Netizen

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Mindfood And Business Models

Image via CrunchBaseYour Local Library On Kindle

Fred Wilson just put out a post on the music business.

music listening is going to move into the cloud and that the dominant model will be streaming via free ad supported Internet Radio and paid subscription services.

The internet as a technology is best suited for the creation, distribution, and consumption of mindfood: books, movies, music. But we have to get rid of out of date business models first.

For all our emphasis on techies, I think what we need more of is business innovators. We need MBA dropouts who will offer us better business models.

Silicon Alley

Photograph of Madison Square looking north, Ma...

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: Manhattan’s Tech Start-Ups Settle in the Flatiron District and Chelsea: a decade after the dot-com crash stopped the rapid growth of the city’s booming Internet sector, a high-tech corridor has developed in the Flatiron district and neighboring Chelsea. ...... “Within five years, you’re going to have a true Silicon Alley. Every company that’s a tech start-up will be here.” ..... The older, small office buildings in the Flatiron district have attracted start-ups, while large companies like Google and IAC/InterActiveCorp have found homes in Chelsea. ..... It is no accident, for example, that General Assembly, a new educational institute, meeting place and co-working environment devoted to technology entrepreneurs, was established at 902 Broadway, at East 20th Street, in the middle of the Flatiron district. ...... a lot of young companies, a lot of designers and artists, and a lot of venture capitalists working in that neighborhood ..... “There’s a pretty exciting start-up scene now that there wasn’t in 2003 ..... the loftlike space that the Flatiron district offers, in relatively small footprints ...... a lot of buildings with high ceilings and natural light, overlooking Madison Square Park ..... “You get the amenities of a Midtown building but the flexibility of a loft in Brooklyn,” Mr. Kirven said. “Obviously without the Midtown rents, either.” ..... Prices are substantially lower than in Midtown and other prime office neighborhoods. ..... The Kaufman Organization has also helped Paperless Post, Break Media and Zemoga find space in the neighborhood. ...... “A lot of landlords are looking at 10-year leases,” Mr. Dunn said. “As a start-up, there’s no way to do that. Even a three-year lease was a scary thought.” ...... Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and IA Ventures, have offices nearby. ...... If start-ups look to Flatiron for its small spaces, larger tech companies are choosing Chelsea for its sprawling floors. ....... “There’s a psychological barrier to going to a different floor to talk to somebody,” Mr. Nevill-Manning said. “Having 800 people on a single floor means we’re much more productive and much more creative as a result.” ....... public amenities ..... Hudson River Park, the High Line, Chelsea Piers and the concourse of Chelsea Market. ..... “From a recruiting point of view, a lot of those connections get made virtually,” Mr. Nevill-Manning said. “They know where to find us online.”

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Bringing 100% web to the world of Google Earth and Google Maps: At Google we’re committed to opening up our cloud infrastructure so that others can benefit from our enormous computational power. Today I’m going to share some exciting details on our plans to make our cloud technology available for processing and serving geospatial data...... Google Earth and Google Maps have given people the ability to easily view rich geographic information from desktop or mobile devices. Google Earth helps us understand the effects of climate change on our ecosystem, Street View provides a panorama of our neighborhoods ...... Constant Innovation: just refresh the browser for the latest features ..... shapefiles of demographic data, spreadsheets of worldwide customer locations and files of your recently acquired imagery for a new development ..... Google Earth has more than 700 million downloads. We hope that more people can use Google Earth Builder to make better location-related decisions within business and government

The day Google Earth first came out, I downloaded it and had an amazing, amazing day roaming the Himalayas and vast expanses of Russia. It was a mind blowing experience. I was like wow.

Google Earth: A House Is A House Is A House

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

Cover via Amazon9 To 5 Mac: You'll be able to borrow Kindle books from 11,000 libraries, says Amazon

ReadWriteWeb: Check Out Library Books on Your Kindle: the announcement from Amazon this morning that it is launching a Lending Library "later this year" that will let Kindle owners check out books from their local library..... participation of over 11,000 libraries in the U.S. ..... the ability to actually make margin notes in your library books. You'll be able to take notes, store them privately - in other words, the next library patron won't see them - and then access them again should you check the book out again or purchase it in the future

This is huge. This kind of made my day. Does this mean all of the New York Public Library will be available on Kindle? That is pretty awesome.

Nihal Mehta: No Sellout

Local Response: Monetizing On "Their" Behalf

Image representing Nihal Mehta as depicted in ...

Image via CrunchBaseNihal Mehta: Being Mysterious About Local Response

My response is based on this TechCrunch post. Looks like in one sweep Nihal Mehta is about to monetize on behalf of all players in the local space. It is quite an audacious move.

TechCrunch: Buzzd Rebrands As Local Response; Debuts Social Customer Management Tool For Businesses: combine the element of the check-in he found intriguing with Buzzd and advertising and marketing elements ..... he calls “a culmination of everything he’s done,” of this is Local Response, a new web-based tool that allows local businesses to respond to the “check-in” on social media sites with marketing campaigns to promote transactions. ...... LocalResponse aggregates real-‐time social media check-‐ins from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local businesses to directly respond to their most influential and valuable customers. What’s compelling about the platform compared to competitors is that it analyzes massive amounts of data in addition to check-ins from the Twitter firehose, photo sharing sites and more to find other forms of check-ins. These could be posting a picture on Instagram of a dish from a restaurant or Tweeting that you are visiting a particular bar. ...... explicitly (i.e. check-ins on Foursquare) and implicitly (by analyzing natural language on Facebook, Twitter, etc.; e.g. “I’m headed to ShakeShack”). Mehta says most check-ins are actual implicit and many social media platforms catered to helping businesses track check-ins miss this key data. ...... Not only does Local Response track all of this data but it allows businesses to respond to these Tweets and messages with a marketing campaign, coupon or advertisement. ...... So Shake Shack could send a Tweet back to someone who had just snapped a photo of a burger with a link to a 10 percent off coupon on the next visit. ...... Local Response has actually creates a number of canned responses which businesses can automatically send. ..... For the past six months, LocalResponse has been running a private beta, with over 2,000 campaigns for local businesses in New York City. The links in the Tweets and messages sent by these local businesses to consumers who “checked-in” to their establishment are averaging a 60 percent click-‐through rate and 15-‐20 percent redemption rates. That’s high and impressive. ...... Mehta says that the platform is so highly-focused in its data collection, that it can send highly targeted Tweets to consumers who are interested in the promotions or campaigns. For example he says that Local Response will run two to three hundred search terms across its data for a particular business. Also, the aim of Local Response is not to overwhelm consumers’ stream with advertisements. Users will never receive more than one message in 7 days ...... a platform for brands and agencies is in the works. ...... closed a $1.5 million in funding this past December from Verizon Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Metamorphic. ...... plans to raise a new, larger round of funding this Summer ..... For now, Local Response is free for businesses. Eventually the startup plans to go the freemium route and will also charge for the brand-focused application. And Local Response is launching with half a million businesses that are already pre-indexed (with search terms). All they have to do is type in the business name, and they can get started using the platform.

A second natural move might be to partner up with the willing players to help them monetize their particular services for cuts, like Google ads help you monetize your particular media site. Because Local Response is not going to have access to the detailed data that those individual services might have.