Going Global: Groupon Buys European Clone Citydeal

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Going Global: Groupon Buys European Clone Citydeal

Hugely successful group buying website Groupon has acquired a European clone called Citydeal, bumping the billion-dollar company’s number of operating countries from two (just the U.S. and Canada) to 18.

Groupon will apply its own branding to the Citydeal websites at some point in the future, but the company’s blog post says that the transition will take “months.” Users will still need to sign up for a Citydeal account separately to take advantage of deals in the European regions served.

Those regions will include the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden, Norway and Belgium.

Citydeal — which has 600 employees now — was founded by some of the same individuals who started European eBay clone Alando, which was later bought by eBay in an arrangement similar to this one.

Groupon invites its members to buy a product or service from a local business en masse at a greatly reduced price made possible by the sheer volume of opt-ins. It offers a new deal each day, giving users 24 hours to opt-in. The service has proved highly profitable for both Groupon and the businesses that partner with it, as well as a boon for local communities.

For example, a dance studio in Chicago recently sold more than 1,000 four-week classes at less than half the usual price-per-head. The business will benefit greatly, but so will the greater community of dance-related businesses in Chicago, which will grow significantly this year, bringing more money to venues and other studios and events.

[img credit: lindsayloveshermac]

YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily

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YouTube Surpasses Two Billion Video Views Daily

Less than a month after its 5th birthday, YouTube has announced that it has exceeded 2 billion video views per day.

The announcement from the Google-owned video website comes as part of a larger initiative that the company is launching today to retell the history behind YouTube and its growth. Part of that campaign is the launch of “My YouTube Story” and the related YouTube 5 Year Channel.

The new YouTube 5 Year Channel is the landing page for the campaign. With it, YouTube intends to get users to submit videos about the impact YouTube has had on their lives. It will eventually be curated by Stephen Higgins, a documentary filmmaker. There is also an interactive timeline depicting the social media’s history and a collection of videos from celebrities discussing the five year achievement.

We’ve been tracking YouTube’s explosive growth for some time, and the numbers are beyond impressive. There are now over 24 hours of video uploaded every minute to the site, but even that is overshadowed by the newly-announced 2 billion video views per day stat. That’s almost 1/3 of the world’s population.

As part of the celebration, YouTube also created a very detailed infographic tracing the site’s history. It seemed like a shame not to include it, so we did. We’re also including a video YouTube created to celebrate the five year anniversary.

What do you think of YouTube’s newest achievement? Do the numbers surprise you? Has YouTube impacted your life? Let us know in the comments.


YouTube 5 Year Anniversary Video




YouTube Infographic

Facebook Is About To Try To Dominate Display Ads The Way Google Dominates Text Ads (GOOG)


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Facebook Is About To Try To Dominate Display Ads The Way Google Dominates Text Ads (GOOG)

chart of the day, U.S. display ad imoressions, q1 2010

It is customary to divide online advertising into two categories: direct response and brand advertising. I prefer instead to divide it according to the mindset of users: whether or not they are actively looking to purchase something (i.e. they have purchasing intent).*


When users are actively looking to purchase something, they typically go to search engines or e-commerce sites. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. Google and Amazon are the biggest financial beneficiaries of intent harvesting.


When the user is not actively looking to buy something, the goal of an online ad is to generate intent. The intent generation market is still fairly fragmented and will grow rapidly over the next few years as brand advertising increasingly moves online. P&G – which alone spends almost $4B/year on brand advertising – needs to convince the next generation of consumers that Crest is better than Colgate. This is why Google paid such a premium for Doubleclick, Yahoo for Right Media, and Microsoft for aQuantive (MS’s biggest acquisition ever).


In 2003, Google introduced AdSense, a program to syndicate their intent harvesting text ads beyond Google’s main property Google.com.  The playbook they followed was: use their popular website to build a critical mass of advertisers; then use that critical mass to run an off-property network that offers the highest payouts to publishers. AdSense became so dominant that competitors like Yahoo quit the syndicated ad business altogether. Today, Google has such a powerful position that they don’t disclose percentage revenue splits to publishers and extract the vast majority of the profits.


It is widely believed that Facebook will soon follow the AdSense playbook by introducing an off-property ad network. They’ll try to use their strong base of advertisers to dominate intent generating ads the way AdSense dominated intent harvesting ads.


But to win the intent generation ad battle, data is as important as a critical mass of advertisers. For intent harvesting, users simply type what they are looking for into a search box. For intent generating ads, you need to use data to make inferences about what might influence the user.


This is what the introduction of the Facebook Like button is all about.  Intent generating ads – which mostly means displays ads – have notoriously low click through rates (well below 1%). Attempts to improve these numbers through demo...

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Google Throws in the Towel on the Nexus One Web Store


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Google Throws in the Towel on the Nexus One Web Store

After disappointing sales of the Nexus One Android phone, Google has officially given up on its mobile web store experiment.

In a blog post published just a short while ago, Google all but admitted that its web store — and thus Nexus One sales — have underperformed. The decision comes after multiple carriers dropped the Nexus One from its line-up, including Verizon Wireless.

Here’s what Google had to say about the web store:

“But, as with every innovation, some parts worked better than others. While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not. It’s remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from.”

Due to the failure of the web store, Google is making two major changes to its Nexus One and Android strategy. First, it is making the Nexus One more available to retailers. Second, it will eventually cease selling the Nexus One online, opting instead for an “online store window” to showcase a plethora of Android phones.

Despite the spin, today’s announcement can’t be considered anything less than an admission of failure. People weren’t willing to buy a phone they couldn’t play with first, and Nexus One sales suffered. Apple must be beaming with glee right now.


Reviews: Android, Google

Tags: android, Google, google nexus one,

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Apple's Lame Response To Falling Behind Android In U.S.: Whatever, We're Bigger Worldwide (AAPL, GOOG)


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Apple's Lame Response To Falling Behind Android In U.S.: Whatever, We're Bigger Worldwide (AAPL, GOOG)

China iPhone Consumer Chinese

Americans bought more Google Android-based smartphones than Apple iPhones last quarter -- the first time that's ever happened -- according to data from NPD Group released yesterday.


In response to getting passed by Android, Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison told The Loop that NPD's data only accounts for 150,000 people in the U.S. And, besides, IDC says Apple is beating Android worldwide.


“This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide...IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”


Loose translation: Whatever. At least we have a new iPhone coming out in a month.


While it's fine that Apple is finding growth overseas, the U.S. is still by far its most important market, and now it's losing to Google here.


How to grow in the U.S. again? Apple must start selling the iPhone at more carriers as soon as possible, especially Verizon Wireless.


See Also: Apple vs Google: The Next 10 Battles To Watch

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

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Facebook’s Social Plugins Now on 100,000+ Sites

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/BZI7L9IocWw/

Despite ongoing questions about privacy, Facebook’s new social plugins continue to expand their footprint across the web, with the company announcing on Tuesday that more than 100,000 websites have now deployed them.

The plugins –- which allow websites to add Facebook-powered social features without requiring users to log in –- were announced less than a month ago at Facebook’s developer conference, and attracted more than 50,000 publishers in the first week.

Some of those publishers are now seeing big traffic gains. Facebook says that The Washington Post has seen its Facebook referral traffic climb 290%, while IMDb has doubled the number of visitors it is seeing via Facebook as users “like” movies in droves.

Certainly, numbers like that are going to keep publishers experimenting with Facebook’s new features as a way to drive more engagement and traffic to their sites. Of course, that could all change if the user backlash against instant personalization continues to grow. For now though, Facebook’s path to web domination seems to be on track, and perhaps even progressing ahead of schedule.



For more social media coverage, follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook




Reviews: Facebook, Twitter

Tags: facebook, Facebook social plugins


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Google’s Secret Plan to Save Newspapers (GOOG)

Twitter gets serious, adds Twitter Business Center.


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Twitter gets serious, adds Twitter Business Center.

Twitter Business CenterTwitter has unleashed a road map of its moves toward making the social media platform into a more viable business product.  At the recent Chirp conference, there were a number of features that carried the scent of marketing toward business.

The most recent news that we have is of the Twitter Business Center.  Though the Center is not rolled out for all business users yet, a few choice ones have gotten the chance to use it.  Features included look like this:

  • Customizable page contents
  • Verified Account badges
  • Extra preferences
  • Ability to add contributors

It sort of goes without saying that these are all necessary, and very welcome, features for companies that choose to use Twitter to communicate with their customers.

Now for the “cool” feature – verified businesses using the Twitter Business Center can elect to receive direct messages from anyone who is following them.  So, instead of being limited to public tweets, customers can now have the option of direct communication with a contributor to a business’ Twitter.

Want to see if you’re part of the Business Center?  Chances are that the account that your business used to register has already received an email about the change.  But if you’re not certain, make sure to check out your account settings then look for a new tab called “Business”.

Via: Mashable

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10 Internet of Things Blogs To Keep An Eye On


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10 Internet of Things Blogs To Keep An Eye On

IoT_blogs.jpgEveryday objects with their own IP addresses may soon be the norm. This communication of objects with the Web is the latest version of a still-idyllic new vision of technology that claims it will improve our lives. Yet we're at such an early stage of development of the Internet of Things that finding the best blogs to follow is a moving target.

Many of the 10 offerings below have only come into being in recent months. Not making our list is a ReadWriteWeb favorite - Pachube - which has been remiss in updating their blog. So stay tuned for updates in future posts. For now, here are what we believe to be the 10 most active blog feeds available on the Internet of Things.


Sponsor

Internet of Things Council

The Internet of Things Council is a European think tank of the best minds in the burgeoning Internet of Things sector. From forecasting to developing prototypes, the council members' commonality is the "range of emotions and conceptual breakdown that comes with grasping the territory, the full logistical, business, social and philosophical implications of the Internet of Things." You can access their blog feed here.

Smarter Planet

IBM has put its long-term innovation emphasis on the global development of the Internet of Things. Its Smarter Planet brand is backed by a social network of 8 million IT professionals, as well as 400,000 employees. The Smarter Planet blog is a place for readers to talk about what they see, read and hear. The blog is "not going to deliver final answers to the issues raised, but we hope it acts as a starting point for conversations about how we can make our planet smarter." You can access the feed here.

I-O-T : INTERNET Of THINGS

This group blog is sometimes in French but mostly in English. The project originated as a LinkedIn discussion group, which readers are still invited to ...

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IBM Debuts New Social Media Analytics Tool


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IBM Debuts New Social Media Analytics Tool

Today, IBM is introducing a new social media monitoring tool, one that it says will measure consumer sentiment from data gathered on Twitter, blogs and other web services and networks.

The software, called the SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench, will use natural language processing (NLP) to analyze everything from product names and industry jargon to slang and emoticons, and it’s already being used by some pretty big businesses.

Navy Federal Credit Union, Rosetta Stone and Money Mailer are already using IBM’s software to understand how consumers feel about their brands, products and competitors. This software can also be put to good use by political groups, marketing and advertising agencies, research firms and many other organizations and businesses.

Data from the social web can also be merged with internal data to create even more accurate intelligence about consumers, IBM says. “Organizations can combine all of their structured data with textual information from documents, emails, call center notes and social media sources.”

Companies already using IBM’s application have used this data to improve CRM and make better-informed choices about products and marketing.

Rosetta Stone’s VP of Strategic Research and Analysis Nino Ninov said, “Predictive analytics allows us to leverage unsolicited and unbiased customer feedback and strategically improve our business. We now can also monitor competitor and industry websites[...] to maintain a current view and better understand how the public perceives our competition.”

SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench is a high-grade product and might be both too sophisticated and too expensive for the average small ...

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