Developers Mixed on Yahoo!’s Open Strategy

By John Greaves

Yahoo! has unveiled its Open Strategy to mixed reviews. The strategy, which is designed to fit in with Yahoo!’s commitment to make its platform more social, is meant to make it easier for developers to build. According to the Y!OS introduction on the Yahoo! Developers Network Blog, “Through YOS, we’re rewiring Yahoo! so that developers can tap into benefits once only available within Yahoo! Namely, you can leverage the content, traffic and user base of Yahoo! to extend your presence on the Web.

According to Sandeep Mundra, whose company IndiaNIC has developed for Yahoo! since 2001, although IndiaNIC is not exclusive to Yahoo! they feel they get the best deal from Yahoo! and they are open to possibilities presented by Y!OS. “It’s very exciting and from this Open Strategy we probably link different kind of models available on the Yahoo! Developer Network to not only on the Yahoo! site but other sites as well. And they’re giving the easy interface so for a developer it’s very exciting,” Mundra says.

However, other developers say they are unimpressed with Yahoo!’s moves so far. Phil Michaelson a developer whose list building and sharing product KartMe builds on Amazon, Google and eBay says Yahoo! needs to do more loosening of restrictions.

“I’d looked at using some of their APIs (e.g., search monkey and Yahoo BOSS) about a year ago. At the time, they didn’t give the end user enough control over how to display data. Now as I review the terms, they’re too restrictive. Offering APIs does not make your service open,” Michaelson says.

A quick visit to the Yahoo! Developer Network blog reveals on the one hand a lot of exciting information from Yahoo! about various innovations such as The Yahoo! Applications Platform that “represents the first time that Yahoo! is opening up the “canvas” of Yahoo! to developers, allowing developers to easily author and publish apps across the Yahoo! network,” reading responses to comments on the potential shut down of MyBlogLog shows the anger and confusion some developers feel.

The potential shutdown of MyBlogLog is not an isolated event. According to blogger MG Siegler, “At a time when many tech companies are starting to launch new projects again and excitement is building, Yahoo keeps shutting things down.”

Mundra says he is concerned over one shutdown in particular. The Shopping API is scheduled to be discontinued as of March 11, in favor of Yahoo! partnership with PriceGrabber.

“That’s a question asked by my clients because my Yahoo! clients storefronts are using 100% Yahoo!-owned shopping engines and from the shopping engines most the clients are getting very good leads. Moving that shopping engine to Price Grabber I think is a very, very hard decision so we’ll need to work very hard on that.” Many developers like IndiaNIC will be hard hit by this because unlike Yahoo! Price Grabber doesn’t offer a free web services API. The YDN advises developers “If you wish to continue to display syndicated shopping results for products listed on Yahoo! Shopping, you must apply to Price Grabber for shopping syndication services. Although they do not offer a free web services API, you can find out more about how to apply to their program here.”

One thing that may allay developers’ fears is a promise by Neal Sample, vice president of Yahoo! Open Strategy: “How we are determining which APIs we support on the Yahoo! Developer Network.” Sample also promises to give more information on progress on the Yahoo! Query Language, Yahoo! Application Platform and Social APIs.

Despite these concerns, Mundra indicates his company will stick with Yahoo! both because he believes the company’s new social focus is good for business and because he likes how the platform compares to other available outlets.

“In the last couple of years social media marketing is buzzing the market and we’re getting a lot more clients who want to integrate it into their store, so with the Open Strategy it’s going to shorten our development time.”

Still Mundra says he would like to have better communication. “Yahoo!’s support is very good but we need more support and better communication from them regarding what development is going on so we can always ready ourselves with marketing and get support ready on that. We don’t want surprises,” Mundra says.

While Yahoo! may be able to rely on the loyalty of companies such as IndiaNIC to attract developers away from competitors, Michaelson says the company has to send a signal that it is willing to make moves to allow them freedom to profit.

“Yahoo’s restrictions on data display and service monetization lead me to conclude they’re not serious about being open. If they were serious, they’d just set a cap on traffic,” Michaelson says. “No need to prevent development from sites that are trying to innovate. They should let partners innovate, and once partners are succeeding, then look to profit.”

Sample says about the Y!OS, “One thing to note today: Yahoo!’s commitment to openness is reflected in the design of recent platform releases. That is right. The truth is in the architecture. Our Open platforms (YAP, YQL, YUI, etc.) will stay and will stay open. YQL technology offers all developers an open, scalable, plug-and-play platform with the same flexibility and security we require for our own production deployment. You have the ability to wire up alternative APIs using YQL’s Open Tables. Now that’s a commitment.”

Google Broadband: One Giant Step For Google

By James Zipadelli

Google is planning on building and testing its own high-speed broadband networks in select U.S. cities, the company announced in its blog recently. The company has put out a request for information (RFI) until March 26 to see how many communities want to participate in this experiment. A Google spokesman says, “We will connect at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people, in one or more trial communities across the country.”

One city that is participating in Google’s experiment is Baltimore, Md. A team of technology and business leaders began working Feb. 22, and entrepreneur Dave Troy says Baltimore’s government and research institutions are also on board. “We hit the ground running,” Troy says. “We have world-class research institutions (the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University). One of the things Google listed is 3-D medical technology. This is something that Hopkins has done. We can do that right here.”

According to Troy, there were other reasons Google’s experiment benefits the city. For example, Baltimore’s proximity to Washington, D.C., makes it helpful if there is a question on regulations. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which President Obama signed Feb. 17, 2009, included the Broadband Initiatives, which has essentially the same goal: to “accelerate broadband deployment in unserved, underserved, and rural areas and to strategic institutions that are likely to create jobs or provide significant public benefits.” Troy says that Google’s experiment helps because it creates competition. “Not only is Google getting access to more people, but they are doing it by using an open access approach,” Troy says.

Asked for clarification, the Google spokesman says, “We will allow third parties to offer their own Internet access services, or other services, using our network. We believe this approach will maximize user choice as well as spur greater innovation and competition. Most providers in Europe and many places elsewhere in the world operate open access networks.”

The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, which represents cable operators, is optimistic. “We look forward to learning more about Google’s broadband experiment in the handful of trial locations they are planning, says spokesman Brian Dietz. “The cable industry has invested $161 billion over the past 13 years to build a nationwide broadband infrastructure that is available to 92 percent of U.S. homes, and we will continue to invest billions more to continually improve the speed and performance of our networks and provide tens of millions of consumers with the best possible broadband experience.”

Not everyone is pleased with Google’s experiment, however. Scott Cleland, president of Precursor and chairman of NetCompetition.org, called Google’s announcement a “PR stunt.”

“This is classic Google,” Cleland says. “Everything is about them. When the nation is trying to move from a jog to a run, they’re wanting to take airplane rides.” Cleland says the timing of the announcement was poor because it coincided with the National Broadband Plan.

“They want a gigabit to the home, which is 50 times more than people have right now, and there aren’t any applications other than Google’s plan that takes advantage of that network,” Cleland says. “Google is the biggest bandwidth consumer in the world because YouTube broadcasts over the Internet and it’s 14 times bigger than any video broadcaster. Google is constantly crawling the trillion pages on the Internet.”

AT&T spokesperson Jenny Bridges was cautiously optimistic. “We commend (FCC) Chairman (Julius) Genachowski for his plan to set an ambitious goal for broadband deployment in America,” Bridges says. “But in setting a 100mb goal, the FCC surely recognizes the massive investment by the private sector that will be required. As the Commission’s own broadband team estimated, it would cost an additional $350 billion to bring 100mb service to every household in America. It is thus all the more important that the FCC resist calls for extreme forms of regulation that would cripple, if not destroy, the very investments needed to realize its goal.”

Verizon Wireless spokesman James Smith says, “The Internet ecosystem is dynamic and competitive, and it’s delivering great benefits to consumers. Google’s expansion of its networks to enter the access market is another new paragraph in this exciting story.” To learn more about Verizon’s network, VerizonFIOS, click here. VerizonFIOS serves 16 states including Maryland and Washington, D.C., according to the fact sheet.

Baltimore’s Troy says the benefits for the city from Google’s experiment are just beginning. “It will make Baltimore a world-class destination for technology entrepreneurs,” Troy says. “It also will keep people here that might go somewhere else. The combination of those two things makes it extremely compelling.”

Gaming Consoles: Stop-gap Technology or Mainstay Trend?

By John Greaves

Gaming consoles have enjoyed a unique niche in our culture fueled by a fairly loyal and growing fan base. Now they face challenges to their product offerings on several fronts. Blu-Ray players and set-top boxes continue to compete with consoles for streaming video and television content and OnLive has emerged as a contender in the video game world with partnerships with game developers like Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft and Atari.

The advantage game consoles have is a pre-established fan base, one accustomed to the world of online content, Internet streaming and more than stand-alone set top boxes like Vudu can offer. According to blogger Michael Wolf in a 2008 post for eHomeUpgrade, “The price tag for standalone boxes is more than most would pay, especially if they can get similar (if not equal) services through another box like a game console (which also, it goes without saying, plays games and DVDs)”.

According to Netflix vice president of corporate communications, Steve Swasey, his company is aware of the value consoles add industry wide. “There are three jewels to the crown and Netflix is wearing the three jeweled crown with three devices the Xbox 360, the Playstation 3 and we announced that we’ll be available on the Nintendo Wii in the spring. The Wii has sold 22 million units in the U.S. alone. So we are able to reach a lot of subscribers through these consoles alone.” This adds a lot of value for these consumers as Swasey points out that Netflix revolutionized the video rental industry by saving people from going to video stores.

Still it is significant that Netflix is not exclusive to consoles. “The goal here for Netflix is to be ubiquitous on any device to watch movie and TV episodes on. The game consoles are one way for us to reach that level of ubiquity. We also have deals with Blu Ray disc manufacturers and TV manufacturers like LG Electronics and Samsung and then of course stand alone devices like the Roku and TiVo, now we have more than fifty devices which stream instantly from Netflix,” Swasey says.

Add to that the fact that Boxee, arguably one of the fastest-growing software solutions for internet streaming content, doesn’t currently run on any game consoles. Andrew Kippen, vice president of marketing for Boxee, says he doesn’t know what technology issues would have to be addressed to get Boxee on game consoles but they’re interested in working with manufacturers to make it happen.  “We see Boxee as the Android of the living room - software that runs on TVs and any device that connects to them.  With game consoles already sitting underneath millions of TVs - we’d love the opportunity to provide our media experience on them.”

While Kippen acknowledges the attractiveness of the large footprint Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have, he says Boxee is also watching a newcomer to the space. “I like the idea of something like OnLive as well. If we look at a platform like that, the minimum requirements that Boxee has probably gel pretty nicely with the minimum requirements that that platform has, so I hope one day we can create a Boxee OnLive box. We haven’t had any formal discussions with them but I think it would be a great customer experience to get that kind of all in one box for all of your entertainment.

Rob Green of Imagine Communications says, “I think consumers want the content they want, how they want, where they want it.” So in order to remain relevant it appears that consoles are going to have to do more.

Encouraging news for Sony and Nintendo at least is that Netflix appears open to the idea of coming to the PSP and Nintendo DSi handhelds at some point. “Long term we want to stream on any device you want to watch on,” Swasey says.

This means at least two of the big three can hope to increase the attractiveness of those platforms. Nevertheless, consoles cannot rely on pushing sales across their platforms to save them. As the danger of “box fatigue” grows the resulting push for cross- functional devices means that the race is on to plant flags in prized living room real estate and consoles need to be among those running. Console manufacturers seem to be reacting dynamically to the threat.

Microsoft which was the first gaming company to partner with Netflix, and has planned an IPTV offering since 2007, has announced that Xbox 360 owners in the U.S. will be able to get AT&T’s Uverse offering by this spring. Xbox Live members already have access to Zune, last.fm and social networking through Twitter and Facebook integration. According to blogger Michael Mahoney Microsoft also has a deal with British broadcaster Sky to leverage Xbox to stream live television programs, including sports, TV shows, and movies.

Mahoney says Sony and Nintendo are working with BBC’s iPlayer to provide recent television shows to their consoles. According to Mahoney, “A major benefit of console subscription-based service is it eliminates the need for set-top boxes and satellite dishes, a huge cost-saver for Pay TV operators to deploy, service, and upgrade.”

Another major offensive strategy is gaming consoles’ encouragement of social networking in their fan base. According to a December 17, 2009 Sony press release, “10 million users around the world have visited PlayStation Home to play games, attend special events, watch videos, listen to music, meet new friends, and launch into multiplayer PS3 games — averaging 60 minutes per visit. Over 250 community events have been held in PlayStation Home since its launch, many organized by the PS3 community.”

Sony is sweetening the deal at Playstation Home by giving Playstation 3 version 3.10 users the ability to “easily showcase their game accomplishments to friends and family, and post information about the PS3 games they purchase from PlayStation®Network to Facebook.”

It’s not clear whether these moves will be enough or whether current game consoles will join the Sega Genesis and Commodore 64 as museum artifacts.

Spinning Tweets of Gold: Twitter’s Revenue Model

By John Greaves

Twitter, the social networking giant that has revolutionized the way we interact with each other and search for information, seems to be planning to monetize using third-party applications. On the other hand, it might be planning to charge companies for access to its site’s products. Or maybe it will just sell ad space. It’s still not clear despite Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s promise that we would know how his company plans to start making money in early 2010.

The question of Twitter’s move toward monetization has been a topic of discussion for years, and of course, Twitter has a history of promoting third-party apps without being paid for them. So intense is interest in how Twitter will monetize that a hoax last year concerning paying for premium accounts led to a firestorm of outrage that increased when protesters learned they were the victims of a prank by BBspot.

This is partly because Twitter’s investors have long maintained that they were in no hurry to make money off the micro-blogging site. Stone told reporters in 2009 the company wasn’t fretting about the need to monetize. “There are no dates when we need to break even. We have plenty of money in the bank,” he says.

The question remains, what is Twitter planning and will it be successful? In 2007 Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and the current CEO, let slip some of the ways he thought the site could generate income. “Two more-straightforward ideas: 1) Ads on the site. We have a little AdSense on there now, but we haven’t really tried. As the traffic grows, some tasteful sponsorships might be sellable. 2) Charging companies who are using it for marketing or other commercial purposes. If an organization finds Twitter to be a valuable communication tool with their customers/constituents/etc — especially if we’re sending lots of SMS’s for them, which cost us money — it seems viable to make an offering around that,” he said.

Steve Hofstetter, a comedian who has helped create apps for Facebook and the iPhone as part of promoting his brand, is enthusiastic about Twitter monetizing through ad revenue.  “Click on their website right now, you know they have that little useless twitter definition, who gets utility out of that? People in the office enjoy that, if you made that a tiny little ad; it doesn’t just give utility to Twitter, marketers put ads on sites because they’re good for the consumer, I’ve found good stuff through banner ads,” Hofstetter says.

Nevertheless, according to Radar Research founder Marissa Gluck there is a problem with simply relying on advertising to monetize social media. “In terms of advertising, click-through rates and engagement historically tend to be very low on social networks, consumers aren’t really there to search out products or to purchase, they’re not in that mode, they’re not in that mentality, so consumers are not really engaging with ads on social networks because they want to engage with their friends,” Gluck says.

On the other hand, Gluck points to the fact that Twitter wears many hats in the social media arena and can perhaps choose multiple revenue streams to be successful including the second option Williams mentioned. “Twitter is everything from a social network to an RSS feed to a broadcasting platform, so Twitter is a little bit different, which is why for Twitter it makes more sense to look towards paid subscriptions from commercial enterprises as well as advertising,” Gluck says.

Ian Swanson, the CEO of Sometrics, a company that helps developers and brands monetize the social Web, thinks Twitter is right to avoid the ad model for now. “If you look at the expertise of the company, you’ve got to say is this a media company, is this a company that belongs on Madison Avenue or is this a tech company? They really know their strengths. Hey we’re really good at building this platform, really good at the technology - so let’s allow the brands and third-party applications to build on top of our platform and if we go through and charge people for that access, almost like taxing the system, eventually they’re going to make money and that’s just a smart approach for them.”

This echoes comments made by Stone to the Reuters Global Technology Summit in May 2009. “”There are no people at Twitter who know anything about advertising or work in advertising. So we don’t have anyone there to make or take those calls,” Stone says.

It is obvious that third-party applications have figured out how to monetize using Twitter. A PR Newswire press release notes that TwitterJobSearch, the first real-time job search engine, has evolved its offering to include an In-Stream Ads service. Back in 2007, Steve Poland even blogged on easy ways to make money with Twitter using third-party applications. Ad.ly “enables Twitter publishers to make money from the content they produce on Twitter by sending one tweet every day from advertisers that they approve.”

The question is not whether it’s possible for Twitter to monetize itself. Rather everyone is wondering whether 2010 will be the year when Twitter begins to spin tweets into gold.

Pinpointing the Future of Geo APIs

By Ron Callari

Geolocation APIs are flourishing and third-party API developers are multiplying faster than bunnies on a hot spring day. Twitter’s acquisition of Mixers Labs and GeoAPI have a lot to do with this exponential activity, but other APIs and location-based-services have been flourishing on their own paths as well.

Facebook is sitting back examining the digital landscape before making a move. Couple this with the heated smartphone explosion in the last 12 months, and you have a perfect digital storm brewing on the horizon. 2010 may be the Chinese Year of the Tiger, but it’s also the Year of the API.

It’s no longer good enough to know “what’s happening” a la Twitter circa 2006-2009 - now according to CEO Evan Williams, it’s more important to know “where it’s happening.” Noted in his “Mixing It Up at 795 Folsom St ” blog, 2010 will be the year that “the Twitter API integrates its platform with new and existing apps the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla.”

What geolocation brings to the table that has somewhat stalled the traditional social networks of Twitter and Facebook is a quicker means to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. With smartphones came cameras and GPS systems allowing for an easy and direct conduit to local advertising for shops, restaurants, bars, tourist attractions and a multitude of other businesses. In turn, APIs that open their platforms to the public can grow their reach and the diversity of that reach with newer monetization models.

So while some call geolocation one step closer to ‘improved stalking,’ others believe that there will be a paradigm shift and a more relaxed definition as to what privacy means to us in the year 2010.

Let’s take a look at today’s most shiny thing as seen through the eyes of third-party developers, CEOs and other thought-leaders in the soon-to-be-very-crowded location-based space.

Andrei Taraschuk, Founder | UMapper
The big idea behind UMapper is enabling its customers to manage the entire map life cycle from creation to monetization. With UMapper you can create, distribute, track and monetize maps. In addition, UMapper is map-agnostic framework - meaning it works with different map data providers including Bing, Google, Yahoo and OpenStreetMap.

In questioning Taraschuk as to how UMapper works with Twitter’s GeoAPI, he notes, “We used the Twitter search API with a geographic filter, which can search tweets in a specific location / radius.” Basically a simple platform to work with, “The GeoAPI implements Twitter’s search methods making it very easy for integration with Flash we used Tweetr ActionScript library.”

Users can create UMapper/Twitter maps that in turn can be embedded on their websites or Facebook pages. Others have used them to enhance blogs and news articles. “For example, if you are writing an article about a flood, you can create a Twitter map that shows people tweeting about flood in the area,” Taraschuk says.

Paul Hallett, CEO | Schmap
Hallett makes an interesting observation regarding what he calls the “geoparsing” of content shared on social networks. He points to the example of the wealth of local information that is shared in the body of tweets. “People tweet about great restaurant experiences, bands tweet about gigs, bars are tweeting about happy hours and so on,” he says.

The challenge for the app developer then comes down to filtering and deciphering. If someone tweets “Cool bash tonight at Joe’s,” has that person just returned from a private party at a friend’s house, or is there some kind of event coming up at Joe’s Bar? What is the event? Where is Joe’s Bar, and who might this information be relevant to?

According to Hallett, “there’s an epic commercial migration taking place right now at the intersection of ‘local’ and ’social’.” The same local restaurants, bars, shops (i.e. SMBs) that took 10 years to discover the Internet are now adapting to Twitter and Facebook with a much greater speed.” At Schmap.it, “we make it easier for these SMBs to reach local audiences, and help these target groups to discover vibrant, real-time local content,” affirms Hallett.

Jean-Francois Noel, CEO | 3rd Crust /SeeYourHotel.com
In working with Twitter’s API, 3rd Crust developed two apps that were both based on search/tracking to view where people wanted to go on vacations. According to Noel, “Twitter’s search API is very easy to use and the technical hurdles are minor.” The app provides location points and those points are added to tweets. However Noel feels that Twitter is somewhat limiting when compared to Google’s new social network product, Buzz. With Buzz, there is the ability to be more precise with one’s location and what is nearby. “In fact,” notes Noel, “I see this possibility as one of the best aspects for Buzz on the mobile devices and a problem for Foursquare.”

SeeYourHotel.com is a Web app designed to let you make your accommodations with ease, whether you are traveling for business or pleasure. Using the power and ease of Google Maps technology, you can now find a hotel, then view actual photos of the rooms and facilities, compare with other hotels nearby and then make your reservations all from one convenient site.

Keith Lee, CEO | Booyah & Founder of MyTown
With the location-based social network of MyTown reaching its recent milestone of one million registered users, Keith Lee sees the intersection of the real and digital worlds opening up new forms of monetization and branding opportunities with real-world tie-ins. According to Lee, “the ability to serve geo-targeted advertising and to engage consumers with brands on a local level is the holy grail for marketers. For Booyah, we now have the ability to offer branded virtual items based on proximity to real-world retail locations.”

One of the major limitations with today’s geolocation apps is “the inaccuracy of GPS at indoor environments such as malls. This is a problem since a significant number of shops in the US tend to be indoors. Moreover, it’s challenging to determine if you’re inside the store instead of just outside the store,” Lee adds.

While MyTown does not use Twitter’s GeoAPI, it does use GPS features to check-in at real-world locations to unlock virtual rewards. Players can then buy and upgrade to real-world shops, and enjoy MyTown ownership of their favorite real-life places. The more a place is frequented, the more it raises your shops’ value and rent. It’s a fully dynamic market economy and MyTown leverages the CitySearch API as its local directory to search for nearby restaurants, stores, and other points of interest.

Keith Dutton, CTO | Geodelic Systems
Dutton believes the geolocation APIs have significant potential, as they offer other dimensions that brings targeted, relevant information to users in a specific context. “However, with all the excitement of location specific information, it is important to remember that location is just one more dimension, though obviously a very important one, to relevancy,” Dutton notes. He cites as an example, using a geolocal coupon API. “While we receive a set of local coupons, to create a positive user experience, we still need to prioritize those coupons with additional analysis along traditional dimensions,” he says.

Geodelic’s app proactively shows what is likely to be of interest to a user in his local area. The app’s raw data consists of national geotagged databases, proprietary partner feeds, public partner feeds, live geolocal API calls, hand edited content, and will soon be rolling out a general public facing content publishing system. All this is run through a search engine that takes into account your personal interest profile to highlight points of interest around you. Their many data sources allow Geodelic to augment the API information, so that when an API locates a datum on a local business, it can match it to that local business and present a unified set of enriched information about it.

Dan Gilmartin | Where/Ulocate.com
Gilmartin see the location-base service market becoming more streamlined over time. “As a company that has been developing mobile location based applications since our inception in 2003, we saw early on, a developer had to have a relationship with a carrier, then pass a series of tests in order to get access to the location infrastructure. Today, developers can get access to location from device manufacturers as well as aggregators and the possibilities become endless,” he ascertains.

Where.com’s consumer value proposition is to deliver the best in class local search and discovery experience, through the aggregation of top data feeds. They combine their content into a user friendly application and based on the users’ location and context, they provide the user with distinct offers and deals from local merchants.  Ultimately their goal is to connect consumers and merchants who will have access to a network that delivers location services to users without the need to have them download an application.

Kent Lindstrom, CEO | Oogalabs.com/PlacePop
Lindstrom was the former founder and CEO of Friendster. When he became enamored with location-based social networks, he hired the head of Google Asia Pacific to run Friendster and founded OogaLabs to develop PlacePop, his initial entree’ into the LBS space. Competing head-on with the widely popular Foursquare and Gowalla, Lindstrom’s vision is predicated on providing users with a “dead-simple app” that reduces the mobile location experience to its essence, “much like Facebook did compared to MySpace,” he says.

While he is not yet working with Twitter’s GeoAPI nor does PlacePop have it own API, he finds the development of geolocation an arduous challenge - but one that PlacePop is up for. “For example just to do a “check-in,” it requires multiple systems to work in tandem; namely:  GPS, the phone network itself, the app, a geolocation database, then that all has to be sent back to the phone, in just a few seconds,” Lindstrom notes.

When asking Lindstrom as to how he will differentiate PlacePop from the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and MyTown who all gained a foothold in the market last year, he sees it as such: “In my experience, the first movers rarely end up winning, because of the enormous burden of pioneering. Lycos, Powells.com and even his own former company Friendster were all eventually exceeded by the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook.”

Zak Tanjeloff, Founder | Brring.com & NearToHere
Tanjeloff has not worked with Twitter’s GeoAPI. His alert service called NearToHere has been developed on the Wikipedia API. The challenges he sites in developing geolocation apps points to the “inability for iPhone apps to run in the background - meaning that unless our apps are running, we do not have access to geolocation data, and therefore, cannot deliver relevant content all the time,” he cautions. However he is very enthusiastic about embracing the enormous possibilities of geolocation apps. “With the availability of tremendous APIs to small developers like myself, we are able to build products, seemingly once only available for James Bond, in a quick, efficient, and most importantly, inexpensive manner.”

In considering collaboration with other location-based social network Tanjeloff says, “we are going to continue to layer more content into NearToHere to make it a more robust experience for the user.” Since we are a travel guide, in addition to Wikipedia content, we will next be layering in Yelp’s geolocated content to provide reviews of local business to users as they pass them.”

Tim Napoleon, Co-Founder/President | AllDigital, Inc.
AllDigital offers software and online services that enables the secure transport of digital content to IP-enabled devices including mobile computing devices, the desktop computer, and digital televisions.

In discussing geolocation challenges with Napoleon, he firmly believes that “The biggest issue with GEO data is end user perception. It needs to be really clear how this data is being used or the industry risks consumers disabling the feature,” he says. He sees the ubiquitous nature of geo-information affecting almost every Web page or application we use. “The widest use case is ‘ad targeting’ and ‘right restriction on Premium Content’,” notes Napoleon, where, “the granularity of mobile data is really providing media companies with new ways of pin-pointing users.”

As with so many early-stage social network platforms, extending the service with secondary applications is what makes the functionality truly useful. GeoAPI and the other geolocation APIs mentioned by our experts is a work in progress and as all have indicated, there is a lot more work that needs to be done. With Twitter and Facebook holding their developers conferences two weeks apart in April, I am sure the momentum for API development will kick into high gear shortly thereafter.

As to what major platform will lead the ‘geolocation’ charge by year-end, Booyah’s Keith Lee seems to think if “Facebook decided to incorporate a check-in process into their own API, it will have the capability of destroying all other check-in functionality (found in the majority of location-based social networks) because no one will be able to compete with their 400M+ social graph.” Others think Twitter and their acquisition of Mixer Labs’ GeoAPI will be the major catalyst to give them a leg-up in the geolocation universe.

With success comes consolidation. Potentially some or all the API development firms mentioned here may eventually be absorbed. Schmap’s Hallett is actually planning for that end-game as part of his exit strategy. He believes it’s extremely important that the smaller players like his company Schmap need to “establish defensible positions” to prepare for that outcome. He argues, “My point here is that when a smaller location-service player fails to establish a defensible position (erects little in the way of competitive barriers), then the big guys don’t need to acquire, they can just compete and squash it.”  However, “If the position is defensible, because the smaller player has built up a large enough base of loyal clients/users, or because it has certain key elements to its rollout that would prove difficult or time-consuming to replicate, then an acquisition makes more sense.”
The Year of the API may be a long-winding road as a result of geolocation being part of the mix.

Pirates Beware: eBooks Are Not Songs

By Rebecca Henely

For the customers of Lori James, chief operating officer for AllRomanceEbooks.com, the suave, swashbuckling pirate is a favorite literary trope. However, James makes sure to teach her customers that “Not all Pirates are Sexy.”

On the AllRomanceEbooks.com’s website, readers and visitors are invited to sign a petition to fight eBook piracy. The petition has 218 signatures as of this writing. Yet while James is committing herself to fighting the problem, she — and others — are unsure of the scope of eBook piracy.

“I’ve yet to see numbers presented [that] I felt were a true reflection of the scope of the problem in terms of the initial theft or lost sales,” James says. “I know some publishers and authors look at the number of downloads and count those as lost sales, but there are people who will download a book for free just because it’s free and never read it. That doesn’t really represent a lost sale because the person never would have purchased the book.”

Nevertheless, some technical measures have been put into protecting books from being pirated. James states many of the books sold on AllRomanceEbooks.com have some sort of digital rights management encoded in them.

Stephen Cole, managing director for Ebooks Corporation Limited, says that eBooks.com utilizes Adobe’s Content Server system to protect against piracy. “Because of the protection provided by Adobe Content Server, very few books are pirated as a result of people buying an ebook and somehow hacking it,” he says. “There are pirated books out there, but as far as we can see they arise from people scanning or re-keying.”

Cole says Ebooks.com has been working to prevent piracy by offering incentives with eBooks that can’t be pirated. Most pirated books come in a pdf format. While these can be uploaded to popular e-readers like Amazon.com’s Kindle and Barnes and Noble’s Nook (just as Kindle or Nook eBooks can be backed up on a computer as .pdf files), Cole says Ebooks.com’s new reader for the computer The Amigo Reader, will give readers an interactive experience they can’t get from a pirated book, like the ability to share notes with others and a live chat about the book.

“In an age of rampant piracy, it’s important for book publishers to keep adding value to books, which cannot be included in a pirated book. Amigo Reader goes some way toward that goal,” Cole says.

Take-down notices have also been a tool for the distributor. James says this has helped her company, AllRomanceEbooks.com, and has been very successful for book publisher Macmillan, which has been diligent about takedown notices. “A service like this could be especially valuable to small or mid-sized presses who don’t have staff dedicated to this function, so we are considering it,” she says.

Cole states that piracy will continue to be a problem for eBooks, although most likely not on the level of music piracy, as most eBooks are copy-protected. “Books are not songs,” he says. “When the Internet happened, there were 2 billion people out there in possession of CDs that had unencrypted, easily copied music on them. In effect, everyone who owns a CD and a PC, even an untutored technophobe, is a couple of clicks away from forwarding a song to their 500 best friends. This is not the case with eBooks.”

Yet James states when it comes to pirates, there are two types: “those [who] can perhaps be persuaded not to [pirate] and those who can’t.” She says the best way to prevent piracy is offering eBooks at legitimate sources and combating illegitimate ones. ”I firmly believe that the vast majority of our customers and readers are honest people,” James says. “They understand piracy is stealing and they understand that re-distribution of content contributes to the erosion of an industry that brings them countless hours of joy and entertainment.”

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