subscription - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/subscription en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:04:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Streaming or Buying Books: Will Readers Choose a Subscription Model for E-Books? 24symbols150.jpgWhen Amazon launched its new Cloud Drive a few weeks ago, it prompted a debate in the ReadWriteWeb editorial room about whether or not the future of music involved downloads and ownership - as supported by Amazon's cloud stage - or streaming and subscription - as provided by any number of music startups, like Rdio and Spotify. The ReadWriteWeb writers kept our discussion focused on music, but the debate could easily extend to any number of digital media now in Amazon's catalogue: movies, magazines, books.

We're familiar with these streaming and subscription services when it comes to music and movies (Netflix, Hulu for example). But books? Will we (can we) rent books?

]]> Lit Subscriptions and Banner-Ad Books?

A Spanish startup called 24symbols is launching this summer with the promise to do just that: provide a subscription service and become the "Spotify for e-books." (Much like Spotify, 24symbols won't be available at launch in the U.S.)

24symbols will offer an ad-supported and a subscription-based access to e-books, the latter running about 10€ per month. The books are all DRM-free, but 24symbols is entirely cloud-based. In other words, books are streamed, not downloaded for reading.

While we can probably wrap our reads around a Netflix or Spotify for e-books, that bit about ads in our literature might be anethema to many. I mean, how dare they! I poked around on the 24symbols website, but I don't see examples of how those ads will appear. Flashing banners in the margins just won't do, and it will be interesting to see how 24symbols - now in beta - will actually look.

24symbols_ss.jpg

What's on the 24symbols Bookshelf?

As Booksprung notes in its review of the new service, one of the most interesting things about 24symbols isn't simply that it's offering books by subscription. It's how it's splitting the revenue. On some levels, it's actually adopting the funding model that fuels much of the Internet: pageviews: "The company says it will create a standard page measurement as a specific number of words, and apply that to all texts equally when splitting up ad and subscription revenue."

As the reading is all done online, 24symbols will have some fascinating data about readership -- like, at what point in a novel do people just chuck it aside. It's not clear that all of that information will be shared with authors and publishers, but data about page views will serve in part to determine revenue share.

piracy_ebook_150.jpgWill this ad-supported, pageview oriented model help keep content farms out of e-books? After all, it would be difficult to make much money with your spammy, scammy e-books if people don't get past the opening paragraph.

The content farms may steer clear of 24symbols, then, but will book publishers join? That may be the thing to watch, for as GigaOm's Michael Wolf suggests, publishers may be better served by a Hulu for e-books, where they set the terms of the publications.

Book Buyer or Book Subscriber? What About Loans? (What About Libraries?)

E-book subscriptions may sound like a new and exciting model for readers, authors, and the publishing industry. But there's already an "all-you-can-eat" model for books: libraries. That library card gets you access to all the books you want, for free.

Libraries are already finding themselves at odds with some publishers when it comes to e-books - not notably HarperCollins with its 26 checkout limit. If a new model for the publishing industry becomes a subscription-based one, how will library loans fit in?

It will be interesting to watch the launch of 24symbols this summer and to see which publishers and authors play along and how many customers are interested. As my ReadWriteWeb colleagues and I debated with the launch of the Amazon Cloud Drive - we may be moving away from the idea of "owning" our digital content. Will e-books be the next content that we subscribe to and stream?

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/streaming_or_buying_books_will_readers_choose_a_su.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/streaming_or_buying_books_will_readers_choose_a_su.php E-Books Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:16:26 -0800 Audrey Watters
What To Look for at Tomorrow's iPad 2 Event ipad2_150.jpgFew events cause such widespread speculation and exuberance as an Apple product announcement, and the company has scheduled one for tomorrow, March 2. Apple is expected to announce the iPad 2, the first upgrade to its massively popular tablet.

Many of the rumors circulating about the iPad 2 involve the upgrades to the tablet's hardware, which according to a number of reports is expected to be thinner than the current model and therefore lighter as well. It seems a given that the iPad 2 will have at least one camera, something lacking in the first version, and there are several reports that it will have two - a front-facing camera for video, perhaps, and a rear-facing camera for photos. There's also talk that the new iPad will have more memory and a better graphics processor. ReadWriteWeb's live coverage will begin right here at 9 AM PST - we hope you'll join us.

]]> Want a reminder email to join the conversation at ReadWriteWeb tomorrow morning? Click the button below and that's easy to do.

And what would rumors of a new Apple device be if there wasn't speculation that you'll be able to get this latest iPad in white.

An Apple event always showcases the device itself, of course, as well as the iOS. But it's also an opportunity for the company to highlight its partnerships with various developers and publishers and to show off the range of the Apple ecosystem. With that in mind, here are some other things to look for tomorrow.

Any Fallout from Apple's New Subscription Policy

Since announcing its controversial (and confusing) subscription policy last month, Apple will likely want to assuage the fears of developers and customers that the books, movies, and music they've purchased will continue to to be accessible and that the apps they love - whether it's the Amazon Kindle app, Pandora, or Netflix, or the like - will continue to work. The new subscription service was first rolled out to coincide with the launch of New Corp's The Daily. As that's been widely panned, it will be interesting to see which magazine or newspaper - if any - takes the stage tomorrow.

A Better Bookstore? A Better E-Reader Experience?

ibooks150.jpgAlthough not tablet devices, e-readers are often lumped together in the same category as the iPad. And while the iPad is, for many people, their e-reader of choice, there are lots of things about the iPad that make it inferior to other devices that are specifically designed for e-books. The screen, for example, on the original iPad is absolutely horrible if you're trying to read outside, and there are reports that a less reflective screen is in the works for the iPad 2.

But it isn't just the hardware that's inferior; it's the Apple iBookstore. Random House, one of the world's largest publishers, has agreed to the agency pricing model for e-books, the last of the big six publishers to do so. As agreeing to this model has been a stipulation for joining the iBookstore, we may the publisher announce it's availability there tomorrow. But it may take more than a better book selection to make people start embracing the iBookstore the way they have Apple's rival e-bookstores Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Apple in the Cloud?

mobileme150.jpgApple announced recently that it would no longer be selling retail box copies of MobileMe, its Internet calendar, mail, and contacts syncing service. Some took this as a sign that Apple would be making a move to a cloud-based storage service, where users can upload their media - movies, music, TV shows, and so on - online. I'll use this as the opportunity to lament, once again, Apple's acquisition of my once favorite music streaming service Lala.

Apple has long been expected to make an announcement about the cloud, whether it's storage or streaming. I hope Apple's new data center in North Carolina is ready. And if nothing else, I hope there's announcement about cloud syncing that means I can get rid of the pile of white cords I have lying around the house that are necessary to sync my iPhone and iPad with iTunes.

Apple Gets Social?

NPR called Ping, Apple's music-oriented social network, one of the worst ideas of 2010. And Apple's Game Center, promising a more social bent to mobile gaming, has fared no better. Will Apple try again with a new social effort? Will social be a feature or a footnote to a new iOS?

The invitation to tomorrow's event says "come see what 2011 will be the year of," a clear reference to 2010 as the year of the iPad. But as the the tablet market heats up, there are a number of competitors hoping to steal a bit of the iPad's thunder. Will 2011 be the year of the iPad again?

Tune in tomorrow here as we'll be liveblogging the event, scheduled to begin at 10am PST. And tune in to the tech blogosphere shortly thereafter, when the rumors for the iPad 3 will begin in earnest.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_to_look_for_at_tomorrows_ipad_2_event.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_to_look_for_at_tomorrows_ipad_2_event.php Apple Tue, 01 Mar 2011 10:00:50 -0800 Audrey Watters
Fallout and Frustrations From Apple's New Subscription Plan Continue Since announcing its new subscription plan last week, Apple's move to collect a 30% cut of revenue has had raised the ire of a number of developers and commentators. Mike Melanson offered a round-up on some of the initial reactions, that ranged from "greedy" to "anti-competitive" to "Brilliant, Brazen or Batsh*t Crazy.

Apple's 30% fee is posing problems for a number of companies and developers - those who've built their businesses around the existing rules, for example, and those who don't have the margins to be able to hand over such a cut to Apple. Companies that have raised questions about the new policy run the gamut - music streaming services, e-book sellers, and software-as-a-service developers; big companies and startups alike.

]]> No Margin for That 30% Cut

The expletives that came from Last.fm co-founder Richard Jones last week may be one of the most colorful responses to Apple's announcement, but his analysis speaks to the core of many developers' concerns. Jones said in an IRC chatroom that "apple just f***ed over online music subs for the iphone." Jones hinted that Apple may have plans to launch its own streaming service and is therefore attempting to squeeze out the competition. But whether that's the case or not, he contends that "many services can't survive a 30 percent loss of revenue." Jones specifically mentions Spotify, reportedly poised to make its entry in U.S. markets, arguing that he can't imagine its "margins are anywhere near 30 percent."

Trouble for Alternative Funding Models

Readability just announced this morning that its iOS app had been rejected by Apple as the startup wasn't running its service through the new subscription plan guidelines.

Readability offers a service whereby it redesigns Web pages - stripping out ads and resizing text, for example - in order to make online content more legible. Users pay a monthly subscription fee to use Readability, which in turn offers a unique funding model for publishers - the company gives them a 70% cut of the revenue from folks' reading lists. "If we implemented In App purchasing," writes Readability in an Open Letter to Apple, "your 30% cut drastically undermines a key premise of how Readability works."

No Room in the Store for Big Catalogs

Jim Dovey, formerly the Apple Platforms Team Lead for the e-bookseller Kobo had raised another key stumbling block. As it currently stands, there's a cap on the number of items you can sell via in-app purchases. According to Dovey, Apple's "in-app purchasing system only allows 3000 or 3500 distinct items to be in your catalog (depending who you talk to). Kobo and Amazon each have around 2.5 million titles. Judging by the title of Kobo's app, 1.8 million are public domain (or otherwise free), so some 700,000 are paid titles, which they are under obligation to the content owners to make available for sale to all their users."

The dissatisfaction isn't only coming from developers or companies who've invested in the Apple third-party ecosystem. PaidContent.org reports that anti-trust regulators are looking into Apple's subscription plan. But in the meantime, angry developers are looking at their own alternatives.

As Readability notes in its blog post today, "To be clear, we believe you have every right to push forward such a policy. In our view, it's your hardware and your channel and you can put forth any policy you like. But to impose this course on any web service or web application that delivers any value outside of iOS will only discourage smaller ventures like ours to invest in iOS apps for our services. As far as Readability is concerned, our response is fairly straight-forward: go the other way... towards the web."

It seems likely that others will follow suit - putting their development efforts into the mobile web or into alternate operating systems (namely Android).

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fallout_and_frustrations_from_apples_new_subscript.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fallout_and_frustrations_from_apples_new_subscript.php Apple Mon, 21 Feb 2011 10:01:16 -0800 Audrey Watters
Sony's Streaming Music Service Goes Live in the U.S. musicunlimited_150.jpgSony joins a number of music streaming services today with its launch of "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity." The service has been available in parts of Europe since last year, and arrives in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand today.

Membership will start at $3.99 a month, with a $9.99 per month subscription that will give you on-demand access to the Music Unlimited catalog and with the ability to suggest music you might like based on the songs you already own or listen to. The service boasts more than 6 million songs, giving Sony Music Entertainment and its partners in the endeavor - Universal Music Group, EMI Music and Warner Music Group Corp - the ability to sell directly to customers.

]]> The streaming service is currently only compatible on Sony-specific devices like the PS3, Blu-ray players, Sony Bravia TVs, and VAIO laptops. There are plans, says Sony, to offer it on mobile devices later this year.

Streaming Subscription Service (But Not for iOS)

These features of the new service all point to the current landscape of the music business - the increasing popularity of subscription services (such as MOG, Rhaposdy, and Rdio), for example, and the continuing struggles of the record industry to adapt to (declining) digital music sales.

But the launch of Music Unlimited also comes on the heels of Apple's announcement this week of its new subscription service, and the news that Apple would start to charge a 30% commission for purchases made within an iOS app. The news comes as Apple tries to gain more control over content bought and sold via apps on its platform, something that made Sony's proposed Reader app run afoul of the new rules and fail to be accepted into the store.

There were rumors earlier this week that Sony was planning on removing its music from iTunes in response to Apple, although Sony Network Entertainment COO Brandon insists that's not the case. Nonetheless, it's also noteworthy that Sony's new service isn't available on mobile devices - interesting since streaming-on-the-go is part of the benefits of streaming your music.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sonys_streaming_music_service_goes_live_in_the_us.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sonys_streaming_music_service_goes_live_in_the_us.php Music Thu, 17 Feb 2011 06:59:17 -0800 Audrey Watters
Subscriptions Come to Apple's App Store: Good News or Bad News for Movies, Magazines? apple_logo_150.jpgApple announced the availability of its new subscription service in the App Store today. This service extends the billing service made available with the recent launch of News Corp's The Daily.

That means that subscriptions purchased from within the App Store utilize the same billing system that's used to buy apps and make in-app purchases. Publishers will be able to set the price and the length of the subscription - weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly, or yearly. Apple touts this one-click subscription and renewal option, which will give customers the ability to manage all their subscriptions - including cancellations and payments - from within their iTunes account page.

]]> Will Subscriptions Save (Digital) Magazines?

Despite the promise of slick content delivery via the iPad, digital magazine subscriptions have been lackluster. Part of the problem, until now, has been their availability only as single issues, forcing customers to purchase each copy individually rather than subscribe to the magazine for regular updates. Wired Magazine, for example, launched its iPad app to much acclaim and excitement, and while it sold 100,000 of its debut issue, those sales have plummeted since, down to 23,000 for the November 2010 issue.

Publishers will give Apple a (hefty) 30% cut of subscriptions - the same revenue share for app developers. Although the subscriptions will make it easier for customers to buy digital content, publishers have long balked at some of the privacy restrictions Apple has put in place, arguing that they need to have more customer information than Apple was willing to provide in order to help sell ads and provide their subscribers the content they want. According to today's press release, customers will have the option of providing the publisher with their name, email address and zip code when they subscribe.

There's no word in today's press release from Apple if and when publications will join The Daily in offering subscriptions.

The Repercussions for Others Who Sell Digital Content via the App Store

Although the news of the subscription model might sound, at first, like good news for those who've struggled to port their content delivery mechanisms to the iTunes store, there are hints in today's announcement of trouble ahead.

Apple will allow publishers to sell digital subscriptions outside the app, but there Apple says that the same subscription offer must be made available - at the same price or less - to customers who subscribe within and outside the app.

But here's the sentence that has some folks worried: publishers may no longer provide links in their apps (to a web site, for example) which allow the customer to purchase content or subscriptions outside of the app.

That language may have vast repercussions on the apps that do offer digital content now. After all, as the press release states, Apple's new subscription service is available to "all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc." That doesn't just mean subscriptions for Wired. That means subscriptions for Netflix, Hulu, Pandora. And as the recent dust-up with the Sony Reader indicates, it may limit the ability for apps like Amazon Kindle to point users to their website in order to buy content to later consume on the iPad.

It may be that Apple is confident of its lead and market share with the App Store and with the iPad. But with Android hot on its heels and with a crowd of tablets in the wings, waiting for their moment in the spotlight, Apple's new subscription service may make magazine subscriptions easier at the expense of driving some frustrated customers and publishers elsewhere.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/subscriptions_come_to_apples_app_store_good_news_o.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/subscriptions_come_to_apples_app_store_good_news_o.php Apple Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:55:17 -0800 Audrey Watters
New Subscription Service Tightens Apple's Control Over Content apple_logo_150.jpgYesterday's launch of The Daily, Rupert Murdoch's iPad-only newspaper, marked the introduction of Apple's new subscription model - a way for publishers to offer renewable subscriptions to their app-based content. And while Apple is heralding the move as a way for publishers to get more customers, some are uneasy about the company's efforts to channel all billing and delivery through its iTunes marketplace.

The concern comes, in part, as a response to news on Tuesday that Apple had rejected Sony's e-reader app as it allowed users to buy as well as read books from the Sony Reader store. That rejection caused immediate speculation (verging on panic) that this would have huge ramifications for other apps that do something similar - namely, the Amazon Kindle app, the Netflix app, the Barnes & Noble Nook app, and so on.

]]> Apple responded to the outcry, saying that "nothing had changed" in its Terms of Service. But whether it's the spirit or the letter of the law, clearly things have, if only with the introduction of this new subscription offering.

The Wall Street Journal reports that publishers have been notified that by March 31, "newspaper and magazine apps that don't take payments through the iTunes store will be rejected."

Apple traditionally takes a 30% cut from developers' app sales, but it's not known what the company's share of subscription revenues would be. For its part, Apple contends that by managing the billing, it will help publishers sell more content. Indeed, many publishers have long lobbied for Apple to add the subscription feature as it will improve delivery over the current system, which until now has forced users to buy a new app for each new "issue." And as sales of digital magazines have been less than stellar, a better billing and delivery system may not be a bad thing.

That is, of course, unless you're a publisher who's built your business model on selling digital content through your own website, rather than via the iTunes store.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_subscription_service_tightens_apples_control_o.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/new_subscription_service_tightens_apples_control_o.php Apple Thu, 03 Feb 2011 07:41:38 -0800 Audrey Watters
Google Plans a Digital Newsstand for Android newsstand.jpgReports of declining iPad magazine sales are a good reminder that neither Apple nor publishers have really nailed the content and delivery of magazines in a digital format. And a story tonight in The Wall Street Journal reports that Google may be working to take advantage of this opportunity by setting up its own digital newsstand for Android.

Google has discussed its plans with a number of publishers, including Time Warner, Condé Nast and Hearst Corp, but according to the story, the details and timing are "vague." And it's possible that the venture won't materialize.

]]> Despite some of the problems with digital magazine publishing, it seems unlikely Google wouldn't try for an Android alternative to iTunes, particularly as both consumers and publishers have been frustrated with the Apple (non-subscription) delivery model.

Wooing Publishers to Android with Better Consumer Data

Google has apparently told publishers that it would take a smaller cut from its Android apps than the 30% that Apple takes from iTunes sales. And to sweeten the deal, Google has also proposed giving publishers access to personal data about app consumers.

The latter has been a sticking point for the publishing industry, which has grumbled about Apple's refusal to hand over download data, arguing that it needs this sort of information to better serve readers (and advertisers).

For example, Jay Lauf, the publisher of The Atlantic recently wrote, "What happens if an "iStand" supplants the newsstand in the way iTunes has supplanted the record store and it supplants our traditional means of driving subscriptions? Currently it means the characteristics and locations of readers we've long had a direct relationship with, whom we know so much about--which allows us to provide them better content and more meaningful ways to engage while also allowing us to better service our advertisers--will be in the hands of Apple, not us."

For its part, Apple is preparing to make changes to iTunes in order to meet some of publishers' wishes, including adding subscriptions and sharing more user data. However, the latter will be "opt in" - subscribers can choose to share their personal information with the publisher. Or not. According to The Wall Street Journal, "some publishers remain unhappy with this arrangement because they think few customers would opt to share such data" - something that perhaps speaks volumes about the "relationship" that many readers have with magazines these days.

Photo credits: Flickr user Des Byrne

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plans_a_digital_newsstand_for_android.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_plans_a_digital_newsstand_for_android.php E-Books Sun, 02 Jan 2011 22:15:42 -0800 Audrey Watters
Hulu Announces Monthly Subscription, Support for iPhone/iPad; Still Ad Supported hulup_jun10.jpgThe rumors about a paid subscription service coming to Hulu have turned out to be true, as the online video hub has announced Hulu Plus - a premium service that will give users access to more content on more platforms for a monthly fee. For $9.99, subscribers will be able to access full seasons of shows on Hulu.com, on apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, on Internet-enabled TVs and BluRay players, and on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles.

]]> UPDATE: The Hulu Plus app is now available in the AppStore to download on iOS 4.0 devices. You can watch some free previews, but full episodes obviously require an account in the trial program. Check out the screenshots below!

hulup_platforms_jun20.jpgHulu is expressing that Hulu Plus is not a replacement for its home page. Non-subscribers will still get the same new content at the same time, but subscribers can access a deeper back-catalog of shows. Hulu users hoping for an ad-free version of the site will be disappointed to learn that despite the $9.99 price tag, Hulu Plus will still feature ads during shows.

"Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service," the company said in its blog today. "For almost all of the current broadcast shows on our service, Hulu Plus offers the full season. Every single episode of the current season will be available, not just a handful of trailing episodes."

huluiphone1_jun10.jpg

Hulu is keeping the ads and is instead providing subscribers with the ability to watch shows on a plethora of media platforms. Free iOS 4.0 apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad will let users of those devices catch shows on the go via Wi-Fi and 3G, and Internet-enabled TVs and BluRay players will bring the experience into the living room. Hulu also says PlayStation 3 users will have access to its content "soon," and Xbox 360 fans will see Hulu in their dashboards in "early 2011." Plus subscribers are also provided with an HD 720p stream for all shows.

Right now, Hulu Plus is taking requests for preview invites and is surveying users on how they digest their media. Upon requesting an invitation, users will be asked what mobile devices they own, what their Internet connection is and what additional set-top boxes and gaming consoles they use. There is no mention of whether support for the Nintendo Wii is coming, or whether Hulu itself will launch a set-top box. With all the support for these various devices, a Hulu box seems unlikely at this time.

huluiphone2_jun10.jpg

This announcement comes hot on the heels of Fox Interactive Media's foray into mobile video with its on-demand service Bitbop. Fox has an exclusive deal with RIM to bring mobile video to BlackBerry users, but with Hulu's broad sweep of the Apple mobile device platform, the going will likely get tough for Bitbop.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hulu_plus.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hulu_plus.php Video Services Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:16:00 -0800 Chris Cameron
InSTEDD: Enabling Collaboration in Third World Countries At ETech today members of the InSTEDD team spoke about how they have been building SMS and mapping applications, in the Mekong Delta in the jungles of South East Asia. InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters) was organized in 2006-2007 and aims to harness technology to help with early warning, prevention and response to disasters and public health threats. Some of the issues InSTEDD came across in the Mekong Delta were figuring out multilingual issues, human interaction design for 140 characters, ad-hoc team creation, and data integration of disconnected systems. After the jump is a summary of their presentation at ETech.

]]> CEO Dr. Eric Rasmussen spoke about how InSTEDD has a focus on collaboration, using both technical and sociological means. Everything they do is free and open source. Eduardo Jezierski, Vice President of Engineering, spoke about how information flow is important - you need good sensor and human networks to detect things early. The people in villages need more data, however currently they don't get this. It's not necessarily a technical problem, but economic and sociological problems. For example 3G may cover the area, but inhabitants can't afford it. Another issue is that mobile phones don't necessarily support the different languages spoken by people, or different people speak different languages and so collaborating is difficult. Another issue is that it actually costs about the same amount to send an SMS message as it takes to buy a handful of rice, so obviously priorities come into play.

InSTEDD has built a product called InSTEDD Geochat, which is a service combining SMS, Twitter and email. However it is SMS-only interaction for users, as most don't have browsers. Driving the system is a "semi-structured" API with an extensible pipeline. However the idea of this system is that the participants don't need to be concerned with all the technology behind it, they can just interact with the system using SMS.

Interoperability is an issue, but this is being addressed with an InSTEDD service called Mesh4x. It syncs data from diverse applications, sources and devices. It works via HTTP, files and SMS. It supports open standards, such as FeedSync - an open protocol that describes data formats and algorithms used to version information in a mesh. Interestingly this is a Semantic Web application, with RDF as the default data representation.

The next challenge is using this data for collective action. "Today it takes a lot of coordination to get two organizations working together", said Jezierski. So they have been working on a system called Evolve - described as an RSS Reader for groups by Jezierski. It aims to provide collaborative decision support around streams of information. The service tries to sift through data and identify emerging health-related events. It also has an automatic feature extraction, for data classification and tagging. There is a human input and review module that "allows users to comment, tag, and semantically rank the elements (positive, neutral, or negative)." The overall theme is that it is a mix of machine and human intelligence - the machine can recommend a course of action, but people trigger the actions.

Jezierski has worked in the commercial sector before and he noted that "doing stuff to help people in Cambodia is way harder than running the London Stock Exchange". He said for example that for Twitter to reach wide adoption in these places, much work needs to be done to enable it. In particular he thinks a "better shared language" for technologies is needed for third world work - much in the same way that web 2.0 evolved a specific language in the tech world (tagging, user-generated content, etc).

The InSTEDD Innovation Lab is another project. It's a "socio-technical" lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and mixes InSTEDD's own team with various other organizations, to work on technologies that help society.

Overall it's clear that InSTEDD is doing some great work to bring collaborative software and systems into countries that need it the most - for disaster prevention and recovery, healthcare, and other essential needs.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/instedd_enabling_collaboration_in_third_world_countries.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/instedd_enabling_collaboration_in_third_world_countries.php ETech 2009 Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:54:00 -0800 Richard MacManus
DropPlay: Listen to YouTube Music with Your Facebook Friends We just heard from DropPlay about their new beta social-enabled music site that calls itself the perfect streaming music service. Leveraging the power of the cloud-based applications Facebook Connect and the YouTube API, DropPlay weaves together a site that both organizes and lets you share your favorite YouTube music and playlists that you create. Unlike similar service Muziic (previously covered here) the entire experience is web-based, using Facebook Connect to store your profile and sharing data.

]]> DropPlay describes itself as a combination of iTunes, Facebook, Pandora and YouTube. The interface is fairly straightforward, letting you search for your favorite music and watching it right away. Bookmarking music is just one click away, and organizing tracks into a playlist or sharing them with your Facebook friends is as simple as dragging and dropping the song on their name.

We found the DropPlay interface painless and fun to use. The YouTube integration was pretty seamless and there is a quick setting to compensate for a slow network connection. Plus, there is a lot of potential for the social side to really explode with the decision to go with Facebook Connect. It's still a little rough, but for an initial beta release, overall, we don't have a lot of nits to pick with the way it works.

However, we do have some thoughts we'd like to address overall.

First, just like with Muziic, this service leverages YouTube specifically for music videos (via the YouTube API) and appears to not honor YouTube's advertising model. This means that it is, in essence, getting the 'milk for free,' something that we believe can last only so long until Google clamps down on this sort of behavior, either by making the API more restrictive or being more aggressive about removing music videos.

Second, although Facebook Connect is used so that you can easily log in, find Facebook friends, and save playlists, there is no export option once your playlists are created. This means that all the work you do lives in this app, and you must resign yourself to a possible future where the site may disappear one day and any playlists or shares will vanish with it.

Finally, there seems to be no support for sharing any discoveries you make in DropPlay with outside services, except perhaps your Facebook friend's wall. There's no link back to the original YouTube video and no sharing options via email or other social network. While this approach seems to mimic Facebook's own original 'walled garden' approach, even Facebook realizes they themselves must become more open and share more social graph data with other networks.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dropplay_listen_to_youtube_music_with_your_faceboo.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dropplay_listen_to_youtube_music_with_your_faceboo.php Social Web Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:45:00 -0800 Phil Glockner
Tekarma: A Social Homepage for Every Product (Invites) tekarma_logo_mar09.pngTekarma, a new user-generated product support site, launched its private beta today. Tekarma wants to provide users with a central place to find and share tips and trick about products. Currently, the site focuses mostly on electronics, cars, and sporting goods. Maybe the best way to describe Tekarma is as a mix between a wiki, forum, and a tech support call center. If you want to try it out yourself, you can find a link to the private beta at the end of this post.

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Tekarma was built by a team that includes a number of former eBay executives and engineers. The idea for the site, as Tekarma's Alex Kazim pointed out to us today, was to provide a comprehensive homepage for every product that would allow users to get tech support, read FAQs, and discuss the product with other users. The content on the site is completely user-generated, though Tekarma also uses Shopping.com's APIs to pull in product specs, which, however, can later be edited by the users.

tekarma_homepage.jpg

Features

Every product page features four main sections: FAQs, Reviews, Web Resources, and Surprises. Surprises is actually one of the most interesting sections here, as this is where users can share information that is often left out of standard reviews such as the ground clearance of a car that a buyer would only notice after using it for a longer period of time.

While Tekarma features a price-comparison widget, Kazim told us that shopping is not the focus of the site. Instead, Tekarma, at least in its current iteration, focuses on providing support after a user has already bought the product. In the long run, once the site has more content, Kazim envisions that this may shift a bit, depending on how the users end up utilizing the site.

We liked Tekarma's user-interface, which makes browsing the site extremely easy. As Kazim pointed out to us, the team incorporated a lot of the lessons it learned at eBay into Tekarma's interface. One nice feature, for example, is that the service displays a list of your last search results in the left sidebar. Thanks to this, you don't have to constantly click the back button when searching for a specific product.

Good Start - Now All it Needs is More Users

Overall, while Tekarma is not necessarily revolutionary in its approach, we think that it has enough compelling features to set it apart from similar services like FixYa or product-specific forums. At the same time, though, Tekarma, like most services that rely on user-generated content, will have to attract a sizable number of active users to add content and fill the gaps in its current catalog.

Invites

If you would like to try out Tekarma and maybe add some of your own expertise to the system, you can follow this link. It will be valid for the first 100 readers who sign up for the service.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tekarma_a_social_homepage_for_every_product_invite.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tekarma_a_social_homepage_for_every_product_invite.php Product Reviews Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:37:21 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
Datz Music Lounge: Gimmick or the Future of Digital Music? datz_logo.jpgIf you live in the U.K. and you have 100 British pounds to spare, you can now subscribe to the Datz Music Lounge, where those 100 pounds can buy you unlimited access to DRM-free MP3s for one year. According to Music Week, Datz features about 2 million tracks from EMI, Warner, Beggars Group, and The Orchard. While the service is encumbered by technical problems like having to use a USB dongle, as well as a relatively limited selection of songs, we can't help but wonder whether this all-you-can-eat plan for DRM-free MP3s points towards the future of the digital music business.

]]> For now, Datz is only available in the U.K. and users will have to buy a boxed retail package with a CD and the USB dongle from either Sainsbury's or Datz's own site. One more negative for the service is that it doesn't have a licensing agreement with either Universal or Sony, leaving it with a relatively limited music selection compared to more traditional subscription services like Rhapsody or Napster.

At about $160 a year, Datz' plan is comparable to most subscription services, though the high upfront cost and limited selection might make quite a few potential subscribers think twice about the value of this new service.

datz_lounge.png

Mark Mulligan from Jupiter Research argues that Datz is a big deal - not because it might become a market leader itself, but because it has laid a licensing groundwork for the rest of the industry.

Indeed, it will be interesting to see if other services will offer similar all-you-can-eat plans in the future and if the music industry as a whole will be willing to go along with this.

At the end of the day, it is good to see yet another new business model for music services and that at least some of the labels are willing to experiment with new licensing models as well.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datz_music_lounge_gimmick_or_future_of_music.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/datz_music_lounge_gimmick_or_future_of_music.php Product Reviews Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:42:41 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
Vimeo's Newest Feature: More Predictable Revenue Stream VimeoAs more and more Web users gain access to broadband connections, the ability to consume high-definition video becomes an option for more people. But where are they going to access that content?

If a loyal user base - and USA Today - are to be believed, few user-generated video sites compare with Vimeo, a small but well-loved online video site with some of the best HD capabilities around. And after today, Vimeo is highly likely to be serving up more of that HD content, thanks to the release of Vimeo Plus.

]]> With the purchase of a Vimeo Plus subscription at $59.95 per year, users gain access to a slew of features and benefits, like an increased upload limit - up 300% from 500 MB per week to 2 GB per week. no more banner ads, the ability to customize the video player, and access to more of the social features the service offers.

But one feature stands out for anyone who has ever sat drumming his or her fingers while waiting for a video service to finish the encoding process: Buying Vimeo Plus entitles users to priority uploading. That alone may be worth $5 a month.

For all the new found freedom a paying user gets, the service still has some limits. NewTeeVee highlights some of the intricacies of the small print for Vimeo Plus, including the fact that - even with a Plus account - "HD embeds are limited to 1,000 plays." Going over that limit results in a reduction in definition until the user purchases more HD plays.

It's not just the paying customers that have limits. The free users have had some new limits added as well. Vimeo point out that "you'll only be able to upload one HD video per week. You will also be limited to creating 1 Group, 1 Channel and 3 Albums."

All in all, the trade-offs seem fair and aren't like to adversely impact users' opinions of Vimeo in the long run.

The Real Question: Can Vimeo Convert Loyal Users into Paying Customers?

Vimeo's user base is active and loyal - but relatively small. In these uneasy times for the online ad world, Vimeo's decision to trade unpredictable ad revenue for subscription revenue is shrewd. Why? Aside from the likelihood of higher revenues, the subscription base will give Vimeo a better chance of predicting its cash flow month-to-month. The higher-ups - especially when they're higher-ups like Barry Diller - tend to appreciate that kind of predictability.

But for all the predictability, will anyone bite? It's not unheard of for a loyal user base on a free service to translate into paying customers for a fee service - especially if the cost is reasonable. Flickr Pro immediately jumps to mind. With the nominal cost of Vimeo Plus, Vimeo has the potential to see that kind of conversion, as well.

Will the latest features and benefits cause those loyal users to step up? We'll have to watch - in HD - and see.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/vimeo_newest_feature.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/vimeo_newest_feature.php Video Services Thu, 16 Oct 2008 21:15:39 -0800 Rick Turoczy
Best Buy Acquires Napster: But Why? napster_logo.pngElectronics retailer Best Buy today announced that it plans to acquire music retailer Napster for $121 Million. According to the Wall Street Journal, the deal values Napster at $2.65 a share, almost double its closing price on Friday. However, while Napster was a major success story when its name was still synonymous with illegal P2P file sharing, it never quite caught on with users after it turned into a legitimate business. Judging from the press release, Best Buy is mostly interested in Napster's mobile business, where, with the help of Best Buy's marketing power, the company might just be able to create a profitable niche for itself.

]]> Users never really warmed up to music subscription services. Napster, for example, only had about 700.000 subscribers and, according to a recent report by Jupiter Research, its subscriber numbers have actually been falling. Most consumers still prefer to own their music, even though subscription services, with their all-you-can-eat plans, often offer a good value for those who tend to have a high turnover in their music collection. In May, Napster started selling DRM-free MP3s, but judging from this sudden sale of the company, few users must have chosen Napster over Amazon's MP3 store or Apple's iTunes.

It's All About Mobile

napster_sshot_sep08.pngBest Buy must think that it can push Napster to be a profitable part of its company, but over the last few years, the company never turned a profit. Best Buy, of course, does have a considerable amount of marketing power both in its ubiquitous big-box stores, as well as through TV and print advertising. Judging from the wording of the press release, it seems Best Buy is mostly interested in Napster's mobile business. In the mobile business, Apple doesn't have the dominant market position it has in the regular MP3 player market, so by positioning Napster there, Best Buy might be able to carve out a lucrative niche for the service.

Bundles

Chances are that Best Buy will start bundling Napster with anything from toaster ovens to overpriced Monster cables in the coming months. The holiday season, after all, is right around the corner and if Best Buy still wants to get some value out of the acquisition this year, they will have to act fast.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_buy_acquires_napster.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/best_buy_acquires_napster.php News Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:24:21 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
11 Things Startups Should Know About Enterprise 2.0 Yesterday we wrote about Enterprise 2.0 from the point of view of the Enterprise, the buyer. The conclusion was that the impact of social media on the Enterprise was very big, addressing the very "nature of the firm". This post looks at Enterprise 2.0 from the point of view of the vendor, specifically startups. This is a 30,000 foot view, but we aim to get past the hype to insights you can use in your startup. Further posts in our recently launched Enterprise Chanel will drill into specific market segments, companies and technologies.

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  • Subscriptions are the best revenue you can get. Subscription revenue is more recession proof than advertising and more predictable than traditional enterprise software licensing. As long as you don't mess up, you will have a low churn rate. Then your new subscriptions drive your revenue growth
  • It is much easier to get subscriptions from a business than from consumers. Sure we all love the idea of consumer subscriptions, the potential is enormous. But do this reality check. How many subscriptions do you pay for? How many current subscription costs would you love to eliminate or drastically reduce? What would your really (no, really) agree to pay for every month? We are in a serious consumer recession in the developed markets that may last a while. What was always hard, just got an awful lot harder. Selling to business is much easier, if you focus hard on the next rule.
  • The other 80/20 rule. 80% of enterprise IT budgets just "keep the lights on". Only 20% goes to new stuff. I learned this in the technology nuclear winter in 2002, when a 20% cut in IT budgets meant that no (zero, nada) new projects were approved. If you can show how to reduce that 80%, you get a better shot at the 20%. That 80% market is a replacement market. You need to know what cost you are replacing. The incumbents are looking at the 20% budget as well and they have the inside track. You have to attack the 80% to make it big.
  • "Parallel replacement" is new. The old enterprise replacement market was based on capital expenditure write offs. If the client bought a $1m license fee over 5 years ago, you had a shot at selling another license fee for something "better, faster, cheaper". In the new enterprise world of SAAS and open source, upfront license fees are the exception rather than the rule. Buyers prefer to hold onto the old stuff a bit longer until they can see either an open source or SAAS alternative. Replacement is always very risky, leaving incumbents in control and startups banging outside the door in frustration. So you need to show that you can run in parallel with the existing solution for a period until you are established enough to be a viable, safe replacement. Step 1 is run in parallel, step 2 is replace. This is what Google Apps and Zoho are doing to Microsoft office (I use both Google Apps and MS Office. Even though I use Office less frequently I own a license, so why delete it? When I get a new laptop I will decide whether I need to buy Office). To play this new parallel replacement game you need to a) offer a free entry point (the Freemium strategy) so you get traction with a low cost of sale and b) you need to show one very clear new value proposition that will tap into that 20% budget for new stuff.
  • Have one simple new "blue ocean" value proposition that any business user can understand. You need this to access the 20% of budget going to new stuff. Being "cloudy" is not a value proposition, it is simple]y a way to deliver your value proposition. The incumbent can always launch their SAAS equivalent. Your free entry level just gets you through the door so that you get a chance to upsell to your subscription; free is not a value proposition. You have to show how you will do something really basic such as either a) increase revenue with a low cost of sale or, b) reduce cost on an existing process or c) create strategic sustainable advantage in measurable ways. Most likely you will do this by enabling better collaboration/communication, both within the enterprise but also, more critically, outside the firewall to the "extended enterprise". For a startup, this has to be "blue ocean", a market that has not yet been defined by the incumbents. By its very nature, this means the market size will be very hard to define and there will almost certainly not be recognized external authority that has defined the market size. Smart VC understand that Blue Ocean strategy and precise market size estimates seldom go together.
  • SaaS ++ means that Open Source is no longer a problem. Open Source has been great for buyers but it has also taken the entry level market away in most segments and that trend shows no sign of letting up. That is bad news for a startup looking to sell traditional software with a "better, faster, cheaper plus we try harder" replacement pitch. You cannot undersell Open Source. That has forced many ventures with great software and strong teams into the dead-pool. With a "SAAS ++" offering, you can use Open Source as the base, add a bit of new code and bundle it all up with hardware and service in a monthly fee. Unless buyers really want to do all that in-house, using their dwindling internal IT staff, you have a shot at it. SAAS alone however is not a barrier to entry. Anybody can replicate it. Which means (smart) VC will/should pass. You need the "++" bit as well. That is likely to be something to do with viral, communications and network effects that create a growing user base and proprietary data coming from that base. That is the "magic sauce".
  • You need to become a very good financial and data modeler. You will need some old-fashioned face to face relationship selling to get large enterprises to understand your solution, so that the "powers that be" encourage adoption and do not seek to block it. But the business will grow one subscriber at a time and users convert to subscribers one click at a time. Modeling becomes a core competency. Modeling the costs of all the SaaS components (R&D, hardware, infrastructure software, software maintenance, system and data maintenance). Modeling the cost of subscriber acquisition using SEO, SEM, social networking, conversion from free to paid and inside telephone sales in a highly efficient funnel process that delivers the right $ per subscriber. Modeling the revenue growth with multiple what if variable assumptions. Modeling the ROI for your clients at various levels of adoption.
  • Most external market size projections do not help your business plan. Forrester Research reports that Enterprise 2.0 will be a $4.6 billion market by 2013. That is not nearly granular enough for a real business plan. You are not really in the Enterprise 2.0 market. Saying "we will get 1% of the $4.6 billion Enterprise 2.0" market is totally meaningless and will simply get you shown the door in the VC office. You are in the market of solving a specific business problem, for a specific type of customer, competing against specific incumbents and startups. That is how you need to build a market size, from the bottom up. This is particularly true for "blue ocean" strategies where the market has not been defined by an incumbent. Building the real world, bottom up market size takes real hard work and detailed market knowledge. Look for a small enough market where you can get 20% and take that to 50% share and then leverage that market to get 10% in another market. Rinse and repeat. It is an old formula, but it works.
  • You need VC, they need you but there is a disconnect. Since 2000, most VC have sent any business plan with the word "enterprise" straight to the trash. With good reason. During the nuclear winter, the enterprise IT market was dead as a dodo. Then the big incumbents got into the consolidation game and it looked like you would count enterprise IT vendors on the fingers of one hand. The cost of entry was high, needing expensive sales teams upfront and the revenue was lumpy and unpredictable. Yech. Better to back a few inexpensive developers building a free service that some big vendor would buy and figure out how to monetize. That was a great game for a while. Most VC now view it as in its final innings at best. There is a shortage of buyers, no IPO market, we are in a cyclical downturn for advertising and in a major funk figuring out how social media can be funded by advertising. So VC need Enterprise 2.0. But they have missed the early winners. Very few of the current Enterprise 2.0 startups are venture backed. This is a disconnect. The early players always find it easier to bootstrap than later vendors. Today you need capital to fund the ramp-up and to build distance from competitors as the Enterprise 2.0 market moves from "below the radar" to "early hype" phase, thus dragging more entrants into every category.
  • Vertical is not the same as Horizontal. Classic Web 2.0 services such as Delicious, YouTube and Skype are geared at mass markets. Anything that is more niche has tended to be called "vertical". That is confusing. Vertical means a specific industry such as banking, healthcare or manufacturing and sub-sets of those industries. Horizontal (applying to any industry) should mean a set of common and linked features used by a specific type of person in the company (e.g. accounts payable by Finance, CRM by Sales and so on). The general rule of thumb has been for vertical ventures to be bootstrapped and eventually rolled up into larger entities. VC tend to view vertical as too limited. Horizontal on the other hand is big enough.
  • Know how to deal with secrecy, structure and control needs. Social Media is about being open, loose, unstructured, informal and fun; no ties allowed. Enterprises are about secrecy, structure and control. Ties show that you are serious and fun is for after work. The ties and fun bit is just style. But secrecy, structure and control is real. If you threaten those, many forces within the enterprise will shut you out. It will be like the red blood cells attacking the foreign virus. On the other hand, if you go along with all the secrecy, structure and control rules of the enterprise you will lose the social media benefits of extended enterprise collaboration and innovation. Many people within enterprises understand this and some of them are in a policy-making position of authority. In general, the trend is towards loose, unstructured, "emergent business networks". So "make the trend your friend", but beware of the very strong forces of opposition and deal positively with their legitimate needs.
  • Conclusion

    What is your position in the Enterprise 2.0 market. Do you work in IT in a large Enterprise? Do you work for a large incumbent Enterprise IT vendor? Do you work for a startup that is going to change the Enterprise world? Are you writing about this rapidly emerging market? Do you have unique insights or research to share? We would love to hear from you in the comments and maybe as a Guest Author. Email us if you're interested in writing for ReadWriteWeb's Enterprise Channel.

    You can subscribe now to our special RSS feed for the Enterprise channel.

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    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/11_things_to_know_about_enterprise_20.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/11_things_to_know_about_enterprise_20.php Enterprise Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:40:00 -0800 Bernard Lunn