Will Geolocation Services Ever Boost Your Business?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

The web world is a whirl for small business owners, especially in urban areas. First there was Citysearch, which did its own online reviews. Then Yelp, in which users wrote reviews — not always good. In 2005, business owners that had just figured out how to make a webpage found themselves making profiles on MySpace or Facebook. Now just when many small business were just beginning to feel good about Twitter, there’s a wave of new services for smartphone users, called geolocation applications.

Today there are three primary apps: Foursquare, MyTown and Gowalla. All cater mostly to iPhone users. As users move about in the physical world, these apps track where they are, so that they can earn points for visiting places, like a business, public spaces or even their workplace. Businesses are already using these apps to promote themselves. Here are some details on each:

Foursquare — Users or players get “badges” for visiting places, and can compete for a top spot — the “Mayor” of a particular location. Some small businesses have begun giving Mayors discounts, because having the Mayor badge means they visit frequently.

Gowalla — Similar to Foursquare, Gowalla is a game that also gives users virtual items that add an extra spin to the badge concept. Gowalla is partnering with big companies to promote them with branded items.

MyTown — For the moment the largest geoloco app, MyTown has almost two million users. In this game, users can “buy” real world properties then charge their friends rent for visiting, similar to Monopoly. This game is also partnering with businesses to offer virtual items. Players want these virtual goods because it helps them advance in the game. And businesses want to give them because it incentivizes players to visit.

For now, small businesses are still trying to figure out where they fit in. But it won’t take long. By the end of the year, geoloco apps will probably be a notable new marketing channel for local businesses in some areas. Areas with large populations of twenty-somethings and lots of smartphone users — like the Bay Area — will see the most growth in geolocation advertising.

For a long time people have predicted that local businesses will draw nearby shoppers by, for instance, sending a coupon to their phone as they walk by the shop; a geoloco game can alert its users to such copuons. It can also identify your existing loyal customers, and help you give them a reason to come back.

The promotions aren’t limited to brick-and-mortar stores selling physical goods, either. Even a virtual business can get some play. For example, The Travel Channel has partnered with Gowalla and MyTown to give out virtual items that promote a new show, Food Wars. Whenever users visit a food-oriented location, like grocery or restaurant they receive virtual good relating to the show.

For most businesses, these services are still in the “watch-and-learn” category–they could be a good place to advertise, but it is still too soon to tell. But if you run a bar, a coffee shop or a restaurant in a college town like Berkley, it’s worth looking into now.

You can contact the author at press@janusnetworks.com

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ACAP: Can It Help Monetize Content Online?

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

ACAP, or Automated Content Access Protocol, is one of the latest buzzwords in the debate about how the Internet is affecting traditional publishers. The protocol, being developed by the World Association of Newspapers, the European Publishers Council and International Publishers Association allows for publishers to easily communicate to search engines what content they want those search engines to have access to. It has gained attention since Rupert Murdoch said he was thinking of locking his newspapers away from the crawling eyes of Google and also when Microsoft reportedly pledged about $200,000 to fund development of ACAP.

The idea is that by controlling what search engines, specifically Google, can index, publishers will be better able to monetize their content online.

Regardless of if that goal is successful, something like ACAP is a useful tool for anyone who, for whatever reason, doesn’t want part or all of their content accessible to search engines. The proponents of ACAP admit hiding content from search engines has been possible since the beginning through a protocol called robots.txt, but claim ACAP modernizes and expands on robots.txt. ACAP accepts instructions in plane language and then converts them into instructions to web-crawlers automatically. Purportedly, ACAP also allows publishers more granular control over what content can be accessed.

But better control over search engines can only be a small part of better content monetizaton. It is well reported that it is delinting ad revenue, not readership, that is causing the problems for big, traditional media outlets. They simply can’t demand the same ad rates online or in print that the once could. The sheer amount of ad real estate created by the web, has driven down the price of advertising in print and online. Creating a closed environment for your content doesn’t, in and of itself, raise your ad rates.

Of course, the proponents of ACAP probably plan to implement a subscription service. Yet traditionally subscription rates have been a small portion of newspaper and magazine revenue compared to that of advertising. This is not to say a subscription model can’t work, just that probably rates would have to significantly higher than what consumers have been used to paying. If the content is unique and compelling enough, a critical mass of users may agree to the rates, but that is uncharted territory.

The media landscape is still changing quickly. A couple of years ago, paying for journalistic articles was largely considered unreasonable and unnecessary. But now that so many papers and magazines have shuttered, their are murmurs from many that 24 hour blogo-twitter-sphere often feels…well, a bit trivial. I think there is a growing group of people that would consider paying for access to a lot of high quality journalistic articles online. But the value must be clear–any subscription service must keep them informed above and beyond what they can get elsewhere, access must be easy and the cost must be reasonable. If all three of those criteria are met, a big if, than ACAP could help usher in a new way of thinking about, and accessing online content.

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Facebook: A Small Business Strategy

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

The first step is to set up a Fan Page. There are a couple of different ways to promote your business in Facebook, but the most common is the Business Fan Page. I recommend you go with this over the Business Account, because it has less restrictions.

Why should you set up a Business Fan Page? I know what you are thinking–that you already have a website and blog and Facebook is just place where 20 somethings post photos and throw sheep. Wrong! It’s best to think of Facebook as a sort of Internet in side the Internet. Basically, a HUGE amount of people of all ages are spending a HUGE amount of time on Facebook doing all manor of things including shopping for goods and services. Why wouldn’t you want to be there too?

Best of all, Google thinks highly of Facebook fan pages in search results.

Creating a Fan Page takes just a few clicks, but you should add as much content as possible including photos, logos, videos, descriptions and links to your website and blog. You’ll also have to keep your Fan Page active with fresh content, but short and sweet is fine.

You will want to pick the best Facebook URL for your business. Once you pick it, you can never change it. Almost all Fan Pages are www.facebook.com/businessname. This is fine and may, in fact, be perfect for your business. But you might want to consider adding the city where you are located and some other word about what type of business you are. For instance, if you are a hair salon called Snips in San Francisco, consider: www.facebook.com/snips.salon.sanfrancisco or something similar.

You will want to connect your Facebook and twitter accounts so that your tweets will appear as status updates on your Fan Page. You should also engage your Facebook community individually at times, because they are different mediums with different kinds of engagement and you don’t want your Fan Page to be just your twitter stream.

So now you’ve got a compelling Fan Page, how do you get fans? The first step is to leverage the customers, contacts and promotional tools you have already. Put a Facebook badge on your website, tweet about your Fan Page every so often, tell your customers in your newsletter, put the URL on your business cards and promotional materials. Send an email asking your contacts to join: tell them about all the content you have put up and ask them to check it out. It is also good to encourage your customers to join you on Facebook and write reviews. A simple “Hey, if you enjoyed doing business with us, writing a us a review on Facebook would be great.” will suffice. You can also offer discounts or extras to customers who write reviews.

The last step is to set up a hyper targeted Facebook ad campaign. Facebook ads work similar to Google Adwords, but you bid on targets (the best audience of your ad) instead of keywords. You can select targets by location, age, sex, education, occupation and more. I recommend starting with a small budget, a tight
target and several different ads. See what happens. Experiment. Learn and eventually increase your budget.

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Google Navigator

By Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Google has released what promises to be fierce competition to older, more established devices in their Google Maps Navigation cellular app. Designed to work on their Android platform, the app connects through your cell network to deliver real time navigation, similar to a number of apps on the iPhone. The difference, though, is in the details.

With Google Navigation, your phone gets a lot more forgiving. For instance, you could type in “nearest Pete’s Coffee house” and Google will figure out that you meant “Peet’s Coffee & Tea”, then locate the nearest one and start giving turn by turn directions in real time. You could also type “Coffee Shop” and wind up at the nearest coffee shop known to Google. With Google Navigator search and interpretive technology, you can search by business name, address, place or just a type of business – like a coffee shop or towing company.

Another trick feature is the voice-response search. Since locations like “Guggenheim Museum” can be difficult, or even lethal, to type while driving, Google devised a better way: just ask your phone to navigate you to the Guggenheim. Pronunciation may still be an issue, but once you get that worked out the phone interprets your speech and searches for it–automatically bringing up the best result and navigating you to it. Since it is connected to the Internet through Google, you can even ask things like “Navigate to the Kandinsky exhibit” – even if you don’t know where that is exactly. Incidentally, the Kandinsky exhibit is at the Guggenheim, where you were already headed.

It also includes real time traffic data along your route in three colors, green yellow or red. With the push of a button, the application will find you an alternate route to avoid heavy traffic.

The app incorporates some of the signature features from Google Earth and Maps, like a satellite view and layered displays of ATMs, Banks, Restaurants, Gas Stations and Parking. The ability to see actual overhead photographic information of your route without altering the route display is a nice advantage for drivers over the TomTom or Garmin units. With available Google Streetview, you can read the actual signs you’ll be seeing in the next few miles and see what it all looks like at ground level.

Google is offering this application at the cost of your data package, that is to say, no additional cost.

Despite its advantages, Google Maps Navigation has limitations. While Internet connectivity and “smart” features like voice command, step by step directions and instant access to Google Streetview may seem to make Google Navigator far superior to traditional car based GPS navigation, it is unlikely that we will see Garmin and TomTom close up shop in the next few weeks. First of all, it will only work when you have a solid data connection. While the Verizon network is solid, it still won’t work everywhere. If you are touring Colorado on US 550, Google Navigator could leave you lost, while the GPS based Garmin will get you where you need to go.

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Soonr:Collaboration in the Cloud

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks
Google Docs is a great, simple office suite in the cloud. It works perfectly for a lot of people and small businesses. I’m even using it right now. But if you, or your business, need to use more powerful programs, yet want the easy accessibility, convenience and ease of collaboration that Google Docs provides, then Soonr is a good option.

Soonr isn’t new. It was founded in 2005 as a service that enabled standard mobile phones to use the applications on computers in an optimized way, but since then it seems to have evolved into a complete productivity tool.

You install the Soonr app on your desktop and mobile phone and select which files you want to sync with Soonr’s servers in the cloud. From then on, all those files are automatically updated and synced as you edit them. Just like with Google Docs, you can grant others access to documents and they can edit as well. Teams can collaborate on “Projects” containing multiple documents all organized under the same umbrella. Users can also comment on documents without editing–a nice layer between read only and edit. From the Soonr dashboard you can see all the recent edits and comments and who made them. From your mobile phone you can email or fax (that’s right you heard me, fax) documents out through eFax. With an iPhone you can even print a document from any networked printer.

The mobile interface for viewing documents is apparently very intuitive and fast, because it only requests from the cloud the portion of the document you need at any given time. Soonr supports over 800 mobile devices. We don’t offer handset editing ourselves, but coupled with QuickOffice it’s possible. We’ve integrated with QuickOffice to offer QuickAccess.net. Often times handset editing is a limitation of the handset/os , not the software.

I should clarify that Soonr isn’t an office suite, it just supports such a variety of document types (it even supports .mov files) that you can choose which office suite to use, and it is all continually updated, organized and safe in the cloud.

Soonr isn’t free. If you want acess for more than two users or more than 2Gb of storage you have to pay bit. To get at least five users and 40Gb of storage, you will pay $19.95 a month. I don’t know how the cost scale goes up from there, but it is probably reasonable. So if you work collaboratively are mobile and are tired of fiddling around with the frankly clunky version

AppCentral: Hubb for Enterprise Mobile Apps

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

Mobile applications have redefined the way we think about our smartphones. Nearly every day you can read about a great new iPhone app in the consumer tech press and the iPhone is just one platform. Blackberry and Android apps tend to get slightly less attention, but the cumulative interest in mobile apps is nothing short of an obsession for the tech media. But considering the amount of work that is done on mobile phones and the importance of the mobile web to so many workers and companies, where all the apps for them? Until now, enterprise has largely been left out of the app revolution. AppCentral, a venture of Ondeego, hopes to change that.

According to AppCentral, there are three primary reasons the enterprise market has lagged behind the consumer market in mobile app adoption: it is not easy to find apps for business amongst the thousands of consumer apps in app markets; Mobile apps can be difficult to manage for IT professionals and sometimes even dangerous to company data; and third party developers currently don’t have the right tools to make “enterprise-ready” apps or a good marketplace to sell them.

AppCentral says it tackles these challenges with it’s three part ecosystem. It addresses the needs of end users by providing an easy to use web-based portal for employees to find and download the mobile business applications they need. It helps IT professionals by allowing them to easily enable and disable applications as well as handle the data of each application. Additionally, AppCentral’s patent pending “Securitization” technology creates a “security wrapper” around apps enabling remote management. But how AppCentral claims to help developers is what may make it a real game-changer in the mobile applications space. The technology is platform agnostic, so it gives developers valuable tools to efficiently create and market their apps to a wide audience. The securitization layer is also added automatically, so no additional work is required from the developer.

AppCentral just launched a private beta in early October, so its claims have yet to be tested. However they have definitely identified a pain-point in the marketplace and the concept is different from anything else currently available. Being platform agnostic also gives them a leg up on any similar marketplace that might be created by Google, Microsoft or Apple. Although, at the moment AppCentral cannot support development for the iPhone because of “legal reasons.” However, if technology is as easy to use Ondeego says, AppCentral will tap into the largest, most lucrative, yet currently least accessible mobile application market.

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The Rhetoric of Behavioral Targeting

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

In March, I wrote a piece about Google’s behavioral ad targeting and possible legislative action in the works to insure customers understood Google’s (and other advertiser’s) privacy policy. There is still not a bill on the table, but congressional hearings were held in mid-June and Rick Boucher (D-Va.) has been vocal about his plans to draft a bill. Although, Boucher insists: “My overall purpose is not to interfere with the legitimate practice of people who are doing targeted advertising. My goal is to try to create a greater sense of confidence on the part of consumers.”

The definition of what exactlyA qualifies as behavioral targeting varies across the industry. Some companies that claim to offer behavioral targeting, really only offer vague demographic information. Also it is unclear if retargeting (ads based on a users visit to an advertisers site) is considered behavioral targeting by legislators.

Opponents to regulation of behavioral targeting argue that it could “cripple” the online advertising business. I think this is a bit hyperbolic. It might be true if retargeting is outlawed, which is unlikely because it requires the collection of only one piece of information. True behavioral targeting requires following a user across several sites, and represents a relatively small but growing percentage of ads. Advertisers selling high price-point items like cars or travel packages use behavioral targeting the most. For the majority of advertisers, it is still unclear if behavioral targeting is worth the premium. Perhaps as the technology improves, it will become more of an advertising mainstay.

Having said that, the the cost of online advertising inventory was plummeting before the crash, and with cutbacks in ad budgets, even a small change in the industry could impact a lot of businesses. The businesses most scared of this legislation are ad networks. Google has its own ad network, as does Yahoo. They sell billions of dollars worth of “remnant” publisher ad space. Ad networks, rather than the advertisers or publisers, do the actual behavioral targeting in most campaigns. Limiting behavioral targeting would definitely cause them to rethink the way they do business.

However there is another, quiet trend in the industry that may one day replace ad networks as they are now. Advertisers and agencies know that ad networks function as a middleman between them and publishers and they would like to have more direct access to remnant inventory. Ad exchanges give advertisers direct access to impression by impression inventory for purchase through auction. Right now, ad exchanges are still an emerging platform, but if they gain popularity, they would decrease the relevancy of ad networks. That doesn’t mean behavioral targeting would go away, but it may become less attractive to advertisers if they can target remnant impressions more precisely.

In conclusion, congress and the FTC continue to debate regulation of behavioral targeting while the online advertising industry attempts to standardize a definition and develop practices to polices itself. Though true behavioral targeting currently represents a relatively small percentage of impressions, regulating would adversely effect some advertisers, agencies and especially ad networks. However, behavioral targeting is only one set of innovations emerging in online advertising and other technologies may make it less desirable.

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Social Media and Web Ecosystems

By Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

It may seem too obvious to mention that the strength and utility of the internet come from its ability to access and share information from a nearly infinite number of sources.
Yet this is a truth we are continually relearning about the internet through the successes and foibles of notable internet companies. The latest iteration of this lesson comes from the big players of social media.

Consider Facebook’s recent acquisition of Friendfeed. Until that acquisition, Facebook’s strategy was the much discussed walled-garden: control the user experience and keep them on the site. Such an approach is great for the statistics advertisers love like “time-on-site” but is, in actuality, counter to the natural flow of the internet.

Facebook’s status updates became a central part of the site during the rise of Twitter. The updates are easy, fun and useful way for Facebook users to keep track of what their friends are doing. But Friendfeed has a wider scope, allowing users to easily share a myriad of online activities including: favored websites from Digg and StumbleUpon, favored videos on YouTube, Amazon wish lists, music artists they found on Pandora…the list goes on. Friendeed acts as an online activity aggregator, rather than a walled garden and thus offers a richer user experience.

Facebook will use the acquisition to enter the aggregation business as well, which means the walled garden just became an ecosystem. Friendfeed would be a boring site if the sites it feeds from, like twitter and Pandora, weren’t interesting and thriving as well. Friendfeed does not directly compete with these services, it is merely a broadcast tool–taking data and sending traffic back to these sites. Facebook now also depends on the success of these other sites.

Some bloggers have argued that if twitter posts are widely fed to Facebook updates it could eventually erode Twitter’s audience, but I think there is plenty of room for multiple services depending on what a user wants to do or where they are on the web at any given moment. Many users will want to use both. On the social web, multiplicity of sources creates value, much like the wider world of the web.

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TechCrunch Brings Dream of Dead Simple Web Tablet to Life

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

In July of last year, Michael Arrington posted on TechCrunch that he was tired of waiting for someone to produce a simple web tablet computer for “couch computing.” So, he asked readers to help him build one. Now, a year later, the blog is on the verge of announcing how to get your hands on just such a tablet. Not bad for people that until now have only written about devices.

The original idea was simple: a thin, light, computing tablet with the sole function of surfing the web. A single physical button would power on and off the device. All other interaction would be done through a touchscreen. When turned on the device would go directly to Firefox. The price goal was $200 and, originally, the end product was to be open sourced to “let anyone build one that wants to.”

Well, Firefox was nixed in favor a Webkit based browser and the cost will be closer to $299, about the same as the Kindle 2. But the CrunchPad, as the tablet is now called, does indeed exist — in a very proprietary form. Presumably it will be sold by a company spun off from the blog.

The near-finished Crunchpad is 16mm thick with a 12 inch full color touchscreen encased in aluminum. Exact details of the other specs will be released in a press event later this month or early August, but presuming it is like the previous prototype it will have: a 1024×768 resolution screen, 1GB RAM, 4GB flash drive, a camera, speakers, four cell battery and will be powered by a Via Nano processor. The whole thing will weigh about three pounds.

The Cruchpad is an interesting development consumer electronics, aside from being born from a blog. It competes on one level with netbooks, laptops, the Kindle and the iPod touch. Essentially it’s a netbook with bigger screen, no keyboard and no internal storage. For a lot people, is all they need. For web browsing, it works just as well as a laptop. The CrunchPad is web dependant, while Kindle functions entirely off of internal memory, but it is as portable as the Kindle, and in full color. Apple is rumored to have a tablet computer in the Pipeline, but it’s a safe bet the cost will be more than $299. It will be interesting to see if the sleek, simple CrunchPad can compete will Apple, Amazon and Dell.

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Semanti: Where Search Meets Your Friends

by Mielle Sullivan, Janus Networks

There have been several attempts to use crowdsourcing to help users find the information they are looking for on the web. The whole social bookmarking approach can be seen as a human solution to a mass of information and less-than-perfect search results. Google even displaysStumbleUpon ratted sites with a star ranking for SU users. While knowing a site is popular can be helpful for many searches, a recommendation from a friend is usually more valuable.

Enter Semanti, a Firefox add-on that combines search results, semantic parsing and friend recommendations through Facebook Connect. Just install the add-on and start saving search results you like with the Semanti button. Semanti stores your queries and saved results, so the next time you search for the same term (or something similar) on Google, Yahoo or Bing, the saved results will appear at the top. Next, invite yourFacebook friends to use Semanti and their favored results will also appear at the top of your search results. You can access your Semanti saved searches on any computer or any search engine, as long as the add-on is installed in your browser.

The semantic parsing is also personalized, by you. Instead of relying on complex language software to determine what you mean in a given searchquerie, Semanti displays several definitions in a definition menu. If you need to specify what you meant to refine your search, simply click on the menu and chose from the variety of meanings.

Of course the power of the “friendsourcing” will depend on how many of your friends adopt the tool. Given the mass of add-ons for Firefox, you may have to sell your friends on the concept. However, the one-click bookmarking and automatic return of favored searches on similar terms makes Semanti atime-saver for me, even if I can’t get any of my friends to use it. No longer will I need to try and remember which site was useful the last time I searched for something, Semanti saves it all right there. Plus, I may even get a little help form my friends.

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