30th Aug 2010

Skype Tries Its Hand at VoIP for Business


Skype has formally announced its newest product for business users, Skype Connect.

Skype Connect, formally Skype SIP, is Skype’s play at the IP-enabled PBX and Unified Communications (UC) market. With Skype Connect, businesses can now integrate the service into their existing PBX systems.

In addition to making outgoing calls at Skype rates from desktop phones, Skype Connect also lets businesses receive phone calls from other Skype users, landline or mobile phones, or from other phones on the corporate PBX. Also, Skype Connect can be configured to route calls to mobile numbers.

This video gives an overview of just what Skype Connect does:

Skype is one of the most visible players in the consumer VoIP space, but it has a much smaller presence in the business world.

Skype first launched its Skype Connect Beta in March 2009, and according to its business blog now has more than 2,400 global customers. That’s not a bad start, but it pales when compared to some of the bigger players in this field.

Skype also faces stiff competition, not just from companies like Cisco — which has its own IP-PBX offerings — but from startups in the same space, including Bandwidth.com. Bandwidth.com offers SIP Trunking for businesses that want a cost-effective, in-house IP-PBX, and its Phonebooth Free and Phonebooth OnDemand products directly target SMBs.

Skype’s advantage, of course, is going to be that it has brand recognition with new customers. For small businesses that are transitioning to a phone system, IP or otherwise, for the first time, the Skype brand should have its own set of advantages.

Likewise, while other hosted IP-PBX systems have click-to-talk systems like Skype’s own interface (meaning users can initiate a phone call from a button on the Internet), Skype is a ubiquitous part of many consumer and business desktops.

Skype’s disadvantage, however, is that because it has been such a consumer-centric service, it’s unproven in the business support and infrastructure arena. Skype offers a new dedicated customer support option for Skype Connect users, but it’s going to also off-load some of its support to channel partners and VARs. Depending on the business, this may not be ideal.

Also, we find ourselves confused about Skype Connect’s pricing plan. Rather than bundling together plans with minute buckets or extensions, Skype is charging by the minute and by what it calls “channels.”

Incoming calls are free, and outgoing calls are charged according to Skype’s standard rates of 2.1 cents per minute. Users will also need to pay $6.95 a month per channel. A channel is the number of concurrent calls you want to make or receive at once. So if you want to have five different extensions that can all be in use at the same time, you’ll pay $34.75.

We really think it would be in Skype’s best interest to create some unified or bundled pricing plans for its business offerings, if only to make comparison shopping easier.

What do you think of Skype’s formal entrance into the corporate VoIP space? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Internet, Skype

More About: ip-pbx, pbx, phonebooth, Skype, skype connect, voip

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26th Aug 2010

Facebook Looks to Develop More Social Startups


Y Combinator, an investment firm for early stage startups, will be upgrading its relationship status with Facebook today, as Facebook has just announced a partnership with the venture company.

The Facebook-Y Combinator partnership is designed to be mutually beneficial for both companies.

Y Combinator has a reputation for producing top notch startups that go on to attract high profile investors, including Justin.tv, Reddit, Scribd and Dropbox. Under the new partnership, Facebook will gain insider access to some of the brightest ideas in the web/tech space, an advantage that will help it build better social products and cherry pick the best startups before competitors like Google have a chance.

On the flip side, Facebook will provide Y Combinator startups with a bevy of resources including priority access to Facebook Credits and other beta features, product and design support, and technical assistance for those interested in building social products or Facebook applications.

Y Combinator will use its winter 2011 class to seek out social startups looking to benefit from the Facebook partnership.

“In the near future, we think it will be hard to imagine a web experience that is not personalized. Startups that can build in these interactions from the beginning — not simply add them to existing products — will be the examples of transformative social experiences others will follow,” said Facebook Platform lead Carl Sjogreen.

The strategic initiative is an interesting maneuver by Facebook and one that’s designed to help the behemoth social network stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social technologies.

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20th Aug 2010

Verizon Looks to Jump into Mobile Commerce with New Investment


The venture capital arm of Verizon, Verizon Ventures, has invested $400,000 in CardStar. The Boston-based CardStar makes a mobile app for iPhone, Android and Blackberry that lets users store all of their membership cards in one digital repository.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the investment is part of Verizon’s continued interest in mobile commerce, an interest that also extends to the carrier working with AT&T and T-Mobile in a separate initiative around mobile payments.

CardStar hopes to capitalize on the intersection of traditional loyalty, reward and club programs with mobile technology, a hot trend of late that will only become more relevant with time. Users can replace their physical club cards with a digital replica and potentially receive merchant-provided extras for doing so. The application also integrates with Fousquare for convenient in-store checkins.

“The carriers have long been looking at the mobile wallet idea, especially mobile payments … But mobile payment is not here yet. So, what else is in someone’s wallet? A lot of different cards, and the common thread is loyalty cards,” CEO Andy Miller explained to the Journal.

With Verizon’s investment, CardStar has raised a total of $1.4 million in funds. CardStar is also said to have been downloaded more than 1.4 million times and have 700,000 users.

[img credit: shanecurcuru]

Reviews: CardStar

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16th Aug 2010

Slideshare Is Going Freemium


Slideshare, the popular service for sharing presentations, has announced that it’s switching to a freemium business model that caters to professionals, small businesses and enterprises.

While using the core presentation-sharing service is still free, those who want to track engagement, monitor conversions and customize their pages will have to upgrade to one of three PRO plans. All PRO plans plans give users access to analytics about where their presentations are embedded and the ability to monitor tweets and Facebook updates. PRO plans also come with the ability to convert visitors into leads through a lead form. Finally, Slideshare will turn off ads for PRO plan subscribers.

Gold plans come with more leads and customization and branding options for your channel. Platinum plans include unlimited leads and greater control over comments and transcripts. Dell, JESS3 and Microsoft are among Slideshare’s initial Pro customers.

Silver plans require a $19 per month subscription, while Gold plans are $49 per month. The Platinum plans for enterprises have a steeper price: $249 per month.

Slideshare seems to be following a freemium-leaning trend in monetization strategies. Last week, Hootsuite joined the freemium ranks, and Reddit launched a gold supporters plan to pay for new features and growth.

What do you think of Slideshare’s move into a freemium model? Do you think it’s a smart move by the company? Let us know all of your freemium-related thoughts in the comments.

[img credit: daviddmuir]

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15th Aug 2010

5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media

5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Mediagbuzz feed 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Mediafb 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Mediadiggme 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media
Social Media Monitor


Lauren Fernandez is the Agency Community Manager at Radian6, the social media monitoring and engagement platform. She is @cubanalaf on Twitter, and blogs at LAF and MarketingProfs Daily Fix.

From an agency perspective, many utilize social media monitoring at the request of a client who either doesn’t know much about it, or depends on their agency to educate them. With no client direction, it can be a bit difficult to decipher the first steps of what to monitor, who the players are, and the information that will prove valuable to your client.

Volume, Influence and Sentiment are metrics that will come in handy once these five benefits are realized.

1. Crisis Management

Crisis communications strategies are ingrained into most PR professionals’ skulls from the beginning of their education and internships. However, many don’t ever have to execute a crisis communications plan. In the traditional space, it was few and far between, but social media gives customers instant access to a real-time complaint channel.

Creating a presence on social media networks won’t stop this type of conversation from happening, but will enable brands to make the conversation a two-way street. So, what type of metrics can you measure in a crisis? You can look at conversation at the start, middle and end for benchmark comparison, and evaluate response on a cause-and-effect spectrum.

In June 2009, the Holocaust Museum shooter was incorrectly identified as a current American Mensa member. Amongst all of the horror, the Mensa fact was reported quite extensively. We knew about it before the first reporter called because we monitor the mention of the client’s name on social channels. We were able to discuss a quick response, activate our crisis communications plan and be prepared. We not only considered image, but the sensitive matter and how our members would react. If we didn’t know about it beforehand, our response would have been much slower and not as precise.

2. Influencer Identification

Influencer identification is a processes that is unique to each brand. If the client’s presence is heavy in forums or blogs, it helps to look at post mentions, commenter count and post volume.

Work with your client to determine whom they think is the most influential. A few questions to ask them:

  • What platforms are you currently using?
  • Are there others in the works?
  • What type of demographic does your typical customer belong to?
  • Where do you see conversation happening?
  • Where would you like conversation to be happening?

These questions will start to form a picture of who the heavy influencers are and how to target them.

Influencers can also change dependent on the situation and type of audience they attract. Create an A, B and C list. This reflects a high, mid or low priority. A low priority might move to a high priority if a blog post written attracts a lot of commentary. The key to tapping influencers is being flexible and knowing they can change constantly.

3. Building Relationships with Media and Customers Alike

We are in the field of communications. Journalists are utilizing social media to stay on top of the news, get leads and build relationships not only with PR professionals, but also with the community. It also enables brands to see if the discussion, content and approach is resonating with their target audience.

This is an area where customer service will come into play as well. What type of conversation is your customer base having? Does the sentiment skew heavily toward positive, negative or neutral? What areas are they focusing on? This will enable brands to act quickly and efficiently for their current and future customer base.

Ask a reporter out for coffee. Chances are, if you build a relationship, they will call you if they have a story that fits. You’re able to pitch them off-topic ideas to see if it can run. Other reporters can see the interactions you’ve built and will find you more approachable.

4. Creative Feedback and Ad Targeting

If you work in an agency that also handles the advertising for a specific client, the creative feedback and ad targeting principle is something to incorporate in your monthly metrics report.

Advertising campaigns reflect brand positioning, which should also be reflected by social media efforts. Incorporating the mindset and campaigns into your social media presence isn’t being promotional. It’s not about using the campaigns directly, but the idea the campaign presents.

For Facebook, you might see an ad for shoes once you update your status dealing with that particular subject. Monitoring if someone actually clicks ad that will be beneficial.

Other questions to answer: Is the message hitting the right demographic? Is it resonating with the audience, or is it having the opposite effect? Did the platforms we chose work?

Benchmarking your efforts can help with this. Set attainable objectives and the type of demographic desired. Set up a pyramid effort to check in increments of three months, starting at six months out. That will give you enough time to measure the “before,” “during” and “after” of a campaign.

5. Competitive Monitoring

Your clients want to know if they are measuring up to the competition — literally. Monitoring industry conversation is the first step in identifying who the competition is in the social space.

With this, it can be two-fold: Who the client perceives as their competitor might not be the same across different social networks. It’s up to the agency to identify and further define what is successful and what’s failing. The latter is important when one needs to prove why a certain idea isn’t the best route.

Knowing competitor efforts can affect not only what a brand does in the future, but current efforts. You can see where the consumer is, and what efforts they react positively and negatively to. Brands like to see competitor efforts for consumer validation, trends and market research.

From these five areas, you can then start focusing on specific metrics to report on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Monitoring specific topics will always come down to what the brand wants to achieve and if it meshes with objectives.

What would you add? Share your opinions and strategies in the comments below.

More Social Marketing Resources from Mashable:

– 5 Tips for Managing Your Company’s Brand on the Web
– 10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring
– 5 Tips for Aspiring Social Media Marketers
– 10 Tips for Corporate Blogging
– Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, apostol_8

More About: advertsing, brands, List, Lists, pr, social media, social media marketing, social media monitoring

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5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media
5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media

5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media 5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media

5 Key Benefits of Monitoring Your Client’s Brand on Social Media

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12th Aug 2010

“Paypal for Groups” Startup WePay Raises $7.5M Series B


WePay can most quickly be described as a sort of Paypal for groups. It allows users to collect, manage and send money as a group online.

Hypothetically, it works well for clubs, small organizations, roommates and other groups and could become a household name — at any rate, the VCs at Highland Capital certainly think so. They’ve led a $7.5 million Series B for the startup, which was joined by August Capital. The latter firm also led the startup’s Series A eight months ago. Dave McClure and Ron Conway were also early investors.

WePay began as a Y Combinator startup and has recently added Rasmus Lerdorf, the creator of PHP, as a lead developer on the company’s APIs.

If you’re a brilliant hacker and you think you’d might like to work with Lerdorf and the rest of the WePay team, you’re in luck; the latest round of funding will partly be used to beef up the company’s engineering staff. Co-founder and CEO Bill Clerico said in a release today, “After several months of both steady growth and exceptional user engagement, this latest round of financing will allow us to substantially expand our operations and engineering team, dramatically increase marketing efforts and continue to build our user base.”

This type of deal is consistent with the ever-popular trend of funding startups that have built-in revenue mechanisms. Although signup, group creation, joining a group and making payments are all free on WePay, the site charges a flat fee or percentage for all incoming transactions. The company’s also listed a healthy roster of charges for its prepaid Visa cards.

With that kind of revenue stream baked into the service, what is a 50-cents-here, 3.5%-there trickle at the outset can turn into a billion-dollar tsunami at scale, a fact which no investor could overlook.

What do you think: Does WePay’s service have you seeing dollar signs?

[img credit: donbuciak]

Reviews: PHP

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08th Aug 2010

HP CEO’s Alleged Sexual Harassment Victim Speaks Up


Today we saw two big developments in the drama surrounding a sexual harassment claim against HP CEO John Hurd which led to his resignation. First, we learned that Hurd received $12.2 million in severance pay, and second, the woman who filed a sexual harassment claim against him stepped into the spotlight.

Today, a story appeared on PR Newswire that not only identified the woman who made the claims against Hurd, but quoted her sharing her thoughts on Hurd’s apparent firing and some aspects of the scandal that led up to it.

She is a single mother named Jodie Fisher. She was contracted as a greeter and organizer for HP. She is also an actress; she appeared in several minor films in the 1990s. In her public statement, she said she and Hurd “never had an affair or intimate sexual relationship,” and, “I have resolved my claim with Mark privately, without litigation.”

More poignantly, she expressed regret that the investigation caused Hurd to lose his job. “I was surprised and saddened that Mark Hurd lost his job over this,” she said. “That was never my intention.”

While Hurd is facing a very public kind of humiliation right now, his departure isn’t a complete disaster. According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, his severance package included $12.2 million in cash and $16 million in stock. Still, depending on what happened exactly, the consequences for his personal life and reputation may overshadow the payout.

The company claims that Hurd didn’t violate its sexual discrimination policy — as Fisher said, they never had a sexual relationship, so it’s any outsider’s guess exactly what occurred — but that he violated its “Standards of Business Conduct.” Hurd explained his departure by saying, “I realized there were instances in which I did not live up to the standards and principles of trust, respect and integrity that I have espoused at HP and which have guided me throughout my career.”

If you want to learn more about Hurd’s years at HP, Networkworld has written up a short but comprehensive summary of his tenure.

More About: ceo, fired, firing, Hewlett-Packard, HP, jodie fisher, mark hurd, scandal, severance pay, sex, Sexual Harassment, tech

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08th Aug 2010

38 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed


Capping off a busy week at Mashable HQ we bring you a massive list of social media resources you may have missed. We’ve got 38 of the most interesting features and tools published over the last week or so in case you were, you know, outside during the summer.

Have a look through our social media resources for the Origin of Twitter’s “Fail Whale,” some great Twitter visualizations, or why WikiLeaks and the mainstream media still need each other.

Our Tech and Mobile resources include some amazing Konami code Easter eggs, great (free) WordPress themes to use, and a game plan for keeping BlackBerry relevant in the battle for mobile dominance.

For our entrepreneurs, we’ve got tips on how to self-publish anything, great Twitter lists for C-Suite execs, and a guide on how to structure your startup. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Looking for even more social media resources? You can find this guide every weekend, and check out all of the lists-gone-by.

Social Media

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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02nd Aug 2010

Feds Resurrect “Do Not Track” Concept for Online Ads


According to various reports, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering instituting a “do not track” list, similar in concept to the Do Not Call registry, for Internet users who want their browsing activity hidden from online advertisers.

If implemented, this registry would keep advertisers from tracking your browsing and shopping history via cookies and serving customized ads based on your behavior.

This opt-out solution would be great for consumers who’d rather not have the commercial version of Big Brother watching their every online move while still allowing those more lax in matters of online privacy to benefit from increasingly sophisticated e-commerce technologies.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz told members of the Senate Commerce Committee recently, “We may explore in the context of behavioral advertising… a do-not-track mechanism that’s more comprehensive and easier to use than the procedures currently available. Under such a mechanism, users could opt out of behavioral advertising more easily rather than having to make choices on website-by-website basis.”

Back in 2007, similar legislation was proposed. At that time, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, the Consumer Federation of America and the Electronic Frontier Foundation were among the registry’s advocates. These groups also suggested that advertisers should give consumers details about exactly what data they intended to track.

We’re unclear on exactly why this idea wasn’t implemented three years ago. What we do know now is that it’s going to be difficult for the FTC to make these changes when it might not have the deep and wide control it would need to institute such a registry. Moreover, this list is guaranteed to be extremely unpopular in the online ad industry, which itself is one of the main arteries of Internet revenue.

We won’t know anything about the fate of this idea for quite some time; whether or not it’s even feasible will be explored in a comprehensive report on online privacy due to be released later this year. If the online ad industry takes proactive steps toward explaining and protecting users’ privacy and data beforehand, the legislation may not even be necessary, Leibowitz noted.

What do you think about the concept of a do-not-track list for online advertising? Would it harm the Internet industries as much as it would protect citizens? Let us know your opinions in the comments.

[img credit: icki]

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28th Jun 2010

Leaked Slide Deck Details Microsoft’s Plan for Windows 8


The Italian Windows website “Windowsette” somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft’s goals and plans for Windows 8. Apparently this sensitive data (complete with UNDER NDA watermarks) was just found sitting around the Internet.

MSFTKitchen has an extensive breakdown and detailed posting of all the slides from within the slide deck. The presentation details many of Microsoft’s thoughts going forward for Windows 8, including the fact that it is taking direct cues from Apple on how to build something customers want to pay for.

While we’ve heard various rumblings about time tables and features of Windows 8, according to the slides, it looks like the internal plan is to have the product to market sometime in 2012. Of course, that could change (see Vista), but from the roadmap presented in the presentation, 2012 looks like the accurate release date.

Facial Recognition, Fast Boot Up and a Windows App Store

There are lots of new ideas being considered for Windows 8, but a few really stood out to us. First is the concept of user accounts being the primary method identifying a user. So instead of just having the traditional, “admin,” “user,” “guest” paradigm, accounts would be customized for individual users in a much more customizable way.

Additionally, Microsoft is looking at integrating facial recognition technologies to log users into computers automatically. According to the slides, Microsoft is also considering connecting Windows accounts to the cloud. This is actually a really cool idea because it means that your preferences, bookmarks, e-mail account info and other data could all follow you from system to system.

If you consider that more and more storage might be done in the cloud, via something like Windows Live SkyDrive, the possibilities are pretty cool, especially if used across ultra-portable devices like tablets.

The presentation also shows that Microsoft is looking at making the startup and boot process of Windows 8 as fast as possible. The idea is to make it as “appliance like” as possible, so that instant-on connectivity is available.

Finally, one of the most interesting new developments is that of the Windows App Store. Now, you could make a joke and say that that already exists as the software aisle of any major electronics store, but the concept of having a way to discover new applications online and to get them from a trusted repository is actually not a bad idea.

For desktop operating systems, the idea of a central software repository is not new. Package management tools like APT and PackageKit have been a part of the Linux world for years. In fact, Microsoft has tried to do this to some degree with the Windows Marketplace and Zune Marketplace. Looking at the slides, the Windows App Store will be a much broader strategy with a much more Apple-like approach.

For instance, there is discussion about a “Windows Reset” feature that would back up a users files and reformat the system in case of some sort of system problem. Upon reinstallation, apps purchased from the App Store could be reinstalled and applications not from the App Store would be listed for a users convenience.

Trying to Bring the Smartphone Experience to the Desktop

Looking at many of the broader trends posited for Windows 8, we couldn’t help but notice how many similarities exist between current smartphone solutions and paradigms and with what Windows 8 might end up becoming.

The idea of keeping user profile data backed up to the cloud and being portable is something that Google is doing with great success on Android. To a lesser extent, Apple is doing this on the iPhone and iPad with MobileMe and iTunes accounts.

Furthermore, the big focus on quick startups and shutdowns and being “more appliance like” seems to describe the kind of experience that we have on our smartphones and iPad devices today. Since a broader part of the Windows 8 strategy seems to be all about being on many different device types, this makes sense, but it also sounds like Microsoft is trying to bring this sort of experience to the regular desktop.

Of course, the Windows App Store is almost a recreation of the mobile app store paradigm. While an app store is probably less needed for Windows than any other Operating System, having a curated, searchable database of software programs, filled with user reviews and the ability to re-download and re-install on demand is still a compelling feature, provided of course that software can still be found and installed more traditionally.

Future of the Desktop?

Two weeks ago, Farhad Manjoo wrote an editorial for Slate entitled, Flight of the Desktops. In it, he made the argument that desktop computers (ie, NOT laptops but main desktop machines) will continue to lose relevancy over the next five years. This isn’t the same argument that a Google executive made back in March (that argument was that smartphones would replace desktops in three years time), but it hints at the same trend, which is, if our mobile devices become more powerful and our data becomes more accessible, for many people, conventional desktop machines will only be needed for certain tasks. If you don’t need to do one of those tasks, a desktop computer may eventually end up irrelevant.

Manjoo got a lot of pushback for his post, but in the wake of 3 million iPads and booming iPhone and Android sales, I’m more open to his opinion than I was even four months ago. While I think Google’s prediction of an operating-system free world (in the traditional Windows sense) is extremely premature, three’s no doubt that the way we use and interact with our content is changing. The definition of computing itself is changing too.

For that reason, many of the slides in the Windows 8 presentation make a lot of sense. Now, how many of these ideas are deliverable and how many can be integrated across a broad set of different devices remains to be seen, but if the traditional computer operating system could take on many of the qualities of a smartphone operating system, that would be a very interesting future.

What do you think of the slides for Windows 8? What do you think about the shifting of the desktop to becoming more mobile-esque? Let us know!

Reviews: Android, App Store, Google, Linux, MobileMe, Windows

More About: future, microsoft, operating systems, software, Windows, Windows 8

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