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| Why Mobile Ads in Emerging Markets are the Future [INFOGRAPHIC] | |  There are 5.3 billion mobile subscribers around the world, meaning 77% of the world's population uses a phone. The majority of those users -- 3.8 billion or 73% of the group -- live in emerging economies. Yet mobile advertising dollars spent around the world do not begin to compete with traditional platforms or Internet ads. As the Internet spreads throughout the developing world, it's arriving on phones before traditional computers. Some 70% of Internet users in Egypt, 59% in India, 57% in South Africa, 50% in Ghana and 44% in Indonesia get online via mobile phones alone. This Jana infographic poses a question for advertisers -- how will relevant content be delivered via mobile device? One idea: in Brazil, 74% of mobile users said they would like to receive advertisements in their devices in exchange for voice minutes. Do you have an answer to Jana's question? Take a look at the infographic below and share your suggestions for the future of global advertising in the comments. Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, hadynyah |
| 5 Ways to Market Your Brand With Location-Based Networks | | 12:51:52 AM | Brian Honigman |
| 
Brian Honigman is the digital marketing manager at Marc Ecko Enterprises. He is a part of Ecko's marketing and ecommerce team, ensuring a polished brand experience across all channels. Follow him on Twitter @Brian_Honigman. Between the rise in location-based social networks, like Foursquare, and the mobile market's meteoric growth, a new marketing avenue has opened up. Location-based marketing is a nascent frontier, and marketers are clamoring to take advantage of it. Already, about 30% of smartphone owners access social networks via their mobile browser, and that figure will continue to grow, according to an infographic by Microsoft Tag. So, if your marketing plans include location-based networks, below are five ways to get started. 1. Push Notification Integration hocus-focus |
| Instagram: From Zero to $1 Billion in 17 Months [INFOGRAPHIC] | |  When Instagram launched its first app in October 2010, it did not strike most people as the kind of startup that would be acquired for $1 billion. "We were all like, 'what's the big deal? It's just photos and filters," Brian Blau, a Research Director with the Consumer Technology and Markets Group at Gartner, tells Mashable. But in retrospect, he adds, "There's something to be said around that simplicity." The app had almost 200,000 users within the first week. By February, it had 1.75 million users, and three months later that number had jumped to 4 million. By the time Facebook acquired Instagram on Monday, the startup's iPhone app had been downloaded 30 million times. In the same week, its six-day-old Android app hit the 5 million mark. Meanwhile, Instagram's valuation has shot up with similarly impressive speed. Facebook acquired Instagram just as the startup was closing a round of funding at a $500 million valuation. Instagram's $1 billion price tag means it literally doubled its valuation within a week. Designers at Visually have compiled an infographic that documents the startup's journey from photo app to $1 billion startup using, appropriately, Instagram photos.
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| Time Out New York Makes a Major Bet on ECommerce | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 10:01 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  Online retailers have become a growing threat to lifestyle magazines over the past few years, hiring away influential editors and building their own magazine-like interactive spreads. Now magazines are fighting back -- by establishing online shops of their own. Time Out New York, a weekly print and digital magazine covering film, theater, fashion, food and other local happenings in the New York City area, has announced that it won't just be advertising tickets to shows and other events; it will also begin selling them. The publication introduced a redesigned website and city guide apps for iPad and iPhone devices Tuesday, through which readers will be able to purchase tickets. This isn't a simple affiliate scheme; Time Out New York will be managing its own inventory, a spokesperson tells Mashable. The publication has pursued affiliate schemes as well. Visitors will be able to book restaurant reservations on the site through a relationship with OpenTable. The magazine will also begin selling discounts on events and services through partnerships with daily deal providers. The drive to ecommerce is being driven by investors, the publication indicated in a statement. Oakley Capital Investments, a private equity fund, took a majority stake in the Time Out Group last year. The company has since made more than 60 digital hires, and partnered with digital and mobile startups including Foursquare. We expect the move into online retail will become a trend among lifestyle magazines seeking to compensate for declining print ad revenues. Many magazines have already incorporated scannable 2D barcodes into their print editions in an attempt to drive sales at advertisers' mobile websites. Others have partnered with retailers in affiliate and promotional schemes. Vogue, for instance, sold merchandise directly from its website through a partnership with fashion retail startup Moda Operandi during New York Fashion Week last September. Image courtesy of Flickr, khawkins04 |
| YouTube Lets Partners Make Money from Paid Livestream | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:55 PM | Kate Freeman |
|  Next time you have guests at your home for a live TV event, you might be streaming it from YouTube. Just don't expect it to be free. YouTube announced it would add the option for partners to monetize on YouTube Live, its year-old streaming service, with advertisements or other paid options. In a blog post, YouTube Partner Product Manager Varun Talwar joked they considered renting a bouncy castle or hiring a magician to celebrate YouTube Live's first birthday. "Neither of these seemed just right to celebrate the millions of you who've seen live videos," Talwar wrote, "so we went with our favorite gifts: new features from our tireless engineers." YouTube Live lets viewers watch live events, while companies and brands grow their following -- and now, make a profit. This means live content will be accessible through a paid livestream option. "A live event can be claimed in the new video manager like any other video and monetized with in-stream ads or paid options where you can set price by country," Talwar writes. You can also preview live events before they actually go live, and view real-time analytics that show at-the-moment viewers according to geography and format. New Wirecast software lets YouTube partners produce and stream professional-quality live events directly from a desktop. Add files, images and other overlays to enhance the program. For those who are livestreaming enabled, simply download Wirecase for YouTube. What do you think about this new feature? How much would you pay to watch a big, live television event on YouTube? Tell us in the comments. |
| How Instagram's $1 Billion Sale Helps Other Photo-Sharing Startups | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 7:17 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  When Facebook decided to acquire Instagram for a whopping $1 billion on Monday, the two companies weren't the only ones with reason to pop open a bottle of champagne. The acquisition has lent legitimacy to a whole genre of startups -- photo-sharing apps -- previously accused of being a fad. "Every time we went and talked to investors, they always complained about how low the exits have been for photo startups," explains Andres Blank, co-founder of Pixable, that aggregates important photos from across a user's social networks. Before Instagram, the most recent photo startup to make a notable exit was Photobucket, which was acquired by MySpace's parent company for $250 million in 2007. Now Blank and other photo startup founders can point to Instagram's $1 billion exit as proof that there's money in photo apps. As Blank puts it: "Video startups have YouTube. Now photo startups have Instagram." Brian Blau, a Research Director for the Consumer Technology and Markets Group at Gartner, agreed that the acquisition puts most photo startups in a better position than they were last week. "It's going to open up the eyes of these bigger companies that want to do something similar to Facebook," he says. "It just makes it seem a little more legitimate than it did before ... I wouldn't be surprised if you see more similar acquisitions in the future." "Video startups have Youtube, now photo startups have Instagram."Large technology companies have demonstrated similar shopping preferences in the past. Google, Facebook and Skype, for instance, all bought group messaging apps last year. Could photo-sharing apps be this year's flavor? "It encouraged us when we saw it," says Twitpic founder Noah Everett. "It validates what we've been wanting to do lately." Twitpic, a website and API that makes it easy to post photos to Twitter, will unveil a standalone app in the next few weeks. While Everett says there are currently no plans for filters, the new app, like Instagram, will combine social features and photos. Where Instagram encouraged sharing across a range of networks, Twitpic's new app will integrate closely with Twitter. Comments and photo tag notifications, for instance, will be delivered both through the app and as @ reply Twitter messages. "I wouldn't be surprised if you see more similar acquisitions in the future."Everett doesn't say Twitpic is aiming for a Twitter acquisition ("I think Facebook has more resources than Twitter," he notes), but it's developing what sounds like a good candidate nonetheless. Lucas Buick, the co-founder of another photo filter app called Hipstamatic, is less optimistic than Blank, Everett and Blau about the influence Facebook's purchase has on the startup photo space in general. "It's always been legitimate, which is why Facebook made this move," he says. Maybe so, but it's hard to imagine the string of articles from 2011 that have titles such as "Are photo-sharing Apps Like Instagram and Path Just a Fad?" running this year. It's always been legitimate, which is why Facebook made this move.Instagram's acquisition is far from a universal stamp of approval for all photo startups -- the app never did, for instance, figure out how to make money from its service-- but Facebook's purchase of the service does suggest that something as simple as social photos with filters can be valuable (whether or not that value is the result of a bubble is up for debate). "Before there were two examples to be made," Blank says. "The first was that photo startups don't have big exits. The second is 'where is the business model?' At least Instagram can be the example for the first." |
| Instagram for Android Hits 5 Million Downloads in 6 Days | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 12:04 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  One day after Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion, the photo-sharing startup doesn't really need another excuse for celebration. But it has one: Its six-day-old Android app has already crossed the five-million download benchmark. The long-awaited Android version of Instagram's popular iOS app was a success from the beginning (an "instasuccess," if you must). Within the first 24 hours after the app launched last Wednesday, it had more than 1 million users. While the app's momentum has slowed slightly, it continues to be downloaded at an impressive pace. Instagram for Android is currently the third most popular free app on Google Play and the most popular app that isn't made by Google. The startup's iOS app launched in October 2010. It took seven months for that version to reach 4 million downloads, according to Bloomberg. The app has now been downloaded more than 30 million times. Instagram's Android momentum likely helped set the startup's impressive $1 billion price tag. In addition to acquiring a huge presence on Apple devices and a location tagging system people actually use, Facebook now has one of the most successfully launched apps on Google's operating system sitting in its portfolio. |
| Microsoft and Nokia Begin Massive Marketing Push Behind Lumia 900 | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:16 AM | Samantha Murphy |
|  On the heels of putting on a free Nicki Minaj concert in Times Square on Friday, the big marketing push behind the Lumia 900 smartphone went into high gear this week in New York City. To draw attention to the Nokia Lumia 900 -- the first U.S. Windows Phone to boast a high-speed LTE network connection -- Microsoft set up an event in Madison Square Park on Monday to give people a chance to check out the new device. The Lumia 900 (which costs $100 with a two-year contract) debuted on Easter Sunday and is yesterday was listed as the number one smartphone on Amazon. Nokia and Windows aim to differentiate the device in the marketplace by highlighting its LTE network connection, which is far faster than the iPhone's speed capabilities. New Yorkers who participated in a two-minute demo of the new Lumia 900 device or HTC Titan II device, which also runs on the LTE network, were given a ticket to win "time-saver" prizes. Those randomly awarded special tickets could tap on an enlarged Lumia 900 touchscreen and win prizes that save them time, from a gift certificate for a local dog walker or having a member of the event staff wait in line for them at popular burger joint Shake Shack, located behind the event space. SEE ALSO: Nokia and Microsoft Take on the iPhone - By Going Local "Since the LTE network is so fast, the event focuses on how the Lumia 900 saves you time with its fast speeds," an event coordinator told Mashable. "It's been a big success so far." An event employee with a microphone also told people in the park that the device runs "much faster than the iPhone" and that it's the best phone on the market. Although the device launched on Sunday, it was reportedly difficult to purchase the Lumia 900 as nearly all 39 AT&T stores located near Times Square were either closed for Easter Sunday, according to the New York Times. To create buzz for the launch, Nokia hired Nicki Minaj to put on a free live show in the middle of Times Square on Friday. She performed several songs on a Nokia-branded stage, surrounded by billboards that also promoted the new device. In addition to shout outs about Nokia and the Lumia 900, Minaj also filmed a remix of her song hit "Starships" that has already been watched more than 300,000 times on YouTube. Minaj also promoted her new album "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded." In addition, Nokia launched last week a nationwide marketing campaign called smartphonbetatest that lead up to the launch. The strategy implied that other smartphones were only in beta before the launch of the Lumia 900. However, the site appeared to suffer from poor planning -- it counted down to zero several times before launch day, only to have more hours added to the clock each time. What do you think of the marketing around the Lumia 900? Are you impressed? Let us know in the comments. |
| How One Startup Is Digitizing the Business of Personal Finance | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 9:43 AM | Alex Fitzpatrick |
|  This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business. The world of personal finance is slowly experiencing an Internet revolution, but many people still rely on the old brick-and-mortar shops for advice about investing, mortgages, retirement accounts and other complex financial processes. Personal Capital, a California-based startup, is seeking to change all that by fusing the worlds of finance and technology. The Mint-like funds tracker provides services catered to people who manage a wide variety of finances -- a mortgage, a retirement fund and so on. And Personal Capital also offers customer-focused financial advice over the phone, via email and through video chat. Mashable spoke with Personal Capital's CEO, Bill Harris, to talk about how his company is disrupting the entire financial industry and bringing everything online. Personal Capital's Philosophy Personal Capital, says Harris, isn't meant for the person in their twenties with a basic job, savings account and credit card: "Once you've got complex finances, this is where we can help." The company is going after a "relatively small" group of people that have to pay close attention to their financial lives. So far, the company has 10,000 people representing more than $2 billion in assets; it raised $27 million before launch. "The mission that we're on now is to revolutionize how financial services are delivered in this country," says Harris. "Financial services are being delivered in a way they've always been delivered for the past 50 years -- predominately through physical distribution channels, like brick-and-mortar bank branches, adviser offices, paper processes, things like that." Harris says the key is to ditch the shops and bring everything to the Internet. "We have the point of view that this is one of the two industries that be the most fundamentally changed by the Internet," says Harris. "Many industries will be changed, but I think the two most completely revolutionized businesses are media and finance -- with both, you can do an entire transaction virtually." "Amazon still needs little brown trucks to deliver your goods," added Harris. "But with sales and media, entire transactions in both directions can be quicker, easier, less costly, more efficient and at the end of the day, better if they're all electronic." Driving Value Harris says his scrappy financial startup can compete with the Charles Schwabs and Bank of Americas of the world for two reasons: the novelty and convenience of the service, and the difficult transition that existing financial institutions must make in order to compete in the digital sphere. Harris' team offers financial advice that can be delivered over the phone, through email or via a live video chat. If customers use the video chat feature, Personal Capital has a "screen-share" mode, which guarantees an adviser and a customer are both on the same page -- literally. The video chat mode also works on the company's iPad app, via Apple's FaceTime. "Most people need and want an interpersonal relationship, a human-to-human bond to discuss and simplify this, and we do that," says Harris. "We deliver that not by sitting in a shopping mall or some office where you have to make an appointment -- we deliver that virtually. If you're on the web, the adviser can co-browse and see exactly what you're seeing, so you're having a face-to-face relationship while you're looking at your data from anywhere, at any time." Moving into the future, Harris' two goals including serving "as many customers as they can," and doing more "actual asset management" for those users. He says he'd love to see 100,000 users with $10 billion in assets on board, then one million users with $100 billion in assets. More Small Business Resources From OPEN Forum: - Should Small Businesses Follow Everyone Back on Twitter? - Are You Falling into the Pricing Trap? - How to Innovate for Top Social Media Sites Image courtesy of iStock, Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto, PashaIgnatov |
| Today's Top Stories: Sony Forecasts $6.4 Billion Loss, Facebook Buys Instagram | | Tuesday, April 10, 2012 8:39 AM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories. Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion Reactions to yesterday's news that Facebook plans to acquire Instagram for $1 billion are still piling up. While we hope that Facebook won't ruin Instagram, we already dug out some alternatives to the popular photo sharing service. Sony Forecasts $6.4 Billion Loss Sony has once again changed its forecast for the fiscal 2011, announcing it will take a $6.4 billion net loss, more than doubling its previous $2.9 billion loss forecast. The additional losses are "primarily due to the establishment of valuation allowances against certain deferred tax assets, predominantly in the U.S," Sony claims. Iran to Permanently Shut Down Internet The Iranian government plans to completely cut off access from the internet to its citizens and establish a national intranet within five months, the IBF reports. In order to "clean up" the internet, the Iranian authorities will deny its people access to services such as Google, Gmail, Google Plus, Yahoo and Hotmail; the only accessible foreign sites will be the ones that appear on the government's "white list." Image courtesy of iStockphoto, mattjeacock |
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