Networks In Motion To Launch First GPS App For BlackBerry App World
Mar 31, 2009 General
In news that seems to indicate that Blackberry’s App World is indeed launching tomorrow, we’ve learned that Networks In Motion (NIM) will be releasing a GPS application for the BlackBerry on Wednesday, which would make it the first (or at least, tied for first) GPS app available on the new storefront.
NIM has built a number of applications and services for its partners, including Verizon Navigator, but this is the first time it has sold an application carrying its label to end-users. The new GPS application takes advantage of technology built by TrafficGuage, which NIM acquired earlier this month. TrafficGuage’s technology will be used to offer users real-time traffic updates on the application. Other features in the app include the ability to locate nearby points of interest (like gas stations) and multiple viewing angles. NIM has not yet released exact pricing, but the application will be available on a subscription basis.
Depending on the application’s pricing and how well it works, NIM’s app could do very well on the BlackBerry application storefront. And while BlackBerry will have GPS at launch, it’s worth noting that Apple’s App Store appears to have actually banned turn-by-turn GPS applications (even if developers can get them working) until the iPhone’s 3.0 software is released this summer.
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Confirmed: Facebook Loses CFO Gideon Yu
Mar 31, 2009 General
Facebook is losing its CFO Gideon Yu. The Wall Street Journal broke the news earlier today, and speculated that the reason could be that Facebook might want to make an early bid for an IPO and wants a CFO with public company experience (which is complete nonsense). Yu was previously the CFO of YouTube. At Facebook, he was key to raising money from Microsoft at the famous $15 billion valuation, but as the economy soured he was not able to find as many takers at that same price, despite Facebook’s voracious need for capital to keep up with its growth.
A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed Yu’s departure to us, providing the following statement.
Facebook confirms that CFO Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and we are well positioned for the next stage of our growth. We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience.
High-level departures are becoming more common at Facebook as it strives to match its managerial talent to its ever-changing needs. Part of Yu’s job was to find capital to keep Facebook’s server farms growing. He was certainly in constant discussions with various investors, even going to Dubai last year looking for deep wallets. But he came home empty-handed.
An early IPO may not necessarily be the best thing for Facebook right now. Its revenues are rumored to be growing faster than many people think, driven by a huge inventory of advertising spots. Even if those ads are sold for pennies apiece, those pennies add up. One insider claims that revenues are on track to exceed $400 million this year. But Facebook would do better to wait until it starts generating substantial profits before testing the IPO waters. Going out too soon may just be a sign that it can’t find funding in the private markets.
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Mozilla Weave Now Lets You Sync Your Mobile Browser Too
Mar 31, 2009 General
Today, Mozilla Labs released the 0.3 version of Weave, its project that syncs multiple browsers in the cloud. Weave lets users sync their bookmarks, tabs, passwords, and histories in the cloud across Firefox browsers on different computers. With today’s release, you can also sync with Fennec, Firefox’s mobile browser, which unfortunately right now only works on one kind of phone: a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. Yeah, I don’t have one of those either.
But the idea of syncing your browsers is a powerful one for anyone who uses more than one computing device on a regular basis. Originally launched in December, 2007, Weave is now faster and more reliable. In other words, now it actually works (or so I’m told).
The one thing Weave doesn’t sync is all of your add-ons. But that is planned for a future release.
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Jimmy Wales Deadpools Wikia Search
Mar 31, 2009 General
It is going to take more than just an open search platform to take on Google. Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced today that he is shutting down Wikia Search, the company’s experiment in creating better search results through crowdsourcing. Wikia Search attempted to port the Wikipedia model over to search by allowing anybody to modify results by including new links or moving natural results up the page. The initial launch last year was awful, but the experience improved over time. Still, it never really attracted anything more than a trickle of searchers. We are placing it in the deadpool.
Then Wikia Search got Googled when the search juggernaut launched its own Search Wiki feature, which lets you do pretty much the same thing on Google itself (move results up the page, block results, add comments—except it only affects your search results, not everyone’s). And so it goes. You cannot compete in search if your idea can be easily copied by Google.
But if Wikia Search had never existed, Google might never have felt pressure to add wiki features to its interface. In that regard, Wikia Search did have an impact beyond its own site.
Wales says that Wikia will focus its resources on its main Wikia service for building wikis, as well as Wikianswers, a Q&A service which launched earlier this year and also faces stiff competition, but not from Google.
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MySpace, Citysearch Partner To Create MySpace Local
Mar 31, 2009 General
MySpace and Citysearch are jointly announcing a new MySpace property this morning called MySpace Local. The site combines Citysearch business listings (including address, photos, menus, videos, maps and hours of location) from a thousand cities with the MySpace community. The site is launching into private beta this week, with a general U.S. launch next month.
The new site will eventually include listing information for all Citysearch businesses via small business listing pages. To start just restaurants, bars and “nightlife” listings are included. Users can rate and review businesses, which is shared via the MySpace activity feed.
Don’t just skip over that last sentence. This is good stuff – users will be able to see the restaurants, bars and other businesses that their friends are interested in, and how they rated those businesses. When you first visit MySpace Local, the first thing you see are reviews from friends.
Listings are grouped into city hubs for all major U.S. cities and include new local search functionality. And eventually, MySpace says, users will be able to make reservations and upload their own photos and videos. Features will also be built into MySpace mobile products.
A demo of the product is here.
It’s All About The Money
Don’t be fooled – the reason for all this local content is to create premium ad space. Businesses will be able to use MySpace’s self service MyAds product to promote these pages. And more importantly, they can place an ad when someone is looking at the competitors or other local businesses. Expect national brands to advertise as well – Coors and Outback Steakhouse are initial sponsors of the site.
Citysearch has already integrated Facebook Connect, allowing Facebook users to pull reviews and other information they leave at Citysearch into their Facebook news feed. MySpace is saying we can expect an implementation of MySpaceID, their version of Facebook Connect, in the near future. But MySpace Local goes a full step further, bringing all this listing data directly into MySpace itself, and creating literally tons of ad inventory for the sales team (and self service product) to sell into.
The terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, other than that this is a revenue sharing agreement.
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