SlideShare Branded Channels
In the world of business there’s rarely a case of TMI, unless you happen to be Toyota. Oversharing is the rule of the road, especially when it comes to PowerPoint presentations, the lingua franca for all who toil in the trenches of commerce. SlideShare, the world’s largest community for sharing business presentations and documents, has been a faithful business sidekick for business since 2006. You can upload PowerPoint, Open Office and Keynote presentations and Word and Open Office documents. You can share them on your blog or website, or send a URL by email. Transcripts of your files will be indexed by Internet search engines and enhance the search engine ranking of your presentations and documents. Since the site is searchable by then outside world, it’s a great and inexpensive - read free - way to spread the word. Well, a good thing has just gotten better, Slideshare has launched a new Channels service to provide custom-branded micro sites that businesses can use to showcase presentations, whitepapers and webinars to a professionals audience. Some of the early adopters include Adobe, Ogilvy, Microsoft and Razorfish Marketing.
Features:
- Share PowerPoint, Open Office and Keynote presentations as well as Word and Open Office documents
- Can embed your presentation/document in a blog or website
- Has apps to share via Facebook, Linkedin and XING
See how ReadWriteWeb uses Slideshare branded channels.
WatchNBuy.com to White-Label its Interactive Video Commerce Player
By: itvt.com
Interactive video commerce company, WatchNBuy.com, announced Wednesday that it is offering its interactive video player on a white-label basis to other Web site operators.
An Emerging Industry: eBook Brokers
By Ron Callari
Digital content distribution as an industry emerged as a result of books moving from the traditional world of publishing to online platforms such as PDFs, eBooks and other ePub formats. Some licensing brokers for eBooks like Ingram Digital grew out of their traditional publishing units that have been in the industry for more than 40 years. Others like Robot Comics emerged within the last few years to solely focus on digital formats for specific genres like graphic novels.
Some of the advantages of digital vs. traditional publishing “is the compressed time from the distributor’s inventory to the online retailer or library’s shelf, [due to] the elimination of shipping, unpacking and shelving for the channel,” according to David Burleigh, director of marketing for OverDrive, a leading global distributor of eBooks and audiobooks.
In the traditional world, “books progressed through a well-defined supply chain from publisher to printer to shipper to wholesaler/distributor to bookstore,” notes Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, which is both an eBook publisher and distribution platform. Because the eBook supply chain is nascent and still evolving, Coker sees the industry in a state of still fleshing out its distribution channels. “Some publishers go direct to their customers, others go direct to the retail and others use distribution and aggregation intermediaries such as Smashwords or Ingram Digital,” he says.
With hundreds of mainstream and niche eBook distributors entering the field, the aforementioned firms aggressively distinguish themselves from the competition. OverDrive sees its distinction as providing the best customer support as well as the largest collection of digital content (including eBooks, audiobooks, music and video) for libraries on a single platform. Smashwords focuses exclusively on the independently published eBooks from self-published authors and small independent presses.
Other publishers acting as their own distributors focus on specific genres. While Robot Comics publishes graphic novels and currently works with Apple, Google and Amazon, its deputy director, Dave Baxter, refers to these companies as “marketplaces” or “storefronts” vs. distributors. According to Baxter, “in the digital world, there’s very little distinction between the store and the distributor, often none at all.”
Graphic novels have the inherent challenge of adapting color images to Kindle’s black-and-white-and-shades-of-grey format. Baxter indicates that “few are flexible enough to handle the needs of a graphic novel library and allow them to shine.”
Overdrive’s Burleigh notes that “early on, romance was the clear leader in libraries, probably proportionately more than in print, but other than that, we now see growth across the spectrum of all genres.”
According to Baxter, “due to the percentage of profits taken by the distributors, the limitations imposed by the software they work with, and the lack of direct control over the material display and the ability to market on certain levels, a distributor truly has to prove their worth in order to be literally, worthwhile.” So Baxter and his company continue to search for distributors whose business models are closer to the iPhone app model, but “so far the jury is out,” he says.
Since Amazon presently represents and sells its own library of eBooks exclusively on its Kindle devices, in some respects it can be reviewed as a competitor of eBook distributors. However, according to Overdrive’s Burleigh, he believes, “Amazon has a different business model, so we can’t really compare us to them.”
On the other hand, Smashwords just signed a distribution agreement with Amazon that will one day allow its books to be available in the Amazon Kindle store. As Coker puts it, this makes Amazon, “a competitor and a partner.”
Regarding end users, a recent DMB article highlighted the innovative distribution deals between companies and schools. The Blyth Academy in Toronto was touted as the first high school to purchase the Sony Readers for its student body. Similarly, OverDrive supplies eBooks and audiobooks to several colleges, including McGill University in Montreal, the Virginia Community Colleges in addition to K-12 schools. It also has a similar program for public and corporate libraries.
As far as Sony being a competitor, Coker makes the distinction: “Sony is definitely not a competitor. They’re a distribution partner [they sell our books] and we also help power their Sony Publisher Portal, which makes it easy for authors and publishers to publish their content into the Sony Store.”
With established libraries of their own, one would think that Sony and Barnes & Noble might not need a distributor for their online downloads. However, Burleigh states, that “one of the benefits of working with OverDrive is that it simplifies the process for libraries and retailers to work with a single distributor rather than hundreds of publishers.”
Coker agrees with Burleigh, and adds, “It’s time consuming and expensive for a retailer to enter into and maintain contractual business and technology relationships with hundreds or thousands of small publishers.” This is why he believes that “Sony, B&N and others value working with distributors and aggregators such as Smashwords. With us, they only have to manage one relationship, one technical integration and cut one check.”
Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been published on AlterNet, CounterPunch and the Sacramento News & Review. He is currently a social media blogger for InventorSpot.com and the author of two graphic novels.
Virtual Worlds Go Mainstream For Businesses
Image courtesy of Viximo
By Ron Callari
Viximo, a 2-year-old start-up company, is fast becoming a leader in the burgeoning virtual goods industry. For those who are new to this commercial space, virtual goods are digital products that are gifted, bartered or paid-for items online or via mobile phones. Videos, icons, e-cards, personalized avatars - items that allow people to better express themselves, add gravitas to their online persona, or increase their enjoyment of a game - make up the products that are now known as virtual goods.
Considered an unlimited opportunity for thousands of Web publishers, Viximo distinguishes itself from its competition in how it addresses the market. It claims it is the first and currently the only virtual goods provider that brings together everything a publisher needs for virtual goods in one complete, easy to implement, customizable solution.
Viximo is one of the only companies that offers both a system for selling virtual goods and the goods themselves. This then permits clients to either upload directly into their own virtual gift stores or customize at will.
In addition to partners such as Fotolog and Zorpia, Viximo just added BlackPlanet.com, SmartDate.com and FanIQ.com into its virtual goods platform. These deals extend Viximo’s reach to 60 million users, a new milestone for the company.
The increased interest in virtual goods is apparent by how quickly it has scaled. U.S. consumers spent $1 billion on such items in 2009, according to Inside Network, a market research company focused on Facebook and social gaming sites. Daniel Strang, the newly appointed CEO of Viximo, says he “sees these types of purchases as a potential substitute for dying revenue streams (such as subscriptions) in the publishing world.”
Brian Balfour, founder and vice president of product marketing for Viximo, speaks with DMB about how companies can capitalize on the virtual goods market.
What is the current status and future of the virtual goods market and how does it break down percentages between social networking, online gaming and online dating sites?
The current size of the virtual goods market in 2009 was about $1 billion in North America, and about $7 billion world wide. While North America still represents only one-seventh of the global market, it is the fastest growing - quadrupled in 2009 - and the youngest. There is still a lot of room to grow in North America and we expect it to double in 2010. I am unsure of exact percentages, but the majority of virtual goods purchases are taking place on social networks, which includes social gaming - probably around 50 percent. The next biggest area is more traditional gaming and virtual worlds, with online dating being the smallest piece at the moment.
What do traditional brands use virtual goods for? (e.g. Kohl’s, American Apparel, Sears, K-Swiss, Eberjey)
There are a couple opportunities for brands to get involved in virtual goods.
The first way is a sponsorship model. Users are highly engaged with virtual goods and spread them virally to their friends, so it’s a great place for brands to embed themselves. Brands can pay to have branded virtual goods offered to the users in various social networks and games. It basically acts as a very engaging form of promotion that performs much better then banner advertising does on social communities.
The second way is a licensed model. Certain brands that have a luxury appeal to them have an opportunity to sell virtual goods around their brand to users for actual money.
Does Viximo supply Second Life with virtual goods? According to the blogosphere that site has lost popularity over the years? Why?
Viximo does not supply virtual goods to Second Life. We primarily work with social networks, online dating and casual gaming sites. These areas are where most of the growth happened in 2009 and will continue to happen in 2010. I think the fact that the public has lost interest in Second Life is a good thing for the virtual goods industry. Typically people originally associated virtual goods with something very geeky and non mainstream like Second Life or other 3D worlds. The fact is that they represent a smaller portion than other areas like Social Networking. Virtual goods is a mainstream thing and as users become exposed to it more often, it will become more socially acceptable and we will continue to see the industry as a whole grow.
What types of sites are “hot” right now? And why?
The three verticals [that we] mentioned are where we will see most of the growth in 2010. There are still thousands of these sites worldwide that have yet to institute virtual goods. But looking forward beyond 2010 there is a question of how virtual goods will expand into the broader social Web and content arena. It will happen, but just how we don’t know yet. Other areas of potential opportunity in North America would be consoles (xBox, Wii, etc).
Ron Callari is a freelance journalist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been published on AlterNet, CounterPunch and the Sacramento News & Review. He is currently a social media blogger for InventorSpot.com and the author of two graphic novels.
Suggestion Apps Cut Through the Clutter
By Lee Simmons
Any mobile app that hastens Matt Glazer’s productivity is worth the investment, even at 99 cents a pop. A partner at Austin-based online communications and fundraising firm, GNI Strategies, Glazer depends on iPhone apps such as Tweetie to spread the word on various campaigns and causes.
“Social media is important to me when I’m looking for productivity apps,” he says. “I really take my time and try to learn what apps other people are buzzing about.”
For Glazer and thousands of wireless users like him, finding the right app has become a burgeoning cottage industry of late. While many users depend on search functionality, suggestion apps are fast becoming an effective tool to that end. Suggestion apps and services attempt to cut through app store clutter by recommending specific apps based on indicators like sales, relatedness to other apps, and social buzz.
“The Apple App Store currently has over 120,000 apps in it, with thousands more being approved every week,” says Chris DeVore, CEO of AppStoreHQ. “For iPhone owners and for app developers, app discovery has become one of the biggest pain points in the iPhone ecosystem. The same problem is emerging for the Android platform, with 20,000 apps and counting.”
Leveraging the ecosystem
DeVore explains that for the app ecosystem to function, two things must happen: consumers need the ability to find new apps and app developers need to believe that their hard work will get discovered. Suggestion apps meet both challenges by ranking apps based on certain criteria.
“There are many different kinds of recommendation engines,” DeVore says. “Nearly all of them are based on a mathematical algorithm engine that assigns a score to apps based on the provider’s approximation of importance, like how many people care about this; and relatedness, like what other apps or people is this app most related to.”
DeVore and his team scour the apps that get reviewed on his own site and monitor Twitter for app-related tweets. The result is a high-level view of what AppStoreHQ members consider to be their favorite apps.
“I can’t speak to other companies’ approaches with any authority, but the two vectors that we’re focused on at AppStoreHQ are critical acclaim and social recommendations. The former we assess by indexing and weighting the app reviews of the most authoritative critical voices on the topic,” DeVore says. “We recalculate these critical rankings several times a day to provide a constantly fresh assessment of the apps currently receiving the most attention from the most influential online voices.”
To tackle the social side, the company tracks all apps that members mark as “loved” or add to their wish lists, DeVore says, in addition to tracking tweets. The company then applies the same indexing and weighting criteria to the Twitter commentary as it does for its blog sources.
“The result is a near real-time view into the apps that individuals around the world are recommending the most,” DeVore adds.
DeVore cites Apple’s Genius feature - embedded in the latest version of iTunes - as one of the more important mechanisms currently used to capture information for apps. The feature tracks information about which apps are downloaded the most and by which users, DeVore says, in an effort to garner the best possible raw dataset to help make recommendations based on popularity and relatedness.
However, adds DeVore, “Apple Genius isn’t perfect, and there are other, potentially more relevant and interesting ways to discover patterns among app ownership, use, and satisfaction.”
Search vs. suggestion
Indeed, others are aggressively seeking new ways to make apps salient to their customers, though not all of them have adopted the suggestion app approach. Verizon Wireless, for instance, has focused its efforts on improving its mobile search capabilities to enhance its customer app dealings.
“We’re mainly focused on having a search function that people can use,” says Debra Lewis, a spokesperson with Verizon Wireless.
Verizon Wireless’ “Get It Now” feature offers search capability for wireless users, and developers can tap into the company’s online developer community to individually add apps to the Verizon media store.
For Glazer, visiting social media sites like Facebook is a more useful approach to finding the productivity apps that suit his needs. While he has dabbled in suggestion apps, he more often will browse the top 25 apps in the iPhone app store and seek out free apps on his own based on user buzz.
“Suggestion apps might be helpful,” he concedes. “Would they be helpful to me if I went about looking for them, or would they be helpful if I learned from other people using them? It’s a chicken-and-egg kind of thing for me.”
Lee Simmons is a writer based in Austin, Texas.
Mobile Credit Card Payments: Fad or Future?
Image courtesy of VeriFone
By Sheila Shayon
According to Ross Howe, sales and product development director for mStation/Mophie, “Mobile credit card transactions are the first big innovation since PayPal, and the biggest innovation in the credit card industry in 50 years. Plastic is old news.”
Mophie, a leader in creating iPhone accessories, is releasing a new product called the Mophie Marketplace. It’s a magnetic Strip Reader for iPhone 3G and 3GS. It enables the phone as a mobile payment solution that is fast, secure, completely transportable, light-weight and form-fitting. It’s an intelligent case solution for any merchant looking to drive sales at point-of-purchase, with assurance to customers that their card data is encrypted as it is swiped.
Encryption is ensured at the iPhone entry point by a tiny circuit board that bypasses the HH device completely. The iPhone never actually sees the credit card information - but sends it to a server in cyberspace where it is decrypted. Mophie is working on the next level of security, another layer at the swipe-head level, and the company is passionate about the issue.
The particular expertise at Mophie comes from its experience on the consumer side, rather than the payment side. Howe refers reverently to “making accessories for Apple customers that are beautiful, sexy products. The biggest challenge in developing Mophie Marketplace was to keep it as small and thin as possible. We are driven by a commitment to ergonomic design.”
Competitor VeriFone recently announced PayWare Mobile, which turns the iPhone into a card reader. A combination of an iPhone/iPod touch app, with a swipe card reader, it allows merchants to accept and process credit cards on the go. VeriFone’s product is aimed at small business merchants who need a mobile card reader for enterprises like home repair, small cafes and door-to-door sales.
Paul Rasori, senior vice president of marketing, considers his company the granddaddy in the payment business, with a 30-year track record and penetration in more than 100 countries. “In addition to the PayWare payment App, the card reader and the hardware device, the VeriFone gateway adds a fourth crucial component - connectivity. Our proprietary gateway allows the merchant to manage payment devices and credit card transactions seamlessly. It has built-in features that help merchants manage and update security and safety, provide extra reporting, and the ability to turn your device off and deactivate it remotely,” Rasori says.
The average consumer uses the VeriFone gateway in drugstores and supermarkets at check-out, but the company is striving to raise consumer awareness of its mobile brand with commercials now running in 10,000 taxis in New York City.
The PayWare Mobile card reader slips over the iPhone to accommodate card swipes and uses the secure magnetic stripe read head and certified firmware. “With the VeriFone gateway, the swipe read head is already secure even before the data gets to the phone. There’s no chance of rogue data capture,” Rasori says. “Our gateway gives PayWare a pedigree for quick adoption by iPhone users. When you buy online, making manual key entries is tedious, and the merchant pays a higher fee. PayWare is an alternative that bypasses large transaction fees.”
Both Mophie and VeriFone would like to enter the Blackberry and Android markets with their mobile Apps, but for now, Apple’s standardized ecosystem wins hands-down for ease in development and deployment.
Both companies would also like to enter global territories outside the US. “Everybody is ahead of America,” Mophie’s Howe says. “In the Asian markets, particularly Japan, they’re making big purchases on mobile as well as micro-payments for bus fare or a stick of gum. Cash is out. The younger you are the less cash you carry and ATM’s are considered an inconvenience.”
“But it’s five times more complicated outside the US with smart card chips and individual PIN’s - it’s much more complex,” Rasori says. “VeriFone is working with big bank customers in Europe to launch something later this year. It’s a solid business, but still in biz dev mode. There’s great interest in it - but how it all develops remains to be seen. Our US experience is successful so far - we’ve embraced the banks and their issues with fraud and come up with solutions that suit everybody.”
Howe agrees it’s an innovation that’s here to stay. “The greatest challenge going forward is paying attention to what’s possible tomorrow, making connections and thinking in advance.”
And then of course there’s Apple - who may outmaneuver them all with its recently announced EasyPay touch. This change to an iPod touch with Apple software would bring the entire point-of-sale (POS) system under Apple’s control.
Sheila Shayon is president/founder of Third Eye Media, third-eyemedia.com, multimedia production with core competencies in broadband production, creative design and execution, and social media. Shayon has several decades of multimedia experience working for companies like Time Warner Cable and Home Box Office.
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