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AOL, Intel, And The New York Times Help betaworks Raise A $20 Million Series B

Betaworks, the New York City-based holding company investing in the realtime Web, just raised a $20 million Series B. The round was led by RRE Ventures and Intel Capital, DFJ Growth, AOL Ventures, The New York Times, Softbank Japan and Softbank NY, Lerer Investments and Founders Collective, also participated, along with investors from the last round, which was $7.5 million

The company both invests and incubates realtime media startups, including Summize (acquired by Twitter for realtime search), bit.ly, TweetDeck, StockTwits, SuperFeedr, Outside.in, OMGPOP, and gdgt.

CEO John Borthwick says that the funds will be used to do more of the same, invest in and create realtime media startups.

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NYC’s BigApps Winners Announced: WayFinder, NYC Way Lead the Pack

Last fall, we told you about an exciting and innovative competition to find – and fun – civic-focused web abd mobile apps in New York City.

Tonight, after an all-star panel of judges had reviewed more than 80 apps over a month-long period, a handful of winning applications were announced.

These apps include WayFinder, a resource for navigating around the city; Taxihack, a live-feed commentary on New York City taxis; Big Apple Ed, a guide to New York City schools; and seven others.

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Judges for the competition included such media and technology luminaries as NY Tech Meetup co-founder Dawn Barber, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, Mahalo co-founder Jason Calacanis, EDVentures Founder Esther Dyson, FirstMark Capital CEO Lawrence Lenihan, AlleyCorp co-founder Kevin Ryan, DFJ Gotham Ventures managing partner Danny Schultz, and Union Square Ventures managing general partner Fred Wilson.

The BigApps prizes also included a Popular Choice Award, which was decided by an online public vote from people around the world.

The grand prize winner for the competition, Wayfinder, is actually an Andoird app that allows users to find the nearest and best directions to New York City subway and New Jersey PATH stations. It was also selected as the Grand Prize winner for the Data Visualization Award. That team received a total of $7,500 for both prizes.

Other winning applications include:

• Actuatr, a platform that simplifies opening up data to developers;
• NYC Way, an iPhone application that bundles a variety of NYC resources for tourists and locals (also the Investor’s Choice for monetization potential and Popular Choice winner, a $5,000 prize altogether);
• PushpinWeb, a platform for public data;
• Trees Near You, an iPhone app that shows data about trees around New York City;
• UpNext 3D NYC, an interactive 3D map for exploring and discovering the city;
• Overview New York City Parks and Recreation Online, a web app for finding New York City parks; and
• Bookzee, a location-based library book search.

“We opened up the 170 datasets of City information to unleash the creativity and ingenuity of New Yorkers, and we were not disappointed,” said Mayor Bloomberg, who announced the awards at a dinner tonight. “The apps submitted offer a range of unique capabilities, many of which use the data in ways we hadn’t considered. We want New York City to stay ahead of the innovation and technology curve, and we’ll continue to capitalize on our greatest asset – New Yorkers – to make sure we do. Thank you to all of those who submitted apps, and congratulations to the winners.”

The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications worked with around 30 agencies to provide more than 170 datasets for the competition. The data included geographic locations of all sidewalk cafés, laundry facilities, playgrounds, dog runs, city landmarks, as well as census data, extensive property valuation and assessments, the results of restaurant inspections, lists of permitted citywide events and even side parking and traffic updates.

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Books disappear from Amazon as old media battles new retail

The rise of digital media has led to many a battle between the old guard—record labels, television networks, movie studios, and book publishers—and the companies that sell their wares to the public. The latest skirmish between the two erupted over the weekend when Amazon stopped selling all books published by Macmillan, noting only that they are available through third parties.

On Thursday, Macmillan CEO John Sargent met with Amazon representatives to discuss the pricing of the publisher’s titles on the Kindle e-book reader. Negotiations didn’t go so well, with Sargent wanting to exercise absolute control over the prices of e-books sold through Amazon. According to the New York Times’ sources, Macmillan wanted Amazon to raise prices from $9.99 to $15.

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Amazon pulled Macmillan titles due to price conflict — confirmed
Macmillan’s US CEO, John Sargent just confirmed that Amazon pulled its inventory of Macmillan books in a powerful response to Macmillan’s new pricing demands. Macmillan offered the new pricing on Thursday, just a day after Apple announced Macmillan as a major publishing partner in its new iBookstore — a revelation that certainly factored into the discussions along with Skiff and other e-book distribution and publishing models. During the meeting with Amazon in Seattle, Sargent outlined what he calls an “agency model” that will go into effect in early March. Under the terms offered, if Amazon chose to stay with its existing terms of sale, then it would suffer “extensive and deep windowing of titles.” Amazon’s hardball response was to pull all of Macmillan’s titles from its Kindle site and Amazon.com by the time Sargent arrived back in New York.

Macmillan claims that its new model is meant to keep retailers, publishers, and authors profitable in the emerging electronic frontier while encouraging competition amongst new devices and new stores. Macmillan’s model gives retailers a 30% commission and sets the price for each book individually: digital editions of most adult trade books will be priced from $5.99 to $14.99 while first releases will “almost always” hit the electronic shelves day on date with the physical hardcover release and be priced between $12.99 and $14.99 — pricing that will be dynamic over time. So when Steve Jobs said that Apple’s and Amazon’s prices would be the same, he was almost certainly referring to the $12.99 to $14.99 e-Book pricing originally rumored by the New York Times — not the $9.99 price that Amazon customers have been enjoying so far. Funny how Jobs, the man who once refused to grant the music labels’ request for variable pricing on digital music so that Apple could maintain a low fixed $0.99 price per track, is suddenly the best friend of a new breed of content owners. Guess the old dog just learned a new trick, eh?

Amazon pulled Macmillan titles due to price conflict — confirmed originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EA to lay off 1500 workers, close some facilities

Filed under: Gaming, Software

Large-scale layoffs have been hitting everywhere in the past year, and Electronic Arts is now no different: according to Gamasutra, the game publisher announced today that it will lay off 1,500 workers by April 2010, after posting a year-to-year decrease in revenue and a net loss of $391 million.

About 1,300 of the freshly unemployed individuals will result from the full closure of some of EA’s facilities. This will cost EA money at the outset, but they estimate that by dropping the facilities they stand to save about $100 million annually. According to EA CEO John Riccitello, the cuts are happening in “targeted areas,” so the company can focus up on its bigger, more lucrative games.

EA has kept up well with the iPhone platform and has released some of its most popular titles to the App Store, such as The Sims 3, Rock Band, and Spore. Consumers still pay a premium price for them, however. For example, Rock Band costs $9.99 and comes with only 20 songs, and charges 50 cents for each additional song. Still, Rock Band ended up selling well, so maybe we’ll be seeing more of EA in the App Store in the coming fiscal quarters.

EA also announced today its acquisition of Playfish, whose primary business is Facebook games, for $300 million. Hopefully out of the layoff ashes rises some brutally addictive social-based game for the iPhone.

TUAWEA to lay off 1500 workers, close some facilities originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Competing With Hulu a Bad Move for Comcast

Comcast sees the writing on the wall: cable-based TV will not survive the next decade. Its value is fast eroding because it can’t compete with on-demand, Internet-delivered TV across all screens. Unlike their music counterparts, TV executives have pulled their heads out of the sand in time and are working hard to survive this monumental shift. To do so, however, they need to choose the right battles to fight.

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Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco yesterday afternoon. He was interviewed by Federated Media CEO John Battelle.

I discerned three important nuggets from Roberts:

• Comcast will continue to invest in higher-bandwidth connections into homes.
• Comcast will invest in content more aggressively.
• Comcast will officially launch Hulu-competing Fancast.com by the year’s end.

The first two points make a ton a sense. The third point is… well, miscalculated.

I am convinced Brian Roberts understands the challenges ahead. This is why Comcast and Time Warner (which also clearly “gets” it) have been aggressively pursuing a “TV Everywhere” model, which promises to give their subscribers exactly what they want: anytime, anywhere access to any TV content. They have to do this to keep their customer bases.

But in a TV Everywhere world, the role of the multi-system operator is diminished. Your cable or satellite TV provider will no longer be your only (legal) means of watching the current episode of HBO’s Entourage. In a TV Everywhere world, Entourage will be available on literally thousands of websites and mobile apps, as long as you can authenticate yourself as a paying cable or satellite subscriber with the HBO package.

In this world, the value of Comcast as a content distributor is eroded. Comcast risks becoming a “dumb pipe,” providing little more than bandwidth. To avoid that fate, Comcast recognizes that it needs to move upstream and own or control the content itself. This is why it will buy NBC in the next few months.

Moving upstream and investing in content is a smart move for Comcast.

Moving downstream and competing with Hulu via Fancast.com is a bad move. Here’s why:

• Hulu already has a huge lead, having aggressively grown its audience for more than a year now.
• Hulu would be the ideal launching pad for TV Everywhere, because of its mega-loyal and passionate audience.
• Comcast is about to own a third of Hulu. Ad revenue from Hulu will ultimately end up back in Comcast’s coffers.
• In a TV Everywhere world, thousands of websites will likely present the same TV content as Fancast.com. It will be a terribly crowded space, with a ton of noise. The sites that perform best will be the ones that create the best user experience for viewing TV content.
• Comcast has a poor track record with UI and user experience design. Need I compare more than Comcast DVR’s UI to TiVo’s UI?
• Strong consumer brands drive website traffic. Comcast has a horrendous consumer brand. Comcast users generally do not like being Comcast users.
• Comcast’s interest is in the broadest distribution of TV content, not exclusive distribution. Locking up certain content for Fancast.com alone would be a mistake. Consumers would see it as a violation of their rights, akin to the Net Neutrality debate.

Comcast can survive (and perhaps prosper) through the death of cable-based TV, if it makes smart strategic decisions. That means focusing on where it provides the most value in the TV supply chain: Internet connectivity and content investment. Creating a content website that competes with its distributors is not a smart move.

Comcast should pull the plug on Fancast.com or simply use it as a TV Everywhere authentication testing site.

Guest author: Mike Berkley served as CEO of SplashCast Media from 2006 to 2009, pioneering the concept of social TV in partnership with Hulu. Berkley is currently involved in the TV Everywhere initiative, consults on product strategy for online media companies, and maintains the TV News Stream blog covering all things related to online premium video.

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Woopra Aims to Monetize Real-Time Analytics From Outside Silicon Valley

Is the real-time web just Silicon Valley buzz built up by hype-masters aiming to cash out? Good evidence otherwise comes from Woopra, an upstart real-time website analytics company that today announced that it’s taking off its Beta label.

Founded in Lebanon and now international, Woopra said today that the service will lift previous account size limits, will offer paid user accounts and will limit free accounts to by invitation only. CEO John Pozadzides recorded an awesome video that’s both humble and inspiring. We learned about the announcement from the blog ArabCrunch, and that blog’s coverage is today’s Real-Time Web Article of the Day.

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We’re highlighting one article off-site each day that we think is the most important discussion of the real-time web, leading up to the October 15th ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit.

ArabCrunch editor Gaith Saqer explains the importance of Woopra’s announcement today in his coverage.

• Seeing a Lebanon-founded company taking this step in the red-hot real-time web market is a great data point about the international nature of the real-time web movement. Woopra’s CEO is now in Dallas, Texas.
• The product is priced higher than some ostensible competitors, but its availability as a desktop client for Windows, Mac and Linux computers is very appealing for some users.
• Monetization of consumer-level real-time web products, outside of advertising, is itself newsworthy.

Look at how charming that video is! The CEO identifies himself only as “John P., one of the team members at Woopra.” It’s a really frank explanation of how the company is just looking to become cashflow neutral. Imagine, someone humbly asking a relatively small community of software users to pay so that the company’s staff can simply sustain itself. What a radical departure from the typical startup CEO pitch you hear from companies on the bleeding edge of web trends!

Woopra clearly prioritizes authentic communication with its users. The company hired well-known WordPress consultant Lorelle VanFossen to be the company blog’s Editor in Chief.

Woopra watchers can’t be surprised by the announcement, the way it was made or the seemingly very positive reaction from the Woopra community. As Mohamed Marwen Meddah explained on StartupArabia today, “All this of course is a natural step forward for Woopra, that was in the plans from the beginning, in order to start generating revenue, cover the costs of their infrastructure, and make the company and service sustainable.”

This kind of attitude is more than welcome at the forthcoming ReadWrite Real-Time Web Summit. There will be plenty of real-time rock stars there but riding the wave of change that the pushbutton web will bring and building sustainable businesses are both valid ways to engage as well.

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