5 Website Designs That Blew Us Away [Mashable Awards]

As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we're taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is "Breakthrough Website Design." Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

Lately, we've been pondering some of the better web designs that have popped up over the past year.

When we say "web design," we're looking beyond the pretty face of a well-laid-out page, beyond color and typography, beyond trends. What we're after is a truly elegant and functional design, and those things are just the icing on the cake. We specifically looked for sites that stretch the boundaries of our technologies' capabilities in interesting, useful and beautiful ways.

As greater bandwidth, new file formats and new markup specs make it easier, cheaper and faster to deliver high-quality digital images, sound and video, groundbreaking web designers are making visually and aurally intensive sites that change our point-and-click expectations of what the web should look like.

Here are a few of the websites we think showcased excellent design work this year, both in terms of form and function. They range from video and music showcases, to media troves, to high-volume social media apps, but they all have one thing in common: a (in some cases, renewed) focus on digital multimedia content.
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1. Best Social Media App Design: The New Twitter
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One of the best social web designs we've seen this year was a reimagining of a familiar product. Still, Twitter's redesign was much more than a facelift.

The new Twitter design was based on the Golden Ratio and was clearly built with users in mind. It beautifully incorporates common user actions with current design trends to make a highly enjoyable, useful and easy-on-the-eyes web app.

Most importantly, the new Twitter.com integrates multimedia content into the stream, a feature users have loved in desktop apps and other third party Twitter apps.

Not that popularity is any measure of artistic merit, but the redesign has also been well-accepted by the app's users. We agree with some of our own commenters that Twitter.com is beginning to match its third-party app competitors in terms of design and functionality.
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2. Best Media Website Design: Vogue.com
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Magazine-like formats on the web are becoming an increasingly popular trend, but Vogue's design was anything but cookie-cutter.

U.S. Vogue didn't have much of a standalone web presence before this year, but publisher Condé Nast pulled out all the stops (and reportedly loosened all the pursestrings) for the magazine's digital side. Vogue.com got its big redesign just in time for New York Fashion Week.

With a little help from design firm Code and Theory, the new Vogue.com is a wonder of digital multimedia, with splashy slideshows and videos, a full-screen feel and all the gloss and glamour a high-fashion magazine should carry in its online presence.
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3. Best HTML5 Website Design: TheWildernessDowntown
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Social media-savvy band Arcade Fire knocked our socks off earlier this year with a three-way marriage of music, video and HTML5. The group's experimental new video site changed the way we think about a music video.

Highly interactive and highly personal, the site uses the Google Maps API and the all-new HTML5 spec to great effect. By showing users a Google Street View image of their childhood home from a few different angles, in a handful of constantly resizing browser windows, the site truly challenges the viewer's expectations of what the intersection between music and technology should hold.
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4. Best Music Website Design: Thesixtyone.com
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When it comes to consuming new music, there are "lean forward" experiences and "lean back" experiences. Thesixtyone manages to offer both.

Formerly a convoluted, music-focused social network, this year the Thesixtyone controversially relaunched as a site where musicians of all stripes, especially independent musicians, can interact with fans and peddle their tunes. The "new" Thesixtyone.com scrapped a ton of clutter from its former iteration, paring down the entire site to its most fundamental and beautiful element: The music itself.

The new site offers a full-window music player that gives users as interactive or passive an experience as they desire, and the huge images and solid typography make the page a pleasure to behold.

The site's new features also include mood-based listening, similar to what we've seen from MySpace's new (and quite awesome) Romeo iPad app and Getty Images' MoodStream.

While many users revolted, we have to give Thesixtyone a huge hand for creating such a simple and gorgeous showcase for independent music.
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5. Best Design Shop Website Design: Wonderwall
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Debuting almost exactly a year ago, this site is the digital representation of Japanese interior design firm Wonderwall. The firm was founded by Masamichi Katayama in 2000 and specializes in commercial interior design for retail stores, building complexes, restaurants and bars. Its website's homepage contains a huge, dynamic grid of thumbnails that allows the user to quickly and easily browse through the firm's interior design work.

The site was designed (in Flash, no less) by Yugo Nakamura, one of Japan's leading web designers. On his own design firm's site, we learn, "The website's main index is a fluid grid-structure that sensitively reacts to each mouse action, organically changing its form based on the user's browsing history."

Although the fluid, mouseover navigation is something of a trend and might even be seen as an annoyance when a more practical browsing experience is needed, the layout is perfect for a portfolio. As the user clicks through, the "wall" of images gives way to a gorgeous, large, black-framed series of photographs for each project in the portfolio. For projects that have already been viewed, the "block" in the homepage's wall becomes a solid color instead of a thumbnail image.

Although the wall is the most eye-catching element, the site also allows users to view projects by year, by category and even by location via the Google Maps API.
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What Are Your Picks?
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Clearly, this is just a smattering of the most interesting web designs we've seen over the past year. We'd love to know more about your finds and faves.

In the comments, let us know what groundbreaking web designs you noticed this year, and tell us why you think they're important.
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The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)

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In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)
Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT
Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas
Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations
Socialize: Facebook, Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

Thanks to our sponsors:

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From a group of 20 street performers at its beginnings in 1984, Cirque du Soleil is now a global entertainment organization providing high-quality artistic entertainment. The company has over 5,000 employees, including more than 1,200 artists from close to 50 different countries.

Cirque du Soleil has brought wonder and delight to nearly 100 million spectators in 300 cities on five continents. In 2010 Cirque du Soleil, will present 21 shows simultaneously throughout the world, including seven in Las Vegas.

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About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

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Aro Mobile is an intelligent mobile experience that includes better email, connected contacts, smarter calendar and improved browsing.

The Aro system automatically learns what's important in your life—the people, places, dates and organizations you care about most. In your communications, Aro automatically identifies people, places, events, dates,organizations and locations. From any recognized term, Aro offers quick action menus to speed up your day.

The unique Aro experience is powered by advanced web services: next generation natural language processing and semantic data analytics services. Aro gives you the power to see through the clutter and focus your mobile life.

About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.

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About Research In Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. Through the development of integrated hardware, software and services that support multiple wireless network standards, RIM provides platforms and solutions for seamless access to time-sensitive information including email, phone, SMS messaging, Internet and intranet-based applications including the BlackBerry® wireless platform. For the latest on BlackBerry products join us at www.facebook.com/BlackBerry.
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Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Internet, Mashable, MySpace, Twitter, thesixtyone

More About: #newtwitter, arcade-fire, chris-milk, HTML5, mashable awards, mashable awards 2010, New Twitter, thesixtyone, thewildernessdowntown, twitter, vogue, web design, website design, wonderwall

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Ask a VC: Is Southeast Asia’s Economic Growth for Real This Time? [TCTV]

As promised, my guest on Ask a VC this week is James Chan of Neoteny Labs, an early stage Singaporean investment firm. Chan isn't some banker-fied expat, he's a "son of Singapore's soil" as he phrases it. He was educated in the system, served his two years in the army and got a scholarship to study in the US, part at Carnegie Mellon University and part at Stanford.

That scholarship came with a hefty price: He had to come back and work for the Singapore government for six years or pay hundreds of thousands of Singaporean dollars to get out of it. Yeesh, those are some strings, Pinnochio. The government offered to subsidize my trip to Singapore, but TechCrunch or my personal (depleted) savings account pays for 95% of my travel- the exception being when I'm paid to speak at a conference. In this case, TechCrunch picked up the tab, and hearing Chan's story I was relieved. Even Arrington's lock-in with AOL isn't that long.

Chan didn't wind up serving all of it, thanks to Joi Ito who met Chan and decided he had to have him for Neoteny Labs' man-on-the-ground and helped negotiate an out in the contract with a deferred payment plan. But Chan's experience in the government gave him an appreciation for the strengths and weaknesses of Singapore's astoundingly practical and far-reaching government machine.

Chan uses that unique mash-up of East-West experiences to answer reader questions about investing in Southeast Asia- and where to find the best chili crab in Singapore. Next week, our interview with one of Indonesia's only early stage fund, East Ventures.

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Are You A Pirate?

I read blog posts by Don Dodge and Glenn Kelman today about people jumping from Google to Facebook and it got me thinking about entrepreneurs.

Most people have an aversion to risk, my college economics professor told me. Which means they have to be rewarded to take on that risk. The higher the risk, the higher the possible payout has to be for people to jump.

We make risk/reward decisions every day, all day. Do I go skiing, and enjoy the rush of flying downhill even though there's a small chance I'll blow out a knee? Should I go to college or just get a job and start earning money now? Should I eat the high fiber and generally healthy thing on the menu, or go for the cheeseburger? Should I hit the restroom before the movie starts? Etc.

Every time we do something, or don't do something, there's a risk/reward algorithm being calculated in our brain.

Entrepreneurs, though, are all screwed up. They don't need to be rewarded for risk, because they actually get utility out of risk itself. In other words, they like adventure.

The payouts for starting a business are just terrible when you account for risk. A tiny minority of entrepreneurs ever get rich. And the majority of entrepreneurs would probably make far more money, and have more stable personal relationships, if they just worked for someone else.

In my youth I was a corporate lawyer, making a very nice salary for representing technology startups in Silicon Valley. There was a good chance I'd make partner after 7-8 years and could be earning maybe a million dollars a year by the time I was 40. All I had to do was work hard, and bring in clients. I was good at both.

But I left the law after just three years to join a startup. And the reason I did it was adventure. I wanted to be in the game, not just watching it. My parents thought I was crazy. They still have no real idea of what I do for a living, and they were, frankly, pissed off that I spent their money getting a law degree, only to throw it away before I was 30.

But I did it anyway. And then I left that company after a year to start my own company. And I've never looked back since then. That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a "real job." That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted technicolor. Also, I hate working for other people because I'm really bad at it.

When I talk to non entrepreneurs about the startup world I often use a pirate analogy. Not because I know that much about pirates, but the the general stereotypes work well as an analogy.

Why did some people way back in the 17th century, or whenever, become pirates? The likely payoff was abysmal, I imagine. There's a very small chance you'd make a fortune from some prize, and a very large chance you'd drown, or be hung, or shot, or whatever. And living on a small ship with a hundred other guys must have sucked, even for the captain.

But in my fantasy pirate world these guys just had really screwed up risk aversion algorithms. Unlike most of the other people they actually lusted after that risk. The potential for riches was just an argument for the venture. But the real payoff was the pirate life itself.

Also, it was nearly impossible to be an entrepreneur back then.

Now it turns out that most people in Silicon Valley are actually normal risk averse types. They carefully calculate the potential rewards of a startup before they join, taking into account stock options as well as salary. And also the resume value of a company.

Some of the richest people I know aren't really entrepreneurs. They worked at HP and then moved to Netscape when it got hot. They made a fortune and then jumped to Google and made another fortune. And now they're jumping to Facebook.

They may be very good engineers, or sales people, or marketing, or execs. But they ain't entrepreneurs. They're just resume gardening and they're really no different from everyone else.

I don't care if you're a billionaire. If you haven't started a company, really gambled your resume and your money and maybe even your marriage to just go crazy and try something on your own, you're no pirate and you aren't in the club.

That thrill of your first hire, when you've convinced some other crazy soul to join you in your almost certainly doomed project. The high from raising venture capital and starting to see your name mentioned in the press. The excitement of launch andgulpcustomers! and the feeling of truly learning something useful, you're just not sure what it is, when the company almost inevitably crashes and burns.

Now that person is interesting. That person has stories to tell. That person is a man who has been in the arena.

There are lots of things that I will probably never experience in this life. Military combat. Being dictator of a small central American country. Dunking a basketball. Being a famous rocks star. Or walking on the Mars.

But one thing I have been, and will always be, is an entrepreneur. And damnit that feels pretty good. Because if I was a lawyer right now, even a rich lawyer, I'd always have wondered if I had what it takes to do something a little more adventurous with my life than work for someone else.

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PayPal Beats Google Checkout To The Local Payments Market But Will It Work? (TCTV)

In conjunction with the company's developer conference, PayPal announced a slew of news and product releases this week, including a new micropayments product and an apps platform for businesses. But tucked away in a release was another piece of news from PayPal that could be huge. PayPal just released a new version of its popular iPhone app that allows users to find businesses near their immediate location that accept PayPal as a form of payment. Launching in San Francisco initially, the feature encourages merchants to attract nearby customers to their stores by posting deals and promotions to the app as an incentive for customers to visit their businesses.

Customers can search by category and location, and find and select stores, services, or special offers. Users can pick up the goods or services in person, but pay the merchant using their PayPal app. Users can also use tags from Bling Nation, a startup that has partnered with PayPal to use the startup's mobile payment chips to deduct funds from a PayPal account.

One of the big selling points around using PayPal for merchants is the ability to offer deals as an incentive to drive buyers to a store or restaurant. Whether it be Groupon-like daily deals or just ordinary coupons, there's no doubt that deals do help drive online to offline sales.

PayPal President Scott Thompson tells TechCrunch (see video below) that eventually this local feature will have "ubiquity," meaning you'll be able to access these merchant listings and pay with PayPal wherever you are in the world. Local is one of the key parts of PayPal's future strategy, says Thompson. He's confident that has the world becomes more connected, eventually all local merchants will accept PayPal as a payments option for in-store purchases.

For PayPal, local payments certainly makes sense. Online to offline sales is a big part of local commerce, and if PayPal can become a payments mechanism in the local market, it could be pay off in revenue for the company.

One competitor worth noting in the local payments space is Google Checkout. While Google Checkout doesn't have as extensive of a reach as PayPal, Google Checkout has an ace in the hole when it comes to Google Places. Google Places allows local businesses to claim and edit a page, post realtime updates (eg, "happy hour tonight"), post reviews, create a custom QR code, and even offer coupons. And Google indexes and highlights these pages in search results, most recently launching a more integrated placement of Places page within Google search.

Google could easily turn on a transaction (such as a daily deal) for these merchants, and use Google
Checkout as the payments mechanism. The same experience could extend to mobile phones.

The advantage Google has over PayPal is that with Places, these relationships with local merchants are already built into the search giants business. At last count a few months ago, Google had Places pages in place for over 4 million businesses but I'm sure this number is higher. PayPal on the other hand will have to forge new relationships with all these local businesses to get them on board with their payments platform. Not only do they have to find the businesses, but PayPal has to teach them how to use their mobile apps as a payment mechanism. Scaling PayPal's local feature will be a huge endeavor for the company, which is why PayPal is testing the feature out in a limited market in the San Francisco.

This why it makes sense for PayPal to form partnerships on its local endeavor. Google is an unlikely partner considering that the company already has its own payments platform. Facebook Places could be a potential partner (PayPal is already a micropayments partner for the social network's virtual currency platform Credits). Facebook is rumored to be turning on a deals feature for Places and PayPal could be a way to process these payments. And Groupon is rumored to be brokering a payments deal with PayPal as well.

So while Google Checkout still doesn't have the sort of users numbers that PayPal does in the payments area, Google has much more in the war chest in terms of local. With local up for grabs, the battle between the two payments platform just got a whole lot more interesting.

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Antrian Pembeli Samsung Galaxy Tab Mengular 200 Meter

Antrian itu bikin sesak Plaza Senayan.Antrian mengular sampai ke tempat partkir.

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Berprestasi atau Bunuh Diri

Seorang mahasiswa di Singapura harus mengumpulkan sejumlah nilai dari kegiatan ekstrakurikuler untuk bisa masuk dan bertahan di asrama kampus.

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DeskMetrics Wants To Be A Google Analytics For Desktop Software

There's a lot of talk about how web apps and the cloud are heralding a new age of computing, but for the forseeable future many people are still going to be relying heavily on desktop software — especially as operating systems start to bake in their own App Stores.  And while desktop apps may offer advantages in terms of performance and user experience, in some ways web apps are actually better for developers — it's much easier to track how people are using your application and iterate accordingly.

That's where DeskMetrics comes in. The Brazilian startup, which launches today to the public, offers developers a set of components that will allow them to analyze how their desktop applications are being used, down to each click. This means developers can analyze which buttons users are clicking, how far along in various sign-up flows they're getting, and more — just like web developers have been doing for years.

To get DeskMetrics working, a developer needs to integrate special native components into their application, which will allow them to track both clicks and when their users are installing, running, or — heaven forbid — uninstalling their application. All of this data can be followed from the DeskMetrics web interface, which updates in real-time and also features geo-mapping so you can see where in the world your app is taking off.

DeskMetrics isn't the first company to tackle this problem. Founder Bernardo Porto says that competitors include Eqatec and PreEmptive Solutions' Runtime Intelligence. But he says that DeskMetrics differentiates itself in a few ways. First, he says that DeskMetrics has support for more programming languages, including C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and .NET (C#) (he says the competitors only support .NET). He also says that DeskMetrics is the only one of the three that reports data back in real-time.

Pricing is based on how many applications a developer is tracking and how frequently they're used. A basic startup plan runs $49/month for one app and 20,000 sessions, and a premium plan goes for $669/month for 10 apps and 1 million sessions (there are a few price points between those).

I'm still a bit skeptical about how much real-time matters in this case — after all, developers can't iterate on desktop software nearly as quickly as they can on the web. But the company has the endorsement of OpenCandy cofounder Chester Ng, who says that this was actually a problem OpenCandy wanted to solve early on (they provide add-on installs for desktop software) but haven't gotten around to it yet — and they say DeskMetrics is the best solution that's currently available.

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DeskMetrics Wants To Be A Google Analytics For Desktop Software

There's a lot of talk about how web apps and the cloud are heralding a new age of computing, but for the forseeable future many people are still going to be relying heavily on desktop software — especially as operating systems start to bake in their own App Stores.  And while desktop apps may offer advantages in terms of performance and user experience, in some ways web apps are actually better for developers — it's much easier to track how people are using your application and iterate accordingly.

That's where DeskMetrics comes in. The Brazilian startup, which launches today to the public, offers developers a set of components that will allow them to analyze how their desktop applications are being used, down to each click. This means developers can analyze which buttons users are clicking, how far along in various sign-up flows they're getting, and more — just like web developers have been doing for years.

To get DeskMetrics working, a developer needs to integrate special native components into their application, which will allow them to track both clicks and when their users are installing, running, or — heaven forbid — uninstalling their application. All of this data can be followed from the DeskMetrics web interface, which updates in real-time and also features geo-mapping so you can see where in the world your app is taking off.

DeskMetrics isn't the first company to tackle this problem. Founder Bernardo Porto says that competitors include Eqatec and PreEmptive Solutions' Runtime Intelligence. But he says that DeskMetrics differentiates itself in a few ways. First, he says that DeskMetrics has support for more programming languages, including C, C++, Delphi, Visual Basic, and .NET (C#) (he says the competitors only support .NET). He also says that DeskMetrics is the only one of the three that reports data back in real-time.

Pricing is based on how many applications a developer is tracking and how frequently they're used. A basic startup plan runs $49/month for one app and 20,000 sessions, and a premium plan goes for $669/month for 10 apps and 1 million sessions (there are a few price points between those).

I'm still a bit skeptical about how much real-time matters in this case — after all, developers can't iterate on desktop software nearly as quickly as they can on the web. But the company has the endorsement of OpenCandy cofounder Chester Ng, who says that this was actually a problem OpenCandy wanted to solve early on (they provide add-on installs for desktop software) but haven't gotten around to it yet — and they say DeskMetrics is the best solution that's currently available.

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Lars Rasmussen, Father Of Google Maps And Google Wave, Heads To Facebook

When Google put their faith in Wave, an ambitious new project last year, they knew it was a gamble. But a big part of it was the team behind the project. A team led by Lars Rasmussen, the engineer best known as the co-creator of the hugely successful Google Maps. And now he's left the company. And from what we hear, he's heading to Facebook.

Rasmussen confirmed his departure on his Facebook page. Yesterday was his last day of work at Google. He didn't give any indication where he'll be heading next, other than he'd be "a whole big ocean closer" (he was living in Australia where the Wave team was based). But the fact that he put all this info on Facebook is telling. From what we're hearing, he will be joining Facebook.

Neither Facebook nor Google has returned our request for comment yet.

This is a huge loss for Google and a huge gain for Facebook. But it's hardly surprising that Rasmussen is leaving Google given that the search giant killed his ambitious Wave project barely a year after it was first unveiled.

Rasmussen's defection is the latest in a series of moves from Google to the pre-IPO Facebook. But his move is likely the biggest one since Chrome OS lead Matthew Papakipos made the same jump in June.

We'll be very interested to hear what he's working on at the social network. No word yet on what his brother Jens, who also helped co-create both Maps and Wave, will be joining him there.

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The Future of Local Commerce = Facebook + Foursquare + Yelp + Groupon

Editor's note: The following guest post is by David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong, a mobile payment provider for Facebook Credits, AT&T and hundreds of leading destination websites and mobile applications

There's been much hype, crazy valuations, and overall market excitement about businesses that promise to unleash the power of the social graph, location, recommendations and group buying. Facebook's latest valuation according to SecondMarket is now about $30 billion, Foursquare raised $20 million at a post-money valuation of $115 million while still at a pre-revenue stage, Yelp, short of selling for $550 million to Google, raised over $25 million at an undisclosed but very high valuation, and finally Groupon raised $135 million at a whopping $1.35 billion valuation. So besides their huge success with the investment community, and their users, what do these companies have in common, and what does all this have to do with disrupting Local Commerce?

In an August TechCrunch guest post, Alex Rampell, describes how Online2Offline commerce is a potential trillion dollar opportunity. The gist of it is that we spend most of our disposable income offline, in local stores, restaurants, and shopping malls. But companies like Groupon, Gilt, and other group buying and private sale startups are changing the money flow. People buy online, and redeem offline. But this is just the beginning of a perfect storm brewing that will change the way we discover, shop, and pay for things. Let's focus on the main function each of these different startups provide to understand how bringing them together will ultimately disrupt multiple trillion dollar industries:
Facebook: provides the Social Graph, which is fast becoming a utility. Through its open platform, and APIs, we share more about our lives and our interactions online and on mobile every day.
Foursquare and Gowalla: provide location services and check-ins, along with game mechanics that motivate users to unlock badges, earn mayorships, and get discounts at local stores in the process.
Yelp: provides crowdsourced reviews of local businesses. Now also provides check-ins, and offers.
Groupon: provides discounted offers against a promise to increase sales and bring in brand new customers to local businesses.

The interesting thing here is that there's a lot of overlap between the features offered by these companies. Recently, Facebook launched Places, a mobile geo-location service that mimics Foursquare local check-ins. Yelp also added check-ins, and recently rolled out Yelp Deals, a Groupon clone.

Considering that Local Commerce will be mostly mobile, one of these companies still must bring all of these features together, along with one-click payments (IMHO), to truly tap into the potential of all these disruptive technologies. In my mind, the ultimate product combines all these features in a mobile app. A user would launche the app, see what special deals are in her area (location + group buying), whom of her friends already bought the coupon/item (social graph), local reviews from friends (social graph + reviews), and then she could then buy the desired coupon in one click on her handset. She could walk into the local business with a discount code, barcode, or maybe at some point in the future, an enabled RFID tag, and redeem what she just bought.

All of these companies, with the exception of Yelp, are at an early stage of their product development in this space. Facebook Places is lacking the gaming mechanics of Foursquare, the reviews of Yelp, and the local deals of Groupon. Foursquare is missing scale in its discounted offers. Yelp is missing the reach of the social graph, and the embedded payments. Groupon is lacking core social graph features that would give it better relevance through social shopping.

So which one of these companies will succeed in unleashing the power of Local Commerce by combining the right set of features with the appropriate on-the-ground salesforce? My bet is on Facebook to be first. They have a large advertising sales organization that could reach out to local businesses, already are supposedly testing offers on Places, they have de-facto more distribution and social graph access than any of the other companies, and finally they are building a true payments platform.

Groupon and Yelp also have a decent shot at it, but it will be tough to compete with Facebook's distribution capabilities and ubiquity. In order to remain relevant, they will have to innovate and come up with original features. Foursquare's future is probably going to be more challenging with more players entering their space, but it it could end up being bought (once again for founder Dennis Crowley) by Google, which is preparing to aggressively go after the local commerce opportunity.

CrunchBase Information

Facebook

Foursquare

Groupon

Yelp

Information provided by CrunchBase

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What the Future Holds for B2B Social Media Marketing

The B2B Social Media Marketing Series is supported by IDG Enterprise. Understand how IT decision-makers are accessing information and how you can engage them with successful multi-channel programs. Learn more.

Promoting a brand through social media is no longer unique or novel it's simply the norm. From Starbucks to taco trucks, the use of social tools like Facebook and Twitter to spread awareness about a business to customers is widespread because that's where brands find prospective customers and engage with existing patrons. But what about the use of social media between businesses?

Business-to-business (B2B) social media is a different animal. B2B and enterprise companies aren't trying to convert millions of individual consumers into customers they're trying to convince a smaller group of companies with bigger budgets to buy their products or services. Social media's power to spread a message across the web isn't as relevant.

That doesn't mean social media doesn't have a place in the B2B world, though. On the contrary, a lot of these companies have found social media to be extremely useful in generating leads, performing market research and establishing themselves as thought leaders.

We've already written about ways to use social media for the enterprise, but now we want to explore a different topic: how B2B companies will use social media in the future. To do that though, we need to explore the current state of social media in the enterprise.
---------------

What B2B Marketers Use Social Media For
---------------

While you might assume that B2B companies are less engaged in social media than their B2C counterparts, you'd actually be wrong. In a study of social media use conducted by Business.com last year, it was revealed that North American B2B companies are more likely to be using social media tools when compared to B2C companies.

Here are some examples:
81% of B2B companies were likely to maintain company-related profiles on social networks, compared to 67% of B2C companies.
That gap stayed true for a wide range of social media activities; 75% of B2B companies participated in Twitter (compared to 49% for B2C), 74% hosted a blog (compared to 55% for B2C), and 66% engaged in online discussions (compared to 43% of B2C companies).
B2C and B2B companies were just as likely to be monitoring user reviews (B2B: 49%, B2C: 51%) and manage a community dedicated to customers (B2B: 49%, B2C: 51%).
One of the only areas where B2C was more active than B2B in social media was advertising on social networks (B2B: 42%, B2C: 54%).
In terms of the tools B2B companies use, 77% used Facebook (compared to 83% for B2C) and 73% utilized Twitter (compared to a shockingly smaller 45% for B2C companies).

Why are so many B2B marketers using social media, though? According to a study analyzed by eMarketer, the majority of B2B marketers (60%) said they use social media to provide "thought leadership" for their brand. Another 49% said they used social networks to generate leads, 46% for customer feedback, 35% for advertising and 29% for market research.

The inescapable conclusion is that the use of social media in a B2B setting is more popular than most people would expect. Businesses are mostly using it to develop thought leadership and customer service. Because of that, we're not surprised to find that Twitter is often their tool of choice.

Still, as social media strategist of the PayPal X Platform Sudha Jamthe told me in an interview, thought leadership and customer service are "low-hanging fruit" for B2B marketers. Social media is capable of so much more.
---------------

What Tools Will B2B Marketers Use?
---------------

B2B social media marketing is still very much in its infancy. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and most of the social tools we use today are just a few years old. Companies are just starting to really discover the power of social and what it can do for a company's bottom line.

In other words, there's a lot of room for growth. So what's next for B2B social media marketing? To find out, I consulted some of the best minds in the B2B social marketing space.

Autumn Truong, manager of social media and corporate communications at Cisco, says that she sees social as one of the key channels to reaching influencers and building awareness about B2B initiatives. She specifically pointed to the social media efforts of Cisco's executives (a big example: CTO Padmasree Warrior, who has nearly 1.4 million followers).

Really though, it boils down to one thing Truong said during our interview: "How can we mobilize a captivated audience to do something on our behalf?"

Truong believes the future of B2B social media marketing will focus on three key areas: video, mobile and engagement. She seemed especially excited by video's potential to tell a story and spur new engagement. We wouldn't expect anything less from her, though; Cisco is the owner of the Flip camcorder, after all.
---------------

Social Media Shaping the Product
---------------

PayPal's Sudha Jamthe believes we've only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to B2B social media. While social media may be used for thought leadership and customer service today, she thinks its real power is in real-time feedback.

PayPal is utilized by millions of consumers worldwide, but it also has countless merchants as customers and developers and small businesses as partners, all of which it wants to reach via social media. Sudha believes that a lot of B2B marketers are using it simply as a broadcast platform, when its real value is in making customers your partner.

Her example was the PayPal Developer platform. She says that PayPal simply can't know all of the potential APIs and feature requests its developer community wants and needs in order for them to build applications and products on its platform. The company has two primary options for getting feedback from them: market research or social media. The problem with market research though is its drastically high costs.

Social media, on the other hand, can be a direct channel for customers to express what they really want. PayPal has used its social media accounts to communicate with developers, which has resulted in innovations such as PayPal Apps and its Micropayments for Digital Goods product.

Jamthe believes that the future of B2B social media marketing is in companies' ability to use social feedback to adapt their products based off criticism and comments. She also stresses though that social is going to become more integrated in not only B2B marketing campaigns, but in actual products. This will provide an even more direct way to solicit feedback and innovate based off of that.

"In B2C, there are a lot of tools that measure the conversation," she said. "How many conversations, what was the reach of my campaign? It doesn't mean anything in a B2B setting. Talking to vendors, so what? It should be different for B2B, and it needs to be about real ROI. It translates to cost saving."

The ROI of B2B social media depends not only on tracking engagement, but on figuring out where it saves a company money. Jamthe argues that social media's cost savings come in its ability to get market feedback and even new product ideas at a fraction of the cost.
---------------

Three Takeaways
---------------

There's a lot to be excited about if you're a B2B social media marketer, because we're just starting to realize how powerful social media can really be for enterprise organizations. While today it may be about the social tools we use to spread our message, tomorrow it will be about the platforms utilized to engage in constructive and effective conversations.

With that said, here are my three key points to remember about the future of social media for B2B companies:
B2B social media will be less about marketing and more about thought leadership and crowdsourced feedback.
Twitter and Facebook may be huge now, but video and mobile are the new frontiers.
The true ROI of social media in B2B doesn't come from broadcasting your message, but the engagement companies get in return.

How do you think B2B social media will evolve? What tools will we be using? Where is the true ROI in social media? It's your turn to chime in.
---------------
Series Supported by IDG Enterprise

---------------

The B2B Social Media Marketing Series is supported by IDG Enterprise. Understand how IT decision-makers are accessing information and how you can engage them with successful multi-channel programs. To learn more, download our white paper or listen to our webcast as IT marketers discuss the challenges of reaching customers in the current media environment and best practice frameworks for developing successful multi-channel programs.
---------------

More B2B Marketing Resources from Mashable:
---------------

- 10 Essential Social Media Tools for B2B Marketers
- 4 Tips for B2B Marketing on Facebook
- 13 Essential Social Media Lessons for B2B Marketers from the Masters
- 10 Essential Social Media Tips for B2B Marketers

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, almagami Flickr, Brian Solis

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Groupon Merchants Can Now Create Their Own Deals

Groupon has released a Merchant Center for Groupon Stores, its recently uncovered self-service platform that businesses can use to set up virtual store fronts to promote and run their own deals.

The Merchant Center packs a host of information on the new product offering and appears to be open for business interested parties can now sign up to set up their own Groupon Store and create deals.

Should you sign up, Groupon claims you can have your first deal up and running in a few days' time. Compare that to a month or longer if you go the traditional Deal of the Day route. Once your business has been verified, you can run deals as often as you want.

While there are no up front fees, Groupon does take a variable commission. The commission is a 30% cut of sold Groupons for deals the site helps to promote, and 10% for the deals it doesn't promote merchants only get paid upon deal redemption (an important distinction). According to the Merchant Center, promoted deals have additional fees but will be matched with members and delivered via e-mail or displayed on a user's homepage.

Self-serve deals cannot be modeled after Groupon's Deal of the Day "tipping point" formula, but merchants can limit the number of customers who can buy deals.

Now that the self-serve Groupon Stores platform has opened its doors, we can watch to see if the product becomes the "future of Groupon" as it's been described. What's interesting is that the implementation of the product indicates that this will compete with the likes of Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR, Gowalla and Google when it comes to attracting small business attention.

There's also an active discussion on Quora around Groupon Stores with participants chiming in on whether this is a misstep for the company.

"By moving into a self-service model Groupon has essentially turned itself into a coupon provider. As it is right now they are having difficulty maintaining a high level of deal quality (the real value proposition in the industry). When there is no moderation the quality of the deals will drop and people will stop buying," says Quora user Eric Bernhard, whose answer is currently the highest rated.

[via Yipit]

More About: groupon, groupon stores, MARKETING, small business

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4 Ways to Improve Ad Performance on Facebook

Matt Lawson is the vice president of marketing at Marin Software, the largest paid search management provider.

Facebook advertising holds tremendous promise for marketers looking to reach targeted audiences online. Nowhere else do people willingly share such specific information about themselves – enabling marketers to target ads and evaluate performance based on details about consumers such as their age, interests, employers, location and even friends and relationships.

Facebook advertising, however, is still relatively new, and advertisers are only beginning to experiment with Facebook ads. Even digital marketing experts, familiar with advanced targeting techniques in paid search and display advertising, are just now figuring out how to effectively run advertising programs on Facebook.

To get your ads noticed by Facebook users, you'll need to tailor your ads to work within the Facebook experience. Facebook users spend an inordinate amount of time –- more than any other website on the social network. They interact with friends, share information and connect with their favorite causes; however, despite all their actions, people aren't searching for products or services. That's why carefully selecting images, modifying calls-to-action and subtly changing messaging to reach Facebook users is important for success in this channel.

Here are a few insider tricks you can use to take your Facebook targeting and ad performance to the next level.
---------------

1. Remember the User Experience

---------------

Many marketers dive right into Facebook ads expecting to drive traffic from Facebook directly to their site, just as in paid search. While this may work for some, tailoring the experience to Facebook users typically delivers better results. Using Custom Pages or Applications on Facebook to capture traffic allows you to keep users within Facebook for a consistent browsing experience, resulting in lower bounce rates. Custom Pages, as part of your Facebook Page, make it easy for consumers to "Like" your product or brand. For every user who Likes your page, you can remarket to them over time with status updates about deals or upcoming events.

Facebook Apps, on the other hand, provide the marketer with more control over the user experience, as well as the ability to gather detailed demographic data from user profiles. If converting traffic outside of Facebook is a requirement for you, consider tailoring your landing pages to social users. This could include writing different ad copy, the inclusion of Like and sharing buttons on your site and presenting user-generated content such as videos or reviews, as opposed to product information, for Facebook users arriving at your landing page.
---------------

2. Use Root Analysis to Expand Targeting

---------------

Facebook users can list any terms they want to define their likes and interests, so in order to target a full audience of potential customers, you may have to do some investigating for those terms and phrases that go beyond your general keyword search. For example, using the targeting parameter "camping," your ad will not reach users who have listed "camping in the mountains" or "tent camping" on their profile.

Root analysis is a useful way to discover people's likes and interests on Facebook to expand your audience and drive more conversions. Simply start with a root word and expand your targeting to include related interests. You can do this by typing the root word into Facebook's "Likes Interests" targeting settings and then typing a single letter to find related terms. Using the camping example, entering "camping i" results in a list that includes "camping in California" and "I love camping." Adding these unique terms to your targeting criteria expands your audience, helping to discover additional valuable consumers and improve ROI.
---------------

3. Segment Your Ads

---------------

With 500 million users on Facebook, there are probably plenty of consumers that you want to reach with your ads. However, not all Facebook users are created equal. Breaking out your audiences to understand the value of each segment, and then adjusting your bids accordingly, will help you optimize your Facebook budget.

Dividing audiences by age, location, and gender should help you find the segments most likely to convert, making each segment more valuable to you. As you measure the performance variance between your segmented advertisements, you can adjust your bids to improve the overall ROI for your Facebook ad campaigns.
---------------

4. Prevent Ad Blindness
---------------

People use Facebook to interact with friends, share their photos and play games, not to look for products and services. Your ads need to grab their attention. Facebook users are inundated with content and typically scan images and text quickly, but there are tricks to modify creative to minimize ad blindness and increase click-through rates. The most successful ads include colorful, engaging images and of course, a compelling and relevant offer. Adding borders to your photos in colors like orange or yellow, which contrast with the blue and white Facebook interface, is a simple way to pull the user's eyes in your ad's direction.

Make sure to test early and often here, as the results will surprise you. The most-clicked ads are not necessarily the most aesthetically pleasing; they are often the ones that stand out on the page. Also, because ads can be served to the same users multiple times, it doesn't take long for users to completely tune out repeat ads, so you have to keep your approach creative and fresh. Rotating images and headline copy as performance drops over time can help boost click-through rates.
---------------

Conclusion

---------------

By using the tips above to target and optimize your advertisements, you should have a head start in Facebook marketing. More importantly, by building competencies in this new channel, you can build sustainable advantage over the competition through superior targeting and optimization.

Taking a wait-and-see approach may be the safe route, but now is the time to begin. The Facebook advertiser base is still relatively small in comparison to the Facebook audience. As a result, costs-per-click rates remain lower than paid search and other channels. As advertisers continue to shift dollars to Facebook, costs will rise, and advertisers that have managed to build a fan base early will be better positioned to reap dividends from their investment.

What tips can you offer? What has worked with your own advertising experience on Facebook? Do you also zone out uninspired ads? Let us know in the comments below.
---------------

More Business Resources from Mashable:
---------------

- HOW TO: Optimize Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
- Social Media Marketing 101: In-House Team, Agency or Consultant?
- Why Social Media Is Perfect for Brand Ambassador Campaigns
- 4 Winning Strategies for Social Media Optimization
- Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

More About: ad, advertising, business, facebook, facebook pages, List, Lists, MARKETING, ROI, root analysis, small business, social media marketing, targeted, tips

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HOW TO: Protect Yourself from Firesheep with a VPN

Think browsing the web at Starbucks is safe? Think again.

A wildly popular new bit of malicious code called Firesheep is making the rounds among script kiddies and black-hat hackers; it allows them to access the cookies of any user on a non-password-protected wireless network. Once the ne'er-do-well in question is on the same public network as you, he or she can save and use your cookies to access your accounts (e-mail, Facebook and many other types of accounts, as well) through a point-and-click graphic interface.

In the words of the person who created Firesheep, "As soon as anyone on the network visits an insecure website [Facebook, Gmail, etc.] known to Firesheep, their name and photo will be displayed [in the Firesheep interface]. Double-click on someone, and you're instantly logged in as them."

For businesses with remote employees, Firesheep is a particular danger, as it potentially compromises your company's data and accounts any time a worker logs in from a coffee shop, Internet cafe or other public network.

The practice is known as session hijacking; if you'd like more information on how the code works, check out this post on Firesheep's technical details.

This code is being downloaded at an astonishingly high rate; although we don't like to resort to scare tactics, we can't currently recommend browsing on a network that isn't password-protected.

As long as the network you're on has any kind of password even a publicly available password or an obvious password Firesheep won't work on that network. However, if you're using public Wi-Fi at a Starbucks, a hotel lobby, a college campus or anywhere else where you don't have to enter a password before getting access to the network, you're putting yourself at risk.

Firesheep even works on airplanes, where the networks allow you some preliminary connection to the network before letting you browse the Internet.

There is a safe way to access Wi-Fi on the go. It might give you a slightly slower connection; it might even cost you a bit of money. But until the general mess that's been caused by Firesheep gets sorted out, it's better to take a few precautions than to let some random black hat steal your Internet accounts.
---------------

What's a VPN?
---------------

A virtual private network (VPN) is the easiest way (other than avoiding unsecure Wi-Fi altogether) to prevent yourself from a Firesheep-powered attack.

VPNs create a private tunnel through the public network, protecting the user from any prying eyes (or packet sniffers) on his way from destination to destination online.

VPNs were used a lot during the Irani election and protests; they're also used a lot in China and in other areas where access to the Internet is restricted.

Another group that uses VPNs frequently is corporations. Employees often need a safe way to access very private and sensitive information from a public network; VPNs provide security and access. (For more information on corporate use of VPNs, check out this HowStuffWorks article.)

The downside of using a VPN is that you may notice a drop in your connection speed. You might also have to pay for your secure Internet access.

The upside, with specific regard to Firesheep, is that you can sit elbow-to-elbow with a black hat hacker in a coffee shop and know that your data is safely encrypted.
---------------

A Few VPNs to Try
---------------

If you'd like to protect yourself and have a more secure browsing experience from a public network, we recommend that you try some of these VPNs and use one every time you log onto a public Wi-Fi network. This is definitely one case where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Note: Need to set up a VPN on your iPad? Yes, yes you do. Here's a tutorial that will get you through the process.
LogMeIn Hamachi2

Cost: $33 per month for commercial use, free for noncommercial use
What It Does: "LogMeIn Hamachi² is a hosted VPN service that securely connects devices and networks, extending LAN-like network connectivity to mobile users, distributed teams and business applications. You can easily create secure virtual networks on demand, across public and private networks."
OpenVPN

Cost: FOSS
What It Does: "OpenVPN Technologies has designed and deployed a virtual network software that provides secure, reliable, and scalable communication services, not only fulfilling the requirements of the traditional virtual private network (VPN) market, but also addressing the demands of next wave web-scale VPN services. OpenVPN, our award-winning open source VPN product, has established itself as a de-facto standard in the open source networking space, with over 3 million downloads since inception."
WiTopia personalVPN

Cost: $39.99 per year
What It Does: "PPTP is a good basic VPN for customers desiring simplicity and ease of use. Most computers and smartphones have compatible PPTP software already built in, so you don't even have to install anything to use it."
StrongVPN

Cost: Starts at $7 per month
What It Does: "VPN accounts are a 128-bit encrypted tunnel between your computer and one of our servers Security for hotspot wireless access users."

If you have other VPN recommendations, please share them with our other readers in the comments, and safe surfing.

Image courtesy of Flickr, ari.
---------------
Reviews: Double, Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, Internet

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Facebook to Launch Local Shopping Deals With Check-ins; Look Out Groupon

Facebook appears set to launch a social check-in Deals feature, according to an email forwarded by a participating retailer to Facebook watch-dog blog All Facebook tonight.

The email says that this particular deal will give Facebook users a free item when they tag three of their friends as present at the retailer's location. Facebook plus Groupon? Considering how much profile and social data a Facebook Places check-in can carry as a payload, this sounds a whole lot more valuable to retailers than a Groupon deal. This is very different than the kind of Places-powered hyperlocal advertising that most observers were expecting to monetize the Places feature.

Sponsor

This will no doubt make Facebook Places more appealing to users as well. As Nick O'Neil writes at All Facebook, "One of the major criticisms of many of the existing check-in services (Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Facebook) is the lack of incentives for checking in to various locations."

What's to stop people from tagging friends who aren't really there? In theory, even if a person was falsely tagged as present at a place - they would still receive a word of mouth promotion of the place as a result of being tagged.
The Data Power of Facebook Deals

Many observers expected Facebook Places to be combined with a system of hyper-local advertising. This is different; it looks more like the Groupon hypbrid of commerce and advertising, lowball commerce as advertising. Picture Groupon type commerce with a rich layer of profile and social data powered by Facebook on top, though. It's one thing to get piles of people coming through your door for deals, it's another to know all about them and their friends.

Foursquare says retailers like the detailed analytics that it provides retailers, but Foursquare doesn't have nearly the same level of profile detail on its users as Facebook does. Almost no company does. Would you share selected parts of your Facebook profile with the local brewery in exchange for a free round of beer? Many of us will.

How much profile and social data would retailers be given access to, and in what form? Such are the mysteries we can only ponder while the program remains a mystery.
See also: The Story of Groupon & its Daily Deals Groupon, a startup that's being called the fastest growing startup in history, isn't standing still either. It's now releasing a self-serve feature for businesses. Facebook Places Deals looks self-serve at the outset, though.

Is the email O'Neil posted a redacted copy of for real? In all likelihood it is, though we've received no response from Facebook yet after requesting comment by email. Update: A Facebook spokesperson replied to our email saying only: "As a matter of policy, we don't comment on speculation. We have nothing to share at this time." Discuss

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'Teroris' dan 'Pejuang' di Dunia Online

Markplus Inc menemukan sembilan kategori netizen, ada yang tukang jail yang isebut netterorist ada juga yang menjadi pejuang atau menyebarkan eksistensi mereka.

http://www.tempointeraktif.com/hg/it/2010/10/29/brk,20101029-288108,id.html

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Microsoft Runs Basically The Worst Internet Startup Ever. 1 Year, Over $2 Billion In Losses

When you hear the word "startup", you most likely think of an Internet startup. Maybe it's funded, maybe not, but its burn rate almost for sure puts it in the red each quarter. Obviously, Microsoft is not a startup. Nor have they been a startup for a long time. But what if you thought of their Online Division as an Internet startup? One funded by Microsoft. The thought it terrifying. Or it should be. To Microsoft.

Microsoft released their Q1 2011 earnings today. The results were very good except for one very big blemish: the Online Division. Last quarter, the division lost $560 million for Microsoft. That's better than the previous quarter when it lost a staggering $696 million, but it's much worse than a year ago, when it lost $477 million. In the past year, Microsoft has lost well over $2 billion from the division.

Let me repeat that: 1 year, a $2 billion loss.

Obviously, any startup that did that would have long since gone under — with that kind of burn rate, they probably would have gotten the plug pulled a few weeks into existence no matter how well-funded they were. But Microsoft keeps pumping money into the division. And they have to. Because even they realize it's the future.

Of all the money Microsoft makes, the vast majority comes from two divisions: Windows & Windows Live Division (Windows) and Microsoft Business Division (Office). They make a good amount of money from the Server & Tools division too, but it's less than half of those other two. And both of those two are under direct assault.

The web is making Windows (and every operating system) less vital, while at the same time coming up with free and/or cheap tools to replace the relatively expensive Office. And new devices like smartphones and tablets have created an ecosystem where Windows is essentially a non-player (though we'll see what happend with the just-released Windows Phone 7). And Office is basically non-existant in these spaces.

As this past quarter has shown, Microsoft is fine for the foreseeable future still. People (mainly companies) are still buying Windows and Office licenses. But only a fool would think this is perpetual.

Microsoft needs to have a heavy presence online in order to maintain their power going forward. And that's why they're dumping so much money into it. And you could argue that this strategy has worked with products like Bing. But Microsoft needs more than just this presence, they need to make money here. And not only are they failing at that. They're failing in spectacular fashion.

Five years ago, Microsoft's Online Division was actually making money. Granted, it wasn't a lot. But they were in the black. But for the past 19 quarters in a row now, Microsoft has lost money in this division. And as this chart put together last quarter by SAI shows, the losses have actually gotten worse over time. It's a bloodbath being covered up by the profits from other divisions.

People talk a lot about Google's failure to make money off of YouTube. But at least they're not bleeding money to this extent. And they may actually be close to profitability. And while it's true that Apple hasn't been hugely successful online, they really haven't tried much. They have MobileMe, which isn't hugely popular, but they do make money on. Twitter is another company talked about a lot as not making money. They too seem much closer than Microsoft is at this point. I think it's a safe bet that they're not running $500 million in the red each quarter.

So can Microsoft turn this around? With Bing continuing to gain some popularity and Microsoft now in complete control of Yahoo's search business, there's some hope. But even with those, there doesn't seem to be a clear cut way to start making real money without pouring a ton more in. Yahoo Search is in decline and while Microsoft is monetizing Bing, they're also spending a huge amount advertising it to get the eyeballs they eventually monetize. 19 quarters of losses in a row is bad enough; the fact that the profit trend is going the wrong way is even more troubling.

Is it too late to buy Facebook outright (they own a very small stake)? Of course it is, but maybe they can head to SecondMarket and allocate at least some of the $2 billion a year they're blowing to buy up some Facebook stock. That would be one way to make money online.

[image: Warner Brothers]

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Singapore: Why Innovate in Utopia?

SINGAPORE- On the eve of my trip to Indonesia last May, I was having dinner in Cape Town with someone from an investment firm that has been killing it in Asia. When I told him Indonesia was my first trip to Southeast Asia he almost spit out his Springbok, saying "My God! You are starting with the hardest one first!"

On the eve of this trip to Singapore, I was having coffee in San Francisco with a venture capitalist who has been killing it in the Valley, after four years of living in Southeast Asia. He gave the same observation a decidedly Valley twist: "You are going to be bored to death in Singapore."

Bored is hardly the word I'd use- it's hard to be bored when you are running from meeting to meeting, not to mention eating some of the most awesome food known to man. But Singapore is most definitely an Asia with training wheels. And that's the Singapore blessing when it comes to globalization, but it may be its curse when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Singapore is easy, clean and staunchly non-corrupt at a country level. The trees are immaculately groomed. Any 7/11 can give you a week of Blackberry service for less than $20 and double as full-on tech support if something goes wrong. You think of a cab, and it's there, clean and cheap. When I landed in Singapore on Sunday, there was a white haze over the sky- that looked almost like a dome. Combine that with the clean streets and lush foliage and my jetlag-hazed drive from the airport to the hotel looked like I was in the episode of Battestar Gallactica where Starbuck and Apollo grab some faux rays on Cloud 9. People here call it "an experiment" and a "startup country."  But James Chan, of the incubator/ venture fund Neotany Labs co-founded by Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman, says what they really mean: "It's utopia." (More from Chan in Friday's Ask a VC.)

Of course there's a reason few people call it utopia. You don't have to be a science fiction junkie to know utopia always has a catch, and obnoxious American reporter that I am, I've been looking for it since I arrived. So far- from what I can gather- people aren't murdered when they reach the age of 30, homeless people aren't repurposed into crackers, or encouraged to have meaningless sex as long as they don't procreate and stay drugged up on Soma. But Singapore has one big challenge: How to create a country of entrepreneurial problem solvers and hackers when there's no chaos, total practicality and a culture of obediently going-with-the-flow.

People call Singapore a police state because of its heavy authoritarian reach, punishment by caning, one of the highest rates of capital punishment in the world, and- you know- the whole ban on gum, to which people here get defensive and say "That's totally overstated! You can chew gum, it's just that no one is allowed to sell it." (So, you get it from….?)

But that's not really apt. Unlike a lot of authoritarian regimes, Singapore is ruled by practicality not some force-fed morality. When the population was growing too fast it instituted a "two is enough" campaign. When people reacted by having fewer than two children per household the government mandated that local TV stations devote their final hour of programming to romantic soaps to get people in the mood. I'm not sure if that story is really true or apocryphal, but its certainly believed by a wide swath of people here I've asked.

An even better example, which may also be apocryphal: The government wanted to encourage the development of a more vibrant artistic culture, and a study revealed that societies with more open gay and lesbian populations had more artistic achievements. So Singapore's Prime Minister went on TV and expressed support for "our gay brothers"- nevermind homosexuality had been illegal before. Locals have told me Singapore has one of the more accepting cultures of homosexuality in Asia today.

For the last few years, the government is trying mightily to spur high-growth entrepreneurship. Unlike, the US, which is punishing immigrants and proposing laws to restrict angel investing, Singapore is doing all the sensible, practical things. The red carpet is rolled out for skilled immigrants, who now make up some 40% of the population. After years of investing hundreds of millions directly in entrepreneurs, Singapore is now taking a lead from how Israel created its venture capital ecosystem. It partners with venture firms, allowing them to make the best investment decisions and given them up to 6-to-1 matching funds. In other words, a firm invests $15 million and the government will invest $85 million for a convertible note. Under other programs the government will pay 50% of small companies R&D costs, ensuring they are focused on building something differentiated.

Billions are spent in government-run R&D labs that produce crazily disruptive innovations and "science fair projects" that capitalist, short-term thinking VCs in the US would never fund. Government programs send kids to the United States where they can work with startups, see behind the glamor, and hopefully catch the entrepreneur bug. They're trying to augment an already rigorous education program that focuses on math and science to include more exercises on reasoning and problem-solving. Looking at the highly-practical policy free of moralistic, protectionist grandstanding, you can see why Singapore- a tiny nation of just five million people with comparatively few natural resources relative to its neighbors- has so outperformed on a per capital economic basis, with a stunning 18% growth rate.

Practical as ever, most Singaporeans I've met with this week have told me up until now, it's excelled at being a global hub, but it hasn't excelled when it comes to local high-growth entrepreneurship. Can it legislate its way there? It's unclear. If any place can it's likely Singapore. I mean, if local stories are true it helped legislate who people have sex with and how frequently they do it.

But my gut says that chaos and problem solving go hand-in-hand. When things are too comfortable, why take risk?Disproportionately immigrants make better entrepreneurs than trust fund kids. Small companies are the ones who actually innovate more than large, publicly-held market incumbents, who like to buy innovators or just throw the word around. (OK, Google, you and your flying cars get a passfor now.) Countries in chaos tend to have greater needs- and great market holes to exploit.

It's hard to find any corner of chaos in Singapore. The system is engineered with one outcome, Chan says: "Making people good economic units for society." Is there room for a high-beta version of good economic units of society- one that could succeed disproportionately or fail disproportionately in a culture so tied to obediance? The big "what's-wrong-with-youth-today?" scandal of late has been kids getting out of school and taking all the tables up at Starbucks with their endless studying. Lily Chan, CEO of the National University of Singapore's Enterprise program, thinks it'll take generations for Singapore to truly develop a culture of entrepreneurship- and she blames the parents. In a place replete with accountant and banker jobs, where buying a house is more expensive than most places in the United States the pressure not to waste your time building something speculative is high. There's also another problem: One employer has optimized the system to find and make lucrative offers to the smartest kids in the system- that's right, the Government. People who could have made the country's top entrepreneurs instead make comfortable salaries trying to craft policy to encourage people to be entrepreneurs.

But just because an ecosystem isn't poised to give rise to a disruptive potentially $1 billion dollar company doesn't mean it's not innovating and doesn't mean the Valley doesn't need to pay attention. I'll detail how Singapore is accomplishing both of those in future posts.

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Where in the World Is Eduardo Saverin? In Singapore Funding Facebook Games.

I haven't run into him, but have confirmed from at least ten local programmers and angel investors that Eduardo Saverin- the Brazilian-born estranged Facebook co-founder who helped Ben Mezrich write a devastating revenge book of his ouster before taking a settlement and disappearing from the face of the US tech scene- has been hiding out in Singapore for the better part of the last year-and-a-half. I'm told he lives in the penthouse of the tallest building of the city, and is a regular at Singapore's club hot spots, especially a place called The Butter Factory.

Rolling with the city's socialites aside, locals say that Saverin is pretty low-key. No one I spoke with had ever heard him refer to himself as the "co-founder" of Facebook. It either goes unsaid or, on one occassion, he told someone who'd never heard of him he was merely a "programmer of Facebook games." I don't know how much coding he's doing, but he's reportedly using that Facebook settlement money to fund a variety of Facebook game developers from his perch in Singapore. He may be hiding out from the limelight and attention, but he's certainly not trying to get away from Facebook itself.

By many accounts Saverin is well liked here and people are protective of him. In everyday conversation, people refer to Saverin's role creating Facebook, not Mark Zuckerberg's, which let's just say, you don't hear a lot in the Valley. One source did a deal with him and wanted to make sure I said he was "the most honorable guy I've ever dealt with in business."

Given TechCrunch's experience with Singaporean businessmen, I could make a catty comment about that being a low bar. But I've met a lot of honorable people this week in Singapore, and it seems like Saverin is keeping his head down, trying to build something on his own and avoid the film limelight his tell all account helped create. I give him credit for that. It'll exciting to see what games he winds up funding for the platform that seems to have caused him a lot of pain and made him a billionaire household name. With any luck,  his games will do well enough that Aaron Sorkin can fictionalize a sequel.

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After 3 Years In Stealth And $20 Million Raised, Aro Mobile Shows Some Skin — Some Android Skin. And We Have Invites.

Yesterday, both the New York Times and Robert Scoble unveiled publicly for the first time what a company called Kiha Software has been working on for about three years in stealth now: a piece of software called Aro Mobile. With $20 million in backing from the likes of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, they're obviously getting a lot of buzz. And that should continue when they fully show the system off in a few weeks at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. But for now we have a video sneak peak of it in action, and 1,000 exclusive beta invites for TechCrunch readers to try out the software themselves.

So what is Aro? Currently, it's a piece of software that runs on top of Google's mobile Android OS. But it's not just another layer like some of those awful skins that OEMs design for Android. Instead, it weaves itself into the OS and uses AI and machine intelligence to make sense of what you're doing with your phone. It natively ties into your email, phone, calendar, address book, and browser to make them potentially much more useful to you when you're on the go.

Maybe someone sent you an email mentioning an address, the Aro system can recognize that and with the click of a button give you all kinds of actions you can do with it. The same is true with names — of both people and companies. And dozens of other things.

But it really is one of those things that's better when you see it in action. So watch the videos below. And if you're interested in signing up to test it out, use this link. The first 1,000 people who do will get priority access to the beta program (though it is still rolling out in waves as they ramp up).

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Kaskus dan Plasa Dominasi Perdagangan Via Internet

Sebagian besar transaksi yang ada di dua situs tersebut nilainya masih di bawah Rp 1 juta.

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PayPal Launches Mobile Express Checkout - PC Magazine

Inside Facebook

PayPal Launches Mobile Express Checkout
PC Magazine
SAN FRANCISCO—PayPal announced a number of enhancements to mobile payments at its PayPal X Innovation conference on Tuesday. PayPal announced Mobile Express Checkout, a two-click payment on a mobile device; mobile payments library, which adds chain and ...
EBays PayPal Unit Unveils Software For Mobile Phone PaymentsWall Street Journal
Buying Facebook goods, just a few cents at a timeCNN
PayPal Reveals Digital Goods Payments, Facebook IntegrationGamasutra
GigaOm -Digital Media Wire -CNNMoney
all 181 news articles

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Facebook Credits Come to Best Buy, Walmart

Facebook has continued to ramp up its virtual currency offering, Facebook Credits. Earlier this month, the company made it easier for the 70% of its users outside the U.S. to purchase credits. Today, Facebook Credits will be available in the form of gift cards at both Walmart and Best Buy stores across the country.

The new offering is just in time for the holiday season, so now you won't have to choose between Mafia Wars or Farmville for your Facebook game addicted friends.

Sponsor

It's been just under two months since Facebook began offering its Credits as gift cards in Target stores but, as Reuters points out, "landing on WalMart and Best Buy shelves should vastly expand the availability of its fledgling currency - at the end of 2009, WalMart had more than 3,600 stores in the United States."

Reuters reports that cards will be available in denominations of $10, $25 and $50 at Best Buy and $5, $10 and $25 at Walmart with a $50 card available at Walmart.com.

Facebook Credits can be used on more than 150 games and applications and help comprise a virtual goods market that the New York Times estimates to reach $835 million this year.

The big question might be, how will the Facebook Credits gift card compare to the Farmville gift card sitting next to it? Discuss

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PayPal Introduces its Micropayment Solution

Keeping good on a promise made earlier this summer, PayPal, one of the most popular online payment providers, announced today the unveiling of a micropayment solution. According to the company, the new product will offer low fees and a seamless integration that "lets consumers pay for digital goods and content in as little as two clicks".

Sponsor

As we've noted before, there are a couple of problems with selling cheap digital goods. For consumers, it's a matter of time and hassle, while merchants often have to contend with high transaction fees and lost sales. According to the release, "the new solution offers PayPal's competitive fee structure for micropayments, with pricing at 5 percent plus 5 cents for purchases under $12".

A number of companies have already signed on, including Facebook, Autosport.com, FT.com, GigaOM, Justin.tv, Ooyala, Plimus, Tagged, Tyler Projects and Ustream.

"The decision to purchase digital goods and content usually happens on impulse, so the act of paying needs to be as quick as that impulse," said Sam Shrauger, PayPal's vice president of global product strategy

When we first examined PayPal's proposed solution earlier this summer, there was one feature that was said to be integral to its plan - the consumer would not be required to pay each time, but rather they would spend up to a certain point before receiving a bill. We haven't seen this in today's release, but this might be the "two click" transaction PayPal mentions. Discuss

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Old Meets New As Groupon Partners With eBay

Groupon may not turn out to be the next eBay according to our own Mike Arrington, but the social buying site is on a veritable tear. Coincidentally, the latest Internet giant to partner with the ecommerce startup is eBay.

While arguably symbolic, the deal - which we predicted was going to happen when we covered the Yahoo-Groupon acquisition rumors - doesn't go as deep as one might suspect.

For now, the agreement spans a co-marketing incentive whereby US-based eBay customers can sign up for Groupon deals on groupon.ebay.com and earn 5% back in eBay Bucks, the ecommerce juggernaut's free rewards program.

Groupon closed a similar affiliate deal with Ning last week.

We'll have to wait and see if these disitrbution partnerships grow into something more meaningful over time.

Groupon is currently live in more than 100 North American markets and running nearly 200 deals per day; eBay for one says it will use geolocation to determine the closest deal for each user.

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Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV, really

Yes, you heard this before. The Death of Cable TV. Yet, it hasn't happened. But now, so many disruptions are happening in the video space, cable tv is really stepping towards the cliff. Don't expect the cable industry to just give up.

We'll get some new insights next week when the largest U.S. cable operator (23 million cable customers), Comcast, reports its Q3 earnings and subscriber count. Comcast cable customers dropped nearly 3% in Q2 compared to last year. In Q2 for the industry overall, a record 711,000 subscribers abandoned cable tv, and six of eight operators suffered their worst quarterly subscriber losses ever.

Just this month, a lot has happened:
Google unveiled its Google TV platform less than 3 weeks ago. You can't ignore Google. Hey, the just built a car that drives itself. But Thursday, in a battle that will likely become more frequent between old media and new, ABC, CBS and NBC blocked their programs from Google TV. MTV, Fox and HBO are still available, but that could change. Still, one TechCrunch post declared "I've seen the future and it begins on my sofa with Google TV."
Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has already sold 250,000 new Apple TVs. The first Apple TV shipped in 2007. It had its fans but didn't take off like the iPod or iPhone. The second generation of Apple TV's launched just last month. MG Siegler really likes the device, but admitted it's not yet the killer device in the living room. To get there, he said, would require tv network subscription packages.
"Watch Instantly" is booming at Netflix. A shocking statistic came out this week. 20% of Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. is coming from Netflix.
For more on Netflix's plans, see Sarah Lacy's interview with CEO Reed Hastings.
Hulu Plus will be coming to the Roku box in the fall.
For some, the Roku box may be the first step towards eliminating cable.
Boxee announced the new Boxee Box will ship next month, both if you pre-ordered from Amazon or want to buy one in stores.
Flurry reported Apple's iOS Apps are responsible for the recent downward trend in TV ratings. The actual cause may be a bit broader.
A TechCrunch post Friday suggested the future of TV is HTML5.

With all these alternatives, a J.D. Power and Associates survey released this month said consumers are less satisfied with the monthly pay-TV bills and cable subscribers are more likely to feel ripped off than telcom or satellite TV customers.

Why Does Cable TV Exist?

When cable tv first started in the 1940s, it was a disruptive technology. Community Antenna Television (CATV) solved a problem. Some homes, in mountainous regions, cities, and locations far away from the over-the-air broadcast transmitters couldn't get a good signal. By setting up a large community antenna and retransmitting the signal on coxial cables to those homes, the reception problem was solved. Some claim the first system was set-up in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania and cost subscribers $100 per hookup plus $2 a month.

As the industry grew, cable operators began to pick up distant signals, providing new programming choices for consumers. Even homes that could receive the over-the-air signals signed up for cable. And cable started producing its own exclusive, original channels. In 1975, HBO became the first cable network delivering its signal across the country, via satellite to cable systems, which then re-transmitted it to consumers. Ted Turner ("I was cable before cable was cool"), launched the first basic cable network distributed by satellite, WTBS, in 1976. Cable also offered local community programming, not available on the broadcast networks. I remember watching a news show at home produced at my junior high school. At the time, this blew my mind.
(Disclosure: I owe the cable industry for the first 14 years of my career, working at a place with a name starting with Cable.' But then I switched to the internet.)

What's Changed

But all these once cable-only' benefits have changed. DSL, cable (yes, cable - more on that shortly) modems, and perhaps future fiber to the house mean video has many other routes to the home.

The once exclusive cable-only content is now becoming available elsewhere. At first, cable shows started appearing on DVDs after their first run on cable. But now, there are many more options. Cancelcable.com lists some non-cable ways to find your favorite shows. And local and user generated content now has a global reach and can be shared in a community of viewers with common broad or narrow interest.

There is one key stumbling block for getting more tv shows on the Internet though. Money. And it's the reason for the network / Google TV dispute mentioned above. An AdAge article wisely pointed out

"The networks aren't blocking Google TV because it's Google. They are blocking Google TV because it is putting a web TV show, with web TV show economics, on a TV, which would be incredibly disruptive to their business."

Revenue per viewer-minute is much less online vs. broadcast. This could change as more ads appear on the web distribution and they become more targeted and interactive. Also, show or channel subscriptions could solve this problem.

The one thing that cable does have going for it is: its relatively easy to use. Make a call, someone comes over to your house and hooks it up, and then you control it with your remote. (Well, you may have waited for hours on hold for someone to answer your call and then waited all day for the installer to arrive.) Up to now, you had to be a tech savvy person to cancel cable and hook up your own system. No one from Google, Apple, or Netflix is going to come to your house and help you hook the new devices up. As Danny Sullivan found out, hooking up your Google TV is not quite ready for prime time or the masses. But, expect it to improve. And other offerings, such as Apple TV, are making it easier. The cable alternatives are moving from technologies only early adopters use to ones the broader market can figure out.

Cable Has Faced Competitors Before
The cable tv industry is no stranger to competition. Cable survived competition from the DVD rental store. (Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Apple just killed the optical drive in its new laptops.) Satellite TV providers DirectTV (18.7 million customers in the U.S.) and Dish Networks (14.3 million customers) have some loyal customers, but haven't been able to stop cable. But, the internet will be a tougher challenge.

The Cost of Cable
One of the biggest problems for the cable industry is its high cost. Growing cost was the biggest reason one study reported one in eight consumers said they would eliminate or scale back their cable, satellite or other pay-TV service in 2010. The cable industry tries to explain that the cost of cable is going down. Check out this graph on Price Per Viewing Hour, on the National Cable & Telecommuncations Association website

Yeah, right. That's not going to convince any cable subscriber looking at their monthly bill.

The cable industry has resisted "a la carte" pricing, allowing customers to pick and choose which channels they watch and pay for. Cable networks make part of their money from subscription fees paid by customers to the cable operators and then to the networks. So smaller networks could go out of business under such a pricing plan. There's also a debate over whether "a la carte" pricing would save or cost consumers money. Internet TV already offers pick and pay pricing options. New media can handle this much better than old media. For my money, I think I'd come out with a big savings under an "a la carte" system.

Cable Fights Back
While the cable industry is losing basic cable subscribers, they are still doing fine financially. Comcast stock is up 15% so far this year, vs. 9% for NASDAQ. Comcast's internet business (cable modem users) is growing. Comcast, teaming up with Time Warner cable, is also pushing TV Everywhere, which puts TV channels online and behind a paywall only cable subscribers can view. And of course, Comcast is planning to merge with broadcaster and cable network giant NBC Universal in a complex transaction. But the new joint venture won't include Comcast's cable systems. The deal still needs regulators approval, and the FCC has asked the companies how the merging of the biggest broadband provider and major content firm will impact the distribution of online videos.

There's also speculation that cable boxes could come with Google TV' built-in for an additional fee. But, would consumers really choose to pay the higher fee and keep their cable box, when other options will be cheaper?

The Immediate Future
The Death of Cable remains a hot topic. Next month, a panel at Streaming Media West will discuss "Cutting the Cord on TV: Will Online Video Really Lead to Cable's Demise?"

I actually still have cable. I'm inches away from dropping it, but there are still a few shows not available elsewhere that my wife enjoys. But, it's hard to imagine those shows won't be available elsewhere in the near future. I know a lot of folks who keep cable for live sports, but cable surviving as a sports-only service is hard to fathom.

More than a year ago, writer and entrepreneur Paul Kedrosky wrote "Many people are coming to the correct conclusion that in the age of Hulu, Boxess, Bittorrent, etc., that cable TV is an over-priced relic of another entertainment age." Now that the likes of Apple, Google, Netflix and others are aggressively joining the game, the days of that over-priced relic seem even more numbered.

For more information, check out other TechCrunch posts:
MG Siegler and Jason Kincaid talking about Google TV, Apple TV, Boxee on this week's OMG/JK.
I'm Giving Cable 6 Months, Then I'm Cutting Off Its Head
Estimate: 800,000 U.S. Households Abandoned Their TVs For the Web
Andrew Keen interviews Justine Bateman on the Internet not becoming Cable TV

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