Camera, Facebook's brand new photo sharing app, is built to do precisely the same thing as its wildly popular stepsister, but it feeds directly into Facebook rather than into Instagram's walled garden, population 40 million and growing. It may not officially have Instagram DNA, but Facebook Camera offers up a palette of 14 filters to please any budding mobile photog, though they sport more literal labels ("Neon" and "Golden") than in Instagram's own moody toolkit.
Tinker with your photo (you know you want to crop it into a square, go ahead), apply a filter to set the tone, tag a friend and send it straight to Facebook. Like Instagram photos on Facebook, it'll appear on your Timeline at full-width - and fast. Facebook Camera, which was built independently of Kevin Systrom and co., runs circles around the regular Facebook app in terms of speed and navigability. If you mainly use Facebook to share photos with friends, Facebook Camera is a sleek, lightweight way to beam your pictures to the social network - but it's no Instagram.
Or Is It?
Facebook Camera takes more than a few cues from the photo sharing service we all know and love, but it's got a leg up with that whole 90-plus-million-strong active userbase. But why did Facebook make its very own Instagram at all? Facebook has been building this app for the better part of a year, since well before it successfully put the moves on Instagram. In fact, at least some photo filter features were ready to roll last August, according to engineers involved with the project.
Facebook couldn't just sit on its hands while Instafever spread like so much Toaster-tinted wildfire. As the company made a move for the photo sharing app, it was smart to develop its own in parallel - it certainly has the resources to do so. Facebook Camera was insurance that the king of social won't look like a lumbering giant next to the hot photo filtering craze that has all the social media whippersnappers in a tizzy. Instagram innovated, and gave us something we didn't know we needed until there we were, huddled over an iPhone screen tweaking a teensy square photo with the zeal of a less digital artist. As ReadWriteWeb Editor-at-Large Dan Frommer puts it, "Facebook bought Instagram because it’s doing something new and different that’s special; because it represented the biggest existing threat to Facebook." It wanted to assure us that, as the true sovereign of social, it can meet the evolving needs of its vast kingdom - there's no need to let our eyes wander.
Is Facebook's new app Insta-redundant? The polished little in-house photo app - which was developed independently of the Instagram team - must have been burning a hole in Facebook's pocket. And the company might as well siphon off Instagrammers while it watches the clock - they'll all end up in the same place anyhow.
Beyond Instagram, Facebook Camera also throws some elbows in the direction of Google+'s slick photo features. Google+ is still floundering when it comes to engaging users, but the site has a dedicated base of photogs who enjoy tools like Instant Upload and the large lightbox photo view, which Facebook mixed into its own recipe in February.
Camera isn't Facebook's only spinoff app. Last year it released Messenger, another service that serves its purpose far better than the Facebook app itself. Just like with the ill-fated Pool Party and the advent of Google+, there likely isn't room for two.
It's hard to say what Facebook will do with its new set of photo sharing nesting dolls. Once the Instagram buy goes through (assuming it's smooth sailing), the social giant will have the choice of integrating the two, or deep sixing one altogether. And after Instagram's loyalist outcry, it'd be wise to handle both the popular product and the brand with kid gloves. May the best-loved app win.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Why Facebook Just Launched Its Own Instagram
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Why Every Company Should Adopt Twitter's Internet Patent Agreement. @jzb via @RWW
Twitter has raised the bar for recruiting the best and brightest developers, and without any real costs. Instead, the company's Innovator's Patent Agreement (IPA) appeals to a cause near and dear to many of today's best developers: Refusing to weaponize software patents.
The IPA published today by Twitter (on GitHub, no less) should ensure that Twitter can amass a defensive collection of software patents without giving its developers cause for alarm.
If you're wondering how developers feel about software patents, Andy Baio's take is instructive. Baio, a former Yahoo, helped Yahoo file several patents and has lived to regret it. "Yahoo's lawsuit against Facebook is an insult to the talented engineers who filed patents with the understanding they wouldn't be used for evil. Betraying that trust won't be forgotten, but I doubt it matters anymore. Nobody I know wants to work for a company like that."
Pragmatism Meets Idealism
As much as many developers would like to see software patents abolished altogether, it's unlikely that's going to happen. It's certainly not likely enough that a company like Twitter can ignore the possibility that it will be a target for software patent suits.
Twitter can't simply sit out the patent arms race, as much as it might like to. But what it can do is strike a policy that both protects the company and assures developers their inventions and cooperation won't be used against them. Thus, the IPA.
A defensive patent portfolio, that developers can be assured will be used only to defend against software patent assaults or with their permission, strikes the perfect balance. The company doesn't have to antagonize its employees, and it doesn't have to be left totally vulnerable to lawsuits.
As Yahoo has shown, an assurance that patents will be used defensively has to be put down in writing. Management changes, sometimes very rapidly. A company's position on software patents can flip overnight - so developers can't rely on verbal assurances that software patents won't be used offensively.
Why Every Company Should Adopt the IPA
The agreement put forth by Twitter, or something very much like it, should become industry standard for a number of reasons:
1. Companies that adopt the IPA are going to have a competitive edge over companies that do not. If a developer has the option to work on two interesting projects, with similar pay and perks, the knowledge that their work won't be used against them in the future is likely to be a persuasive tie-breaker.
2. Companies that adopt the IPA are less likely to need incentive plans to convince developers to file for patents. As Baio wrote, Yahoo helped amass its arsenal with a "patent incentive program" that awarded "sizable bonuses to everyone who took the time to apply." With an IPA in place, employers can make a much stronger case to employees that they should help with patent applications.
3. It could ultimately reduce the number of pure-play patent trolls that buy up software patents from failing and desperate companies. What's the only thing worse than a competitor with a patent portfolio? A litigation company with no products but patent suits and every incentive to file nuisance actions, with little downside for failure.
4. The IPA can act as a poison pill for the patent portfolios of companies that don't succeed. They can still sell off patents for companies that wish to have a defensive portfolio - but the patents couldn't be used offensively without the inventor's permission.
The Next Step
Twitter's IPA is a good step, but the company should go one step further. Not long ago, a group of companies that were involved in Linux development created the Open Invention Network (OIN). The idea is simple: Form a patent pool that lets any company attacked use the patents for defense, but the companies in the pool cannot sue another for patent infringement.
A larger patent pool is in order, and Twitter could get the ball rolling. Any company that offers the IPA to its employees for all current and future patents should be able to join the patent pool. Assuming Twitter gets some traction with the IPA, it could start a trend that helps curtail the systemic abuse of software patents.
Ultimately, that's good for Twitter - and for any company that looks to make its money by innovation rather than litigation. And that's good for the entire industry.
Article originally publised on ReadWriteWeb
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
3 Twitter Rumors and What They Could Mean for Brands
David Clarke is CEO and co-founder of BGT Partners, a 2011 and 2010 Ad Age Best Place to Work in the U.S. BGT creates interactive marketing and technology solutions for global corporations that strengthen brands, develop more engaging relationships and transform businesses.With increased competition for ad dollars, Twitter is making a big push this year to become more attractive to advertisers. It has invested in a redesign, as well as brand pages, but that may not be all the social network plans to unveil.
According to a recent Ad Age report, the company is looking to add new experiences to its platform, in the hopes that the move will entice brands to spend more ad dollars.
Although Twitter hasn’t officially confirmed these rumors, it’s worth taking them seriously. See below for the three possible changes, and what each could mean for brands.
SEE ALSO: 6 Successful Twitter Hashtag Campaigns 1. Open Platform
Facebook and Apple transformed their businesses by opening their platforms to third-party developers. The move allowed independent developers to create new ways for consumers to engage with brands. As a result, we now have multi-million dollar businesses built around these apps.If the rumors are right, Twitter is heading in the same direction by opening its platform to developers.
An open Twitter platform would allow brands to create deeper interactions with consumers through custom experiences. This would not only be an opportunity for developers, but also for brands — especially those with strong Twitter presences. For example, if you’re using Twitter as a customer service channel, then a customer service app could potentially streamline the way you handle customer support.
That said, apps on Twitter will face inherent challenges. The Twitter stream is the main attraction, and most people don’t visit brand pages directly. Plus, popular Twitter browsers such as TweetDeck and HootSuite are built around the Twitter stream, which deals another blow to the power of brand pages. Perhaps custom apps can find a way to drive more traffic to brand pages, but it seems doubtful.
2. T-Commerce
Social commerce was hailed as the next big thing in ecommerce. Several brands developed ecommerce integration on the Facebook platform, hoping people would want to purchase while on Facebook, but it never really took off. Gap, JC Penny, and Nordstrom closed down their Facebook shops because customers preferred to shop on the main websites. This probably had more to do with the poor Facebook ecommerce user experience than with Facebook itself. Most of these early f-commerce attempts were simply developed without an understanding of how Facebook could add value to the shopping experience.Now, Twitter is rumored to try its luck with social ecommerce for brand pages. Will it be successful?
Fundamentally Twitter has to succeed where Facebook failed. Twitter ecommerce, or t-commerce, has to create a significant added value to make it more compelling than shopping from a traditional web store.
It’s likely that Twitter’s ecommerce solution will include a deep integration with Square, the mobile payment company Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey established in 2009. It’s possible that t-commerce will be a mobile-only service that uses location-based technology and one-click payments with your Twitter name. That would add significant value to Twitter’s mobile user base, especially when you consider that 50% of Twitter’s users are accessing Twitter on mobile devices.
3. Contests and Sweepstakes
Lastly, Twitter is rumored to introduce contests and sweepstakes for brand pages to create deeper brand engagement. That said, brands have been pushing contests and sweepstakes on Twitter for some time, and given the viral capabilities available with retweeting and hashtags, it will continue to happen.Will an official change by Twitter be groundbreaking? Probably not, but it’s likely that these changes will allow brands to more efficiently manage and execute campaigns on this social network.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, matspersson0
Saturday, March 31, 2012
How much does Pinterest actually make?
What kind of revenue numbers would justify Pinterest’s $200 million valuation? Atlantic writer Alexis Madrigal and others have used back-of-the-envelope math to explain this valuation. In his article, “Why Pinterest Is Playing Dumb About Making Money,” Madrigal puts Pinterest’s annual revenue at $45 million a year. Based on statistical modeling, I believe there is only a .25 percent chance that Pinterest is making that much money.
Considering all possible scenarios — not just the most optimistic ones — let me show you why and how much Pinterest earns.
Madrigal calculates Pinterest revenue from its only known source — affiliate fees from SkimLinks. “So, Pinterest has 10 million users,” writes Madrigal. “Let’s say that the average across all of them is that they buy items valued at $10 in a month through affiliate links on Pinterest. That’s $100,000,000 of sales for which Pinterest would get credit. That’s $3.75 million in monthly revenue, or $45 million of annual revenue.”
There are two problems with this calculation. One, no one verified whether Pinterest generates enough traffic to generate 10 million transactions per month. Two, revenue numbers based on broad assumptions have uncertainties that are not quantifiable. For example, how likely is it that each user is generating $10 a month?
Let’s look at the first problem. What kind of traffic should Pinterest generate to websites to deliver 10 million transactions per month? According to the Top 500 Guide: Profiles and Statistics of America’s 500 Largest Retail Web Sites Ranked by Annual Sales, the average conversion rate of website visits to sales is 4.3 percent. That means Pinterest must garner 232 million visits to result in 10 million transactions.
How does that compare to total traffic to all online stores? Data collected by Complete says online stores receive a total of 662 million visits a week, or 1,434 million visits a month. This means that in order to justify Madrigal’s estimates, Pinterest must account for 16.1 percent of all online retail traffic. That’s a tall order. According to Shareaholic, Pinterest only drives 3.6 percent of referral traffic. It is safe to say that Madrigal’s numbers grossly overestimate Pinterest’s page views, transactions, and hence its revenues.
Regarding the second problem with revenue models based on assumptions, let me clarify that it is not possible to avoid assumptions when it comes to privately held companies. However, we can start with smaller, more granular and better assumptions, and we can use statistical models to quantify the uncertainties in them. Instead of making such assumptions as 10 million transactions per month and $10 average transaction size, let’s build out a model from its components.
Sales from Pinterest links = Number of transactions/year X number of active users X transaction size
Pinterest revenue = Sales from Pinterest links X percentage of affiliate fees
Each variable in these two equations are unknowns that must be estimated. Instead of assuming an average value for these numbers, we estimate the low and high values that we’re 90 percent confident about. To be 90 percent confident about an estimate, we need to have a low and high value such that there is only 10 percent chance that the real value falls outside of the range.
Here are the numbers I used based on my research.
90 percent confident Low
High
Number of transactions per user per year 1
18
Number of active users 1,000,000
5,000,000
Sales per transaction $2
$18
Affiliate fee % 2%
4%
(Note: Pinterest has more than 10 million registered users. I generously estimated that they have one million to five million active users who click on product links and make at least one to 18 purchases a year.)
There are two advantages to this approach. First, we are estimating many smaller numbers. And secondly, we are quantifying our uncertainty in our estimates. As we gain more information about any one of the components, we can refine the estimates.
Once we have this range for each component, then we can calculate Pinterest’s revenue numbers using a statistical modeling method called the Monte Carlo method. It’s like imagining living your life 10,000 times to find out how many different lives have certain outcomes. For Pinterest, we’re trying to discover how many different scenarios yield different revenue numbers.
The results are stunning:
- Thirty-three percent chance Pinterest makes more than $10 million a year
- Twenty-five percent chance it makes more than $12 million a year
- One percent chance it makes more than $36 million a year
- Less than .25 percent chance it makes the $45 million number quoted by Madrigal
- Considering all possible scenarios, the expected value of its revenue is just $9 million.
A $200 million valuation based on high revenue numbers that have such a low chance of being true is a risky bet. Clearly, the VC firms focused on the most optimistic scenario — regardless of its chances — and didn’t account for the entire spectrum of scenarios. But that’s business as usual in the Valley.
Rags Srinivasan is a management professional who specializes in strategic marketing. He recently published, “To Group Coupon or Not,” and he blogs at Iterative Path and tweets at @rags.
Featured image courtesy of Flickr user Mykl Roventine.
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
SRK in "The Good Vs The Bad" - Ra.One
The Sunday finally turned out to be my turn to watch Ra.One after a long super Diwali vacation I had.
Although being negativily publicized and criticized for its exaggerated IMC plan, the VFX applied, The second half being boring and what not, I believe the Movie stands upfront in all the aspects of a complete Bollywood Blockbuster. I will never go with collections it has made, but the way it has portrayed itself - is a rare commoditized combination of the ultra-modern graphics, the Indian Niceness coupled with a few fun loving scenes. The storyline makes you feel that we still believe in making this world a nicer place with the essence of Good winning over bad. Obviously, we have our own views on how should the movie would have been but I can say that SRK again has done a marvellous job as Shekhar as well as G.ONE.
On a lighter note, for me, the best thing happened in the movie was SRK taking my name for at least 100 times... Pratik...Prateek... It was just great and I feel honored to have the name....Kinda blessed!
We can so easily criticize something which we have not made and so easily get influenced with what others say... I would rather plead all of you to think - honestly about the movie and respect the kinda art that they have put foreword, the kinda message that they want to say and the kinda actors who have acted brilliantly.
The IMC plan was one of its kind and only King Khan can do such heroics. He has already been proved as a Super Marketer when we saw his team KKR in the inaugural IPL was the only team to make profits even after being right below on Leaderboard. Not to forget, it did repeat his profit making in the rest of the IPLs too.
Very few people in the country would probably have the privilege to have a Brand Persona that he has in India as well as around the Globe.Being an MBA student it only makes me feel proud that my favorite actor - also happens to be the God of Marketing.
