Search Engine Optimization

In Spite of Data ‘Fears...

Hey, you can’t blame Facebook for wanting more data on its users. Marketers want it and will pay for it so Facebook is looking for new ways to provide it. The latest comes in the form of a free wi-fi offering that is being used in the San Francisco area. Wired reports The idea of offering people free Wi-Fi in exchange for their physical coordinates began at Facebook as a one-off experiment, a project by two engineers during an all-nighter in May 2012. Since then, Facebook has gradually spread what it now calls “Facebook Wi-Fi” further and further beyond the company’s corporate walls, deploying the system to cafes in Palo Alto and San Francisco and even into a line of routers made by Cisco. The growth of Facebook’s free internet offering underscores the extent to which the social network is trying to vacuum up more and more information about its members, including their physical movements, and how valuable such data has become in selling advertising. Once again, based on the hunger by marketers for more data and the money that is on the line this kind of offering should surprise no one. The question is whether the users of this service will truly know that they are being tracked and watched by Facebook to an even greater degree than normal? And the next question has to be, do they even care? The service would work like this Intended for use in businesses like cafes, Facebook Wi-Fi asks users to “check in” at the business location using their Facebook account. Once they do, or once they click a small opt-out link, they are granted wireless internet access. Pretty slick. Will it get a more widespread roll-out and adoption? If these experiments prove that more data can be collected on a user than the answer is likely to be an emphatic ‘Yes!’. People love free things, especially wi-fi, and don’t worry much about what they might be sacrificing. If nothing else comes from the recent brouhaha over the government and the information it gathers on US citizens, it will be a greater understanding of the relative indifference of the Internt using public to these concerns. The US is very much a ‘it won’t happen to me’ culture (that is until it DOES happen to someone then the outrage hits the fan) and Facebook, along with other Internet companies, are banking on it. Hey, it’s a free market and it appears that the market will bear it for now, so why not? What’s your take on this one? Good idea that will be widespread or just a one-off?

TripAdvisor Continues A...

Travel portal TripAdvisor continues to push ahead with its mobile and social acquisitions: today the company announced that it has acquired GateGuru , a mobile app that provides real-time information on airports, weather, and flights — much of it picked up from crowdsourcing, much like Waze — acquired by Google last week — does with road travel. Terms of the deal between GateGuru and TripAdvisor have not been disclosed but we are trying to find out. This is not an acqui-hire but a direct expansion of TripAdvisor’s services to its users. As more people take to mobile and social services, the company is looking to extend what it already offers online — a huge database of user-generated content giving reviews of destinations, hotels and other things travel-related, which currently brings in some 200 million monthly active users. In the case of TripAdvisor, it’s almost certainly easier to acquire and tap into services that have already been built rather than create them from scratch themselves. 
”Flying is often an essential part of a trip and we have continually developed our suite of flights products, from the pricing and availability search on TripAdvisor, to our award-winning SeatGuru.com, with seat maps and more” said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO TripAdvisor, Inc., in a statement. ”GateGuru nicely complements our existing flights products and we look forward to working with the GateGuru team as they continue to manage the GateGuru app and add great functionality to the TripAdvisor mobile experience.” It helps, too, that GateGuru is positioned to be in a good place for ubiquity, with apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone in place already. On one hand, this is a sign of the times for TripAdvisor about what is big with users in the market today, and travel and mobile naturally go hand-in-hand. On the other, this is also a sign of some ongoing consolidation in the travel start-up sector: with many services built for scale on thin margins on sales or large ad buys, if you’re a big property you will be looking to get bigger; and if you’re a smaller player you will struggle. (This could have been some of the problem, for example, behind a recent round of layoffs at travel site Ostrovok in Russia .) It helps, too, that TripAdvisor in December got a big injection of cash from Liberty Media, which took a $300 million stake in the company; it could be some of that fuelling this series of acquisitions. The news today follows TripAdvisor buying another mobile/social startup, TinyPost , in March of this year, followed swiftly by JetSetter from Gilt weeks later. As we speculated in March around the time of the TinyPost acquisition, it’s likely that some of this acquisition activity is the result not just of consolidation in the market — Like JetSetter, GateGuru is based out of New York, where it will remain. GateGuru, founded in 2011, had raised at least $800,000 with backing from a pretty illustrious set of investors. They include Chamath Palihapitiya , the former Facebook exec who is now running the Social + Capital Partnership VC fund; Allen Morgan , the former MD of the Mayfield Fund; and Tom Glocer , the former CEO of Thomson Reuters, among several others . GateGuru has even deeper links to the investment world: its founder and head, Dan Gellert, used to be a VC himself , working for Time Warner Investments and JP Morgan. More to come. Release below. LONDON, UK. June 19 2013 – TripAdvisor®, Inc., today announced it has acquired GateGuru (www.gateguruapp.com), the leading mobile resource for flight and airport information around the world.  Built on a mix of user-generated content and information from the airports, flyers can view detailed maps and insights on stores, restaurants, amenities and gate locations.  Combined with weather forecasts, estimated security wait times and real-time flight status information, the award-winning app aims to take the stress out of flying. 
 “Flying is often an essential part of a trip and we have continually developed our suite of flights products, from the pricing and availability search on TripAdvisor, to our award-winning SeatGuru.com, with seat maps and more” said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO TripAdvisor, Inc.  “GateGuru nicely complements our existing flights products and we look forward to working with the GateGuru team as they continue to manage the GateGuru app and add great functionality to the TripAdvisor mobile experience.” The GateGuru team will continue to operate out of New York City, and report to Bryan Saltzburg, General Manager New Initiatives and leader of the TripAdvisor Flights product and SeatGuru brand. Terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed. About TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor® is the world’s largest travel site*, enabling travellers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travellers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, with more than 200 million unique monthly visitors**, and over 100 million reviews and opinions covering more than 2.5 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The sites operate in 30 countries worldwide, including China under daodao.com. TripAdvisor also includes TripAdvisor for Business, a dedicated division that provides the tourism industry access to millions of monthly TripAdvisor visitors. TripAdvisor, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIP) manages and operates websites under 20 other travel media brands: http://www.airfarewatchdog.com , http://www.bookingbuddy.com , http://www.cruisecritic.com , http://www.everytrail.com , http://www.familyvacationcritic.com , http://www.flipkey.com , http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk , http://www.holidaywatchdog.com , http://www.independenttraveler.com , http://www.jetsetter.com , http://www.niumba.com,  www.onetime.com , http://www.seatguru.com , http://www.sniqueaway.com , http://www.smartertravel.com , http://www.tingo.com, www.travelpod.com , http://www.virtualtourist.com , http://www.whereivebeen.com , and http://www.kuxun.cn.  *Source: comScore Media Metrix for TripAdvisor Sites, worldwide, April 2013 **Source: Google Analytics, worldwide data, May 2013 ©2013 TripAdvisor, Inc. All rights reserved.  SOURCE TripAdvisor

Google Looks to Distanc...

In the wake of the leaks by Edward Snowden, many tech companies have been looking to distance themselves from the controversy by releasing how many requests they receive for information from the US government. The latest to take that step was Yahoo! yesterday which followed suit with the likes of Microsoft, Apple and Facebook . Google is taking this battle to the next level as reported in the Washington Post Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests the court makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it is forced to give the government. The legal filing, which invokes the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about broad National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic. Google has long told users of certain government information requests in transparency reports over the years but until this latest big brotherish revelation from the leak at the NSA, it seems as if no one really cared much. We stopped reporting on these updates because our readers clearly were unmoved by the information. Now, Google now wants to get ahead of the rest of the pack and move their efforts for transparency to another level. In its petition, Google sought permission to publish information about how many government data requests the surveillance court approves and how many user accounts are affected. Google long has made regular reports with regard to other data demands from the U.S. government and other governments worldwide, but it has been forced to exclude requests from the surveillance court, which oversees an array of official monitoring efforts that target foreigners. Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo in recent days have won federal government permission to include requests from the court as part of the overall number of data requests they receive from federal, state and local officials. Google has rejected that approach as too imprecise to help users understand the scope of its cooperation with federal surveillance. Google is very good at playing the political game. They should be since the Obama administration is littered with current and former staffers coming from the tech giant in addition to its not so subtle backing of President Obama’s election efforts. So what does this mean to the end user? Probably not much since most Internet users are happily using the Internet regardless of what is being collected. These games are being played at higher levels and are ultimately around stock prices and money which is what drives all corporate decisions. If I sound cynical I am since any altruistic moves by companies can always be traced to the current or potential economic impact on the company with almost no exceptions. In the end this is all public posturing as this quote points out indirectly Even overall numbers of surveillance court requests would offer insight “only at a very high level of abstraction,” said Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor. “I don’t think we’ll learn anything other than how pervasive this practice has been. . . . It will only be a piece of a much larger puzzle.” So where are you on the Internet and privacy? Have you changed your online habits since Snowden went public with the NSA’s practices? Have you kept a close eye on the impact of these actions? Since most of our readers are much more invested in the Internet space than the average citizen, if it’s not impacting you then the John Q. Public likely doesn’t have a clue or doesn’t care. That’s just the way it is. We’ll keep an eye on the ‘big’ aspects of this story but let’s all face it that the truth is we are all being watched and that is unlikely to change. No matter how much companies jockey for PR positioning in the end they will likely need to cooperate with the government and we, the public, will probably never truly know to what degree. In the meantime, we’ll give Google the lead in the “look at what we are doing to protect our users stock price” race and just move on as if nothing has changed because it probably has not and likely will not.

ERN Raises Further $1.6...

BIG DATA costs big bucks. Perhaps then, it should be no surprise to see ERN , the London-based startup that’s planning to use Big Data to enable banks and merchants to create loyalty-based offers for cardholders, has announced that it’s raised more funding before actually managing to launch. Following a $2 million funding round raised last December, the company has added another $1.6 million in seed funding to its coffers. Once again, ERN is remaining tight-lipped on who its backers are, only to describe them as “high net worth individuals”, the majority of which I understand are new investors, and that the additional capital will be used to further develop its platform. In addition to its headquarters in London, the Fintech startup has an office in Silicon Valley and Singapore, and currently employs a team of 14 people, a head-count that it’s planning to ad to. Two noteworthy hires earlier this year include former Mastercard executives Anant Patel and Brian Eagle-Brown. Patel is now ERN’s Head of UK Sales, while Eagle-Brown is the startup’s UK Merchant & Acquiring Sales Director. ERP’s analytics platform, dubbed “Looop”, enables banks (or more specifically, card issuers) and participating merchants to boost customer loyalty by creating new products and offers based on the analysis of their card transactions. The idea is that by drilling into the Big Data around a customer’s transactional history — after they’ve opted in, of course — individually-tailored offers can be pushed to their smartphone via the Looop app, in the form of an e-coupon redeemable in-store. From the merchants point of view, these offers can be segmented using the Big Data that the system is able to make sense of, as well as being based on things like time and location. So, for example, only push an offer when a customer who has previously bought a dress is within a certain radius of the participating store. In addition to receiving highly targeted offers — the Looop system is designed to be non-spammy and is self-learning based on how a consumer interacts with the platform (i.e. which offers they take up) as well as their card transactions — the Looop smartphone app lets consumers track spending on their credit and debit cards in “real-time”. The pull being that they can budget more effectively — the trojan horse needed to push those enticing loyalty-based offers. Meanwhile, although yet to launch, ERN says it’s now in a position to conduct wider customer trials, which have begun already. What banks or merchants it’s working with, the startup isn’t saying or can’t say. However, I understand them to be household names.

Netflix Will Launch In ...

Netflix has announced that it will begin operating in The Netherlands later this year, further expanding its European footprint. The Netherlands, Netflix’s seventh European country, is a relatively small market for the streaming video service, but in keeping with Netflix’s more cautious approach to moving into new countries after its aggressive international expansion last year lost money. After breaking into several international markets, including the UK, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, in 2012, Netflix said in January that it would dramatically decrease the rate of its overseas expansion in 2013. During the past six months, Netflix has not launched in any new countries. In its first-quarter earnings report this April, Netflix said that it expects a profit of up to $149 million from its U.S. streaming business in the second quarter, but losses of up to $81 million from its international streaming in 40 countries. The company’s U.S. business is also given a boost by its DVD-by-mail segment, which will contribute additional profits of up to $112 million. Netflix now has 7.1 million international users in Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. The streaming video company currently has 29.2 million streaming subscribers in the U.S. The company did not give any details about its catalog or pricing, but it did say that users in The Netherlands will get access to Hollywood-produced, local and global TV series and films, including Netflix Original Series “House of Cards” and “Arrested Development” on their mobile devices, PCs and game consoles. A site for The Netherlands is now open for notification sign-ups.

Ooyala Sets Up R&D...

Video services provider Ooyala is setting up an R&D operations in Singapore, and is hiring researchers and data scientists for the facility. The company provides video technology to media companies and telcos, enabling them to stream their content online such as the Australian Open , or helping ESPN embed videos in tweets .It claims to have a collective viewership of about 200 million across 130 countries each month. Ooyala has had a small staff of four in Singapore since last year, but the new facility will bump up its presence here to about 20 when it’s operational in 2014, said CEO, Jay Fulcher. The center here will focus on researching localized products for Asia, as the company expands outside of the US. Ooyala will keep its core engineering team in Mountain View, where most of its 300 staff are. It also maintains offices in Sydney, Tokyo, LA, New York and London, with teams of about ten in each of them. Fulcher wouldn’t say how much the company is ploughing into the center here, but said it is making “significant” investments into its growth. Last year, the company raised a massive $35 million round , led by Australian telco, Telstra. It was its fifth round to date. The company isn’t profitable, but Fulcher said Ooyala can make its books positive “at any given point”, but is choosing to spend aggressively on expansion in the meantime. 45 percent of its revenue comes from North America, with Asia, Latin America and Europe after, in descending order. When I pointed out that it’s generally unusual for companies to have Asia as their second-largest revenue contributor, Fulcher said it’s because Ooyala landed a large client in the Times Group of India. “In fact, that was our first client ever,” he said. As Ooyala expands in Asia, it’s also chasing the growing audience watching video on mobile devices here. According to its latest video index report , Singapore viewers had the longest live viewing sessions at 52 minutes on average. 57 percent also watched online videos to completion, indicating that they were engaged with the content. And more viewers in the region are watching videos longer than ten minutes—considered “longform” for videos, said Fulcher. A third of viewers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Thailand watch these longer videos. Other video networks focusing on mobiles are making an active play for the region, too. California-based Vuclip just reported that its mobile video network has 80 million monthly viewers, with most of them in the emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. It has raised $35 million to date, and earlier this year acquired another mobile video player, Jigsee, to expand into India .

Teambox Adds High-Defin...

Teambox has added high-definition video conferencing, adding to a list of providers that are adding video to their collaboration platforms. The Teambox offering is of particular note, as it fully integrates video conferencing and screen sharing directly into the collaboration platform through Zoom , a video-conferencing service. The service allows for video conferencing of up to 25 people across desktops, tablets and mobile devices. It supports iCal, Outlook and Google Calendar. Teambox has earned recognition for its capability to integrate third-party apps for an inline experience. It’s in some sense a framework for aggregating apps such as Box and Evernote. But is it that much better than using third-party services in conjunction with a collaboration platform? Tibco’s Tibbr activity stream product now integrates third-party web-conferencing tools. A customer can start a live meeting by choosing their own platform. The intent is to allow enterprises to leverage the platforms they have invested in. So there are benefits to both ways of integrating video conferencing with a collaboration platform. Most of the services, such as Microsoft Office 365,  have integrated video conferencing, mostly as an add-on. But the tide is shifting. Services such as Unison now offer video chat through WebRTC, the real-time communications technology that is native to the browser through a JavaScript API. Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera now support the open-source project. Then there are the services like Pexip , which I looked at last week, which is making video conferencing available as a software. In all of this, there is one theme. Video conferencing is now moving to software, making integration into collaboration services easier than ever before.

Fab Grabs $150M At $1B ...

Design-focused commerce company Fab has raised that round of funding we scooped a few months ago. Fab is announcing today that it has raised $150 million in the first tranche of the company’s Series D round of financing. We’re told that $150 million is the first part of a larger Series D round that Fab expects to complete over the next few months. New to this round is Chinese Internet giant Tencent, who will also have a board seat at Fab; and Japanese conglomerate Itochu. Previous investors Atomico, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, RTP Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Lars Hinrichs, and Docomo Capital also participated in this latest round of financing. This brings Fab’s total funding to $310 million. We’re hearing from multiple sources that the pre-money valuation of the company was $1 billion, as we had reported in April (a spokesperson for Fab has confirmed the valuation). And we’ve also heard from a source that Fab will be raising another $100 million or more in the later part of this round. At Fab’s last round of financing in 2012, the company was worth around $600 million . Past investors include First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Baroda Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Thrive Capital, Kevin Rose, SV Angel, The Washington Post, VTB Capital, Phenomen Ventures and the Times of India. Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. He added that for this round there was $400 million worth of interest coming from investors. Growth, International And Another Pivot Fourteen million users strong, Fab is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $150 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300 percent in January 2013 over January 2012. In fact, January was Fab’s third-highest sales month ever. According to the company, Fab should reach $250 million in 2013 sales. Fab’s now achieving 43 percent gross margins, up from 29 percent in 2011. Interestingly, Fab says that most of its revenue is not derived from flash sales, which was the initial model Fab adopted after its pivot in 2011. As we wrote in this profile of the company , Fab infamously pivoted from Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, into a flash sales site. Fab says that two-thirds of sales are currently not from the flash-sales on the site, and the company recently rebranded to reflect this change. And 50 percent of Fab’s sales are in home categories. In May, Fab debuted its new design store , which makes it more of an integrated e-commerce site. You can access design pages by room, type of furniture, color, designer and more. International is also a huge potential growth area for the company. Fab has 1 million members in the UK, which is generating nearly 40 percent of its sales in Europe and is its fastest-growing market outside the U.S. Asia is the next frontier, which is why Goldberg and Fab are bringing on Tencent and Itochu as partners. As Goldberg explains, there are currently only four e-commerce companies in the world that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and Rakuten. He believes that Fab has a legitimate chance to be the fifth by leading in what he calls Emotional Commerce. This basically means that Fab helps people discover the items they love and want. Part of Fab’s plan to take over emotional commerce involves making its own line of products and home goods. Fab is also partnering with designers to manufacture and sell home furnishings exclusively through Fab. Additionally, Fab is experimenting with brick and mortar stores, with the first store debuting in Hamburg, Germany. Mobile is also a huge growth area, with one-third of sales being placed via mobile. And international will also be a major strategic focus for Fab, which just acquired German custom furniture store Massivkonzept. Fab sells products in 27 countries and 40 percent of sales today occur outside the U.S. What Fab Is Spending The Cash On $150 million is a lot of cash, and Fab is raising more. Where is the money going? Goldberg says that Fab will be investing in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology, and merchandising. At the beginning of 2012 it took 16 days — on average — from time of purchase to shipping a product. Today, 75 percent of Fab’s orders ship within 24 hours of purchase, and Fab wants to make sure this is the case for 100 percent of the products sold on the site. This year Fab will open its own new Fab-operated warehouse in The Netherlands to serve European customers. In 2014 Fab will open a warehouse in the Las Vegas area. As mentioned above, Fab will also be doubling down on manufacturing and designing more products in-house, as well as working with designers to offer items exclusively on Fab. We can also expect more development in social and mobile. And Goldberg says Fab will be putting more investment in international (likely via more acquisitions, as it has bought five companies in two years). With the Tencent investment, Goldberg says that Fab will be working together to expand the site’s presence in China. As for why Fab has raised as much as it has in only two years, Goldberg maintains that this is how retail works. “Tell me an e-commerce business that is worth more than $5 billion that hasn’t raised a lot of money,” he says. To fund things like logistics, fulfillment, inventory and manufacturing, a business needs a lot of capital, he explains. He adds that if Fab stayed as a U.S. business, the company wouldn’t need to raise as much. There is also now a somewhat clear path towards profitability, at least for the U.S. and European businesses. Goldberg says that Fab will likely become profitable in its U.S. and European operations by Q4 2014 or Q1 2015.

Startup-PR Matchmaker A...

For pretty much as long as long as anyone can remember, a relationship triangle, or a “love triangle” if you will, has taken shape between companies and the PR firms that represent them and the press that covers them — existing in some sort of recursive loop. Yet, while that triangle should have come to represent a symbiosis and a valuable communication network, somewhere along the way the triangle broke down. (Defying the laws of Geometry, even.) In reality, today this relationship is more like the Bermuda Triangle . While the matter of who is responsible for the disconnect is subject to debate, the PR industry (for right or wrong) usually takes most of the blame. While the causes are numerous, in the end, most of the problems inherent to the startup-PR relationship are a matter of transparency (or lack therof) and the inability for either side to find the best (and most mutually beneficial) match on the other. AirPR launched into private beta last year with $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Mohr Davidow Ventures, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and others to help solve this problem by creating a marketplace in which startups can find PR representation that’s right for them, and vice versa. Pitched as a kind of “Match.com for PR,” at launch AirPR focused primarily on matching top, pre-screened PR talent in the U.S. with technology startups looking for (and able to pay for) representation. Last week, after a year of testing the system in closed beta, iterating and tweaking, the San Francisco-based company has finally opened its marketplace to the public. With its public launch, AirPR is opening its doors to all tech startups, expanding its marketplace to include companies in the lifestyle and consumer goods verticals and adding a few tweaks to its formula. After watching 70 companies go through its PR matchmaking system and processing feedback from PR veterans, AirPR cut its onboarding process in half. Now, in order to find the best match, startups enter the date they want their PR campaign to begin and then answer a series of questions about their focus, stage of development, what kind of help they’d like, how much funding they’ve raised, and so on. AirPR then screens the startups and, if they meet its quality standards, uses the startup’s answers to match them with reps whose experience best fits that criteria. If not, they’re declined. After being alerted to the incoming business leads, reps then place bids for the client, at which point the startup can sift through the offers, compare them, select the best option and pay for a 60-day contract. Based on feedback from startups and PR pros, at launch, the platform also now includes a recommendation system, in which AirPR provides the top three matches based on the data its collected on the PR side. Initially, the company provided a list of all possible matches, but the co-founders tell us that companies were often overwhelmed by an abundance of choice and were less inclined to finish the process than if the system served provided three of its closest matches at the top. In turn, by recommending PR reps and being more proactive in pushing reps to reach out to specific companies, the conversion ended up being faster and a higher percentage of companies closed the deal. While there may be contention over the cause, most will likely agree that the PR model as it currently stands is in sore need of improvement. As someone who stands at one of the corners of the PR Bermuda Triangle, I can attest to this. PR reps have a tough job, and, as in any interest there are incredibly talented, bright firms and reps that get lumped in with the offenders who blanket journalists inbox with copy-and-pasted pablum and poorly worded pitches that aren’t even relevant to a writer’s beat. Any improvement on the overall quality of the PR-startup relationship stands to benefit everyone involved, and while it’s still early to say just how effective AirPR’s model will be, it’s worth the effort. While the startup’s matching algorithm and marketplace model are familiar, what may be even more valuable to the Bermuda Triangle (and to the industry at large) is the insight that can be pulled from the data AirPR collects on how startups are using the system, what they want help with, how effective PR is at meeting its goals, costs, publications they want to speak to, among other things. This data can help both startups and PR people be more effective and precise with their pitches and outreach. (One can also, much to the delight of everyone except PR, imagine AirPR eventually using this data to make a list of the “Top 10 Most Effective PR Firms,” for example.) AirPR allowed TechCrunch an early look into some of the data (and insights) it’s collected thus far, and the conclusions are telling. For starters, the most popular keyword or service startups were looking for help with was “Growth,” with 84 percent of companies listing that as top priority, followed by 69 percent of companies looking for “Brand Awareness,” 36 percent for “Launch,” 25 percent for “Fundraising,” and 16 percent for “Recruiting.” Next, another one that will be of interest to PR reps: The company found that fixed bids (a bid with one amount, like $20K for a 4-month project, for example) were 29 percent more likely to close than retainers (monthly bids). In explaining just why in the sam hill we should care, AirPR CEO Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer explains that, historically, the PR industry has primarily operated on a retainer model. However, the monthly averages for both fixed bids and retainers are almost the same, he says, so the data thus far seems to show that the reliance on the retainer model is psychological, rather than what its customers want. Clients seem to appreciate the one-time fee with specific deliverables, the CEO explained — a conclusion that helps startups and PR move closer to transparency rather than clients being forced to ask “what exactly are we paying for?” each month. To date, AirPR has found that the average bid accepted on the platform breaks down to roughly $5K/month in fees (whether fixed or retainer) for an average of 5 months. In other words, companies that have between $500K and $4 million in funding want shorter-term contracts with lower rates. This, in and of itself may not be surprising, but the more data it collects, the more it will be able to reveal correlations between not only funding and how much they’re willing to pay, but size of bids and the work they want done, the industry they’re in, and so on. The CEO also tells us that several of the PR reps on the AirPR platform have doubled their business since joining and are “now looking to grow their practice with other folks on the platform, like a co-op situation,” he says. To this point, the idea from the beginning has been to not only help startups who often have no idea where to start when looking for PR, but to serve PR firms and reps that are looking to expand their practices. In the end, the AirPR co-founder tells us, this helps them weed out lower quality PR and put the best firms and people in control. If AirPR can follow through on that idea, its marketplace could end up providing a lot of value to both startups and the PR firms that love them by helping them navigate the Bermuda Triangle and get more bang for their buck.

New Yorkers Get Free Po...

Months after Hurricane Sandy left New York scrambling for power, the city is unveiling 25 solar powered charging stations in parks and public spaces throughout the five boroughs, starting today. The pilot project between AT&T and the city of New York is officially called AT&T Street Charge. (DUMBO firm Pensa handled design, and Goal Zero provided the solar technology, AT&T handled the cash.) The stations will move to new locations at the beginning of July, rotating throughout the city until September. After that, we’ll see what becomes of them. Most are a little out of the way for those who don’t go to Fort Greene Park, the Brooklyn Bridge Park, or Riverside Park on the reg, but solar powered, public, and free is a pretty great thing. Definitely better than those public charging stations that also charge you money. Since the Union Square location won’t open until tomorrow, I headed up to Riverside Park to see what the good people of New York thought of it. If I was hoping for a rare Upper West Side mob scene — and I was — I was sorely disappointed. To be fair, it was an overcast Tuesday at 2:30pm. On a sunny Saturday afternoon when the adjacent Pier 1 Cafe is busier, I’m sure the station will be getting more love. Joggers, cyclists, dog-walkers, and people who were otherwise not at work stopped by the charging station regularly and gave the attendant an “I’m just taking a look” or “I just wanted to see what it was” before moving on. It is a 12.5′ metal pole with six phone chargers at hip height and three arms at the top that resemble whimsical helicopter blades, so that is a valid reaction. The most enthusiasm came from a group of 16-year-olds, who rushed the pole going, “Ooohhh, coool .” When I asked them if they’d feel safe leaving their phones there, all five of them gave an immediate and decisive no. “Are you guys from New York?” “Yes.” So there you go. But two of the boys did stick around for a few minutes to plug in their phones. “It’s okay if you’re standing right next to it.” “I’d pull up a chair.” Another man checking out the pole said that while he wouldn’t feel comfortable stepping away from his phone — “I hardly like to leave the house with it” — he could see imagine huge lines in the event of another blackout. The attendant, who works for a company hired by AT&T for the launch, estimated that about 20 or 25 people had charged their phones on the pole in the four hours since she arrived at 11am. In the hour that I was there, only three did, teenage boys included. A 24-year-old cyclist named Shana reclined in a nearby cafe chairs waiting for her iPod to charge. Asked if she felt comfortable sitting 15 feet away from it, she replied, “Well, it’s about 6 years old, so…” Most people seemed to think it was a great idea, especially in light of Sandy, but no New Yorker is going to leave their stuff lying around. I think a nearby Park Enforcement official put it best: “ Never leave anything unattended.” And so the charging stations stood in the June drizzle waiting for the public to stand right next to them. [Image: AT&T]