Yahoo Shuts Down 10 Mob...

Yahoo is moving forward with a “mobile first” mindset, the company stated via blog post late last week, then incongruously announced it would be shuttering 10 of its mobile applications. The list, which contains a mix of iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, includes an odd, and somewhat surprising group of underperforming properties. Yahoo Deals, News, Shopping, Finance and Movies, were included among the shutdowns, for example. Yahoo isn’t cutting all of its News and Finance apps, however – only those on platforms it hasn’t found to be worth the effort to support, it appears. Also, Yahoo’s bread-and-butter apps like Mail and Messenger are safe, as well as newer apps like its TV companion IntoNow and its iPad mag Livestand. As for Sketch-a-Search and AppSpot, the apps’ technologies won’t be abandoned, but will rather be incorporated into Yahoo’s main search app. The full list of apps being shut down includes: Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone) Yahoo! Mim (iPad) Yahoo! Answers (Android) Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone) Yahoo! Deals (iPhone) Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry) Yahoo! Movies (Android) Yahoo! News (Android) Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone) Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone) I’ll be honest – I don’t remember hearing of Meme or Mim, so those won’t be missed, I’ll wager. However, it’s a little surprising to see Finance dumped from BlackBerry – after all, who still rocks a ‘berry, but those busy banker/corporate types who constantly check headlines and stock quotes? And neither Yahoo Shopping nor Deals apps could survive on the phones preferred by those with disposable incomes (that is, the iPhone)? Crazy. Given the news, it was kind of funny to read Yahoo’s declaration of its “mobile first” ambitions, but what the company means is that it’s going to spend time on its more innovative and popular apps, and less on these general purpose (read: boring) creations.

At Least Yahoo’s User E...

Yahoo’s fourth quarter results are as underwhelming as most people expected: earnings were at $0.24 a share from $1.17 billion in revenue. But some of the brightest spots, beyond new chief executive Scott Thompson now taking the helm , are the engagement numbers. Take a look at the slide below, from the company’s earnings deck . Worldwide unique visits to both Yahoo-branded sites and to Yahoo properties were up by 12%. Since this data is from comScore , I pulled the measurement firms’ latest numbers to provide a little more detail. They show that Yahoo staged a minor visitor recovery over the last three months of the year in the US, ending with nearly 176 million monthly uniques. Worldwide, it did so through November, but then dropped slightly last month to end at nearly 692 million uniques. (ComScore graphs below, US first and world second.) Page views, meanwhile, were mixed, based on the data provided by Yahoo. The “Communications & communities” category, which includes Mail, Groups, Flickr and a hodgepodge of other products, fell by 13%, the biggest drop in two years. Search declined 4%, the worst quarter since Q2 of 2010. Media, which includes the Homepage, the mobile web apps, News, Sports, Finance, and other content sites, was the gainer. It continued to build on single-digit gains, with a 7% increase in the past quarter. Media also continued a streak of growth in minutes that started in the third quarter of last year. Communications also has seen very large gains in minutes, which appear to be from its new Mail rollout. The company has some more color on the content effort, via the earnings call today. The so-called “Tentpoles and Anchors” (aka the “Mixed Metaphor”) strategy. The company focused on covering big events like the Super Bowl, the Oscars, and the British Royal Wedding. It’s planning to build on that in 2012 with coverage of the US elections and the Olympics. It also hired more editorial staffers last year, added the ABC News content partnership. Yahoo Screens for destinations now includes 14 new shows. One in six Americans online watched one of these videos in December. It also extended Yahoo Publishing to more than 136 sites, added its social bar to news and other content sites, and added a new mail platform to 80% of global users, and created new iPad experiences.

Social Network For IT P...

Digital media publisher Ziff Davis has acquired Toolbox.com , a social networking and knowledge exchange website for IT, HR and Finance professionals that has been around since the late nineties and was previously owned by a company called the Corporate Executive Board. Terms were not disclosed. For Ziff Davis, which was acquired and ‘relaunched’ as a digital-only media publishing company by former Time Inc. exec Vivek Shah in partnership with PE firm Great Hill Partners back in June 2010, this is the fourth acquisition in the past twelve months. Also read: Ziff Davis Buys Tech Deals Site LogicBuy; Launches Ad Targeting Platform BuyerBase Toolbox.com says it connects over three million IT experts and executives from across the globe on a monthly basis, having attracted 2.3 million registered members since its founding in 1998. Basically, Toolbox.com enables users to evaluate IT vendors, plan and manage projects, solve problems and stay in the loop of what’s happening in the world of tech. Toolbox.com is henceforth a unit of ‘Ziff Davis B2B Focus’, which was formed earlier this year with Ziff Davis’ acquisition of Focus Research , a provider of online research to enterprise buyers and leads to IT vendors. Other sites operated by Ziff Davis include PCMag.com, ExtremeTech.com and Geek.com.

SpotMe Payments: A Grea...

SpotMe , a handy little tool for sharing expenses in groups, is now a top 10 mobile app in the finance category and a featured app in Apple’s App Store Rewind 2011 . Zornitza Stefanova, the CEO of SpotMe’s maker Boomerang Digital, describes the app as “a social messenger for payments.” What that means is that the app takes over the often uncomfortable job of having to ask your friends for the money they owe – it does that for you. An early version of the app was launched this July, but the most recent update just arrived mid-December, bringing with it helpful new features like messaging and email summaries. After installation, you can sign up for an account using Facebook and then add friends to a group by pulling their info from your phone’s address book or by typing in an email manually. It’s really fast to set up the bill you’re splitting, the money you lent, the rent, or any other expense you want to split with others. And speed, as we all know, is key when doing these sorts of things on the fly, lest you turn into the geek with your nose in your phone all night. As new bills are added to the group, an automatic email goes out from SpotMe to those owing as a reminder. Stefanova says the top use cases the company is seeing involve college students, bills split among friends, roommates, and the occasional IOU. Although at present, the app only functions as a tracking tool for managing money owed, the company has something really interesting cooking: it’s planning to integrate a person-to-person (p2p) payment mechanism next year, sometime around the launch of its Android app. That will then position SpotMe against other p2p payment apps, including PayPal, Venmo, ZipPay, Square, Dwolla, and others, which should be interesting. So many of today’s apps have started by addressing the technological hurdle of moving money digitally using your smartphone, but not the psychological hurdle that come from having to talk to friends about the money they owe you. The core focus of the app, with its simple setup, email and push notifications, is to let the app do the dirty work of reminding friends about money they owe. Meanwhile, you can pretend that the money was the furthest thing from your mind. “Oh? You got an email about the dinner we split last week? I totally forgot!” (Sure you did). We definitely needed an app for that. You can check out the newest version of SpotMe here on iTunes . (Sorry Android users. For now, the web app will have to do).

Five European Startups ...

Editor’s note : Guest contributor Amit Shafrir is president of Badoo , a social network for meeting new people based in London with 130 million users . Silicon Valley is famously, and rightly, proud of its place as the spiritual home for startups. And it has an inspiring and awesome track record that’s tough to beat. However, as the recent Le Web conference proved, European tech hubs like London, Berlin and more recently Paris, can now also lay claim to breeding world-class entrepreneurs. There’s a sense that Europe is finally getting its groove on when it comes to startup innovation, and that’s exciting to watch and be a part of. (When even Chanel designer  Karl Lagerfeld  is getting in on the action, you know that Digital/Tech is having a moment…) Loic Le Meur’s mission for Le Web—to bring the best of Silicon Valley to Europe—is a laudable one. As Loic says in this TCTV interview , European entrepreneurs are eager to learn from the best and the brightest in the US. And if you look at the headlines from this year’s Le Web, you’ll see the usual bold-faced American names, such as Google, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter, Flipboard, and Instagram. But hang on a second. Shouldn’t it work the other way around too? Shouldn’t we in the States also look to the European startup renaissance for ideas and inspiration? After all, some of the most successful start-ups on stage at Le Web weren’t just the Valley wunderkinds, flown over to show the Euros how it’s done. They were the European companies that are innovating in the fields of commerce, lifestyle, and social networking. Not content with just providing local versions of Facebook or LinkedIn, they are creating new businesses for a sophisticated consumer audience. And proving they can be profitable. With Spotify as a notable exception, there wasn’t a ton of excitement or buzz about those European startups over here. And I have to question why that is. I welcome your thoughts in the comments. In the meantime, here is my own attempt to try and help redress that balance. Below is my own take on five of the European startups we should be paying closer attention to in 2012: Social gaming: Wooga : One of the hottest companies to emerge from the Berlin tech hub, Wooga is Europe’s largest social games developer and the third largest in the world. Wooga recently launched the mobile version of its game Diamond Dash, one of the top 10 social games on Facebook, and hopes to reinvent mobile game app distribution through smarter use of Facebook’s app notifications. Online Music: Deezer : Spotify might be making all the headlines over here, and they certainly had a good showing at Le Web this year. But French mobile music-on-demand site Deezer seems intent on giving them a run for their money, announcing their expansion to 130 more countries at Le Web , taking the total to 200 around the world. Interestingly, this doesn’t include plans for the US. Deezer’s CEO, Axel Dauchez, is focused on smartphone users and doesn’t see enough growth happening in the States compared to other countries and territories. However, this decision might be better explained by its competitors’ well-documented struggles with US music labels. Soundcloud : Headquartered in Berlin, fast becoming a hub for the online music industry and with two Swedish founders, Soundcloud is one of the German capital’s most prominent start-ups. The company is growing at a rapid pace, with over 8 million people creating and sharing sounds across its platform. With its focus on the mobile platform and apps, Soundcloud looks set for an even bigger 2012. Personal Finance: Wonga :  UK-based short-term online loans company Wonga (the name is a British slang term for cash) is on a tear and looks set to keep growing as the UK economy continues to falter and the need for such a service increases. Wonga closed a  massive $117 million round  back in February, for further expansion in the UK. Photo-Sharing: Eye-Em : Unlike the much-hyped Color , Berlin-based Eye-Em has seemingly found a way to make photo-sharing on your smartphone, well, a smart idea. It’s still early days, but the company is growing fast, and is another one to watch. This list doesn’t even scratch the surface. I could add other more established names, like Rovio , creator of the hugely successful Angry Birds gaming franchise, or private luxury deals site, Vente Privee . In short, Europe is no longer just imitating the Valley; it’s creating its own narrative for success. And as innovators and business creators in a global economy, the US entrepreneurial community should be sitting up and taking notice. Map image by blogdroed .