Last week we reported that MessageMe , one of the latest messaging apps to hit the smartphone market, had picked up a $10 million Series A round of funding, and today, the company is officially confirming the news, along with some more details on how it’s been doing in the 2.5 months since it launched. It now has 5 million users across both iOS and Android — a five-fold increase on the 1 million that downloaded the app in its first 10 days. MessageMe aims to carve out a name for itself by offering more ways than the rest of the pack — which includes WhatsApp, Line, KakaoTalk, Viber and Facebook (from which MessageMe gained some notoriety when it was restricted from using Facebook’s social graph API to find friends to use the app) — for users to communicate with each other on its messaging platform. In its case, this is done through notifications via text messages, but also pictures, doodles, video, voice, location and music sent from one user to another. Altogether, usage of these has risen three-fold, to 1,500 per second from 500 65 days ago. From what we understand, although MessageMe is partly founded by people with extensive gaming experience — Arjun Sethi and Justin Rosenthal both worked together at social games company LOLapps ( acquired by 6waves in 2011) — it will be messaging, not games, that will be the revenue driver for the company. Also: no plans to add in advertising, nor to charge for the app. Instead, it will build out premium messaging features such as stickers and money transfers Read more »
Zynga’s Gaming Partner Bwin Spins Off Kalixa, Its Payments Platform, In Bigger Bid For The $1.3T E-Commerce Market
Bwin , the online gaming giant that is powering Zynga’s first foray into real-money gambing , in the UK , today is spinning off its payments platform Kalixa . In turn, Kalixa is launching new mobile and online wallet products to further its concept of being a one-stop shop for those seeking an e-commerce solution. The move is a sign of how companies are digging in further to tap revenues in the fast-growing world of e-commerce, which passed sales of $1 trillion for the first time last year and is projected to hit $1.3 trillion in 2013 . The move will mean that Bwin can concentrate more resources on building out its gaming operation, while 12-year-old Kalixa can separate itself from being associated with an online gambling company to focus on expanding its own customer base for products to better compete against the likes of PayPal, Amazon and Google. Kalixa says that in 2012 it processed €2.7 billion ($3.5 billion) of transactions for more than 300 merchants, and its prepaid credit cards, which it provides with MasterCard, are being used by some 150,000 people in Europe. Read more »
CEO Tim Cook Confirms First Store In Turkey Amidst Big International Retail Push
Toward the end of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s keynote appearance today at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, he dedicated a good-sized monologue to the state of Apple’s retail operation, where he confirmed a new store in Turkey and more international growth; he noted that stores have become so important in their communities that you can’t really call them stores anymore; and (joked?) that walking into one is akin to taking a Prozac. Apple retail stores, he said, have gone beyond being sales hubs. A store “acts as a gathering place, which has an important role in the community” for youth groups, musicians and more. “I’m not even sure if ‘store’ is the right word any more,” he said. “They have taken on a much bigger role. They are the face of Apple Read more »
InfoArmy Retreats After Crowdsourced Research Business Goes Through The Floor. All Reports Now Free
InfoArmy — a startup built on the “Data 2.0″ concept of crowdsourced competitive intelligence — has today sent out a letter, printed in full below, to its researchers informing them that it is pulling the plug on its current business model after failing to find enough sales for the research reports, and being unable to sustain the quality of the work that was being produced. As a result, it will be offering reports on its site free of charge and will no longer be paying researchers for their contributions, as it works on a pivot of the company. “The key thing is that crowdsourcing is still a part and parcel of what we’re doing, but the way we’re doing it with this model has not worked,” CEO and founder Jim Fowler told TechCrunch. “We got a bunch of researchers to work on this and it was a 50-50 share, but it ended up not working. The critical thing is that we’re looking at a much more crowdsourcing-like model. I remain a 100% believer in it.” Still, the news represents a setback both for enterprise-focused crowdsourcing, and also for Fowler, who sold his previous crowdsourced enterprise startup, Jigsaw, to Salesforce for $175 million . To date, InfoArmy had raised $19.3 million from Norwest Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures and Fowler himself. Read more »
Mobile Ad Revenues Will Top $11.4 Billion In 2013, Up 19% On 2012. India, China And Display Fuelling The Boost
The growing popularity of free mobile content — largely in the form of apps — is having a big impact on mobile advertising, the route that many developers and publishers are taking to monetize that content. Gartner has released its forecasts for mobile advertising today, and it predicts that this year, mobile ads will collectively bring in $11.4 billion in revenues, a rise of 18.75% on 2012′s $9.6 billion. With that growth will also come an evolution in what kind of ads are doing best: display ads will grow faster than search and eventually over take them, says Gartner. But other things will not change. The Asia Pacific region will keep its dominant position in mobile ads in 2013, and for the next three years to come, as the global market for mobile ads grows by a further 400% between now and 2016 to $24.5 billion. Gartner, it should be pointed out, first published these projections in November 2012 , but has actually revised them up. ”The mobile advertising market took off even faster than we expected due to an increased uptake in smartphones and tablets, as well as the merger of consumer behaviors on computers and mobile devices,” writes Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. The growth of display advertising against search ads is down to a few different factors Read more »
Instagram Sees Drop Of 4M Daily Facebook Connected Users Over Christmas, But TOS Kerfuffle May Not Be To Blame
Sure, it’s not unlike the New York Post to be sensationalist . But in this case it misinterpreted data to suggest Instagram was hit harder by backlash to its terms of service changes than it actually was. Combined with it being a quiet-ish holiday news week, I am taking a story it published today on a 25 percent drop in Instagram users with a little more than a grain of salt. Basically, it notes that figures from AppData demonstrate that Instagram lost 4 million daily active users — nearly a 25 percent drop to 12.4 million from 16.4 million — between December 19 and December 26. And as the NYP terms it, people are walking away in a “rage against rules.” The Post blames the decline on Instagram’s new, more commercially-minded terms of service — which it rolled back on December 21, i.e., in the middle of its DAU plummet, in response to public outcry. Now, I should point out that I personally really like Instagram, both as a way to post my own pictures, but also as a way of viewing those posted by others. But I’m no apologist, either. That being said, here are some further observations that give a slightly bigger picture about what is going on: – Yes, AppData notes that Instagram lost 4 million DAUs over the holiday period, as based on Facebook logins via the app. But it’s also seen some gains (according to the same data): weekly active users in that period are up by 1 million (currently at 28.5 million), and monthly active users are up by 1.1 million (currently at 43 million). DAUs also seem to be up a bit since Christmas, and they are now down by only 3.5 million over the last seven days. Read more »
Security Loophole In Facebook’s Camera App Allowed Hackers To Hijack Accounts Over WiFi
PSA to all Facebook Camera users on iOS: If you haven’t update you app in the past few days, update it now . The older version of the app, pre-1.1.2 and released before December 21, has a security loophole. When used over WiFi networks, malicious hackers can tap the network and hijack Camera users’ accounts, picking up information like email addresses and passwords in the process. The white-hat hacker who ID’d the problem is Mohamed Ramadan , an Egypt-based security researcher and trainer with Attack-Secure who has also found and reported vulnerabilities for Apple, Google, and Etsy — which apparently also had the same loophole in its iOS app. Ramadan tells us that the issue lied in the Camera app’s Secure Sockets Layer certification, which was too open. As he puts it, “The problem is the app accepts any SSL certification from any source, even evil SSL certifications and this enables any attacker to perform Man in The Middle Attack against anyone uses Facebook Camera App for IPhone. This means that the application doesn’t warn the user if someone in the same [WiFi network] trying to hijack his Facebook account.” Testing his theory by using a proxy to listen in on a WiFi network, he was able to type in his username and password into the Camera app, and then see that information appear via the proxy Read more »
Facebook Expands Photo Functionality In Its Desktop App; Quietly Rolls Out Drag To Upload Feature
Facebook last week opened a new front in the so-called photo app wars with the launch of its ephemeral photo app Poke . But Facebook’s focus on apps like Poke, Camera and Instagram doesn’t mean that it is has stopped enhancing the photo experience on its main social networking platform. Facebook has now implemented a new “drag to upload” feature to allow users to add photos to their status updates more easily. A few people noticed the feature last week, and today Facebook confirmed to us that it has rolled it out globally. “We are continuing to improve the photo-sharing experience,” it noted to TechCrunch in an emailed statement. “The feature began rolling out globally last week and is now available to all.” What this means is that users can now drag images from their PC/Mac desktops directly into the status update box, and even upload several pictures at once without needing to create an album. That speeds up and simplifies the process of uploading images, saving users a few moments of clicking around windows to upload a file. As Inside Facebook pointed out last week when it noticed the feature, it could take up to six steps to upload pictures before. Zzzzzzz. It also means one less thing to think about in the chaos of engaging with family and friends in the same room as you over the holiday period while still wanting to reach out to those further away. Read more »
Short, Sweet And In Stealth Mode: Quip Is The Name Of Ex-Facebook CTO Bret Taylor’s Next Project
When Bret Taylor announced last June that he would be leaving his role as CTO of Facebook to work on a startup with another ex-Googler, Kevin Gibbs, little else was divulged about what that project would be – except, as he told AllThingsD , that it might cover an area he does not understand well as a consumer, a little like, you know, when he helped create Google Maps. Today, a little more news began to seep out: the startup appears to be called “Quip”; Taylor started to redirect his backchannel.org site to the quip.com domain, but with invitation-only, restricted access; and there is some quiet talent recruitment taking place. We heard about Quip earlier today, and while we were trying to get through to Taylor to ask more, it seems that Business Insider heard about it, too. Now Taylor has responded to us — essentially, to note that the buck stops here for now: “We aren’t releasing anything and aren’t yet talking about what we are working on,” he wrote in an email. “I will be happy to talk when we are, though.” And for good measure, he’s now closed that little backchannel.org loophole that redirects it to quip.com, and backchannel.org has been taken offline altogether. Before the quip.com redirect disappeared, a Google apps login screen noted that Quip requested permission to view your email address, view basic account information, and manage your contacts. But as we note above, access to this was restricted. BI notes some other details that it has found on quip.com: It appears the quip.com domain changed ownership December 7 of this year Read more »
With Digital Media On The Rise, Disney Investment Arm Steamboat Ventures Raises $85 Million Fund
Well here’s a small bit of news before we enter the long holiday weekend: Disney’s investment arm, Steamboat Ventures , has raised a new $85 million fund, according to an SEC filing . The new money will allow Steamboat — and by extension, Disney — to continue making investments in digital media, as the market continues to heat up. Like other investment portfolios linked to major media conglomerates, Steamboat tends to makes strategic investments in startups that focus on digital video, gaming, and advertising — basically all things that could facilitate Disney’s embrace of digital media. Example companies in its portfolio include content-delivery network Edgecast Networks, encoding technology provider Elemental Technologies, online ad startup FreeWheel, and portable camera maker GoPro, all of which seem to be doing fairly well. The firm has had its share of successes, such as Playdom, which was bought by Disney for more than $750 million in 2010, as well as Pure Digital (acquired by Cisco) and GreyStripe (bought by ValueClick). But not all exits have been totally successful — Move Networks was sold to Dish in what appeared to be a fire sale . Nevertheless, now seems to be a good time to be investing in digital media, particularly online video and technologies that help support it. With YouTube emerging as a viable platform for video distribution and monetization, the promise of alternative online video content sources looks like it’s finally being realized. Meanwhile, a ton of traditional media companies — like Disney — are moving their video and gaming portfolios to new platforms to take advantage of new online, social, and mobile distribution outlets. Read more »