SEO Werkt!

For a tech company founder in San Francisco, I’m a terribly late adopter of new technology. My buddy in med school had a smart phone before I did. The iPhone was out for a year before I bought the 3G. The iPad? I’m embarrassed to admit, I got my first one a month ago.

I held out on the iPad because I didn’t get it. It didn’t have retina display, and comparing the screen after looking at the iPhone 4, it just seemed… pixelated. My friends who had the original version bought them as a novelty, which quickly seemed to wear off. I didn’t know what I would do with one once I had one.

So, when I finally buckled and got the iPad 3, I came to the realization that the rest of the world had over 2 years ago: the iPad is an amazing consumption device. You don’t need a keyboard, because if you’re doing any work at all it will be to send iPhone length one-liner emails. Most of what you’ll be doing on the iPad is playing games, watching videos and shopping.

There’s a plethora of iPad games, and you can download almost any movie or tv show from iTunes, but the shopping experience leaves a lot to be desired. When I first turned on the iPad, I went through and downloaded all the popular apps I recognized. In the shopping / ecommerce category, this was Gilt and Fab.

Both of these companies have amazing iPad experiences. For a while, I was browsing them every day; not because I actually needed to buy anything, but because I enjoyed the virtual window shopping experience of browsing through amazing photos of cool looking products. As any retailer knows, getting people in the store is half the battle, and pretty soon I was back to buying things off Gilt (when I had previously sworn off of it after their fulfillment sent me the wrong thing on multiple orders).

Inspired to find some shopping apps that weren’t flash sales sites, I simply couldn’t find any decent ones. All the apps for department stores and brands seemed like screenshots of their websites. In most of them, I couldn’t even purchase anything.

The ecommerce experience for iPad has been dominated by the deals sites because the deals sites are the only retailers heavily innovating on the technology side. That doesn’t have to be the case. The thing that makes a Gilt or Fab iPad app stand out is that they are extremely polished and conducive to casual browsing, which leads to serendipitous discovery and purchase. Also, they have a great excuse to bring you back in their “store” with a push notification every day — they have a new batch of inventory for you to check out.

Therere a couple other reasons iPads are natural platforms for ecommerce. On iPads shoppers are in a different state of mind (they are relaxing instead of being distracted with work or IM), and are more likely to make impulse purchases. Also, because of the high switching cost of opening up new tabs in Safari or switching between apps (when compared with a browser), a well designed app can keep users engaged for much longer than they would be on the web.

I think the next generation of ecommerce apps for iPad will focus less on the discounting and more on creating an amazing curated browsing experience. Recently, I got a preview build of an app called Monogram by founder Leo Chen (who I’m now advising), which does exactly that: curates collections of clothing from around the web, bringing the user a personalized boutique that updates every day with new outfit suggestions. Like Gilt, the emphasis on the app is about browsing and discovery. When I’m using apps like Monogram and Gilt, I find myself spending more time and browsing/buying more products than I ever do on the web. Apparently I’m not the only one.

A couple things I think this next generation of apps will have to figure out:

1. Some way of differentiating their product inventory. Some will be vertically integrated companies that are bringing their own designs to market, like Everlane or Warby Parker. Others will focus on curation of existing products. I personally have been waiting for a store that curates the very best item I can own in every category, and tells me why it is the best.
2. A great offline experience. Few companies in the ecommerce space have focused on innovating on what happens after you checkout with your shopping cart, and they all happen to be owned by Amazon (Amazon, Quidsi, Zappos). I believe there’s a lot of room to innovate in how products are packaged and delivered, and not many people are doing that at the moment.

Right now the iPad is like an entire country of 60 million consumers with only a few stores competing for their purchases. The denizens of iPadlandia are waiting to buy your awesome stuff. Why are you not letting them?

Vampire loads can cost you a few bucks a day depending on how many devices are plugged in. Consider adding a power switch to turn off all the electronics plugged into your major-use outlets; you’ll quickly recoup the investment. More »

Raised on the Internet and versed in social media, today’s youngsters view the world in a different light. Here to serve and inspire these influential minds is #waywire, a New York-based startup that’s landed $1.75 million in funding, which includes celebrity support from Oprah, for its mission.

#waywire, which launches in beta later this summer, is a video news network targeted at Generation Y that will feature original, syndicated, and member-created content. The vision of Newark, New Jersey mayor and tech figurehead Cory Booker, #waywire’s goal is to provide today’s youth with a social platform that informs and encourages participation in positive debates with peers.

First Round Capital and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors led the startup’s first round of funding. Oprah Winfrey, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, and Lady Gaga manager Troy Carter have also ponied up to participate in the round as well.

“The idea behind #waywire came from Mayor Booker and grew from his desire to shift America’s public conversation away from divisiveness toward a debate focused on achieving solutions. The Mayor plans to contribute original content to the #waywire network where he will discuss America’s most significant challenges with a variety of thought leaders from diverse backgrounds,” according to a press release.

Booker, a co-founder and part owner in #waywire, will only play advisor to the company while he remains in office.

Filed under: deals, social

If you watch TV this weekend, you will be encouraged to buy furniture. You will also be persuaded that it is the American thing to do.

Is it the American thing to do? Given that the offers are zero down pay later schemes I’d say yes, pretty American.

Is there a category more in need of a refresh? I know, it’s holiday-triggered retail price promotions, but where is it written that holiday-triggered retail price promotions must suck?

Someone step in and solve this.

Android: If you want your phone to obey your commands with the flick of a wrist consider using Flick Widgets, an app that brings up your volume controls or contacts list depending on which direction you flick your phone. More »

For the past few years, we’ve been told over and over again that NFC will eventually replace the common wallet. And yes, NFC is a great technology. Parts of Europe and China are using it for public transport transactions, and the sharing of content between devices is incredibly cool (just check out this commercial). And moreover, the ability to ditch all of your loyalty cards and combine them in one place (potentially) PassBook-style would be highly convenient. But where mobile payments are concerned, there is no problem to be solved.

Let’s just start with the small stuff. For one, the motion itself should be no different. It’s not like contactless payments via mobile is a more physically efficient form of living and transacting. You grab your credit card out of your wallet in your pocket, and swipe it through the reader (or in some cases tap it, just like the phone). In the case of NFC, you grab your phone out of your pocket, open Google Wallet (or whatever), and tap it to the reader. It’s the same exact motion.

But that doesn’t even matter when we start to consider the real obstacles for NFC mobile payments. There are two issues: the smaller is that, along with not being any faster or easier physically, no one is actually getting rid of their wallet. For one, everyone needs an ID and an ID isn’t safe in a pocket or loose in a bag. So, until I can use my phone as a form of identification at the airport, with the police, or to go to a Dr.’s appointment, my wallet will still remain. And it’s fair to assume that at least some people prefer to have a little cash on them, just in case.

I took a quick Twitter poll using PopTip (a newly launched TechStars company), and it turns out that the few respondents I had mostly feel comfortable without any cash. But, I also assume that the majority of my Twitter followers are generally tech-savvy early adopters, so I still stand behind the fact that you’ll continue carrying a wallet, or some other carrier of small, valuable pieces of paper like insurance cards, IDs, etc.

Moreover, all merchants would need to be set up for NFC transactions to allow the consumer to ditch their wallet, not just forward thinking giants like American Eagle, Macy’s and OfficeMax. It’s not like consumers will stop shopping at non-NFC merchants just because they aren’t set up — paying with a credit card is just as easy, so why even go through the trouble of setting up Google Wallet? Google Offers is a nice incentive, but it isn’t enough to sway all consumers, and it certainly isn’t attractive enough to woo merchants.

In essence, the only true value given to the consumer is the fact that it’s “cool.”

And then the problems intensify when we visit the merchant side of things. There is no benefit to merchants to implement these systems. Sure, Google and Isis can try to convince these SMBs that NFC is the future, but in reality it’s only an added cost to overhaul the system. Even at a minimal cost, the only value is a slight increase in efficiency pushing customers through POS. Companies could potentially market through their POS using NFC, as is the case with Google Offers, though I’m not sure this is welcome on either side. As Mirth so gracefully stated at Disrupt, merchants aren’t quite as enthusiastic about deals services as consumers are.

This comment thread on LoopInsight says it well:

There’s no tangible, proven way to get any return on investment for the implementation. So why do it?

Credit cards are ubiquitous. Credit cards are fast and easy. Almost all merchants have the ability to process payments via credit card. So why? Why are we solving a problem that doesn’t exist?

And even if there is some added benefit, most research predicts that the ubiquity of mobile payments via NFC is between five and ten years away. That’s more than enough time for another disruptive payments solution, likely something that doesn’t require a complete merchant systems overhaul, to supplant NFC before it ever hits its stride.

Again, NFC is an incredibly useful technology. In fact, the social media implications of NFC ubiquity in mobile devices (not at POS) are kind of mind-boggling. Just look at these TagStand figures, and pair them with Google’s recent announcement of 1 million NFC Android devices shipped every week, and then imagine Facebook and Twitter bigger than they’ve ever been before. That is the future of NFC.

Very soon, we’ll be using it in all kinds of interesting and productive ways. I just don’t think mobile payments is one of them.

If you’re looking for a way to keep cash handy for daily expenses that’s a little more showy than a wallet or money clip or just for a nicer way to give cash as a gift you can make a cash pad with up to 50 bills, two pieces of cardboard, and some rubber cement. More »

“There’s an oligarchy in the media and that needs to be broken up” Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker tells me. So he’s building #waywire, a news site that features original and syndicated video content, but that also lets viewers record and share their responses. “Traditional news sources aren’t in any way talking to millennials” Booker says, so #waywire is designed to deliver them content from their perspective. It’s now taking registrations for its upcoming private beta.

#waywire want to challenge old media outlets like CNN, but also create a news discovery alternative to Facebook and Twitter. It’s bold ambition convinced First Round Capital, Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter and other angels to fund #waywire’s $1.75 million seed round. And the startup has exclusively told TechCrunch that Oprah Winfrey and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner are also investors.

Booker believes “There are practical solution to [creating] more jobs, lower crime, better education. If more people could find their voice and be part of the national dialogue, we could solve these problems.”

As the mayor New Jersey’s largest city, once named “The Most Dangerous City In The Nation” by Time, Booker is no stranger to big problems. Nor is he a stranger to innovative solutions, as the steward of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark’s public school system.

To make his idea for #waywire a reality, Booker has recruited some co-founders with deep digital experience. including TechCrunch’s own former CMO Sarah Ross whose also worked with Katalyst Media and Yahoo. Nathan Richardson, former president of Gilt City, CEO of ContextNext Media, and head of Dow Jones online will be #waywire’s CEO.

When it eventually launches, #waywire will pull in data from your social sites like Facebook and Twitter to help you build a personalized newswire of topics you care about. #waywire plans to start by creating 10,000 minutes of original video content hosted by all-millenial newscasters, which will be combined with clips syndicated from established outlets.

While the company has yet to release any screenshots, Richardson tells me these pieces of professional content will appear flanked by video responses from the #waywire community and your networks. You’ll be able to shoot video responses to offer up your own opinion, and then share the news and your rebuttals to social networks, making #waywire inherently viral. Plus, there’s a badge and reward system that lets aspiring anchors and editors become part of a trusted set of curators who determine which content is highlighted on #waywire.

Richardson gave me an example of the content you’ll see on #waywire. “Say I see this post from a traditional media source on something like healthcare, but don’t understand what it means to me. {On #waywire I’d get] a millennial point of view. ‘Oh, you just graduated and can be on your parent’s healthcare plan until you’re 26. You just scored.’”

As a voracious but busy news reader, I worried that video which can’t be scanned like text might make #waywire difficult to quickly browse. Richardson assured me, though, that there will be written summaries beside official clips to help you deciding whether to watch.

And if you’re scratching your head about why the medium is so critical, you might be older than #waywire’s target audience, the YouTube generation who are growing up with video as a format for creation, not just consumption. “All the research shows millenials want more video content” the startup’s CEO tells me. The fact that the startups name is a hashtag should indicate just how serious it is about courting young digerati.

Still, turning #waywire popular enough to change the world will be no easy task. Millenials are already saturated with stimulation. Facebook and Twitter have built brilliant mouse traps for attention, and their text and photo-focused inputs erect smaller barriers to participation than webcams and video. #waywire’s content is inherently sharable, though, so if it reaches critical mass as a news discovery tool, links to it could be pumped out across the social web.

And thankfully, Mayor Cory Booker is relentlessly inspirational. He tells me “Right now, we don’t have enough voices in the national dialogue, and it’s causing slowness in the pace of change. I want People to raise their voice, find something they’re passionate about. With that spirit we’ll see a country that moves further and faster down the pathway of change.”

Sign up for early access to #waywire’s private beta

Tim Bray, the Googler most famous for his prior role in editing the XML language, has set his eyes on a new challenge: eradicating usernames and passwords, at least as we know them today, from the Internet.

Bray, who landed at Google in 2010 as an evangelist for the Android platform, announced Friday that he will be joining Google’s Identity group on July 1 to work on OAuth and OpenID, two standards for user authentication in web and mobile applications.

Inspired by his recent work on Google Play services (a soon-to-launch platform that offers app developers ways to integrate with Google products), Bray believes the current systems for user authentication are outdated and overly complex.

“Usernames and passwords generally suck and obviously don’t scale to the Internet, so we need to do away with ’em soonest,” Bray said of his latest fascination. “The new technology coming down the pipe, OAuth 2 and friends, is way too hard for developers; there need to be better tools and services if we’re going to make this whole Internet thing smoother and safer.”

What Bray will do to solve the username/password problems of today, we don’t yet know (we asked, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back). Sure, some skeptics may posit that he’s simply working on a Facebook Open Graph-like system for Google services, but maybe there’s more to his new gig.

“No doubt in my mind that this is one of the big problems to be solved for the industry over the next decade,” tech pundit John Gruber wrote on his popular Daring Fireball blog. “Bray’s two-point bullet list is exactly right: the username/password solution is bad for users in numerous ways, but whatever eventually replaces it needs to be easy for developers.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Filed under: dev