Media

As marketers we are all now faced with keeping up with our consumers’ desires to be in the content consuming, creating and sharing business.

People share things online for the same reason they share them at a bar or in the carpool - because they want to talk about something that matters emotionally to them.

While the industry discusses multi-screen opportunities and best practices for developing and executing a seamless message across a spectrum of screens, Turner Entertainment and Zenith have been undergoing a long-term, collaborative study that looks to better understand viewer consumption habits within these environments.

While the United States Government paints Kim Dotcom as some kind of international super criminal, the Megaupload founder sees himself rather differently. Continually over the past year and half, and particularly since his January 2012 arrest in New Zealand, the German-born entrepreneur has described himself as an innovator, someone who creates rather than destroys as the U.S. would have people believe. Dotcom’s achievements are many and his cloud storage companies past and present have certainly generated hundreds of headlines. However, it seems that the New Zealand resident’s creative mind was already working overtime more than 15 years ago to come up with an idea that is now gaining serious traction online. Two-step authentication is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to online accounts. If a user logs into a service from an unusual device or location, the service sends a message containing a password to a trusted device such as a cellphone. This enables the service to authenticate the access and allow the log in. Just hours ago Twitter implemented the system but it’s already in use by companies such as Google and Facebook. In fact, according to Kim Dotcom there are more than a billion uses of the system every single week and he’s got good reason to be interested. The businessman says he invented it, and to back up his claim he’s just posted his patent to Twitter. The patent, US6078908 titled Method for authorizing in data transmission systems, was filed way back in April 1998 and published in June 2000 under Dotcom’s birth name of Kim Schmitz. There can be little doubt from the patent’s abstract that it does indeed describe a two-step verification system. “Google, Facebook, Twitter, Citibank, etc. offer Two-Step-Authentication,” writes Dotcom. “Massive IP infringement by U.S. companies. My innovation. My patent.” It’s fairly apparent that none of these corporations are paying Dotcom for the use of his invention but as usual he’s approaching the matter in his own style, with a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other. “I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now cause of what the U.S. did to me,” he declares. Of course, Dotcom has a problem. He’s up to his neck in legal action across several jurisdictions and has a legal bill set to top $50m. In realistic terms the last thing he needs is another legal front, however there might be other options for solving the problem, including partnership with those companies allegedly infringing his patent rights. “Google, Facebook, Twitter, I ask you for help. We are all in the same DMCA boat. Use my patent for free. But please help funding my defense,” said Dotcom this morning. It seems unlikely that any of the above companies would consider donating to Dotcom’s fighting fund in any direct manner. However, one or all of their hands might be forced by the Mega.co.nz chief’s latest announcement. “Want to buy the worldwide license to my two-factor-authentication patent? (13 countries incl. US & China) Email: twitter@kim.com,” he concludes. Asking price $50m? We’ll let the lawyers argue over that. Source: Kim Dotcom to Google, Twitter, Facebook: I Own Security Patent, Work With Me

It looks like Amazon Appstore has finally gone live, about a month after it announced plans to expand the store internationally, (Hat tip Anupam Saxena). Users can download the Amazon App Store app from Amazon Website. Amazon’s app store brings features like 1-click purchase, one free paid app/game everyday, among others. Users can also test apps on a simulated Android phone using a feature called Test Drive or buy apps from computer and send them to the connect phone or tablet. The Test Drive feature is not available for all mobile handsets but users can test it over PC. No Localized Pricing? However, what’s surprising is that even though the app store is now available in the country, it does not list paid apps in local currency. Remember that both Apple and Google already offer localized app pricing for developers and consumers in their respective app stores. While Amazon had started accepting apps/games by Indian developers in April 2013 we couldn’t find any local apps in the store. That said, it doesn’t look like Amazon has any plans to target local apps & games to users. Discovering local apps in the Amazon app store, despite the fact that it has relatively lesser number of apps listed, could be a major issue. Amazon App Store’s direct competitor Google Play Store provides localized top free, top paid, top grossing, and trending apps, which could help Indian developers reach out a larger Indian audience. So if you’re an Indian Android developer, where do you submit your apps for greater audience? Well the answer is submit everywhere. Payment: Currently users need to connect their Credit Card to purchase paid apps on the store, however, free apps can be downloaded without connecting Credit Card to their account. With its international expansion, Amazon App Store could possibly be the second largest Android app store in terms of reach. Amazon Appstore will compete with Google’s Play Store and third party app stores such as Getjar.com, Opera App Store, Mobango, Slide Me, among others. More the app stores means better visibility for developers as each app stores would have their own programs to promote apps. For developers: Last month when it announced that it will expand its app store, it also invited third party app developers in these regions to submit their apps for distribution through Amazon Appstore. It also provides In-App Purchasing (IAP) APIs, Amazon A/B Testing, and GameCircle, Amazon’s gaming experience for Kindle Fire. Just like Google Play store, Amazon will also take a 30% cut from developers on each paid app sale and each in-app transaction, as indicated by the company FAQs. Amazon had also recently launched a Mobile Ads API and its virtual currency called Amazon Coins, for U.S. customers, through which they could purchase apps, games, and in-app items on their Kindle Fire. The Android Appstore roll-out strengthens the fact that Amazon will be rolling out its Android tablets like Kindle Fire HD in India in the forthcoming future. Remember that Amazon has already tied up with the IT distributor Redington India last month to sell Kindle devices in the country.

With 47.61 lakh subscribers, Maharashtra has the largest Internet (=256 Kbps) subscriber base in India as of December 31, 2013 followed by Tamil Nadu with 28.59 lakh subscribers, according to the latest numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Some observations Except Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, all the top 10 states with highest Internet and broadband have higher number of broadband connections compared to Internet connections. Among the top 10 states, Maharashtra has the largest number of Internet and broadband base. Punjab has the lowest number of Internet connections while West Bengal has the lowest number of broadband connections. Data Source: TRAI Share data sources with us: contact brindaa@medianama.com Advertise: To advertise on Chart of the Day, contact sales@medianama.com. Daily and segment-wise options available.

Jaipur-based Intap Labs, which runs online language learning platform CultureAlley, has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from KAE Capital, the Mumbai-based early stage investor, reports Mint. The firm has picked up a minority stake in the company, said the report. Founded in 2012 by Nishant Patni and Pranshu Bhandari, CultureAlley uses live videos for one-on-one student-teacher interactions. Students can learn Punjabi, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin or French and currently offers free self-study modules to start off. Each live lesson costs a minimum of $15 or $20, depending on the package, and individual lessons last for 60 minutes. The platform enables students to connect with teachers in India and overseas and there is a money-back option if students are not satisfied with their lessons. KAE Capital, founded by former BlueRun Ventures India head Sasha Mirchandani, raised its debut fund with a $25 million corpus in March last year. The firm is backed by larger venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners and Omidyar Network, among other investors. It typically plays in the pre-Series A stage, with per deal ticket sizes pegged at between $200,000 and $500,000. Some of the investments it has made since raising the fund include storage software startup CloudByte, career assessment platform My Talent, and apps development platform ShepHertz. Image credit: CultureAlley Read the original post here.  (c) StartupCentral 2013.

Rammohan Sundaram’s piling on the deals, all right. His newly formed company has now agreed a deal to monetize the entire sales inventory of NLPCaptcha, which is claimed to be India’s largest Captcha advertising platform, albeit in a phased manner. NLPCaptcha monetizes captcha codes using advertising, replacing the usual blurry (or mathematical) codes that one has to enter while signing in or signing up for services. NLPCaptcha was launched in December 2011, and their publisher network includes premium websites across genres like News, Jobs, Entertainment, E-Commerce, Classifieds etc. It claims that its advertising lineup includes names like Google (surprisingly), Visa, Volkwagen, Toyota, Maruti, Axis Bank, ICICI, SOTC, Lufthansa, Blackberry, HUL, P&G etc. PlatformPlay has recently tied up with AOL to bring TechCrunch events to India; Sundaram had previously founded NetworkPlay (backed by Capital18, sold to Bertelsmann group’s media company Gruner + Jahr in March 2012), which had brought Ad:Tech to India. It has also struck a deal with Vuukle Inc, a comment management firm that monetizes through advertising, to set up its India business in a build operate and transfer model. Perhaps there are other deals in the pipeline, because that is PlatformPlay’s approach. The thing you hear about Sundaram most is that he can sell (is incorrigible), and has a large network in the Indian digital and marketing space. This allows a business like NLPCaptcha to outsource sales. As NLPCaptcha’s co-founder Amit Mittal said in the press release – “I think that our own sales team has done a fantastic job on the field but still we do realize that we are an ad-tech company and in order to achieve the exponential growth, we should focus on our core business and handover the monetization part in the hands of the right partner.” Not sure if this is a long terms solution, but PlatformPlay is taking a can-sell-will-sell approach; the representation business is one that Sundaram has tried before – NetworkPlay represented LinkedIn India in sales before it took over. I wonder if Komli Media, which represents Facebook for sales in India (among other agencies; it’s a relationship both Facebook and Komli shy away from explaining the details of), should watch its back. Download: Structuring Of Investments In eCommerce Businesses In India – A MediaNama and Arkay & Arkay

Media conglomerate Viacom18 has launched an IVR based voice chat called MTV Gupshup, a mobile content shop called Vh1 Hub and a game for teenage girls called Stardom Saga. Speaking to Medianama, Rajneel Kumar, Viacom18’s VP and Business Head, Digital Media said that these products have been launched to make their content available to consumers wherever they are, through multiple devices. Owing to the recent challenges in the traditional mobile VAS market in India due to change in guidelines, the company is launching new products to monetise this space better, adds Kumar. Vh1 Hub:  Vh1 Hub, Vh1′s mobile content shop powered by Techzone, offers its users with songs, ringtones, caller back tunes, videos and wall paper’s on their Vh1 Hub WAP, mobile site and their website. This service is available for Android, Blackberry and Symbian platforms. When we checked the website we noticed that though people can sample songs and buy them, there is no information at all on the price of each song, caller tune or ringtone. The website also has a super value section, however without mentioning the price of each song, users cannot really find what the value ad is in this section. Even on check out the website does not provide any information about the pricing of the song that you buy. The website mentions that users can SMS Hub to 56882 to set up songs as caller tunes. It is worth noting that Vh1 had also recently launched a Facebook music streaming app in partnership with Hungama. However, when asked about a streaming service for mobile, Kumar said that they are not currently considering a streaming service as part of their mobile content shop. MTV Gupshup: The company claims that MTV Gupshup, their IVR based voice powered by Altruist is available in 13 different languages with search filters for age, zone, circle and gender, friendship, flirting and serious relationship. When asked if they are intended to launch a dating service, Kumar said that they see conversations between people happening on the Facebook page and intend to take these conversation forward through their voice chat service. He also added that anonymous option will be available to ensure privacy since call chats can’t be moderated. Stardom Saga: Stardom saga is a mobile game targeting 13+ teenage girls with smart phones and viewers of their channel, Teen Nick. Available on iPhones, iPads and Android phones, the object of the game is to become a celebrity star. Kumar said that the app targets teenage girls who like to follow the lives of Bollywood and Hollywood stars and also intends to provide an option for advertisers to reach this market out traditional media. Celebrity life based games are among the most common themes of several girl games on the web and mobile. Monetization: Viacom18 has partnered with all mobile operators through its partners – Altruist and Techzone for both its VAS offerings and will bill customers through the operators. The game is being offered as a freemium app with in-app purchase option. Other players: Although Viacom18 claims to have evolved new products for the Indian mobile VAS market, there have been other players that have launched mobile content stores. Nokia stores offers music for download through operator billing. Mobile operator, Aircel, had launched a new service called ‘Pocket Music International’ where it offers its subscribers full music track downloads for Rs.5/day. Saavn has recently partnered with Tata Docomo to launch music-oriented data plans to its 2G and 3G prepaid GSM subscribers. Hungama’s ArtistAloud.com has partnered with Vodafone, Uninor and MTS to allow them offer its service to their respective subscribers. Times Internet’s music streaming service, Gaana* had partneredwith Airtel to allow its users to set their Airtel Hello Tunes, its Caller Ringback Tones (CRBT) service. This partnership however is more of an advertising deal for Gaana. *Disclosure: Indiatimes, which owns Gaana.com, is also an advert

Online Indian Media business Rediff.com has reported its 19th straight quarter of losses, despite India Advertising revenues increasing 9% quarter on quarter to $2.33 million, a third consecutive quarter of increase. The increase was attributed largely to an increase in spends by clients in the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance industries (BFSI) segment – which is normal in Q4 because the insurance sector increases advertises to target Indian taxpayers who buy insurance to reduce tax at the end of the fiscal year; Telecom, Education, Tourism and Real Estate sectors apparently increased spends as well, but “The auto industry have not been visible at all in the last six months,” Ajit Balakrishnan, Chairman and CEO of Rediff told MediaNama. Rediff had 207 advertisers, he said, adding that advertising rates have been stable during the quarter. Advertising levels, though “are still lower than pre-recession days.” Ecommerce Rediff reported net ecommerce revenues (i.e. not value of goods sold) of $0.6 million for the quarter, up 19% quarter on quarter, and 105% year on year. The year on year growth in net revenues the previous quarter was 95%. Some back of the envelope calculations that we did: - Gross revenues should have been $5 million for Q4-FY13 (since gross margin = net revenue/gross revenue). - Net revenue for Q3-FY13 should have been $0.5 million. - Net revenue for Q4-FY12 should have been $0.29 million. - Net revenue for Q3-FY12 should have been $0.26 million. Other notes related to E-Commerce - Merchants: The total number of merchants in our online marketplace increased from 620 to 701 over the past two quarters - SKU range has increased from 172,000 to 184,000 to 213,000 over the same period which indicates a 24% increase in our vendor base and 13% growth in SKUs in the past six months. - “During 2011, there was irrational exhuberance in the Indian ecommerce market. People were selling consistently below cost, and giving away deliveries for free, apart from massive returns. I’ve hear return figures of 30-40%. It took a great amount of self discipline to make sure we didn’t enter into that game. We kept a positive margin, obviously clearly lost marketshare during that period, but our returns were in the 2-3% region right through this period. We have positive margins – 12 percent gross margins on a weighted average basis across all that we do. It took a great amount of courage not to lose out heads. It makes us look like a dull company. Many people told us – you guys were the pioneers of ecommerce in India, why are you not outspending the others. I think it’s important to maintain the discipline in business.” - “What everybody calls ecommerce, in my head it is not ecommerce. Most people view this as ecommerce. Ecommerce are the people who stock and sell. Some years ago, people asked Meg Whitman, when she was CEO of eBay, and Meg’s answer was we’re a media company, and everyone was astonished. Similarly, our ecommerce execution, people call it a marketplace. But if you’re a small merchant anywhere in India, we’re a platform where you can pay us money and sell your goods. We view this as part of the classifieds and advertising business.” Financials - Overall revenues (which include India Online and US Publishing) were $4.18 million for the quarter, down 10% from $4.64 million reported the corresponding quarter last fiscal year, ended March 31, 2012. - India Online revenues (including advertising) declined 5% to $3.54 million from $3.73 million in Q4 last year. For the full year FY13, Rediff reported India Online revenues of $12.53 million, down 22.45% from $16.22 million in FY12. - Diversification: Rediff says it is trying to diversify its revenue streams and lessen its dependence on advertising, which has led to an improvement in its India Online business. - Cost Control: Rediff has controlled costs, resulting i