Sh#t VCs Say: “Have You...

Following in the tradition of “ Shit Silicon Valley Says ” and other Shit ______ Says memes, August Capital’s David Hornick has made “ Shit VCs Say. ” There are some gems in here, including: “Is an 11 good on Klout?” “What if we put that in the cloud?” “Have you ever tried Kiteboarding?” “That is literally the worst Four Seasons in the world.” Add your own below, maybe we can get David to make another video.

Sunday Is The Best Day ...

According to new research from mobile analytics service Mobilewalla , Sunday is the best day to release a mobile app, but Wednesday is the most popular day among developers. The company studied the apps released in the iTunes App Store and Android Market over a 17-week period between May 16th and September 8th, 2011, to determine its findings. During this time, there were 91,754 iOS apps released into the iTunes App Store and 122,220 apps released into the Android Market. Yes, that’s a lot of apps! The company reported earlier in December that the app count rose to 987,863 across all four platforms (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone) and is now growing at an average of 2,000 apps per day. In the last 12 months, iOS apps grew from 338,000 to 589,148. Android apps grew from 115,000 to 319,774. During the 119 days of the study, Mobilewalla sorted apps by the day of the week they were released. However, it should be noted that on Android, developers control the release date, while iOS apps’ release dates are affected by the iTunes review cycle. So it may not be fair to proclaim Wednesday as developer’s “favorite” day universally, given that they’re not always in control of the release timeframe. Even if Sunday was not always the developers’ chosen launch day, Mobilewalla found that apps released then statistically performed the best. That is, they made it into the list of the top 240 mobile applications. In this case, Mobilewalls is defining the “top 240″ apps as those that achieve the highest ranking in their respective stores. 42% of the iOS apps released on a Sunday made it into the top 240, while 11% of Android apps did the same. Meanwhile, Thursdays were the worst day to release apps on Android, as only 7% of apps reached the top 240 then. On iOS, Fridays were the worst, as only 10% of apps reached the top 240. Although unrelated to trends regarding the best and worst days of the week to launch, the company stumbled upon a relatively sad finding during its research: an app on Apple’s platform is four times more likely to be discovered than an app on the Android Market. That speaks to the challenges Google still has to overcome in terms of its ability to better showcase the best new apps within its app store, perhaps. Explains Anindya  Datta,  Ph.D., founder  and  chairman  of  Mobilewalla, “Apple users discover apps more conveniently than Android users. And while it is impossible to identify exact causes for this pattern, users may find it easier to browse items in the relatively low number of apps launched over the weekend.”

AT&T Takes Two Ste...

Well, this isn’t the strategy I was expecting, but it seems the FCC’s request to investigate the AT&T/T-Mobile deal under the lens of an administrative law judge last week just doesnt sit well with AT&T. Rather than be scrutinized, the company has instead withdrawn its application for the merger. But don’t let that confuse you. Buying Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile is still big blue’s end goal — the FCC just happens to be blocking the road at the moment. What may be more interesting is that AT&T’s confidence seems to be dwindling. According to an official release , the company agreed to pay a $4 billion pre-tax charge on its fourth quarter accountancy sheet, which is the exact amount it would owe to affected parties should the deal fall through. $3 billion in cash would go to Deutsche Telekom as a default payment, while another $1 billion would go to the book value of spectrum that big blue would be forced to relinquish. In other words, AT&T is preparing for the worst in a very real way. Well, the worst for them, not necessarily the worst case scenario for everyone . What I find most interesting is that AT&T decided to release this information on Thanksgiving. Maybe they assumed we media types would be stuffing our faces with stuffing (ha!). Either way, AT&T is still putting on a brave face, officially stating the following: AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T and are taking this step to facilitate the consideration of all options at the FCC and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice either through the litigation pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:11-cv-01560 (ESH) or alternate means. As soon as practical, AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG intend to seek the necessary FCC approval. The question now is, will a deal between AT&T and T-Mobile ever really be “practical”?

No Love for Luvs: The W...

The people have spoken and Consumerist has tallied the votes. The Worst Ad in America 2011 is Luv’s Diapers “Poop, There it is.” And they couldn’t have made a better choice. It can be hard to advertise diapers without going into the realm of bodily functions, but this nasty commercial takes the. . . dare I say. . . cake? It’s even worse than last year’s offensive ad by Huggies where they implied that babies were sexy when they wore their new line of jeans diapers. Yikes. Other best of the worst ads includes the new AT&T commercial where the wife (whom I thought was the man’s mother) goes off on her geeky husband when he tells her he signed up for a new texting plan and the AT&T spider spot. Yuck. “Most Grating Performance By a Human” went to the lone flashmob guy who is a victim of a late text message. “Worst Abuse Of An Existing Song” goes to Swiffer’s “What About Love” ad which should also win the “awkward” award. Every time I see these pieces of dirt complaining about their lack of love, I feel an ache for the actors who were forced to say these ridiculous lines. Before you plan your next campaign, here are the winners (losers?) for “Trend That Needs To Stop Being A Trend.” With 29.4%, the top “make it stop” trend is men who can’t stand their woman like in the Klondike Bar commercial where men are rewarded for listening to their wives talk for a few seconds. A close second is the “candid camera” style commercial with 28.91% of the vote. The Ford press conference ads are particularly grating and not long ago, another company got in big trouble with mommy bloggers when they tried to pull one off. Want to find out what else missed the mark? Get the full poll results at The Consumerist and then think long and hard about what you read before you release you green-light your next advertising campaign.

When Will Microsoft’s I...

“Online Services Division revenue grew 14% year-over-year primarily driven by increases in search revenue.” That was Microsoft’s statement about the Online Services Division in their earnings release yesterday. Growth! Yippee! The strategy is working! Right? Wrong. What they don’t bother to mention in the release, but they can’t hide in the actual numbers, is just how bad the quarter actually was for the division. While revenue may have grown a bit year over year, income — as in the money you actually get to keep — was an entirely different story. It was a bloodbath, really. Yes, again. Microsoft lost $726 million in the Online Services Division for the quarter. It was actually their worst quarter in two years in that regard. And it was their second worst ever, as Business Insider points out in their nifty chart perfect for showing such bloodbaths. And despite the year over year revenue growth, the income was actually down year over year. As in, they managed to lose more money despite bringing in more. As in, the statement up top is total misdirection bullshit. And how’s this for a kick in the pants: if Microsoft had just scrapped their Online Services Division for the quarter, they likely would have beaten Apple in terms of profits once again. Instead, they’re over $700 million behind — behind, mind you, for the first time in a couple decades. Of course, Microsoft can’t afford to scrap the Online Services Division (well, figuratively afford it, at least). Like every technology company, they know this is the key to the future. And that’s precisely why they’re dumping so much money into it. But it that strategy actually working? Revenue is growing, but losses are mounting. Microsoft is having to spend $2 to make $1 — actually a bit worse than that ratio! Last October, I wrote that Microsoft was running basically the worst Internet startup ever . This pissed a lot of people off, who thought the comparison was unfair. After all, Microsoft can afford to burn the money. That’s true, the quarter overall was fairly good for them (though the stock took a nosedive today because it wasn’t good enough). But if the two pillars of their business, Windows and Office, start to slip (as just about everyone believes they will sooner or later as we move into an increasingly mobile world of computing), these Online Services losses are going to become a big, big problem. Fast. Maybe Microsoft can figure it out before that happens. But there’s just absolutely no data pointing in that direction right now. And there hasn’t been in the past six years . In fact, the numbers are actually getting worse! After a nightmare Q3 and Q4 in 2010 (fiscal, not the actual calendar quarters) with Online Services loses right around $700 million, it looked like Microsoft may be turning things around with loses of “only” around $550 million in Q1 and Q2 of 2011. But if you look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that those Q1 and Q2 loses were actually worse year over year. If you simply extrapolated that out, you should have been able to predict this quarter’s bloodbath as well. In the past year, Microsoft has now lost a staggering $2.5 billion in the Online Services Division. Think about that for a second. When I wrote the October post, the loss runrate was “only” $2 billion. The situation is getting worse. And so I ask, how long can this bloodbath last? When will it end? Or maybe more to the point: will it end? All the data we have right now points to a pretty definitive “no”. [image: New Lines Cinemas] CrunchBase Information Microsoft Information provided by CrunchBase