Tinsel town turns deaf ear to Kutcher’s request to plug his start-ups
Ashton Kutcher may have more clout in Silicon Valley than in Hollywood.
The star of movies like “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and now of the hit show ‘Two and a Half Men” told conference goers at TechCrunch Disrupt that he tried to get the studio to plug some of his Internet start-up investments on the show– but they wouldn’t do it without compensation.
Kutcher, who said he majored in biochemical engineering in college, has invested in some of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies. His bets include check-in service Foursquare, bed-and-breakfast service Airbnb, and personalized magazine Flipboard.
He also said he invested in companies that he thought ultimately would contribute to greater happiness in the world– but won’t open his wallet unless he clicks with the entrepreneur. “At the end of the day it’s about the person who runs that company, and whether it’s a person I’d want to spend some time with,” he said.
While sometimes he likes to go stealth to avoid his name getting in the way of potential customers paying attention on the underlying business, he thinks he brings more than just star power to his start-ups.
“I have pretty good connectivity in marketing,” he said. “I have pretty good product savvy.” And when he draws on his network of contacts to call in a favor for one of his companies, “they generally will call me back.”
But Kutcher really brought the house down when he explained how he got to San Francisco– a seat on no-frills airline Southwest. Given the short trip from Los Angeles, “I feel bad taking a private plane from there to here,” he said. “It’s not very energy efficient.”
Tech wrap: Apple ousts Nokia as top smartphone vendor
Apple jumped to the top of the global smartphone sales rankings in the second quarter, ending Nokia’s 15-year run as the lead smartphone vendor, according to new research from Strategy Analytics. Apple sold a record 20.3 million iPhones during the quarter, which amounts to about a fifth of the global smartphone market. Impressive considering its iPhone 4 model was released more than a year ago. Samsung also surpassed Nokia to claim second spot, with 17.5 percent of market share. Nokia fell to third place as its market share tumbled to 15.2 from 38.1 percent a year ago.
As if Apple’s new royalty status isn’t enough, the gadget maker can also lay claim to being the most profitable in the smartphone business. According to a chart on Business Insider, Apple pulled in two-thirds of all profits in the mobile phone sector last quarter. That’s twice as much as Samsung, RIM and HTC combined.
Did Yahoo get a raw deal when it signed a pact with Alibaba and SofBank to resovle a dispute over online payment service Alipay? That’s the case being made by some analysts. The trio announced it had struck an agreement after months of wrangling over the lucrative asset, under which Alibaba gets up to $6 billion if the mobile payments firm goes public or gets sold. But investors are bothered by the deal, saying it reaffirms perceptions on Wall Street that Yahoo has little say in Alibaba, the e-commerce company founded by Jack Ma and which is 43 percent-owned by Yahoo.
It’s official – you can now get Groupon deals on Foursquare. Foursquare has integrated Groupon coupons into its mobile apps. Users can cash in on the deals now – which will include both daily deals and Groupon Now deals – by using the “Explore” tab on Foursquare’s app, a feature that lets users search for neat activities to do nearby.
Microsoft warned on Thursday that a government review of its U.S. tax obligations in past years could significantly affect its financial statements if not resolved in its favor.The Internal Revenue Service has looked at Microsoft’s use of transfer pricing, among other things, or methods of booking prices and sales between subsidiaries — often leading to opportunities to report earnings in lower-tax jurisdictions.
Tech wrap: Panasonic profits shaken by quake
Japan’s Panasonic Corp forecast on Monday its full-year operating profit would drop 11 percent to 270 billion yen ($3.4 billion) in the year to March 2012, after the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan hit production and sales. Like many of its rivals, Panasonic delayed its profit forecast due to lack of clarity about the effects of the quake.
Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will total roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, displacing Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest slice of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study. Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.
The Internet body that oversees domain names voted on Monday to end restricting them to suffixes like .com or .gov and will receive applications for new names from January 12 next year with the first approvals likely by the end of 2012. Experts say corporations should be among the first to register, resulting in domain names ending in brands like .toyota, .apple or .coke. Besides the $185,000 to apply, individuals or organizations will have to show a legitimate claim to the names they are buying.
In the latest cyber security news, hackers temporarily knocked offline a Website run by the British police Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which targets organized crime in Britain and overseas. Lulz Security, a loosely aligned hacker group which said it brought down the SOCA Website on Monday, has gone after a long list of government and corporate Websites in the past month.
Location-based social network Foursquare has surpassed 10 million users, the two-year-old Web firm announced today on its company blog. TechCrunch reported Foursquare may be raising another funding round, in addition to the $21.4 million it has already raised.
Tech Summit Q&A, final day: Verizon, Foursquare, LivingSocial
Being social, going local, and paying for the privilege were hot topics on the last day of the Reuters 2011 Global Technology Summit.
Verizon CFO Fran Shammo got testy when Reuters reporter Jim Finkle asked him if he would reconsider charging mobile customers in addition to their data plans to tether their devices:
Shammo went on to explain Verizon’s decision to replace unlimited mobile data mobile plans with tiered pricing this summer.
Privacy matters more when you’re mobile and Foursquare co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley sought to reassure users of his social networking service that their information is safe in his hands.
Foursquare still struggling to become more than a niche app
When was the last time you played Foursquare? Not the mobile app that lets you check in at a coffeeshop or store in hopes of becoming its “mayor”. But the original game involving a red rubber ball and a grid chalked onto asphalt.
For me, it’s been years since I played Foursquare, and I’m tempted to get a game going with some of my friends who live nearby. That is more than I can say for the mobile app Foursquare. It’s been months since I’ve check in anywhere – in fact, I’d forgotten entirely that I deleted it from my iPhone – and after reinstalling it and trying out its new features, I’m still not crazy about it. It still feels more like a chore than a game, an act of discovery or a way to connect with friends.
According to Compete.com, I’m not alone. In a blog post entitled “I’m the mayor! So what?”, Karen Costa showed some figures suggesting that the number of unique visitors at Foursquare has dwindled from a peak of 1.8 million this summer to less than 1 million last month. Its rival Gowalla has seen its unique visitor count tread water at around 200,000 for several months.
It’s not that Foursquare and Gowalla aren’t popular, it’s that they are emerging as niche apps. A number of users loyally check in and make recommendations on Foursquare. But even Foursquare’s defenders know that the company needs to hit on some secret sauce to win over a bigger audience.
In an interview with GigaOm, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley acknowledged the work that the company needs to do to become more mainstream. Crowley compared it to the slow adoption of cell phones, although the early bulkiness and high cost were barriers to cell phone sales that Foursquare, which is a free app, doesn’t have to contend with. But he maintains that patience is a part of its business plan for now.
I think of what we’re doing is sort of interesting now, but it’s going to be super-interesting 24 months from now when more people are aware of things that we’re doing and aware of the value that comes out of it. We’re a little bit early.
Foursquare has made some small steps toward a more useful app, adding in photo-sharing as well as access to recommendations from all users and not just your circle of friends. But the most immediate promise may be in its marketing potential. Crowley says the company is working on combining “location-based services and social media to empower local merchants to connect with customers in different ways.”
@johncabell
There is nothing wrong with making niche apps, and there are companies building stables of them. I just think that Foursquare has set its sights much higher.
Gowalla shoots for 1 million users with new version of location service
Location service Gowalla launched within days of rival Foursquare in March 2009, only to see its competitor grow to more than 4 million users while Gowalla seemed left in the dust. This summer’s introduction of Facebook’s location service, dubbed Places, didn’t help the perception that Gowalla was on a challenging road.
But Gowalla, which says it has “north of 600,000” users, has not given up. The Austin, Texas company released a revamped version of the service on Thursday that co-founder Josh Williams says will help bring its number of users to the million-mark by year’s end.
So what’s new in Gowalla 3? For one thing, you can now view check-ins by friends who use other location services, including Foursquare and Facebook Places, directly within Gowalla, as well as check-in to those services from Gowalla. That could provide a common window to keep track of the whereabouts of friends currently kept apart on separate location services.
Gowalla is also developing tools designed to make checking-in more useful, such as a new feature that lets people leave notes at specific locations. Someone checking-in to a restaurant might see a friend’s note warning them to steer clear of the egg-salad sandwich, for example, or a note recommending the margaritas.
And Gowalla has done some work to make checking-in easier and quicker, so that you don’t have to waste 45 seconds fiddling with your cell phone.
While many of Gowalla’s rivals are partnering with merchants to offer discounts to people who check-in, Williams says Gowalla is keener on content than coupons. The goal, he says, is to make Gowalla a sort of social networking-enhanced travel guide.
The new version of that travel guide, Gowalla 3, is initially being released only as an iPhone app.
Google unveils new ads in bid to tap into local merchant market
Google is revamping its efforts to court local merchants, as the Internet search giant faces a growing band of rivals aiming for a piece of the lucrative small business market.
On Monday, Google introduced a new way for local merchants to advertise on its Web site, as well as a variety of additional features to entice small and medium-sized businesses to use Google more often.
Google’s local business center, which allows merchants to provide more information about their business listing on Google, is being re-branded Google Places. According to Google, some 4 million businesses worldwide have already “claimed” their listings among the 50 million generic business listings in Google’s directory of Places Pages
The move comes as a new crop of Web start-ups like Foursquare and Gowalla are gaining prominence among local merchants through popular services that encourage consumers to “check in” to bars, restaurants and other local places of business.
Last week, microblogging sensation Twitter announced a new Places feature that will allow Tweets to be organized and displayed in the context of specific businesses or places, and Facebook may unveil location-specific features at its developer conference this week.
Google, which last year held unsuccessful talks to acquire Yelp, the user review site for local businesses, said it is providing additional free features for businesses that claim their listing on Google, including photo shoots of a business’s interior.
The new type of Google ads, dubbed Tags, allow a local business to pay a flat, $25 a month fee to append additional information alongside the standard listing that appears on Google’s local search results. A pizzeria, for instance, could offer a coupon alongside its listing to make it stand out from all the other pizzerias included in the search results for a particular region.
