a phone has been treated, but it’s also just a labor issue - it takes a while to dredge through the various sites to determine the history of each device. I plan to continue on and might also try to publish the underlying table with references. I also acknowledge that it’s possible I’ve missed something along the way.
Android Release Dates
For the major Android version release dates, I used the date at which it was actually available on a normal phone you could get via normal means. I did not use the earlier SDK release date, nor the date at which ROMs, hacks, source, et cetera were available.
Outside the US
Finally, it’s worth noting that people outside the US have often had it even worse. For example, the Nexus One didn’t go on sale in Europe until 5 months after the US, the Droid/Milestone FroYo update happened over 7 months later there, and the Cliq never got updated at all outside of the US.
Thanks primarily to CNET & Wikipedia for the list of phones.↩
Yes, AT&T committed to Gingerbread updates for its 2011 Android phones, but only those that had already been released at the time of the July 25 press release. The Impulse doesn’t meet that criteria. Nor does the Sharp FX Plus.↩
A couple of samples just from the past week: 1, 2 - in comments.↩
Google News: Neuigkeiten für Leser und Verleger
<div class="readspeaker"> <a href="/newsticker/meldung/Google-News-Neuigkeiten-fuer-Leser-und-Verleger-1368438.html?view=audio"><img src="/icons/ho/vorlesen_download.gif" alt="Meldung vorlesen und MP3-Download" width="150" height="13" class="ISI_IGNORE" /></a> </div>Google hat seinen Nachrichtenaggregator News umgestaltet und mit neuen Funktionen für Leser und Verleger ausgestattet. Verleger können ausgewählte Artikel oder Beiträge in dem neuen Bereich "Auswahl der Redaktion" hervorheben. Zum Start kooperiert Google mit neun deutschen Nachrichtenangeboten: Zeit Online, Spiegel.de, Sueddeutsche.de, Welt.de, Stern.de, Handelsblatt Online, Focus Online, Bild.de und der Tagesspiegel.
Benutzer können jetzt angeben, wie viele News sie aus welcher Quelle sehen möchten.
Die gesamte Site ist übersichtlicher gestaltet worden, Multimedia-Inhalte werden jetzt freizügiger auf der Seite verteilt. Die Nachrichtenlage soll sich so besser überblicken lassen. Die Bereiche "In den Nachrichten" und "Beliebteste Inhalte" sind jetzt in der rechten Spalte des Aggregators untergekommen, wo sie besser ins Auge springen sollen. Eingeloggte Google-Nutzer können jetzt festlegen, wie häufig sie Nachrichten aus bestimmten Nachrichtenquellen angezeigt bekommen möchten.
(jo)
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as zur Competec-Gruppe gehörende Handelsunternehmen Brack Electronics nimmt demnächst in Willisau im Kanton Luzern sein neues Logistikzentrum in Betrieb. Herzstück der Anlage, die in der ehemaligen Lego-Fabrik untergebracht wurde, ist das automatische Kleinteilelager «Autostore», in dem 70 rasende Roboter die Bestellungen der Onlinekunden zusammentragen.
China hat eine Milliarde Handynutzer
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