BoomTown » smartphone

Google Search Stories–Including Batman!–Or Are They Anti-Bing Commercials in Disguise?

Kara Swisher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:41:49 +0000

It’s well known that Google doesn’t do much in the way of marketing around its search service.

While you will catch advertising for the Chrome browser or for Android smartphones on the Web, given Google’s huge 70 percent market share in search, it hardly needs to attract users.

So, then, what is one to make of a series of new videos, which look suspiciously like commercials, that Google (GOOG) launched late last week on its blog and posted on a new channel on YouTube?

Called “Search Stories,” there are a half-dozen of the short videos, some more adorkable than others, which star the main search box.

One thing they have in common is that they have the look and feel of a marketing campaign, with the tag line “Search on.”

They also stress a variety of Google products, such as mapping, video, price comparisons, email and more.

One imagines what pre-Batman Bruce Wayne would look for, complete with ominous music, including search terms such as “coping with loss,” “flexible kevlar” and “gotham city crime statistics.”

Another video, called “Newbie,” has a grandmother searching on “keeping in touch with grandkids” and–in a clever dig at the MySpace and Facebook social networking services–“what is myfacebook,” which gets corrected by Google to “what is facebook.”

Could it be that the $100 million marketing push Microsoft (MSFT) launched for its Bing search service, which seems to be slowly gaining share, is starting to get on the nerves of those Spocks in Silicon Valley?

Not that Google would admit this, instead simply saying it was feeling all warm and fuzzy and so decided to make some kids-let’s-put-on-a-show videos.

Wrote Robert Wong of Google Creative Lab in a blog post, in part:

Because while we’re proud of the innovations we’re making in search, we’re proudest of the things people use search to accomplish. In other words, the best search results don’t show up on a webpage–they show up in somebody’s life.

So in that spirit, we made a bunch of videos. There’s one about grandma dipping her toe into technology. One about friends taking a Kerouac inspired road trip. And yes, there’s even one about Bruce Wayne.

Judge for yourself–here they all are:

Parisian Love

Mad to Live

Batman

Newbie

Potholes

High School

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Flying the Digitally Friendly Skies: Gogo, Google and the Facebook PR Guy in 17D

Kara Swisher — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:11:20 +0000

So, BoomTown–who cannot be unplugged from the matrix for very long without breaking into a cold sweat–was pretty excited to have free Wi-Fi on my Virgin America flight to Washington, D.C., early this morning.

The service from Gogo Inflight Internet is free since earlier this week until Jan. 15, courtesy of Google (GOOG), on Virgin, as well as at 47 airports. It usually costs anywhere from $6 to $13.

Like the search giant, other Web companies–presumably wanting to goose usage and, more to the point, their brands–have also leaped in.

Delta has a promotion with eBay (EBAY) on several hundred planes for a week around Thanksgiving, and Yahoo (YHOO) is footing the bill for anyone using computers or smartphones in Times Square in New York for one year.

Pretty much what the government and big cable and wireless companies should be doing, but let’s not look a digital gift horse in the mouth.

So far on the flight, the Internet has been pretty solid, although video plays even slower than my Comcast (CMCSA) connection at home.

Also, electricity on the flight has been in and out; when it doesn’t work, it pretty much negates Internet use on a long flight.

But more interesting, as most who use the Web in the air seem to feel, is the ability to make a lot of online connections, including with people on the same plane.

While I was no fan of the goofy seat-to-seat connections offered on some airlines, I did get an email from a Facebook public relations guy sitting in the row behind me on the same flight asking if I wanted to meet the social networking site’s DC staff.

Without ever seeing him I now have a meeting on Monday with them, so–apparently–mission accomplished!

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Google Primer on AdMob Acquisition: We Can Believe We Ate the Whole Thing!

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:47:18 +0000

Google has a Web page up about today’s acquisition of AdMob for $750 million in stock, which includes the lovely image below of the differences between what the Silicon Valley companies do in the mobile advertising space.

Said Google (GOOG) on its site about the purchase:

“Mobile advertising is a rapidly growing and competitive space, and Google and AdMob are currently specializing in different areas. Though Google offers many forms of mobile advertising, its focus to date has been on mobile search ads, while AdMob’s focus has been mobile display ads and in-application ads.”

Translation: The Web search behemoth has been slower than molasses in the mobile and smart-phone ad space, sticking with boring blue text links of death, especially compared to the innovative and nimbler start-up, which is rocking the pretty ads.

So, we ate it.

Here’s the differences (click on the image to make it larger), according to Google:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Google Acquires AdMob for $750 Million in Stock (Plus the Press Release and Video With CEO)

Kara Swisher — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:33:49 +0000

Google has acquired AdMob for $750 million, a huge price for an innovative start-up that has pioneered online ads on mobile and now smart phones.

BoomTown visited AdMob last fall and posted about how it was likely to eventually be acquired by…Google (GOOG)!

(Google has provided a primer on the sale, which you can read about here.)

The move is a major one for Google, which has been pushing hard into the mobile advertising space as it seeks to grow its already considerable Web search business. AdMob is arguably the most innovative and fastest out of the gate in the nascent arena.

As I wrote previously about the company’s prospects:

While there are very few bright spots to look at in the start-up space in Silicon Valley these days, especially those relying on online advertising, the San Mateo, Calif.-based AdMob is at least slightly shiny.

The mobile advertising marketplace, backed by Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, just got a big slug of funding–almost $16 million–to keep pushing to get ads on mobile phones, which has gotten a huge boost from the popularity of the iPhone.

The massive data usage by users of the popular mobile device by Apple (AAPL) has clearly turbocharged AdMob’s prospects, which were already on the rise. Compared to a year ago, the company said, the number of ads it served more than tripled the number of ads served on a monthly basis to 4.5 billion.

Obviously, the better quality and more actionable nature of ads on improved screens is the reason for the shift, which should accelerate as more smartphones like Google’s G1 and the newest Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM) become more popular too.

Most importantly, even now, AdMob is cash flow-positive, which is not a bad thing to be in the current econalypse. It also has a cushion of cash–AdMob had previously garnered $15 million in funding from Sequoia and Accel.

It’s not all sunshine and daisies, of course, since the ad market in general is headed for a deep slump, and new markets are not going to grow as quickly, as marketers pull back from spending.

But, when the economy turns, the mobile advertising market is clearly going to be a fast-growing arena, with big players like Google, Yahoo (YHOO), Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) as AdMob competitors (or potential acquirers, especially Google).

With the money it just raised, AdMob said it would be getting ready for that race, and also use it to expand internationally.

Here’s a video interview with Omar Hamoui, founder and CEO of AdMob, on all this and more, as well as a tour of company’s offices:

[ See post to watch video ]

And, here’s the press release:

Google to Acquire AdMob

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AdMob, a mobile display ad technology provider, for $750 million in stock. This acquisition will enhance Google’s existing expertise and technology in mobile advertising, while also giving advertisers and publishers more choice in this growing new area.

“Mobile advertising has enormous potential as a marketing medium and while this industry is still in the early stages of development, AdMob has already made exceptional progress in a very short time,” said Susan Wojcicki, Vice President of Product Management at Google. “AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley startup–generating impressive year on year revenue growth–and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google.”

“I think people underestimate how important ads have been to funding the development of innovative content on the Internet. Our goal all along at AdMob has been to make it possible for developers and publishers to bring their products and ideas to mobile with the same business model,” said Omar Hamoui, Founder and CEO of AdMob. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made towards accomplishing this goal, and joining Google will only accelerate this process, ultimately leading to very real benefits for end users around the world. As publishers and developers generate more revenue from their mobile products, they will invest more, and their mobile offerings will become richer, more creative and more robust.”

The deal will help Google in its efforts to develop more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats. As this ecosystem continues to grow, the company expects these new marketing media to offer significant benefits:

Advertisers will be better able to engage mobile users with AdMob’s ad formats

Publishers and developers will be able to monetize their content more effectively, which has benefits for the wider mobile ecosystem

Users will see more relevant ads and ultimately get access to more ad-supported content and applications – improving their mobile experience

“Attracting the world’s top engineering talent and people with entrepreneurial vision to Google has always been crucial to our success. AdMob’s proven track record in innovating at speed will help maintain that culture–which is why we are so excited to be working with them,” added Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering at Google.

Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Fancy Charts of the Week: It Might Be Bingtastic, but Users Heart Google the Way Gum Loves a Sneaker!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:17:04 +0000

As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs, charts and stats done prettily about tech to send them to me pronto.

I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. Yes, even a closet pie-charter.

Last week, it was graphs comparing app stats for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the Google Android smartphone.

This week, I decided to mash up two different and interesting surveys, both from comScore (SCOR), about the search market.

When you do this, you find that while the new Bing search engine from Microsoft (MSFT) is showing some impressive growth–up a half-point in July from June to an 8.9 percent share, as you see below (click on images to make them larger)–the software giant still has a long way to go to get some true love from consumers.

That’s because, according to an earlier report, while some think Google (GOOG) is just a habit, it turns out to be an obsessive one.

As you can see from another bunch of recent comScore data in the table below–comparing search penetration, share of searches and searches per searcher in the U.S. in June–even combining Microsoft and Yahoo (YHOO) is unimpressive compared to Google.

The search share for Google is much higher and its users do double the searches, even though penetration levels are closer among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Plus, the Googley ways seem to prompt more loyalty, as the next table shows. In fact, even users of Microsoft and Yahoo sites conduct double their searches on Google.

And, while Microsoft search execs will tell you off the record that this kind of stickiness is hard to dislodge–sort of like gum on your sneaker–given Bing’s recent search gains, it’ll be interesting to see them try.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Microsoft's Vision of the Future–and the Inevitable Spoof

Kara Swisher — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:09:55 +0000

One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later.

Part of an “Envisioning” series, the “Productivity Future Vision” video below sketches out a world of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of innovative interacting.

The look is sleek and smooth–which is unusual for Microsoft (MSFT)–with a bit of “Harry Potter” whimsy, and all without falling into the trap of a lot of such imaginings and making the way we live someday seem like “The Jetsons.”

But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video from the software giant in a spoof that hit the target deftly.

Watch each and enjoy:

Fancy Graphs of the Week: iPhone Versus Android

Kara Swisher — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:13:10 +0000

As a new weekly feature, BoomTown is calling all those who make cool graphs about tech to send them to me pronto.

I am–truth be told–a secret stats fanatic. A bargraphaholic. Yes, even a closet pie-charter.

I also love pie (click on this very funny pie chart from GraphJam once to make it larger and on “next” to see other graphs in a slideshow.)

Thus, here are a few–click on the images to make them larger–comparing some stats about development for the iPhone from Apple (AAPL) and the Android from Google (GOOG).

They are from Flurry Analytics, a mobile analytics and monetization tools start-up in San Francisco, from a blog post titled “Smartphone Industry Pulse, July 2009.”

The first chart shows new project starts–apps in the pipeline from third-party developers–for the iPhone, and the second is for Android.

Both starts are up a lot, as you can see, although the iPhone wins in terms of sheer numbers. At this rate, said Flurry, “by the end of 2009, the App Store will easily surpass 100,000 apps.”

But, as you can see from this third graph below, Android’s growth rate for new project starts is accelerating, which is no surprise, since everyone did an iPhone app first (like All Things Digital, for example).

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:15:41 +0000

As President and CEO of Nokia, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo runs the world’s largest mobile phone maker (with roughly 36 percent share) and one of the few top tech companies in Europe.

It’s a hard-won and enviable position, but a tough one to maintain, especially in a souring economy. And that is even more of an issue for Nokia (NOK) now, with new rivals like Apple (AAPL) emerging in the sector the company has long dominated.

Both Apple and Research in Motion (RIMM) gained market share at the company’s expense in the first quarter, with innovative touchscreens and apps, features that Nokia has been late to the smartphone party with.

Kallasvuo talks about all this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

Here’s the video of the full D7 session:

[ See post to watch video ]

RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis: The Full D7 Session

Kara Swisher — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:30:42 +0000

We kick off the week of full posts of the onstage interviews at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO of Research in Motion (RIMM), which is best known as the maker of the BlackBerry.

Lazaridis has been key to developing the BlackBerry, which means he is directly responsible for the CrackBerry problem too. And it means he’s in the thick of the new handheld platform wars.

In this interview, Walt Mossberg talked to him about all that and the competitors, such as Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Palm (PALM), all of which are competing aggressively in the fast-growing and innovative smartphone space.

Here’s the D7 interview with Lazaridis:

[ See post to watch video ]

Why Robert Scoble Is Wronger About "2010 Web": A BoomTown Translation!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:37:14 +0000

Oh, Scooby-Don’t…

You could not be more wrong in your post last week–titled, “Why Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg are wrong about naming Web 3.0 ‘Web 3.0′”–about Walt and I being wrong about naming Web 3.0 “Web 3.0″ in an essay we posted at the start of our D: All Things Digital conference, which took place last week.

I know writing “Kara Swisher,” “Walt Mossberg” and “Wrong” is well-nigh irresistible, but your solution of calling the digital era we are in the “2010 Web” is equally confusing and incorrect.

So, since you know I love to do translations, let me try to take apart your entire piece paragraph by paragraph:

What Scooby-Don’t wrote: Can we just head this trend off at the pass? It seems that Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, at their “All Things D” conference announced the beginning of the Web 3.0 era.

That’s ridiculous.

And I’m not the only one to think so.

BoomTown response: Walt and I simply wrote an essay in which we said we thought mobile and smart phones were super important as the next platform and represented what we thought Web 3.0 innovations, such as social networking (which we also think is important, by the way) would pivot around.

We didn’t “announce” anything, although that does sound awfully grand.

But so what if we did, because it happens quite a lot?

Dan Gillmor, for goodness sake, declared it Web 3.0 in 2005. His take was different:

“The emerging web is one in which the machines talk as much to each other as humans talk to machines or other humans. As the net is the rough equivalent of a computer operating system, we’re learning how to program the web itself.”

And in 2007, Tim O’Reilly weighed in on it, responding to Web 3.0 theses by Jason Calacanis and Nova Spivack, and also noting Stowe Boyd’s thoughts on the subject.

You get my point, Bobby? Lots of folks have opinions about what is Web 3.0, much as they will when we start arguing over what Web 4.0 is.

At Web 5.0, of course, a self-aware Google (GOOG) will have begun its inevitable war with the human race, sending back a cyborg to terminate you before you wrote that post, thereby making this rebuttal moot.

But, I digress!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Short aside: It’s interesting that neither Kara nor Walt show up very often on friendfeed, which is the best example of the 2010 Web right now. Kara Swisher has made a total of five comments there. Walt is even worse, doesn’t bring any items in there, and only has six comments. How can you know what the 2010 Web is, if you don’t use it and don’t participate in it?

BoomTown response: The fact of the matter is that neither Walt nor I like to use FriendFeed as much as you do. I daresay that no one likes to use FriendFeed as much as you do.

Thus, hinging a larger point to this, just because we don’t play in a particular sandbox you like to play in, feels a little too much in the digital weeds to me.

Just because you have chosen to be the unofficial spokesmodel for the very laudable service–about which I have done a very lovely reported post on complete with video–I am not clear why you need to accuse Walt Mossberg and I of not being social because we don’t use it as much.

We both just happen to prefer Twitter and blogging as our social outlets.

I have done 3,255 updates on Twitter since I started last year, for example, which is certainly not as much as your 21,224. But–and I think we can all agree–as blabby as I am, I am simply not as blabby as you.

So, let’s try to make this as clear as possible.

We. Don’t. Use. FriendFeed. Regularly.

As I said, we use Twitter, we use Facebook, we use SMS, we use blogging and we use a whole lot more. In fact, between us, we try out pretty much everything.

While I appreciate that FriendFeed seems to be your home planet of the moment, it is not the only place to realize your term, 2010 Web, and it feels very Web 1.0 to say so.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: The Web does NOT have version numbers. Naming what was going on in the last eight years “Web 2.0″ did us all a large disservice (Tim O’Reilly did that, mostly to get people to see that there was something different about the Web that was being built in 2000-2003 than what had come before).

But by naming it a number, I believe it caused a lot of people and businesses to avoid what was going on and “poo poo” it as the rantings of the new MySpace generation (which was just getting hot back then).

BoomTown response: Let me see if I can get this straight. You can call it 2010 Web, but we cannot use version numbers, such as Web 3.0?

Hey, we’ll call it Britney Spears if we want!

Actually, I like naming the next era of the Web after the always volatile entertainer. She’s mobile, ever-changing, ubiquitous and always entertaining! Also, there are several eras of Britney: Sweet, Timberlake Lady, Federline Lady, Young Mom, Nuts, Nuttier, Nuttiest, Hospitalized, Medicated.

My main point remains: Who died and made you Boss of Pointless Internet Catchphrases?

Scooby-Don’t wrote: See, the Web changes EVERY DAY and a version number just doesn’t do it justice. Think about today, we saw Microsoft (MSFT) announce a major new update to its search engine, named “Bing,” that turns on next week and is already getting TONS of kudos. Seriously, in the rental car shuttle today a guy I met said the demo he saw at Kara and Walt’s conference was “awesome.”

Also today was Google’s Wave, which caught everyone by surprise and which sucked the oxygen out of Microsoft’s search announcements. Check out all the reports that I liked from around the world this morning.

BoomTown response: The Web changes EVERY DAY? You’re kidding! We had no idea! Thanks for that critical morsel of info!

Earth to Robert: Walt has spent a large part of his life writing about the panoply of new devices that have come out in an unceasing flow and I have written at least 10,000 news stories and two books about the Web since the early 1990s.

Pretty much all we write about is how the Web changes every day. Actually, every second.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: But, back to the theme of this post. There IS something going on here. I covered it a few weeks ago.

The things that are happening are NOT just Twitter and search. Here, let me recount again what is making up the 2010 Web:

1. Real Time. Google caught the Wave of that trend today BIG TIME.

2. Mobile. Google, again, caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.

3. Decentralized. Does Microsoft or Twitter demonstrate that trend? Not really well.

4. Pre-made blocks. I call this “copy-and-paste” programming. Google nailed it with its Web Elements (I’ll add a few of those next week).

5. Social. Oh, have you noticed how much more social the web is? The next two days I’m hanging out on an aircraft carrier with a few people who do social media for the Navy.

6. Smart. Wolfram Alpha opened a lot of people’s eyes to what is possible in new smart displays of information.

7. Hybrid infrastructure. At the Twitter Conference this week lots of people were talking about how they were using both traditional servers along with cloud-based approaches from Amazon (AMZN) and Rackspace (RAX) to store, study, and process the sizeable datasets that are coming through Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed.

BoomTown Response: We had folks on stage at our D7 conference discussing all this last week. In fact, we covered a whole lot more than that, which you can read about if you click on through.

While I think all yours are also interesting ideas, I am still not clear why you need to get your knickers in a knot, since we happened to think mobile platforms and smart phones are more important trends at this juncture.

Also, could please explain how Google “caught that wave big time Wednesday when it handed Android phones to everyone at its IO conference.” Google is innovative because they give free swag to folks?

We gave free swag to folks this week at D7, so I guess that makes Walt and I 2010-Web-worthy!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: So, why doesn’t a version number work for these changes? Because they don’t come at us all at once. A lot of these things have been cooking for years. The Internet makes iteration possible. Tomorrow will be better on the Internet than today. In the old world of software you’d have to wait for the compilers, then you’d need to distribute tons of CDs or disks. That no longer needs to be done.

The idea that we have a version for the Web is just plain ridiculous. It makes the innovations we’re implementing too easily dismissed. How many times have you heard that “Twitter is lame?” I lost count 897 days ago.

Now, is using a year number, like what I’m doing, better? Yes. It gets us out of the version lock. And it makes it clear to businesses that if you are still driving around a 1994 Web site that it’s starting to look as old and crusty as a 1994 car is about now. Executives understand this. It’s a rare executive who drives an old car around. Most like to have the latest expensive car to get to work in.

Same with the Web. Calling it the “2010 Web” puts an urgency into what’s happening. If your business isn’t considering the latest stuff it risks looking lame or, worse, leaving money on the table. Just like driving a 1994 car risks looking lame or, worse, breaking down a lot more often than a newer car.

BoomTown response: Actually, I would have to say that your year numbering system is deeply confusing and I am not sure we can treat Internet development like some auto or, even, say, fine wine.

Ah, that 1995 Web was saucy with a smooth Netscape IPO finish, while 2001 had a disappointing popped-bubble tone, due to the excessive tannins of Pets.com. Now, the 2009 is still very young, but it has a frothy Twittery taste, which goes surprisingly well with brie.

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Is the year metaphor perfect? No, I’m sure there are a few things wrong with it. For one, if you want to host a conference based on the “trend” you’ll have to change your conference name every year. That costs money, which is why conference companies like to have more stable trends that they can exploit for a few years, at least.

BoomTown response: D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, D6, D7. So far, changing the number has worked out well for us that we’re going to go for D8!

Scooby-Don’t wrote: Also, there are some clear “eras” in the Web, so I could see wanting to suggest that we’re in the third era of the Web, but I’ve been studying this for the past eight years and calling the second era “Web 2′ actually held us back because mainstream users didn’t think anything was happening in the past few years and Web 2.0 became a useless phrase anyway.

BoomTown response: You must know that mainstream users don’t pay one bit of attention to any and all of the dumb terms Silicon Valley comes up with.

And, with all the obviously massive change that has happened in the past few years in tech and the Internet (iPhone, Kindle, Facebook, Twitter to name a few), it seems odd to say that anything has been held back.

Frankly, it would be nice if tech innovation took a breather once in a while.

Scooby Don’t wrote: Anyway, can we use year numbers to describe the Web now? It’ll make it easier to evangelize the modern world to businesses. We’re entering the 2010 Web, that’s what I’m exploring. Calling the Web a version number is for people who don’t really understand, or participate in, what’s going on here. Kara and Walt, you gotta do better here.

BoomTown wrote: What’s in a name?

Well, it’s dang easy to attack, of course, instead of actually discussing the actual premise that we were outlining in our essay, titled “Welcome to Web 3.0.”

As we wrote:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

So, if you want to just focus on the name, then you gotta do better here.

Until then, you say 2010 Web, we say Web 3.0 and let’s call the whole thing off.

New Tellme Mobile Product to Try to Help Microsoft Fight the iPhone With Voice Power

Kara Swisher — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 04:01:20 +0000

Tellme, the voice services subsidiary of Microsoft, is announcing a “one-button” voice access for Windows-enabled mobile phones, as well as some new technologies to improve call automation for customer service centers.

Aiming at smartphone users who might prefer to use voice over the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s popular touch, tap and swoosh features, Microsoft (MSFT) is trying to differentiate its mobile offerings.

“Unlike other voice-based services, Tellme is the first to allow people to press one button, say what they want and get it, whether that is to send a text, make a call or search for information,” said the company in a press release, which noted the service would be available in the fall on WIndows mobile phones.

Here is a video of Tellme GM Mike McCue, showing off the new one-button service:

And, here are the full press releases:

MICROSOFT’S TELLME ANNOUNCES ‘ONE BUTTON’ VOICE ACCESS TO MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION

More than 75% of Smartphone Users Prefer Voice and Would Buy Phones With Tellme; Free to Carriers and Handset Manufacturers for Windows Mobile 6.5 Phones

APRIL 29, 2009–Mountain View, CA–Today Tellme®, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. and pioneer of voice services, announced the first mobile voice service to combine content and communications, simplifying how people interact with their phones every day. Unlike other voice-based services, Tellme is the first to allow people to press one button, say what they want and get it, whether that is to send a text, make a call or search for information. Tellme has designed a unique version of this experience specifically for Windows phones due out this fall.

The new service puts many of the most popular phone functions behind a single button. Windows phone users just press the side button of their phone to:

- Send a text by saying “text” to open a text box, then speak the text message and send to call anyone in their contact list

- Initiate a call simply by saying “call” and then the name of anyone in their contact list

- Search the Web with Microsoft Live Search by speaking your request, such as “weather in San Francisco, California”, “Pizza in Kansas City” or “mother’s day gift ideas”

“Because it’s so intuitive, we believe there is a real opportunity for voice to materialize as the leading user interface for the phone,” said Dariusz Paczuski, senior director of consumer services at Tellme. “By bringing voice access to calling, texting and searching together we reduce ‘menu surfing’ on phones and make the convenience of voice more tangible for everyday needs.”

In a head to head comparison, it’s clear why people prefer voice over touch. For example, it requires four touches and more than 20 keystrokes to find a business with the Apple iPhone, while it only takes one button push and one verbal command to find the same business with Tellme. Tellme’s research shows similar results for other tasks, such as making calls, sending text messages and searching for content like traffic, movies, news and sports.

“For example, Sprint has integrated our voice access to the Live Search application on Sprint Instinct phones and subscribers love it,” continued Paczuski. “In fact, we’ve seen impressive adoption of voice with 3 of every 4 search queries being initiated by voice.”

Finally, in a recent study conducted by Sanderson Studios, more than 70 percent of respondents said that voice is superior to keypad or touch-based methods to perform some of the most popular mobile tasks. This includes looking up a business listing or location (78 percent), sending a text message (72 percent), placing a call (79 percent), getting information such as movies, weather, traffic or sports (77 percent) and getting directions (81 percent).

For the past decade, Tellme has been pioneering voice services for businesses and consumers, answering billions of calls every year and helping millions of people get the information they need simply by speaking a request. Now the convenience of voice is coming to Windows phones, bringing people closer to the things they want by providing easier access to more of the phone’s functionality. With Tellme, people using the latest Windows phones will be able to simply say what they want, such as “call mom” or “text Jim” or “pizza,” and results display on the screen.

Tellme will be available for free on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones in the Fall 2009 when the phones hit store shelves. Initially available in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile store, Tellme will also make the service available for free to mobile operators and carriers to embed ‘on-device’ for a voice experience right out of the box.

MICROSOFT AND TELLME DELIVER BENEFITS OF VOICE IN THE CLOUD TO CONTACT CENTER CUSTOMER SERVICE

Speech Innovations Improve Call Automation, VoIP Infrastructure Shrinks Telecom Costs

APRIL 29, 2009–Mountain View, CA –Tellme®, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp., today announced three core speech and network innovations that advance its platform for cloud-based voice services. The new technologies significantly reduce costs for enterprise customer service while enabling a faster, smarter caller experience. These advancements include the roll-out of a VoIP carrier service that reduces customer transport costs, advanced speech services that improve automation of customer service calls, and a new ‘voice font’ technology that delivers a more natural text-to-speech experience.

The new speech services area a result of collaboration between Tellme and Microsoft’s Speech Components Group. These jointly designed technologies will be leveraged to advance natural user interfaces across Microsoft products to benefit billions of customers worldwide. Because Tellme operates as an on-demand service, the new capabilities are immediately available to enterprises across Tellme’s platform. In addition, Tellme is now using these technologies to power its mobile services, including the Windows Mobile 6.5 application announced today.

“Providing quality customer service is a top priority for E*TRADE. Tellme’s flexible platform has helped us unify our customer service experience across multiple channels and deliver improved performance year over year,” said Hartley Caldwell, Senior Vice President, Software Engineering at E*TRADE FINANCIAL Corporation.

“Our goal is to provide enterprises with technology that improves their customers’ experience but also affords them the ultimate financial flexibility when deploying voice services. From initial deployments we’re seeing impressive cost savings and results that we’re sure our customers will be excited about,” said Jamie Bertasi, senior director of Business Solutions at Tellme.

Saving Money on Operating Costs

Handling customer phone inquiries represents a multi-million dollar expense for many Fortune 1000 companies, with telecom being one of the largest technology costs. Now with carrier VoIP service, enterprises can extend their VoIP strategy to customer service calls and eliminate transfer fees, lowering the average per-minute cost 60% per call and reducing transfer fees by 100%.

Additionally, Tellme enterprise customers have another option to save significant money on telecom beyond the expensive maintenance of toll-free numbers: local number service. With the rising, widespread use of mobile phones, nation-wide caller plans lessen the need for consumers to use toll-free numbers. With the benefit of toll-free numbers diminishing, having an alternative local number can save costs without affecting the consumer experience. Now, Tellme’s VoIP service makes it possible for enterprises to use less expensive local numbers for their customer service.

Getting the Right Answer More Often, Increasing Automation

One of the biggest frustrations of speech services is that they don’t always understand the caller. Increasing the odds of getting it right makes the overall customer experience better, improving their confidence in using the system, and lowering the total cost per call to the enterprise.

Partnering with Microsoft’s speech team, Tellme provided tuning data from its billions and billions of calls and design expertise to develop new acoustic models, phonetic dictionaries and grammar products that increase the accuracy of every response. The teams built an “online adaptation” capability where the system can adapt to a caller’s acoustic patterns within the first three seconds of speaking. These new platform features make it possible to get the right answer to the caller more often.

Results in early deployments are impressive. With an average of $3 per customer service call handled by a live agent, a phone service handling 200,000 calls per day would save nearly $6 million per year for every 1% improvement in call automation. Trials of the new services with customer applications that handle millions of calls every week indicate an up to 2% increase in automated task completion, which translates to millions of dollars in savings every year.

Creating a Faster and More Natural Experience

Both the way customers request information and the way they hear the answer have been improved with two new technologies: expanded multi-slot recognition and a new ‘voice font’ called Zira.

Multi-slot technology makes it possible for callers to ask for information in a full sentence or phrase, such as “I wanna buy five thousand shares of Coca Cola” and the system listens for the relevant words, in this case “buy,” “five thousand shares” and “Coca-cola.” Then, if any information is missing or not understood the system can ask just for the specific word clarification without re-prompting for the entire answer, making the call faster and increasing the customer’s satisfaction.

In addition, Tellme, leveraging the Microsoft Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine, has developed a new custom TTS service with its ‘voice font’ called Zira. Zira has been created with a patented technique designed for consistency in voice quality and delivery that provides a more conversational experience. The Zira voice talent was coached by audio engineers to record popular phrases and words used in customer service requests. The Zira technology benchmarks close to actual human pronunciations–delivering the industry’s highest quality TTS service and reducing the expense of custom audio recordings for enterprise IVR.

And I Thought My Kid Was an iPhonatic–See This Video and Be Scared, Be Very Scared

Kara Swisher — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:13:06 +0000

Earlier this week, BoomTown chronicled my parenting conundrum concerning the fact that my almost-seven-year-old son hijacks my iPhone at every opportunity to play games and more.

Titled “My iKid iJacked My iPhone: A Geek Parenting Tragedy,” it describes the Apple (AAPL) smartphone’s strange hold over him:

“But now he wants to grab my iPhone from my holster all the time, having become entranced by apps–lots and lots and lots of apps–that now litter the digital pages of my Apple device.

DizzyBeeFree and Super Monkey Ball. Touch Hockey and Paper Football. Finger Sprint and MoodPhone. Bounce On and Crazy Penguin Catapult. Lie Detector and Crazy Snowboard. Tic Tac Toe and Hangman. And iChess, iCheckers, iBowl.

Of course, there are also the bubble poppers and light sabers and more cowbells.

And, good lord, how did a “Race to Witch Mountain” app get on there?”

It’s been freaking me out, frankly, until I saw this compelling video, sent to me by an Internet entrepreneur whom I know (and who shall remain nameless), about his even younger son’s iPhone obsession.

Or as this apps-crazy toddler puts it rather strongly: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiyiiiiiPhoooooooooone!

Here’s the do-NOT-miss video (and below it, for comparison, my little Apple acolyte):

[ See post to watch video ]

Is your kid an iPhonatic? Send me proof!

Kara Visits Demo09!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:00:53 +0000

There was no doubt, given the continuing economic collapse and all the joy that brings, that Demo09 was going to be a much tamped-down and sober affair this year.

But there are still a lot of interesting start-ups being featured in the main ballroom and demo “pit,” such as a cool “touch book” offering, a strange hooking-up-in-a-bar smartphone app and a plethora of ideas that obviously got their inspiration from the iPhone from Apple (AAPL).

As in: touch, swipe, interact! (Which is the official BoomTown motto, in point of fact.)

Demo Executive Producer Chris Shipley is still running the show. But VentureBeat founder and Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall will take over the longtime, semiannual conference–where several dozen start-ups strut their stuff in front of an industry crowd–in 2010.

Here is the video I did of the event, which was held in Palm Desert, Calif., and ends today. It includes serial entrepreneur Mitch Kapor, PR guy Brian Solis and All Things Digital Co-Executive Editor Walt Mossberg.

[ See post to watch video ]

Friending Without Benefits? But Facebook Keeps On Forging Into the Mobile Market!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:00:42 +0000

In an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about an alliance being discussed between Facebook and Nokia, came news about the pair working on a deal to deeply integrate the hot social network with the handsets of the world’s largest maker of mobile phones.

Although BoomTown has seen this movie before–a similar mobile deal with a Nokia (NOK) investment in Facebook was being bandied about a year ago–expect more noise than ever when it comes to social-networking sites and mobile devices in 2009.

As you can see from the chart below, Facebook ran past MySpace in the number of unique visitors via mobile phone in the early fall of 2008 and kept climbing.

Said the Journal article: “In December, Facebook had seven million U.S. mobile users, compared with MySpace’s 5.7 million, according to Nielsen Co.” (Full disclosure: MySpace is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which also owns Dow Jones, the owner of this site.)

And, indeed, to get this kind of traction, Facebook has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, so far mostly by building its popular Facebook application for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and iPhone from Apple (AAPL).

Facebook–the Journal piece said–has also been talking to Palm (PALM), which will launch its new Pre smartphone in the spring, and Motorola (MOT), about being integrated into their operating systems too.

The race to be present on mobile devices by everyone and their Internet mother has gotten all hopped up with the introduction of so many smartphones of late, since these devices make any Web app experience much better.

And consumer uptake of these kinds of phones, with big screens and multitouch capabilities, is widely expected to dramatically increase over the next five years,

But here is the dicey money–or nonmoney, actually–quote from the article:

“As with most of the cellphone-software industry, Facebook has yet to find a way to generate meaningful revenue from its mobile services, which include text-messaging features, a mobile Web site and downloadable software. But the number of users accessing its site from phones has grown.”

Oh dear–that roughly translates in Facebook-speak to friending without benefits, with costs rising without much (or any) revenue coming in, to speak of.

Of course, many would argue that both Facebook and MySpace, as well other big players, have to still play hard in the mobile market to gain users–given that consumers are on the move more than ever, digitally-speaking–even if it takes a while to see financial results.

So while efforts by mobile advertising services, such as AdMob, are trying to make that happen and are definitely promising, it’s still a game of growth and not revenue or, of course, profits.

[T-shirt image, courtesy of Zazzle.]

Kara Talks to Roger McNamee About the Palm Pre

Kara Swisher — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:22:55 +0000

BoomTown did a video interview with Palm’s sugar daddy investor Roger McNamee at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, after the debut of its Pre smartphone.

Via Elevation Partners, McNamee has invested a total of $425 million in Palm, aimed at reviving the company that pioneered the smartphone market.

But Palm soon saw its business gobbled up by the BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIMM) and the iPhone from Apple (AAPL). And, of course, there is the G1 phone from Google (GOOG) too, along with competition from Nokia (NOK) and many others.

And Palm is following the less-than-stellar last launch of the Foleo in 2007.

Thus, the company and the private equity firm have banked a lot on this revival, so McNamee was out in full force at CES in Las Vegas, talking up the Pre.

The Pre launch was indeed the highlight of the show, and also gave Palm’s moribund stock a boost.

And, indeed, the Pre does look pretty cool, with a sleek design and a new operating system, although the real proof will be when it debuts to consumers later this year.

In any case, here is the always hopped-up McNamee giving it his best for the Pre:

[ See post to watch video ]