Raja Jasti’s Blog - Renaissance Thinking

September 28, 2010

Yammer 2.0

Filed under: Uncategorized — Raja @ 7:05 pm

Yammer, originally conceived as the ‘twitter for the enterprise’ has expanded its social networking functionality to look more like a ‘facebook for the enterprise’.

Yammer, which launched as the “Twitter for businesses” at TechCrunch 50 in 2008, is launching the next-gen version of its platform today. Aiming to be a full-fledged social network for the enterprise, Yammer 2.0 is being released today at TechCrunch Disrupt. As we wrote in our initial review of the new platform, Yammer is adding a number of applications to its platform that increases its functionality beyond just a communications platform.

Of course they are not the only one to be inspired by facebook (see Marc Benioff and salesforce’s chatter). This category is really crowded. Besides yammer and chatter, there are players such a jive software, cisco’s quad, social text, cube tree (part of success factor) to just name a few. Enterprise vendors such as oracle and SAP also have similar products.

I see this social software for the enterprise as part of a broader collaboration product category. So you will see current collaboration suites using a bundling strategy to to gain market share against the current market leaders such as jive and yammer both of which are excellent acquisition candidates.

Virtual Goods to grow 40% by next year

Filed under: Internet, Trends — Tags: , — Raja @ 6:36 pm

Bing Gordon, Zynga board member, said social gaming is 4 gaming disruptions rolled into one. 1. social 2. analytics driven 3. APIable web/app economy 4. alternative payments (virtual goods). Now wonder social gaming is exploding.

Here is an example of the growth. Virtual goods market is expected to grow by 40% by next year continuing its impressive growth over the last 3 years. This is how it looks:

AOL Buys Techcrunch

Filed under: Internet, Media, Technology — Raja @ 8:47 am

Tim Armstrong (AOL CEO) and Heather Harde (CEO TC) and Mike Arrington (TC founder) signed the deal on stage at TC Disrupt. Terms were not disclosed. Mike says he can see staying with AOL for at least 3 years. Congrats TC!

September 26, 2010

Security Impedes Web2.0 in the Enterprise

Filed under: Business, Internet, Technology — Raja @ 10:28 pm

McAfee did a survey on the impact of Security on the adoption of web2.0 in the enterprise. Here are some findings:

Those businesses agree that Web 2.0 technologies — such as social media, microblogging services such as Twitter, collaborative platforms, web mail, and content sharing tools — can drive revenue. But more than 60 percent of corporations said they suffered losses averaging $2 million due to security problems. Some 60 percent also said they were concerned about damage to their reputation as a result of Web 2.0 misuse.

Brazil, Spain and India led in adoption of Web 2.0 technology for business, while adoption was lowest in Canada, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Web 2.0 technologies are impacting all aspects of the way businesses work,” said George Kurtz, chief technology officer for McAfee. “As Web 2.0 technologies gain popularity, organizations are faced with a choice – they can allow them to propagate unchecked, they can block them, or they can embrace them and the benefits they provide while managing them in a secure way.”

About 75 percent of the companies said that adoption of Web 2.0 technologies led to new revenue streams, while 40 percent said the tools have boosted productivity and enhanced marketing effectiveness.

The top perceived threats of Web 2.0 usage by employees are malicious software (35 percent were concerned about it), viruses (15 percent), overexposure of information (11 percent) and spyware (10 percent). About 14 percent reported litigation or legal threats caused by employees disclosing confidential or sensitive information.

About 13 percent of businesses block all Web 2.0 activity, while 81 percent restrict its use because of security concerns. About one third say they do not have a social media policy in place. Just 25 percent monitor social media usage by staff.

McAfee is not exactly a neutral party, but the the survey has some interesting data. Enterprise is the next frontier for web2.0 technologies and social media. Think social networking (facebook), micro blogging (twitter), Q&A (quora), LBS (foursquare) etc for the enterprise. There are some really interesting start ups working in this area such as yammer, opzi, asana etc. Enterprise software vendors are also doing some interesting things in this space. Expect to see a lot of innovation in this space over the next couple of years,

September 25, 2010

Zynga buys HTML5 game engine maker Dextrose

Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Technology, Trends — Tags: — Raja @ 10:27 am

Zynga continues its acquisition spree by buying Dextrose, German maker of HTML5 based game development platform.

Zynga has announced its latest acquisition today, the German company Dextrose AG, which released a development platform called the Aves Engine earlier this year.

The news hasn’t been widely commented on yet, but this could turn out to be one of Zynga’s most important acqusitions. Aves is an HTML5 engine designed for high-end 2D and 2.5D graphics.

Since it’s in HTML5, Aves can run on both the web and on mobile devices browsers, like the iPhone’s Safari. More than just a potential tweak to Zynga’s Facebook games, the Dextrose buyout means Zynga could potentially develop a new game simultaneously for both web and mobile.

With FarmVille and its other apps on the iPhone, Zynga hasn’t done spectacularly well, but that’s probably in part due to the higher graphics expectations of mobile users. The Aves Engine hasn’t been widely used, so we’re not sure of its full capabilities. But Zynga probably wouldn’t have bought the company if it weren’t impressed by Aves’ graphical capabilities.

September 21, 2010

Apple’s Lion’s Share of Mobile Profits

Filed under: Mobile — Raja @ 5:41 pm

Apple’s strategy is always about focus on margins and profits, not market share. See this in the context of the mobile market.

Six Apart Acquired by VideoEgg

Filed under: Business, Internet, Media — Raja @ 5:30 pm

If you are an early blogger, you know Six Apart well. They are one of the early pioneers of blogging software with their Movaeble Type and Typepad products. Today they are acquired by VideoEgg, started as a YouTube wannabe, but later pivoted to become an ad network. As GigaOm aptly puts it, it is the end of an era (somewhat like Netscape being acquired by AOL, but at a much smaller scale).

After denying rumors of a deal over the past several weeks, blogging platform Six Apart and advertising network VideoEgg have confirmed they are merging to create a new social-media company called SAY Media. Chris Alden, CEO of SixApart, is stepping down, and VideoEgg CEO Matt Sanchez will become the CEO of the combined company once the deal closes in several months. Although the two companies say Six Apart’s existing Moveable Type and Typepad businesses will continue, the deal effectively means the end of the company — one of the early pioneers of the blogging world — as a standalone entity.

For some early blogging fans, watching Six Apart get more or less absorbed by an advertising network is likely to be a painful sight. The company, led by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, was one of the pioneers of blogging almost a decade ago (the name came from the six-day difference in age between the two founders). Along with Blogger, which was founded by Twitter CEO Ev Williams and later sold to Google, the two software platforms from Six Apart — Moveable Type and Typepad — were used by hundreds of thousands of early bloggers.

Perhaps it’s true that in a day when Huffington Post and other digital-media giants rule the web, blogging has to grow up. But for some, this deal is going to look like the end of an era.

So long Six Apart.

Facebook making up with Social Gaming Companies

Filed under: Internet — Tags: — Raja @ 4:18 pm

Venture Beat reports that Facebook will announce changes to its news feed to improve the viral channels for social gaming companies.

Months after it hurt social game publishers by taking away some of its best viral methods for spreading apps, Facebook is hoping to make amends.

The company is planning to announce today it will make changes to its its News Feed, the system which displays updates from friends, so that aficionados of social games like Zynga’s FarmVille can receive more notifications about their friends’ gameplay. That will help game companies return to the days of using Facebook’s friend activity — a powerful driver of traffic — to market their games. And it comes amidst pressure from Google, which has invested in Zynga and is courting other game publishers to a social platform it’s reportedly building.

It isn’t a complete return to the early days of Facebook’s platform, when obnoxious viral messages — remembering all those zombie attacks and werewolf bites? — turned off many users of the social network even as it allowed pioneering developers to build large businesses. But it’s a positive step, according to sources at social-game companies. The announcement will be at an event at the company’s headquarters.

This is great news for social gaming developers. I wonder how much is this influenced by hearing Google’s footsteps into the social gaming. Competition is a good thing.

September 20, 2010

Native mobile apps = 50% of mobile traffic

Filed under: Mobile, Trends — Raja @ 6:03 pm

From ReadWriteWeb:


Native data applications, such as those installed on smartphones like the iPhone and devices running Android, now account for 50% of all mobile data volume according to a new report from Finnish mobile analytics company Zokem. In a global smartphone study released this month, the company found that while the mobile Web browser was still the most popular smartphone “app,” the use of native apps outside the browser is growing faster than mobile browsing itself.

September 17, 2010

Social Intent = Killer App

Filed under: Internet, Technology, Trends — Raja @ 7:33 pm

Fred made an interesting observation in his blog post ‘Social Layers and Social Intention‘ to pinpoint the problem with google buzz and now the alleged social layer ‘Google Me’.

Q. Why did Twitter succeed and FriendFeed fail?

A. Because FriendFeed was largely a social aggregator whereas Twitter is a service with specific social intent.

I think this is an important distinction. I have not seen any breakout social layers. The social services that have broken out to date have been services where a user has a very specific intent.

BTW, this shows why Fred is a genius consumer web VC.

What he is saying is a well known principle in the ‘platform’ markets. What do all the great platforms have in common? a killer app.

For example salesforce.com was a killer CRM app before it became pioneering PaaS (platform as a service) play. Google was a killer search engine before it became a money minting advertising platform. Facebook was a killer photo sharing site before it became a dominant gaming platform. MS Windows had a killer office suite before it became an all time great OS platform.

Here is the ultimate example: Internet had email before it became the web.

Well complete these.

Skype was a killer internet phone before … Amazon was a killer online bookstore before… Youtube was a killer video sharing site before…. Netflix was a killer movie DVD rental before…. iphone was a killer mobile internet device before… Wii/Xbox was a killer gaming console before….Twitter was a killer (micro) blogging platform before…

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