Research firm Borrell Associates predicts that 2008 online spending for local advertisements will jump 48% to $12.6 billion driven by a demand for paid search and video ads, according to a report on NewsFactor. Search ads will make up the brunt of the local online ad spend in 2008, says Borrell, doubling to $5 billion. Locally targeted video ads are also expected to experience massive growth and rake in up to $1.3 billion.
While Borrell's numbers don't line up with the predictions of other research groups (who generally predict slower growth in the online local ad segment), nearly every report indicates the same thing: local ad sales are on the rise on the Internet. The Borrell report reveals that the growth is mostly being experienced on pure-play Internet sites, while local media outlets are losing market share. Further, the report predicts that "key advertising segments for 2008 will continue to be the Big 3 classified categories of automotive, recruitment, and real estate, with online political marketing holding promise for local sites as state and presidential campaigns heat up."
In July of this year, online presence and social communications app Twitter announced that it had taken a Series B funding round from Union Square Ventures. At the time, USV wrote excitedly about the investment, even though they "don't yet know" what sort of business model can exist around the service.
One thing neither party disclosed was the size of the round. PE Hub reports today that a regulatory filing reveals that Twitter has raised $4.8 million of a $5.4 million round. Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, and Charles River Ventures are also investors in the site.
Perhaps no other small company has caused as much commotion as Twitter this year. Since it exploded on to the scene at SXSW last March (that's not when the service debuted, but when it finally found its audience), Twitter has been running away with headlines all year and their growth has been impressive.
Arguably one of the most important things Twitter has done is open up an API to outside developers (this is an argument that co-founder Biz Stone made to us in September). According to Twitter, the API has seen such incredible growth, that just months after it was released it is already getting 10 times the traffic of the Twitter web site.
One of Twitter's cheif rivals, Jaiku, was acquired by Google in October.
LinkedIn just announced two new things: 1) a new Beta home page with a news feed; and 2) a developer API. Marshall Kirkpatrick covered the announcement this morning on Read/WriteWeb. I was given a background briefing by Adam Nash, Sr. Director of Product at LinkedIn, so in this post I'll explore more about what the announcement means for LinkedIn's user base - and how it compares to Facebook.
Although the news today is fairly ho-hum, what was new and interesting was that LinkedIn claimed a demographic that compared favorably to Wall Street Journal (WSJ) - LinkedIn has an audience that is both younger (41 vs 48) and richer ($106k vs $98K). LinkedIn was also naturally crowing about their growth (189% for year ending Oct. ‘07) and the chart from Nielsen which shows comparative Facebook growth at 125%. Note that Facebook growth is from a higher base and the law of large numbers applies, but Facebook has always crowed about their growth rates vs the larger MySpace, so they have to live with growth rate comparisons to LinkedIn now.
Getting that kind of growth with the younger/richer demographic is significant. What is the average income of a Facebook user? What is the growth rate of WSJ online?
If the rumours of negotiations with NewsCorp are true, I can imagine these numbers being used to some effect.
Before getting into the changes LinkedIn is announcing, it is interesting to look at the four major use cases for LinkedIn and use that to assess how well their direction fits the market needs:
Tay Zonday, the young man behind the Chocolate Rain song and megameme, is among 100 YouTube power users selected to be added to the YouTube Partners program - the site's ad revenue sharing plan for high quality, original content. YouTube announced today that the program, originally limited to less than 40 content producers, is now open to any US and Canadian applicants interested and deemed to be of sufficient quality. The company says it will expand internationally as soon as possible.
"In evaluating applications," the official blog post explained, "we will focus on the users who have built a significant audience on YouTube (as measured by video views, subscribers, etc.) and who consistently comply with the YouTube Terms of Use."
One of Zonday's newest videos, Cherry Chocolate Rain, has been viewed nearly a million and a half times so far. Presumably the deep voiced 25 year old with a sense of humor made good money on that video directly, as well.
Along with integration into AdSense, the Partners program could put to rest concerns about the site's ability to monetize. It's also great news for the selected participants - the critique levied against YouTube, that its founders got rich off the work of unpaid users, may have just got a bit of the sting taken out of it. International critiques concerning YouTube's relationship with authoritarian governments and human rights, however, remain quite stinging still.
Widget platform Clearspring today announced the launch of a new ad network that will allow widget publishers to monetize their widgets with advertising. The ads will run inside widgets and come in a variety of formats. Clearspring has already inked deals with some of their largest widget publishers to run ads, including the NHL, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate Films, Blockbuster, and Virgin Mobile.
For smaller widget creators or those whose widgets are strictly content-based, selling in widget advertising may be a good way to monetize widgets, especially if ads are kept unobtrusive. But many of Clearspring's largest widget publishers are using widgets as ads already. That is, widgets are mainly being used as marketing tools to promote a specific product or service (such as a movie). Will consumers really stand for advertising inside advertising?
LinkedIn, the holy grail for widget developers seeking to prove their software is serious, has taken some interesting steps towards a more social future in the release of some new features and discussion of their forthcoming API this morning. While some of what was announced is very cool, I'm not sure how ready the business world is for widgets. I've still got my fingers crossed for the future, but today's news hasn't gotten me very excited yet.
This is something we've really been looking forward to, there's so much potential here. The best thing that LinkedIn announced today is a cool new partnership with BusinessWeek. You'll now be able to hover over peoples' names in stories on the BW site and see how you're connected to them via LinkedIn. That's awesome. The news site will also offer a social bookmarking button to share an article just with your network of contacts. That's mildly interesting. Both of these features have some real potential and should be rolled out to more sites soon.
LinkedIn also announced its newsfeed today and a new reading list that will highlight the most popular articles around the web among your contacts. There's no Beacon action here, it's just for articles visited by clicking through links in LinkedIn. In other words, it's not worth much yet. Add the ability to import your APML profile and get recommendations and then we're really talking.
Finally, modules on the newly designed home page can be moved around by drag and drop. As Allen Stern at CenterNetworks pointed out, if LinkedIn partnered with an existing startpage, embraced this paradigm whole-hog and became a destination site - then things might really change.
For now, I find all of the above (except the Business Week pop-up profiles) rather uninspiring. If that's the good news, let's talk about the bad news, shall we?
This article is part of a regular series by Matt Rogers, co-founder of Aroxo, on the topic of bootstrapping a startup. See also his previous posts: How to bootstrap your startup and How to create a web app.
A really effective way of bootstrapping your start-up is to offshore and outsource your development. But doing this also carries risks, how can you be sure that you are going to get a developer who'll see it through and has the right experience? This post lays out an effective process to find the right developer.
From starting the search, to the first developer writing code, should take around 3-5 months and there may be further delays whilst you complete your documentation. In this article I'll talk you through what you should be doing at each stage, and what the objective of each stage should be. Here's an overview of the process:
This is a long process, and therefore I've split it up into 4 sections. These will be posted each week for the next four weeks. Regular readers of this series can relax: the whole lot has been written in advance, so there won't be any month long gaps in between!
In July 2006 Read/WriteWeb posted the first in what was to be a long and fruitful series on International web apps. The first post was on Germany, inspired at the time by The Museum of Modern Betas. This was when German social bookmarking site Mr Wong had a controversial cartoon logo! [they recently announced the finalists in their search for a new, less politically incorrect, logo] So it's fitting that we look again at Germany now, nearly 1.5 years later. It's also kind of ironic that The Museum of Modern Betas creator Markus Spath is now blogging for Blognation, which I'm sure took some inspiration for their network from RWW's International series - which ran for about a year, ending with Canada in June '07. It's a virtuous circle of influences!
In his latest post for Blognation Germany, Markus rounds up The 100 Most Popular Web 2.0 Sites From Germany. Following is the top 20 -- what struck me about it is that most of them are local sites and haven't got a global audience (or if they have then it's in a tiny niche market). The obvious exception is Pageflakes, but they are now based in Silicon Valley. So what does this say about the Internationalization of the Web? Are companies in Germany and elsewhere content to capture a sizeable local audience, and not go for the global market? Interested to read your thoughts... and we may re-start our International series again, to explore that theme.
The Read/WriteWeb Job Board provides job opportunities for Web Technology and New Media professionals, at startups and tech firms all over the world. If you're looking for the smartest and most innovative staff, people who are one step ahead of the rest, then you'll find those people in the Read/WriteWeb community! Here are just a few of the latest jobs:
Senior Software Engineer - Java: Startup in Seattle seeks software engineers with broad experience who are looking to work on an interesting new on-line communications application.
Python Developer at UpGuppy.com: New social networking site looking for experienced developers or firms specializing in Python, Javascript development and scalable web architectures.
Interactive Designer at exhibit-E: this is a great opportunity to work on top design accounts, learn from other talented designers and be intimately involved in all aspects of design.
CTO at LinkSpank: Do you like wearing both admin and programmer hats? Do you enjoy solving annoying technical problems? Do you find databases sexy? Do you like to roll up your sleeves and DO stuff?
Front-end web developer at Weebly: There's a puzzle embedded in this page http://www.weebly.com/jobs.html, which you should be able to solve in under an hour. If you email them the correct answer, they'll give you an interview.
For more great Web jobs, visit Read/WriteWeb Jobs. If you'd like to post a job, click here - it is just $99 for 30 days and there are significant discounts for bulk posting.
We also have an Events Board, where you can list your event on RWW. For example check out the Ruby on Rails QuickStart Seminar in San Francisco, Feb 20-21 and the Are You Ready for Funding? event Dec 15 in Mountain View, CA.
In a comment on our recent post The Digg Effect, C. Weng pointed to an e-book he has written called The Web: Hidden Games. It is available for free on Lulu.com. Weng commented that his book reveals "how websites such as Digg, Youtube and Facebook can be viewed as games (even though they weren't designed as such), and how this perspective is beneficial to both web designers and users."
I downloaded the e-book and have started to read it. This description of Digg as a game rings very true:
"So just how exactly is Digg.com a hidden game? Certainly, it has no swordwielding heroes who save fantasy worlds from evildoers, but it does have more characters than in any video game. With millions of users, Digg has a wide array of personalities contributing to the community. This makes it like a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game, just without the slaying of monsters. There is a clear goal: to get to the front page, and there are obstacles: not getting dugg up and having to keep trying multiple times. There is fierce competition between all Diggers for that top spot. Sometimes, they even attempt to discredit others’ posts by commenting on poor grammar, false information, and duplicate stories. Strategies are used to defeat other players and they are numerous. Just as many plans for Digg domination through friendship exist though. Seeking out the different users and adding them to the “friends” list is among the most popular and most successful methods. In the end, a win is only when a story has hundreds of diggs, regardless of how you go about it. Everyone is striving to be the best at what they do and this keeps them coming back to Digg for more."
The e-book goes on to tell you how to "win" at Digg and notes that "like all games, Digg’s system can be cheated." It also compares YouTube to chess: "there are an infinite number of ways to win in YouTube but it only occurs under certain conditions. Every single method, strategy, and theory leads back to the essential factor: getting people to view your videos." And as for Facebook, it is compared to The Sims: "The object of the game is more to monitor or to guide characters in daily life rather than to win at something. There’s no simple goal in sight but it is all about the process of playing."
It's a fascinating e-book and thanks C. Weng for making it freely available on Lulu!
