Nissan LEAF: World With...

Here’s a pretty neat art installation in Sydney for the launch of the Nissan LEAF electric car into the market, illustrating the things we might just be doing with petrol bowsers when there is no future need for them. With almost 40 unique, interactive, re-purposed petrol bowsers on display, people are free to walk up Related Digital Buzz Posts: The Nissan Leaf iAd Demo Video Nissan 370Z Augmented Reality Website (AR) Nissan Juke iAd Demo Experience

Kleiner Perkins Closes ...

Silicon Valley venture capital stalwart Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers is announcing this evening that it has closed on a $525 million round for its fifteenth venture fund, dubbed ‘KPCB 15.’ The fund will be headed up by 10 managing members: Mike Abbott , Chi-Hua Chien , Amol Deshpande , John Doerr , Bing Gordon , Wen Hsieh , Randy Komisar , Matt Murphy , Beth Seidenberg , and Ted Schlein . Longtime Kleiner Perkins investment partners Brook Byers , Ray Lane and Bill Joy are all notably off the list, which appears to confirm earlier reports that they will be declining their participation in future funds as part of a gradual general change in the partnership structure at the firm. Kleiner Perkins says it will focus the fund toward making investments in early-stage digital consumer and enterprise, green technology, and life sciences companies. According to Kleiner Perkins, which for years has been known for placing more emphasis on green tech, it will place an extra focus on all things web going forward: “While KPCB has invested in the digital enterprise space for decades, a further emphasis will be made in KPCB 15,” the firm wrote in a press release. $525 million is certainly big, but it’s not outsized given Kleiner Perkins’ history and the larger environment. The offering price for KPCB’s 14th fund was $650 million , and its 13th fund’s offering was sized at $950 million, according to regulatory documents. It’s also important to note that this is by no means KPCB’s only fund. Earlier this spring the firm raised $1 billion for its digital growth fund, focused on later stage companies, for example, and the firm has a number of other funds focused on specific initiatives and markets. Meanwhile, other venture capital firms have raised some truly massive rounds in recent months. Last week NEA filed documents indicating that it is raising up to $2.5 billion for a new venture fund that could be one of the largest ever in VC history. And earlier this year, Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global each raised $1.5 billion rounds for new VC funds.

The Google AdSense Kill...

Tiny sidebar and news feed ads aren’t going to cut it. If Facebook wants to live up to a $100 billion valuation it will need bold new revenue streams. An offsite ad network, big glossy news feed ads, or and payments for physical goods are a few ways it could boost its average revenue per user far beyond the puny $4.34 a year it earns today. Facebook has a tough decision to make now that’s going public . It will have to strike a new balance between the good of its users, advertisers, app developers, and investors. If it refuses to explore new business models, its share price could sink. But if it strays too far in favor of making money, Facebook could lose its addictiveness and the faith of its users. Here’s the four aces Mark Zuckerberg could have up his sleeve. The AdSense Killer Most ads suck because most advertisers don’t know much about who you are. But Facebook does. What if any website could use everything Facebook knows about you to show you ads you’d want to click? Well, those sites would pay Facebook a lot of money. They also might use Facebook to replace Google AdSense, the current leader amongst ad networks, which analyzes a site and automatically displays relevant ads. Facebook’s ad network essentially turn ad real estate on any website into places to serve the campaigns that advertisers buy for display on Facebook.com. Anyone currently logged into Facebook who visits one of these sites would be shown ads targeted by their Facebook information, such as age, gender, location, work and education history, interests, app usage, and friends. Facebook and the site hosting an ad would then split the money made on clicks or impressions. Facebook has denied this product is in the works whenever it’s been asked, but last week it revised its privacy policy to expand its ability to serve ads to its user while they’re outside of Facebook.com. There’d be little reason to do this if something wasn’t in the works. The march across the web of its other social plugins such as the Like button have also paved the way for an ad network plugin. It might need to develop or acquire a company with expertise in analyzing site content so it could serve somewhat relevant ads to site visitors who aren’t logged in to Facebook. The biggest obstacle, and likely the reason Facebook hasn’t already launched an offsite ad network, is that the world might not be ready. People are already skittish about Facebook using all their personal data to target them with ads when they’re on its site. Even though Facebook wouldn’t technically be “tracking” user web browsing history to power ad targeting, seeing offsite ads targeted from their onsite data might cause some people to have an all-out privacy meltdown. But if it worked, the ad network could double or triple Facebook’s ad revenue. PayBook Facebook has its own virtual currency called Credits that’s typically used to let gamers make in-game purchases like powerups, clothing for their characters, and of course, cows for their farms. Users buy the Credits for $0.10 each, and when they spend them Facebook gives 70% to the game’s developer and keeps the other 30%. These in-game payments are a healthy business for Facebook, and they’ve made game developers like Zynga rich because creating and selling virtual goods is cheap. The problem is that the 30% tax is too high to for people to sell physical goods for Credits. And while Apple also charges 30% to sell music, games, and in-app purchases through iTunes and its App Store, it has a tight grip on the digital media market. Facebook allows media sales with Credits, but only a few developers and content producers are experimenting with it as the tax is prohibitive. But if Facebook wanted to get serious about making money on payments, it could reduce its 30% tax for digital media and physical goods . In fact, its S-1 filing to IPO noted that “In the future, if we extend Payments outside of games, the percentage fee we receive from developers may vary.” That could turn Facebook into a competitor to Amazon for the huge market of physical goods, and pit it against Apple, Google, and Amazon for selling music, films, and more. The real power of Facebook Payments comes in its tie in with Facebook Connect. Together they could one day let you make a purchase and fill in your shipping info anywhere on the web with just a click or two. Before privacy fear-mongers in the media and congress made Facebook retreat, the social network briefly allowed apps to ask for your home address , aka your shipping address. Eventually Facebook will bring this back. Then this frictionless purchase system could increase conversion rates for ecommerce stores enough that they’d gladly implement Facebook Payments and Connet… Charging For Apps For Your Identity There were over 550,000 apps and integrated websites on the Facebook platform as of a few years ago. Many rely on Facebook’s identity system to replace or provide an easier alternative to signing up for an app-specific account complete with another password to remember and profile to fill out. This service saves app developers from having to build their own identity system, and primes users for social sharing that can drive crucial referral traffic to apps. Could Facebook convince some of the developers to pay either a subscription or per-user fee? Yes, but the price would have to be steep to make it a serious revenue stream. If it got 300,000 apps paying $100 a month each it’d still only be make $360 million a year. $100 a month could be a bargain for popular apps, but it might discourage smaller developers from signing on. Meanwhile a per user fee would disincentivize growth, and force apps that suddenly get popular to abandon Facebook’s identity platform. Charging for identity has potential, but it could also backfire and send developers fleeing to Twitter and Google’s free identity systems. That’s a huge problem because Facebook relies on third-party apps to contribute content to its news feed which Facebook monetizes with ads. So instead I think Facebook’s best bet to boost revenue in the short-term is… Big, Glossy News Feed Ads Advertisers don’t want to have their message crammed into the little sidebar ad boxes. And while they’re happy to have their ads made social as Sponsored Stories and injected into the news feed everyone reads, they also want less subtle marketing options. Facebook is trying to be flexible with the launch of Reach Generator and the big logout page ad unit , but advertisers want a louder marketing channel within the core Facebook experience. But beyond advertisers and investors looking to make a quick buck, nobody wants to see more ads on Facebook. So the trick is for Facebook to make ads seem like content instead. Content we actually want to consume. Tiny boxes don’t do that, but large, high-impact full screen or near-full screen ads could. Flipboard and some other mobile apps have been experimenting with these big, glossy ad formats in their mobile apps. Imagine scrolling down your news feed on the web or mobile and when you got to where there’d be a “More” button or fold (if Facebook didn’t have infinite scrolling), you’d see a large or full-screen ad. You could scroll right over it, or Facebook could make it snap into place for a second before you were free to move on. These ads could be clicked to open an advertiser’s presence on Facebook such as their Page or App, or to open the buyer’s website. Facebook could even require the ads to be social, essentially creating a glossy Sponsored Story format that could only reach you if you Liked the advertiser’s Page or your friends had interacted with or Liked the brand. As Facebook’s user base is quickly shifting to mobile where it only shows a few Sponsored Stories ads a day rather than multiple ads per page on the web, glossy ads could let Facebook make more money on mobile without having to show ads too frequently. Users might complain at first, and it could make people slightly less likely to visit the news feed. Still, Facebook could watch the data and manage rate limits to show these glossy ads only occasionally, and less often to users who immediately leave the site or app when they see them. The fact is that Facebook is responsible to its outside shareholders, even if they don’t have enough voting rights to forcibly change the company’s course. If investors are smart, they won’t grumble if Facebook doesn’t immediately flood the site and the rest of the web with ads, payments, and subscription fees. Facebook got us all to connect. Now its biggest challenge is to remain cool while making more money. If Facebook expands its revenue streams slow and steady, it will have an ocean of users to draw from for years to come.

Parking Douche App: Rea...

Rumour has it that in Russia, people might just be worse at parking cars than the French (remember this campaign?!). So online Russian newspaper “The Village” have had enough and launched an app designed to help every day people shame douche bag drivers by taking a photo of the car, where image recognition reads the Related Digital Buzz Posts: The Great Banner Sale: GRAACC Bear 71: A Real World Multi-User Experience Diesel’s Real Life “Likes” via QR Codes

Why The Internet Doesn’...

American politics used to be fun: frequent political carnivals in the 19th century would mix parties, parades, and political speeches in an endless stream of local civic life. As a result, America had an astonishingly high turnout, between 70-90%, in presidential and local elections. Yet, the Internet has never quite captured the emotional gravity of real-life engagement, and keeps tripping up multi-million dollar campaigns designed to inject life into an otherwise passive electorate. For example, take two technology initiatives that were widely predicted to dramatically increase democratic engagement: Obama’s 2008 campaign and Americans Elect. Despite the hype, Barack Obama’s juggernaut of a online campaign only boosted youth turnout by a meager 2% . Americans Elect, a crowdsourced online platform for a third party presidential candidate, was supposed to be the digital savior of American democracy. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman prophesied , “Americans Elect. What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life.” Americans Elect promised to allow citizens to vote directly online for a third party candidate, uncorrupted by corporate donations, and finance the winner’s national campaign. Today, despite massive media attention, the bankroll of a Wall Street billionaire , and the promise of direct democracy, Americans Elect failed to garner its own minimum threshold of 10,000 votes to field a candidate (less than 1% of those who turned out for the Republican primary). The Obama campaign, Americans Elect, and other election startups all promise empowerment. But, if empowerment inspired voting, female and African American suffrage would have sustained high rates after they were given the right to vote. In Switzerland, arguably the most democratic country on earth, citizens vote directly on every major law, upwards of 7 times a year–yet turnout floats around a very low 30% . So, what caused super-high voter turnout over a century ago, if not empowerment? Mark Lawrence Kornbluh, explains, in the deliciously informative Why America Stopped Voting , that democracy used to be a part of everyday American life. Frequent carnivals and parades would accompany political debates, as citizen-revelers would schmooze with local politicians, to discuss issues that they had direct control over. As a result, Americans were not only incredibly engaged, but well-read: a higher proportion of people read Thomas Paine’s political philosophy than watch the Superbowl today. They also patiently listened to presidential debates that last 6 or more hours at a time . Then, technology crashed the party, “By the 1920′s, radio broadcasts had replaced mass meetings and all-day orations,” writes Kornbluh. “As the role of voters became increasingly passive, it is little wonder that their enthusiasm for electoral politics waned.” Attention turned away from local issues, and Americans sat by as government reformers centralized power and held elections less often. Political parties had no incentive to subsidize the good times, given the more efficient ways of mass communication at their disposal. So, with the additional burden of new laws restricting how political parties could directly fund voters (i.e corruption), the big civic party ground to a halt. Ultimately, the motivation to vote has to overcome one very big problem: voting is irrational , since no one person can make a difference. No democracy in history has ever sustained high levels of engagement on the hope that citizens are willing to sacrifice their free time to make a marginal difference. The Gilded Age party machines overcame this dilemma by intermixing politics with fun (albeit in often unethical ways). The need for enjoyment in politics is perfectly illustrated in an unlikely pair: Estonia and  American  Idol . While  Estonia became the first country  to permit the convenience of voting by both cell phone and over the internet, the moderate boost in turnout rates did not even come close  to 19th century America. Yet,  American Idol , which also votes through SMS, is one of the largest democracies on earth  (and, no one is loosing health insurance over the outcome). Though the Internet promises greater democracy, virtual engagement is every bit as disembodied as the couch potatoes of the 20th century who passively engaged politics through TV and radio. Until someone figures out how to create a rocking good time on Facebook, don’t bet money that the Internet is the savior of elections.