MediaPost | Around the Net In Online Marketing

Taking Down The Tech Industry

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:14:06 -0500

Clearly looking for a fight or two, the Atlantic’s sister site Quartz just published a highly critical year-end analysis of the tech industry. Titled, “2013 was a lost year for tech,” the piece begins, “All in, 2013 was an embarrassment for the entire tech industry and the engine that powers it -- Silicon Valley,” before going on to note the industry’s many failed efforts, as well as its peaking arrogance.

Wheels Come Off Ecommerce Industry

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:12:12 -0500

Despite record-breaking ecommerce sales numbers, 2013 could go down as a very bad year for the industry. Why? “After years of preaching the convenience and reliability of online shopping … retailers may have been too successful at spreading the message this year, contributing to the volume of holiday orders that overwhelmed delivery services like U.P.S. and FedEx,” The New York Times reports.

Consumers Can Now Track App Data Usage

Fri, 27 Dec 2013 12:11:03 -0500

Consumers can now see what data their apps are using courtesy of a new site from mobile trade group CTIA. KnowMyApp.org “allows mobile device owners to estimate an app’s data usage before it’s downloaded,” PCWorld reports. “This is the first tool allowing consumers to learn about an app’s data usage before downloading it.”

Google Bruises Rap Genius For Shady Search Practices

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 11:11:16 -0500

Google is reportedly punishing lyrics site Rap Genius for engaging in shady SEO practices to improve its search ranking. “Now RapGenius.com doesn’t appear on the first page of results for a search of ‘Rap Genius,’ and popular queries like ‘Jay-Z Holy Grail Lyrics’ don’t bring up the startup like they used to,” TechCrunch reports. Rap Genius, however, claims to be nearing a resolution with Google over the matter.

Mobile Data (Almost) Doubles In 2013

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 11:05:13 -0500

Making a lot of advertisers happy, this year, mobile data nearly doubled, according to new findings from wireless carrier consultant Chetan Sharma. Why? “Cellular networks got faster, and smartphone screens got bigger,” The New York Times’ Bits blog reports. “Worldwide, the average consumption was 240 megabytes a month this year, up from 140 megabytes last year, [Sharma] said.”

E-Tailers Take On Product Returns

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 11:02:00 -0500

Product returns represent a growing problem for the ecommerce industry, but, as The Wall Street Journal reports, retailers are fighting back with transaction data. “This year, chains are digging through past transactions to weed out chronic returners, train shoppers to make better decisions or stem buyer’s remorse,” WSJ writes. “Companies are also tracking ‘wardrobers,’ shoppers who buy items to wear once and return.”

Porn Goes Mostly Mobile

Thu, 26 Dec 2013 10:57:25 -0500

With implications we’d rather leave unconsidered, new data shows that the majority of porn is now viewed via smartphone. It’s “one stat that shows us how prevalent smartphones and tablets have become to the daily lives of people everywhere,” notes Readwrite.com. The findings come courtesy of porn aggregator PornHub, which reports that 52% its fare was viewed with a mobile device in 2013.

BSkyB Invests In Start-up Jaunt

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 11:45:07 -0500

British Sky Broadcasting Group is beefing up its digital investment. The lastest -- a $350,000 investment in Jaunt, an start-up that displays video content, reports Tech Crunch. BSkyB said that the new partnership will give it “additional insight into developments within the field.” Though Palo Alto, Calif.-based Jaunt’s placeholder site currently offers no information besides “stayed tune,” the company has been adding to its impressive engineering teach, including CEO Jens Christensen who launched Ellerdale, acquired by Flipboard.

Apple: iTunes Radio Top Priority

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 11:27:45 -0500

Apple has a new mission for the iAds team: always be selling iTunes Radio. Apple is trying to ramp up revenue from iTunes Radio, a Pandora-like service that was released widely this fall, per Adweek. In a staff meeting before the holidays, Eddy Cue, head of software, indicated that iTunes Radio is the top priority. At the same time the sales team is busy pushing Apple radio inventory, the company will build a real-time bidding exchange to automate selling in-app ads, multiple sources said.

AOL Nurtures HuffPo, But No Profits Yet

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 11:17:00 -0500

AOL has injected tens of millions of dollars into The Huffington Post. Its audience has more than tripled from 25 million people before the AOL deal to 84 million at the end of October, according to comScore data. It has branched out to cover lifestyle, entertainment, business and technology, growing to 60 vertical sites from about 20, reports Reuters.

But The Huffington Post has yet to turn a profit for AOL, falling far short of Armstrong's projection at the time of the acquisition that the unit would post $66 million in operating profit in 2013 on $165 million in revenue. The Huffington Post will become more critical next year to AOL's hoped-for transformation into a digital media powerhouse.

Samsung Phone May Have Security Gap

Tue, 24 Dec 2013 11:12:56 -0500

The security platform for Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy S4 smartphone suffers from a vulnerability that could allow malicious software to track emails and record data communications, per cybersecurity researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, notes All Things D. The gap, found earlier this month, comes as Samsung pitches Knox, the new security platform, to potential clients at the U.S. Department of Defense and other government and corporate entities.

Google Ventures Thinks Way Outside Search Box

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 13:46:41 -0500

Fortune goes inside Google Ventures, and its investors are interested in everything but search technology and online advertising. Current investments include Foundation, a newly public company that offers a diagnostic test to help doctors decide on drugs to fight specific tumors, and SynapDx, which is developing a blood test for the early detection of autism. “Collectively, they say a lot about where Google sees an opportunity to bring disruptive innovation to create a different future,” Fortune writes.

Google Search Promotes Authoritative Voices

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 12:18:56 -0500

Google is trying to make it easier for search users to surface authoritative voices across various topics. “Google is working on promoting the content of authorities on topics, so if an expert writes on a topic on any site, Google will notice that and make sure the content ranks better than non-authorities,” Search Engine Land reports, citing comments from Google search engineer Matt Cutts. “It is not about demoting sites, but rather promoting the ‘good guy.’ ”

R.I.P. Music Discovery Startup ExFM

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 12:17:36 -0500

Music streaming and discovery startups are falling like flies. Less than a month after Turntable.fm streamed its last dance, ExFM says it’s shutting down. “The company, which operates a music-discovery Web site, as well as iPhone and Android apps, says it will shut down its apps, as well as the guts of its site, on Jan. 15,” AllThingsD reports. What happened? “Startups are hard, and music startups are much harder.”

Answers.com Adds $300M, Analytics Startup ForeSee

Mon, 23 Dec 2013 12:14:32 -0500

Finishing 2013 strong, the privately held Answers.com just raised $300 million, and has agreed to buy customer experience analytics company ForeSee. “It’s an interesting move for Answers, which has had a complete turnaround in the past five years,” TechCrunch writes. “Answers originally only operated a community-generated Q&A site … and was a public company.”

WhatsApp Claims 400M Monthly Users

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:40:45 -0500

Mobile messager WhatsApp now boasts 400 million monthly active users – up from 200 million April. “Just as stable as the user growth has been actual engagement,” Bloomberg reports. “Today, users send an average of roughly 40 messages each per day on WhatsApp -- the same number they were sending back in June.” WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum tells Bloomberg that the startup’s steady growth is largely due to its “focus on messaging.”

EU Keeps Google In Antitrust Purgatory

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:38:40 -0500

With billions of dollars in fines still hanging over its head, Google has yet to appease the EU over outstanding antitrust allegations. Likely pushing the saga into the New Year, European Union competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia on Friday rejected Google’s revised proposals to settle the case once and for all. “Google's original proposal in April was rejected by its competitors,” Reuters reports.

Why Patch Is Failing

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:36:58 -0500

From Patch to Citysearch to Sidewalk, why have local journalism networks so far failed to prosper? For starters, they fail to fully appreciate “regional idiosyncrasies,” according to Folio. “Local markets need individual, customized management.” According to the trade magazine, the networks would be wise to take a page from Nicole Vogel, president of Sagacity Media, which publishes 10 titles across the Western United States.

'NYTimes' Taking Native Ad Plunge

Fri, 20 Dec 2013 09:28:37 -0500

Will The New York Times add legitimacy to native advertising, or will the divisive ad model muddy the publisher’s good name? Only time will tell, but, as NYT’s public editor reports, the paper of record is definitely diving into native. “After months of preparation and scrutiny, ‘native advertising’ is about to arrive at The Times,” Margaret Sullivan reports.

Flickr Finally Adds Embedding Options

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:28:03 -0500

Flickr is finally giving users a broad set of options for embedding images on other Web pages. Putting the change into perspective, The Verge writes: “The past few months have seen Flickr take some major strides forward in catching up to its younger photo-sharing competitors.” In addition to the new embedding options, Flickr recently refreshed its Web interface and app offerings, and gave users a ton of extra data storage.

Twitter Tailors To Big Names, Not No-Names

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:26:36 -0500

Open and egalitarian as Twitter may seem, the social network is actually as hierarchical as any old media platform. So finds data journalist Jon Bruner, who writes in O’Reilly Radar: “Twitter is giant, and it has an outsize influence on popular and not-so-popular culture, but that influence seems due to the fact that it’s popular among influential people and provides energetic reverberation for their thoughts -- and lots and lots of people who sit back and listen.”

Can Google Stop Glass Face-Recognition Apps?

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 11:58:00 -0500

To the chagrin of privacy advocates (and Google), software developers appear determined to make facial recognition apps available to any Google Glass user. Forbes features one such developer whose startup is soon to release an unauthorized app for Glass, which will let users collect and catalog images of faces. The development is bad news for Google, which, this summer, received a letter from eight members of Congress expressing their concerns over Glass’s potential for privacy infringement.

Facebook Selling Shares For Acquisition Cash

Thu, 19 Dec 2013 11:56:41 -0500

Don’t call it a selloff, but everyone’s unloading Facebook shares, this week. Facebook itself is planning a secondary sale of 70 million shares, which will amount to nearly $4 billion -- some of which it plans to spend on acquisitions, AllThingsD reports. Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is selling 41.4 million shares, the majority of which he is expected to use to pay off taxes on some 60 million shares he is getting via stock options.

Apple Adds Gifting Option To iBookstore

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 13:09:02 -0500

Just as we enter into peak giving season, Apple is adding a gifting option to its iBookstore. “The ebooks shop has long lacked any sort of gifting options, despite the fact that Apple’s App Store has had them since 2010, and iTunes well before that,” Macworld writes. “Gifting in the iBookstore works identically to Apple’s iTunes and App Store counterparts.”

YouTube, Roku Finally Join Up

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 13:01:28 -0500

It took three years, by Variety’s count, but Roku is finally adding YouTube content to its set-top boxes. What took the two so long to come together? “The issues in the standoff between YouTube and Roku aren’t clear,” according to Variety. “Google may have previously viewed Roku’s channel-aggregation strategy as competitive with YouTube.” The YouTube channel is now live on the Roku 3, and it is expected to become available on older device models, next year.

Samsung Hires Apple Store Designer

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:56:51 -0500

Samsung is reportedly dying to mirror Apple’s retail store magic, and in the United States especially. It’s no surprise, then, that the Korean gadget maker just hired former Apple Store designer Tim Gudgel. At present, “instead of costly, dedicated stores, Samsung has pop-up areas in shopping malls and dedicated areas in Best Buy locations,” GigaOm notes. “The hiring of Gudgel signals a possible change in that strategy.”

Facebook Buys Into Real-Time Sports Updates

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 12:54:26 -0500

Hoping to be a more reliable resource of real-time information for publishers, Facebook this week picked up SportStream -- a startup that should help the network surface relevant content. “Ideally, SportStream will make it easier for media partners -- like, say, a Fox Sports or an ESPN -- to find Facebook chatter about up-to-the-minute sports events, allowing the partners to better use that content on their properties,” AllThingsD writes.

Is NBC News Giving EveryBlock Second Chance?

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:39:52 -0500

At the beginning of the year, NBC News said goodbye to its hyper-local news network EveryBlock. Now, however, Chicago Grid is reporting that EveryBlock is getting a second chance -- or at least in Chicago. “Comcast is considering launching EveryBlock in Chicago first and subsequently adding more cities,” the local news site reports. “At its peak, the site covered neighborhood news in 19 cities.”

Twitter Testing "Edit" Feature?

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:37:15 -0500

Taking a page from Facebook’s playbook, Twitter is reportedly developing a feature that would let users edit tweets after they’ve been posted. Citing several sources, blogger Matthew Keys has it on good faith that “the feature has been a top priority at the company for months as Twitter pushes to expand partnerships among media organizations and original content producers.” Say sources, the feature will only let users edit posted tweets for a short period of time before they become permanent record.

Huckabee Launching News Site "Huckabee Post"

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:35:15 -0500

What’s good for the liberal goose is apparently good for the conservative gander. Yes, following Arianna Huffington’s lead with Huffington Post, former Arkansas Gov. -- and possible 2016 presidential contender -- is reportedly launching an online news publication named “Huckabee Post.” Citing comments from the former governor’s son, David Huckabee, ABC News reports: “The site will cover a range of topics from news and politics to sports and pop culture.”