The Pirate Bay Makes $4 Million a Year on Illegal P2P File-Sharing, Says Prosecutor
January 31, 2008
When it comes to peer-to-peer file-sharing, as soon as one site is shut down, another takes its place. The current darling of the P2P world is the Pirate Bay, a search engine for BitTorrent files across the Web. It doesn’t actually host any of the files, but that is not stopping Swedish prosecutors from dragging them into court on behalf of Warner Bros., Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI.
According to one of those prosecutors, the Pirate Bay makes $4 million a year from advertising on its site. That site is currently tracking one million BitTorrent files, has 2.5 million registered users, and has peaked at more than 10 million simultaneous users downloading files at one time. That comes to $1.60 per registered user per year in terms of what they are worth to advertisers. Not a very high rate.
But then, this is a volume business.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
RatingBurner Ranks Blogs According To RSS Numbers
January 31, 2008
Well, mainly. It also takes some other factors into consideration, like Google’s PageRank, and the presence of ads and sponsors (although I’m not sure what’s that got to do with anything), but the main criterion for ranking is the number of RSS subscribers (taken from FeedBurner) and recent changes in that number.
RatingBurner, a relatively unknown new site discovered by Louis Gray, currently has the problem (besides the awful design of the site) of being too selective: many big blogs with huge RSS numbers aren’t included. But, that’s why there’s an option to add a new blog feed, so whoever thinks he/she’s being neglected can add their blog, as long as they’re using FeedBurner to manage their feed.
The idea to rank sites according to FeedBurner is not, in fact, a new one; I once did it by hand which caused quite a positive feedback in the blogosphere. However, since then even I changed my mind about the usefulness of such ranking system, simply because RSS stats are quite volatile and not always a good indication of a website’s popularity. But, it’s a ranking system with positive sides and flaws like any other, and I guess it can’t hurt to have another one. If nothing else, RatingBurner is a good way to find some fresh feeds for your reader.
Widgetbox Secures $8M More in Series B Funding
January 31, 2008
Widgetbox, a platform for the creation and distribution of web widgets, has raised $8M in a Series B round of financing led by Northgate Capital and joined by Sequoia Capital and Hummer Winblad.
The company provides tools for both novice and advanced developers to create a variety of widgets, from simple embeddable RSS feed readers (called “blidgets”) to full social network applications for Facebook and Bebo. I first met the WidgetBox team at Bebo’s platform launch event, as it had helped create at least one of the applications that launched there. Out of the 956 applications now available on Bebo, 60% have been created using Widgetbox’s “app accelerator” tool. The company also claims that 15% of the applications on Facebook have been created using its tools.
Since the widget business seems to be a lot about the numbers, here are some more: Widgetbox hosts almost 34,000 widgets in its gallery (the largest gallery on the web according to them) and these spread across over 210,000 domains and created by over 20,000 developers. Every day their widgets are viewed about 23M times. About half of Widgetbox’s advanced developers use Flash, whereas the other half use server-side languages like PHP or JSP. Widget usage on places like Blogger and MySpace is still very strong and growing. Expect to see even greater distribution when OpenSocial finally comes of age.
Widgetbox says that it will use its new funds to scale operations, promote further distribution of its widgets, and develop its monetization strategy and revenue share program. Currently, revenue is only being generated from Facebook applications that have opted in to putting ads on their canvas pages. Widgetbox will be working to create other opportunities for generating and sharing revenue with its developers, some of which will involve advertising and some which may not.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Widgetbox Secures $8M More in Series B Funding
January 31, 2008
Widgetbox, a platform for the creation and distribution of web widgets, has raised $8M in a Series B round of financing led by Northgate Capital and joined by Sequoia Capital and Hummer Winblad.
The company provides tools for both novice and advanced developers to create a variety of widgets, from simple embeddable RSS feed readers (called “blidgets”) to full social network applications for Facebook and Bebo. I first met the WidgetBox team at Bebo’s platform launch event, as it had helped create at least one of the applications that launched there. Out of the 956 applications now available on Bebo, 60% have been created using Widgetbox’s “app accelerator” tool. The company also claims that 15% of the applications on Facebook have been created using its tools.
Since the widget business seems to be a lot about the numbers, here are some more: Widgetbox hosts almost 34,000 widgets in its gallery (the largest gallery on the web according to them) and these spread across over 210,000 domains and created by over 20,000 developers. Every day their widgets are viewed about 23M times. About half of Widgetbox’s advanced developers use Flash, whereas the other half use server-side languages like PHP or JSP. Widget usage on places like Blogger and MySpace is still very strong and growing. Expect to see even greater distribution when OpenSocial finally comes of age.
Widgetbox says that it will use its new funds to scale operations, promote further distribution of its widgets, and develop its monetization strategy and revenue share program. Currently, revenue is only being generated from Facebook applications that have opted in to putting ads on their canvas pages. Widgetbox will be working to create other opportunities for generating and sharing revenue with its developers, some of which will involve advertising and some which may not.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Web 2.0 Invites for January 31st, 2008
January 31, 2008
New Web 2.0 services await; all you need to do is grab your free invites over at Mashable Invites!
Amazon Strengthens Its Digital Hand With $300 Million Purchase of Audible
January 31, 2008
Amazon is betting big on digital media. This morning it announced the $300 million acquisition of Audible (a 7 percent premium to Audible’s $280 million market cap at the time of this writing). Audible is the leading provider of audio books in digital form, with a library of 80,000 titles. As Amazon begins to generate a greater share of its revenues from digital media, owning a digital publisher will help its margins. It should be able to offer audiobooks at a lower cost, which in turn will help grow that segment of its sales.
There is no doubt that as media becomes more digital, Amazon sees it as critical for its future. Media accounts for 59 percent of Amazon’s sales, most of that still being physical books , CDs, and DVDs. But towards the end of yesterday’s earnings call, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hinted at the growing importance of digital media for Amazon:
When media was largely physical, it made sense to buy it in the physical world. But as media becomes digital it does not make so much sense to buy them in the physical world. The bulk of the sales now are in the physical world. So our relative advantage over time should improve.
Amazon will be able to sells Audible’s audio books through its MP3 download store, in its regular book section, or directly to its Kindle electronic book reader, which has a headphone jack and can play MP3s. It is not clear how the deal will effect Audible’s relationship with Apple, though, since Audible’s books are sold through the iTunes Store as well. But Amazon just added about $90 million in annual sales to its revenues with this acquisition, and a leadership position in spoken-word digital content.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Amazon Strengthens Its Digital Hand With $300 Million Purchase of Audible
January 31, 2008
Amazon is betting big on digital media. This morning it announced the $300 million acquisition of Audible (a 7 percent premium to Audible’s $280 million market cap at the time of this writing). Audible is the leading provider of audio books in digital form, with a library of 80,000 titles. As Amazon begins to generate a greater share of its revenues from digital media, owning a digital publisher will help its margins. It should be able to offer audiobooks at a lower cost, which in turn will help grow that segment of its sales.
There is no doubt that as media becomes more digital, Amazon sees it as critical for its future. Media accounts for 59 percent of Amazon’s sales, most of that still being physical books , CDs, and DVDs. But towards the end of yesterday’s earnings call, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hinted at the growing importance of digital media for Amazon:
When media was largely physical, it made sense to buy it in the physical world. But as media becomes digital it does not make so much sense to buy them in the physical world. The bulk of the sales now are in the physical world. So our relative advantage over time should improve.
Amazon will be able to sells Audible’s audio books through its MP3 download store, in its regular book section, or directly to its Kindle electronic book reader, which has a headphone jack and can play MP3s. It is not clear how the deal will effect Audible’s relationship with Apple, though, since Audible’s books are sold through the iTunes Store as well. But Amazon just added about $90 million in annual sales to its revenues with this acquisition, and a leadership position in spoken-word digital content.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Web 2.0 Marketplace Listings for January 31st, 2008
January 31, 2008
The Web 2.0 Marketplace is a place to list Web 2.0 and “New Media” websites for sale, job offers, consulting services, Facebook development services and more.
Jangl Powering Anonymous Phone Sex On PlentyOfFish
January 31, 2008
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget.
In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites (Match.com, Tagged, AdultFriendFinder, and Fubar) and a Facebook/Bebo application (potentially on 80 million profiles). Jaxtr, on the other hand, has been spreading mainly through email links and personal websites (5 million users in under 5 months).
Now they’ve forged a deal to be featured on the maverick of dating sites, PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is like every other dating site you’ve heard of, but free. Free has actually paid off pretty well for founder Markus Frind, who runs the site from his Vancouver apartment and takes in over $10 million a year in advertising.
Comscore ranked the site the number one dating site in December 2007, with an average of 1.3 billion page views a month (70,000 sessions and 3 million page views an hour).
Jangl’s widget will let daters call each other, send SMSs, and leave voice mails all without sharing a real number. The functionality makes it easy to take the next step in a relationship without sacrificing privacy, or just discrete phone sex. Calls will be terminated on Jajah’s servers as part of their existing relationship. Like PlentyOfFish itself, Jangl will be monetizing the service through text advertising; a first for the company. On other sites, the service is either ad-free or paid for as part of membership (match.com).
I’ve found social calling widgets (particularly Jaxtr and Jangl) to be the most attractive part of the VOIP market because they’re not competing in a race to the lowest calling rates, but adding real utility to our existing phone lines. Other voice widgets include Ccube, Tringme, and Snapvine. While monetization is still somewhat up in the air, both companies are testing out business models (paid Jaxtr minutes, or Jangl’s revenue sharing). Going forward we’ll see which models do and don’t work. I also expect both companies to continue adopting more advanced features similar to Google’s GrandCentral.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Jangl Powering Anonymous Phone Sex On PlentyOfFish
January 31, 2008
When it comes to connecting with new friends safely and privately, Jangl fits the bill. The “Social Communications Widget” lets you make calls, send SMSs, and leave voice mails without exposing anyone’s phone number through a simple widget.
In contrast to their competitor, Jaxtr, they’ve been mainly spreading through a series of direct deals with social networking sites (Match.com, Tagged, AdultFriendFinder, and Fubar) and a Facebook/Bebo application (potentially on 80 million profiles). Jaxtr, on the other hand, has been spreading mainly through email links and personal websites (5 million users in under 5 months).
Now they’ve forged a deal to be featured on the maverick of dating sites, PlentyOfFish. PlentyOfFish is like every other dating site you’ve heard of, but free. Free has actually paid off pretty well for founder Markus Frind, who runs the site from his Vancouver apartment and takes in over $10 million a year in advertising.
Comscore ranked the site the number one dating site in December 2007, with an average of 1.3 billion page views a month (70,000 sessions and 3 million page views an hour).
Jangl’s widget will let daters call each other, send SMSs, and leave voice mails all without sharing a real number. The functionality makes it easy to take the next step in a relationship without sacrificing privacy, or just discreet phone sex. Calls will be terminated on Jajah’s servers as part of their existing relationship. Like PlentyOfFish itself, Jangl will be monetizing the service through text advertising; a first for the company. On other sites, the service is either ad-free or paid for as part of membership (match.com).
I’ve found social calling widgets (particularly Jaxtr and Jangl) to be the most attractive part of the VOIP market because they’re not competing in a race to the lowest calling rates, but adding real utility to our existing phone lines. Other voice widgets include Ccube, Tringme, and Snapvine. While monetization is still somewhat up in the air, both companies are testing out business models (paid Jaxtr minutes, or Jangl’s revenue sharing). Going forward we’ll see which models do and don’t work. I also expect both companies to continue adopting more advanced features similar to Google’s GrandCentral.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
