Trainspotting: Hands On With The Mondaine Evolution Automatic Watch

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This weekend’s watch review is focused on the Mondaine Evolution Automatic, a mechanical model that hovers right about the $500 price point — a rare departure into the bargain section for this series. The model I tested is unique for a few reasons although, in the end, this watch is less about the feature set and more about the iconic design.

First, Mondaine is styled on the famous Swiss railway clocks found in stations throughout the country. The bold black hands and clever red seconds hand with the bright red pip at the end are instantly recognizable and, more important, instantly readable. There is no lume on this watch because the assumption is that the contrast between the dark hands and the white face will be sufficient for the weary evening sojourner.

It has a nice 40mm case and exhibition back so you can see the movement and rotor. It comes on a basic leather strap and is ostensibly Swiss-made (a term that can end up being nebulous) but is, at the very least, assembled in Switzerland.

It runs a Sellita SW 220-1 automatic movement, a capable replacement for the traditional ETA movements used in this sort of piece. It has a hacking function – the second hand stops while setting for time synchronization – and it has a day/date register in English and German.

I’ve been a fan of Mondaine for a while and like my other favorite, Xetum, it is one of the few three-handed, non complicated watches that I actually enjoy. The design is iconic and hardly polarizing and the legibility and style are classic without being stuffy. This is a designer’s watch and expresses a certain symmetry and careful consideration for legibility in various harsh conditions. Surprisingly you can, at a glance, tell the exact time thanks to the large hands and bold chapter ring. This is unique in a wristwatch because most watches bury the minutes pips by making them too thin or too light.

Is this a special watch? Yes and no. Given its price and simple movement it’s now more a fashion timepiece than anything else. However, given the design pedigree and readability, I would argue that it deserves a bit more attention than it has thus far gotten. I’ve seen it pop up at about $500-$550 online. This is far less than similarly outfitted “nice” watches. It’s even cheaper than the excellent Le Locle from Tissot, another contender for the inexpensive, but high-quality, timepiece crown.

Again, if you like this particular design then this is a capable, solid, and attractive timepiece. The leather band and the 100-foot water resistance mean that this thing isn’t for beach play. But if you’re going to be wearing it to business meetings or while handling the Wacom tablet, you could do worse.



BitWall Allows Publishers To Make Money Through Bitcoin Micropayments

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Here’s another way that digital currency Bitcoin could have a big impact, according to startup BitWall: it could give online publishers a real alternative to putting up paywalls or relying solely on ads for revenue.

The argument for micropayments is probably familiar to most of you: You may not want to pay a big subscription fee but might be willing to shell out a little bit of money to read an article that interests you. Yet the idea has never really taken off with online publishers.

How is Bitcoin supposed to change that? BitWall argues that with traditional payment systems, there’s a significant transaction fee, so small payments don’t make sense. With Bitcoin, where the fees are lower, the startup says publishers “can finally unlock the untapped world of micropayments.”

At the same time, co-founder and CEO Nic Meliones said the team is open to adding other payment options in the future. He also noted that readers who just want to pay in U.S. dollars can do so, since BitWall is integrated with digital wallet system Coinbase, which allows easy conversion between USD and Bitcoin.

Meliones gave me a quick demo of how the system works. After a site has integrated with BitWall, users who try to read an article will be presented with a new kind of paywall, a “bitwall,” which offers a menu of options. The obvious one is making a small payment (as little as 1 cent), via Bitcoin, to access that specific piece of content. But readers can also pay a daily subscription fee, prepay for a larger sum of credits, or even get access by just tweeting or watching an ad (since publishers are usually paid per impression, “an ad is essentially a micropayment as well,” Meliones said).

The point is the publisher gets something in exchange for the content. The exact mix of payment options (as well as which content is bitwalled) is up to the individual site. You can see this in action for yourself with the first BitWall integration, which went live earlier this week at Bitcoin news and data site ZeroBlock. If you click on the headlines in the ZeroBlock News section, you’ll be asked to pay for the article, watch an ad or tweet.

BitWall was part of Boost VC, an incubator for Bitcoin startups, which had its first demo day on Thursday.

High-Skill Immigration Reform Likely Dead In 2013

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After much speech and pomp, it appears that general immigration reform is dead in 2013, ending with it the chance of positive change to how we handle high-skill immigration. It didn’t have to end this way, but here we are and we need to face the current reality.

The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reported yesterday that in the House, the so-called Gang of Seven will likely not bring forward a bill that could be passed in the lower chamber. That, and the fact that the Senate’s comprehensive bill was deceased upon hello in the House, means that options for functional immigration reform this year are now essentially zero.

High-skill immigration reform was lashed to larger immigration reform in the Senate, marking its fate in time with other pieces of what is generally referred to as “comprehensive” reform. As that effort has failed, so too has high-skill immigration reform faltered.

Sargent goes on to write that House Republicans could “roll out a series of piecemeal bills.” Theoretically, one of those smaller pieces of legislation could deal with high-skill immigration. However, if there is sufficient political will in the House for a push on the single issue isn’t clear. And it is also not plain how such a single bill could wind its way through the Senate, which has already passed its own immigration law.

In a somewhat depressing conclusion, Sargent states that “it remains very possible that House Republican leaders will simply let reform die.”

Next year is an election year, and the threat of primary challenges on the right remain real. Immigration is an exceptionally difficult issue for Republicans, given fierce base support for draconian legislation, and changing demographics that squeeze its leadership. For now, however, it appears that the threat of ‘being primaried’ remains a larger fear for House Republicans than long-term changes to the makeup of the American populace that do not, on projection, bode well for their party.

Unless something miraculous shakes loose, immigration reform looks dead for the year. And as such, we won’t see a rise in H-1B visas and the like. It didn’t have to end this way, but here we are and we need to face the current reality.

For more on how we came to this somewhat dispiriting conclusion of a multi-year push to better our immigration laws, head here.

Top Image Credit: ttarasiuk

CrunchWeek: The iPhone 5s Cat Paw Test, Google’s Calico And Bump’s Exit

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It’s been a week chock-full of news in the tech world, so what better way to cap it off than by watching a brand-new episode of CrunchWeek, the show that brings a few of us TechCrunch writers together to talk about the most interesting stories from the past seven days.

This week, Colleen Taylor, Anthony Ha and I talked about the release of iOS 7 and our colleague Darrell Etherington’s test of the iPhone 5s’s fingerprint sensor using a cat’s paw, Google’s new mad science project and health initiative Calico, and the search giant’s acquisition of Bump.

Microsoft’s Office 365 Consumer Edition Doubles To 2M Subscribers Since May

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Today at its analyst event, Microsoft announced a new milestone for its Office 365 Home Premium product: 2 million subscribers. That’s up 100 percent, or 1 million subscribers, since May 29. Office 365 Home Premium is the company’s cloud productivity suite for consumers that they pay for on a subscription basis.

Previously, Microsoft touted that it had signed up its first 1 million consumer subscribers for Office 365 Home Premium in 100 days. It has been 113 days since it announced the 1 million figure. So Microsoft, presuming that it reached the 2 million mark today, is adding subscribers at almost the same pace as it did around the launch period.

However, as the company is simply stating that it has “more than” 2 million Office 365 Home Premium subscribers, it would not surprise me if the product was either keeping pace with its former sales levels, or has accelerated slightly. At 2 million subscribers, Office 365 Home Premium is a $200 million yearly business.

Office 365, Microsoft said today, was (as a total product) the fastest Microsoft service to $1 billion in yearly revenue run rate in the history of the company. Here’s the slide that details the 2 million figure:

What’s quite interesting is that Microsoft forecasts that it will suffer from short-term revenue declines by switching to subscription revenue from licensing revenue. The bar graph on the lower right side of the chart indicates that revenue will be negatively impacted for several years, until fiscal 2017 and beyond.

This is admission that the company will suffer short-term from its decision to embrace a new business model. But, the company is wagering that the transition is worth the cost long-term, likely due to the fact that its formerly successful method of selling Software in a Box is rapidly fading.

Adobe, also in the period of transition from single-license sales of software to subscription-based services, is seeing its revenue decline year over year. I would wager that this will be a trend that we will see repeated across all large firms that move to a subscription model from their prior business practices.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner claimed today that Microsoft has “made a very graceful transition from our traditional enterprise agreements and licensing agreements” as it shifts “those agreements and customers into the cloud.” That Microsoft forecasts revenue slippage during the period of transition even with self-described smooth hand-offs is interesting.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Microsoft has managed to move several customer categories to subscription-based Office products in parallel. This indicates that Microsoft might not have an impossible time in its soul-defining mission to sell services and not software.

Top Image Credit: Microsoft Sweden

WTF Is Calico, And Why Does Google Think Its Mysterious New Company Can Defy Aging?

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The sad truth is that, if everyone on the Forbes 400 list simultaneously (and tragically) got Cancer, or Parkinsons (or any given disease for that matter), the world would probably be well on its way to finding a cure for these illnesses, thanks to the enormous wealth that would be incentivized to back those efforts.

Finding a cure for an intractable disease requires time, enormous amounts of human and financial capital, cooperation and research — and at least a few public-private partnerships. It’s costly, and it’s messy. This is why Calico, Google’s newest mad science project, is potentially so exciting.

In fact, Calico could represent the company’s largest healthcare initiative since Google Health sprinted its way into obscurity. Of course, Google is a different company today than it was in 2008 (when it launched Google Health) and so are we. Our habits have have changed: Today, 20 percent of smartphone users have downloaded at least one health app and 60 percent of adults now look for health information online.

Led by former Genentech CEO and current Apple Chairman, Arthur D. Levinson, Calico has big plans in healthcare — at least over the long term. From what we’ve heard thus far, the new project will leverage Google’s massive cloud and data centers to help facilitate research on disease and aging, mine its trove of data for insight into their origins.

Apple Chairman, Arthur D. Levinson

Plus, thanks to its investment in 23andMe, Google already has access to a fast-growing genomic database, which could come in handy as it begins to focus on, in its words, “health and well-being — in particular the challenge of aging” and dive into the science, genetics and biochemistry behind longevity and disease.

In an interview with TIME Magazine, Google CEO Larry Page implied that dramatically extending human life is one of Calico’s main goals; not making people immortal per se, but, according to a source familiar with the project, increasing the lifespan of people born 20 years ago by as much as 100 years.

“Are people really focused on the right things?” Page muses in the interview. “One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you’d add about three years to people’s average life expectancy. We think of solving cancer as this huge thing that’ll totally change the world, but when you really take a step back and look at it, yeah, there are many, many tragic cases of cancer, and it’s very, very sad, but in the aggregate, it’s not as big an advance as you might think.”

While his delivery is a bit confusing, Page’s thesis seems to be an optimistic one. While curing cancer has always seemed like an insurmountable obstacle, the goal is more within reach than many believe, if only someone would just put their mind to it — he seems to say. Yes, Larry Page is brilliant, but his message also seems to imply that diseases (and their cures) are reducible — that all of the world’s problems could be cured if we just had some snappier algorithms.

Really, it almost seems more of a reflection of how enormous many-headed-beast that is Google has become, and a testament to its resources and the type of talent it’s able to attract — rather than pure, unbridled hubris. It’s as if they’re saying: “Hi, welcome to Google! Today, we’re going to turn your eyeglasses into a computer, tomorrow we’ll develop self-driving cars, the day after that, we’ll cure cancer and increase the average human lifespan by 100 years. Oh, and by the way, we’re still trying to organize all of the world’s information and make it easily searchable!!” N.B.D., everybody, N.B.D.

Interestingly, Calico doesn’t seem to be a Google company per se, more of an investment in a new company that will be affiliated with Google and become an extension of the company’s mad science lab, Google X. “Don’t be surprised if we invest in projects that seem strange or speculative compared with our existing Internet businesses,” Page warned readers on Google+, Google’s social network. [Yes, let’s not forget that Google also has a social network. It’s like Facebook except no one uses it!] “Please remember that new investments like this are very small by comparison to our core business.” Of course, with a market cap approaching $300 billion, Google could make a $1 billion investment in Calico and it would still be a very small investment “by comparison to its core business.”

Not satisfied with self-driving cars and Google glass, Page says health is something the company needs to tackle, that he wants to “solve Cancer” the same way Google X has tried to experiment and innovate in wearable computing and transportation. “It takes 10 or 20 years to go from an idea to something being real. Health care is certainly one of those areas,” he told TIME’s Harry McKracken. “We should shoot for the things that are really, really important, so 10 or 20 years from now we have those things done.”

Sources tell us that us that Calico is still very much in the exploratory phases and is seeking neither near term profits nor have much of any idea about how to actually increase lifespans. So, there’s that. It’s one thing to say “we’re going to increase the human lifespan by 20 years!” and another entirely to actually do that. Fortunately, Page and Levinson, aren’t the first ones to attempt to longevity: Immortality has long been the ambition of kings, super villains and pretty much anyone who enjoys waking up each morning.

While Google Calico is still a work in progress, given what we’ve learned so far and heard from our sources, here are a couple of ways the company could push us towards that goal — or at the very least, extend our lifespans.

Immortal Worms, Telomeres & Cellular Clean Up

It may surprise you, but in the race to immortality, humans are in second place. But who is this agile and fleet-footed creature out-distancing we ever-powerful humans, you ask? Why that would be none other than the noble Planarian Worm. Yes, in 2012, scientists from the University of Nottingham found a species of Planarian worm that could perpetually heal itslef and divide.

“Usually when stem cells divide — to heal wounds, or during reproduction or for growth — they start to show signs of aging. This means that the stem cells are no longer able to divide and so become less able to replace exhausted specialized cells in the tissues of our bodies,” explained researcher Aziz Aboobaker. “Our aging skin is perhaps the most visible example of this effect. Planarian worms and their stem cells are somehow able to avoid the aging process and to keep their cells dividing.”

Cross-section of a Planarian Flatworm. Photo from The School of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Illinois

Essentially, one of the keys to immortality lies in Telomeres — which are essentially a region of nucleotide sequences that act as a protective cap, deterring the degradation of genes near the end of chromosomes by allowing their ends to shorten. Huh? In other words, as Science Daily points out, the Telomere is like the protective plastic cap at the end of your shoelace; each time a cell divides, the Telomere protects it from fraying or going on a 5-day bender. However, each time it does divide, your Telomere caps are reduced.

Theoretically, then, if someone can figure out a way to preserve or elongate these Telomeres, then we would be one step closer to a veritable genetic fountain of youth. Unfortunately, however, the science is still scant. Back in 1996, team of Nobel Prize-winning scientists explained that “telomere length is clearly not directly correlated with organismal aging” [PDF].

However, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak won the Nobel Price for Physiology and Medicine in 2009 for their work, which found that telomere length could potentially be maintained by catalyzing the activity of an enzyme known as “telomerase.” However, as Science Daily points out, in most organisms, the enzyme is really only turned on during those early developmental years. Planarian worms have managed to outfox this, and by studying the mechanics of their division and how they protect against degradation, Google Calico and anyone else for that matter could be on the right track.

Human Chromosomes capped by telomeres. Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy’s Human Genome Program

Of course, again, real progress in longevity research requires time and money. Organizations and companies have been trying to tackle this problem for years, and many have been rebuffed. For example, in 2008, pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline shelled out $720 million for a promising drug, SRT501, a modified version of substance found in red wine that has been linked to anti-aging. Two years later, Glaxo gave up.

But that was five years ago, and this is the company that managed to map the entire planet in a few years. It’s hard to imagine Google will be pumping much money into Calico at first, but if it does, it could make a real difference. For now, sources tell us that Calico will primarily function as an R&D group, exploring the latest in longevity science. However, it won’t rule out the possibility of manufacturing their own products down the line.

At some level, Larry Page, the company — someone in Mountain View — has become convinced that Google needs to help figure out the aging problem. As Bette Davis and most 90-year-olds will tell you, “old age is no place for sissies.” It’s tough. After all, longevity isn’t any fun if one spends the last decade of life wheezing in a hospital bed.

Then again, it’s how life works. As the truisms say, aging is one of the few things in life you can count on. And furthermore, if

Hardware: Replacement Organs & Nano Repair Bots

Many people die because one of vital of their body stopped working. In recent decades, we’ve dramatically lengthened some lives by simply replacing the faulty part: A heart, kidney, lung, etc.

In the near future, we’ll be able to replace organs at scale with the magic of 3D printing. Scientists have already discovered how to transplant a manufactured kidney, so at some point in the future, heart failure may be just as inconvenient as having to take another trip to Kinkos.

Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Lawrence Bonassar, holds a working, artificial ear created from 3-D printers and injectable molds. Photo by Lindsay France/University Photography

With a colonoscopy costing $7K in New York today, and the average price of a hip replacement in the U.S. being $40K, printing up a new heart would be a welcome change for our wallets. Though until the cost of 3-D printing at scale is realized (it’s going to take awhile), these kind of procedures will likely remain on the more expensive side.

And the harsh truth is that fixing organs may not be enough to stave off the effects of old age in the first place. Repairing whole swaths of decrepit tissue and dying cells is likely where science will turn next. Interestingly enough, Google’s Director of Engineering, Ray Kurzweil, believes that an army of nanorobots will eventually do all of our internal tuneups. The nanobots themselves could mimic the very structure of DNA that is the foundation of our cellular makeup. While the thought is exciting, today this remains in the theoretical realm, i.e. science fiction.

Despite Kurzweil being an authority on immortality, two sources close to the project say that he won’t be working for Calico; instead, he’ll continue focusing on building out his “cybernetic friend” project at Google HQ. That being said, it’s hard to imagine Kurzweil being able to stay away from the project for long, considering how much energy he’s dedicated to thinking about the problem.

Cancer

While Page says that curing cancer won’t be the key to extending the average human lifespan, at some point, Calico and others will have to face it head on. “If a human could live long enough, it is inevitable that at least one of his or her cells would eventually accumulate a set of mutations sufficient for cancer to develop,” explains a team of authors in Molecular Biology of the Cell.

Thus, cancer is an inevitable part of the decay of our cells and, unfortunately, an omnipresent risk as we continue to live longer and longer. One source close to the project says that Google is exploring solutions in the area of genetically personalized medicine. Tailoring drug treatment to the unique biomarkers of the individual, such as the field of Proteomics, is a new path for improving cancer treatment.

BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!?!

There’s a lot of exciting work going on at the intersection of healthcare and technology. The advancements in computing, mobile technology and data analysis have allowed startups like Neurotrack to help push research on diseases like Alzheimer’s forward, and even predict its onset years before it happens. Companies like Proteus Digital Health are leading the charge into personalized medicine with a pill that can text doctors and family members from inside your body, to paraphrase The Telegraph’s paraphrase.

Startups can change the conversation around innovation in digital health by experimenting, pushing the envelope and staying nimble. However, just having the name of a tech industry giant like Google enter the fray on the digital health front is huge, especially when it’s chief executives are resolved to help tackle these enormous problems — from diseases like cancer to those pesky, age-related wrinkles.

It’s still a bit too early to say how much Google plans to — or will — move the needle in the race for immortality and beautiful skin, but it’s an important step. Throwing its name in the ring will incentivize others to do the same.

Why? As Dr. Katherine Pollard of San Francisco’s Gladstone Institutes explained at TechCrunch Disrupt last week, there is still a significant gap between researchers and entrepreneurs — scientists and Silicon Valley. However, at the same time, there are now more opportunities than ever before for both sides to team up to make technological breakthroughs in healthcare, and, in turn, making those breakthroughs more accessible to the public.

This is important because it’s easy to get wrapped up in the exciting science and technology underlying these problems — and trying to solve the unsolvable — but extending longevity just for the sake of longevity’s sake (while arguably a core element of our survival instinct) is silly. There are seven billion people on this planet, and if Google and others are going to enable the majority of them to add 10 years to their lives, it will likely create even bigger problems — chiefly in the “resources” department.

Today, more than one billion people live without access to the most basic forms of healthcare. Not to criticize a beautiful thing before it even sets sail — only a cruel, heartless jerk would find fault with a project that deals, in part, with curing cancer, mind you — but this is worth pointing out. There may even be more urgent or salient problems in healthcare (at large) that a company like Google could help solve; one could argue that bringing basic healthcare to a billion people needs to come before we worry about extending one person’s life from 95 to 100.

Microsoft’s Business In Three Charts

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Microsoft, like other public companies, doesn’t like to disclose more about its business than it has to, but in the middle of a reorganization and a very public CEO search, a little openness could go far to settling the nerves of jittery investors. Today at its analyst nerdmoot, the company showed three charts that strip down its business into its component parts.

Here’s the slide that Microsoft showed to analysts in Redmond and to the press via a slightly wonky livestream:

This is very interesting data. The first graph shows that Microsoft’s revenue is more than half enterprise-sourced. From that perspective, Microsoft could be viewed as an enterprise-facing company that dabbles in consumer technology.

And, given that the OEM business of Microsoft could be called “enterprise” revenue, Microsoft is all the more lopsided. Another take: If you count OEM incomes as enterprise-sourced, and discount small-business incomes, Microsoft is only slightly more than one-fifth consumer-derived from a revenue perspective. That’s a sliver.

Moving to the second graph, Windows is now the third-largest revenue driver for Microsoft. The growth of Server and Tools and the continued strength of the Office division make the changing guard unsurprising. But it’s also worth noting that the weakness of the PC market contributed to the slippage of Windows as the leading piece of Microsoft.

Just as small and medium business revenue is minor from a whole corporation perspective, so too does the Bing and Online revenue category remain essentially a rounding error. Microsoft is investing heavily in this area, but in terms of it becoming a primal component of the Microsoft revenue mix, it simply isn’t.

Finally, geographic share: 56 percent of Microsoft’s revenue comes from “Rest of The World,” which means every place that is not the United States or Canada. It seems likely that international revenue will grow its share of the Microsoft revenue mix. China, Microsoft’s Kevin Turner (COO) stated during his talk, is the company’s fastest-growing market.

What can take away from all this? That Microsoft’s enterprise business units are subsidizing its work to grow its consumer products, like Bing, Windows Phone, and the like. Also, the scale of the Office division is key for Microsoft’s aggregate size – challenges to its status as cash cow must be viewed as almost existential threats to its ability to invest in new products. So, what Box is up to and Google’s work to assault Office on mobile devices should be treated as extremely serious.

Microsoft’s analyst meeting is underway, and we’ll have more for you soon.

Top Image Credit: Paul Downey

WSJ Confirms It’s Parting Ways With All Things D, Adding 20 New Hires And International Conference

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The Dow Jones-owned Wall Street Journal has confirmed today that it will part ways with All Things D. The media publication — and conference powerhouse — is still in talks with potential suitors but its relationship with the Journal is dead. The news was first reported by Fortune’s Dan Primack.

Negotiations have been going on for some time and sources tell us that this is largely due to the fact that Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, the founders and standard-holders of the ATD brand, have been looking for funding to expand the business, rather than simply selling out to a larger media publication. One of the potential acquirers, we’re hearing, was AOL, which owns TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog and other blog properties including Patch.

“We plan to embark on a major global expansion of our technology coverage, which will include adding 20 reviewers, bloggers, visual journalists, editors, and reporters covering digital,” said Gerard Baker, Editor in Chief of Dow Jones and Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal. “As part of this global push, we will also be expanding our conference franchise to include an international technology conference and building a new digital home for our first-class technology news and product reviews on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “

At this point the ATD brand remains with the Wall Street Journal, which would likely continue to use it to in some fashion. The fate of the conferences, from what we know, is still up in the air. Whether a deal is cut to have them continue to run the conferences — or to buy them out — while parting ways on other matters, is yet to be determined. It seems unlikely that Dow Jones will want to let the lucrative events, run by Mossberg and Swisher, out of their grasp, and it’s difficult to see how that relationship would work out. It seems doubtful that they would shutter them entirely, however, as they’ve become marquee events.

The Wall Street Journal says that part of its deal will be for a new conference that will focus on international markets.

As far as the team goes, they are contracted with a corporation owned by Swisher and Mossberg, so they will stick together wherever the team ends up. This will be a deal for the whole kit and kaboodle, even Mike Isaac.

Primack reports that ATD won’t share any content and ‘certain’ advertising functions with the Journal, but that Mossberg will also leave his column. The timeline for the shuttering, as we’ve been hearing for some time, is end-of-year. Potential funding sources that that are being  discussed for Mossberg and Swisher’s new effort are Reuters, NBCUniversal, Bloomberg, Condé Nast, Cox and The Washington Post.

The iconic red chairs that grace the stage at D events will remain with Mossberg and Swisher.

The Wall Street Journal’s statement in full:

For years, Dow Jones/The Wall Street Journal has enjoyed working with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher to bring the best of tech coverage to readers around the world under the All Things Digital brand, however, after discussions, both parties have decided not to renew the agreement when the contract expires at the end of this year.

Technology is the central driver of economic growth and the Journal is committed to being the indispensable global source of news and information in this critical area. We plan to embark on a major global expansion of our technology coverage, which will include adding 20 reviewers, bloggers, visual journalists, editors, and reporters covering digital.

As part of this global push, we will also be expanding our conference franchise to include an international technology conference and building a new digital home for our first-class technology news and product reviews on The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. This new initiative will be an integral part of The Wall Street Journal and will be rooted in the Journal’s reputation for excellent, fair, objective, reliable and stimulating journalism. As part of the mutual separation, Walt Mossberg will be leaving the Journal at the end of this year. I want to offer heartfelt thanks for more than twenty years of Personal Technology columns as well as his very fine reporting on national and international affairs in the years before he turned his attention to technology coverage.”

Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

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This won’t come as a surprise if you’re familiar with the game’s genre, but playing Starcraft 2 might make you smarter. Starcraft 2 is a so-called “real-time strategy game,” a form of video game that involves resource management and military planning in parallel, while restricting the amount of information that each player has.

The result is a gaming experience that involves planning, strategic thinking on the fly, and rapid mental and physical coordination (this is why I’m terrible at Starcraft, if you were curious). According to a study published in August, brought to our attention by Red Bull’s gaming arm, “cognitive flexibility is a trainable skill.”

That conclusion was reached after running study participants through a controlled gaming environment, or Starcraft 1 and 2. Some participants played The Sims, while others played the Starcraft titles, racking up 40 hours of gameplay over a period of one-and-a-half to two months. All individuals that took part in the study were female, due to a “small number of non-gaming males” that might have been eligible. Those who played Starcraft instead of The Sims showed measurable improvements in certain mental functions following the period of gaming.

Playing Starcraft, according to the study, “stresses rapid and simultaneous maintenance, assessment, and coordination between multiple information and action sources was sufficient to affect change.” The result of playing real-time strategy games such as Starcraft is “an underlying dimension of cognitive flexibility” across several laboratory tests.

So, playing Starcraft 2 with its mental rigor helps keep your brain fit, and perhaps tunes it up a bit. Again, this is not a surprising conclusion, but is a fun data point all the same.

There has long been an interesting connection between Starcraft 2 and startups, something that I first wrote about in 2010. Since then, there have been startup Starcraft series, an entire league built to allow large tech companies to field their own teams, and discussion across the Internet about why tech workers seem to love the game.

It’s not surprising that digital types that stick to monitors and fast typing enjoy Starcraft, but it’s also possible that there is a bit of skill or interest overlap between working in a quickly growing tech company and playing the game.

And since Starcraft might help keep your mind fit, it doesn’t hurt to play a few games to stay sharp. At least that’s what you can tell your boss the next time you’re caught getting bunker-rushed before the end of the workday.

Top Image Credit: Blizzard

The Caktus Hug Sensor Makes Sure You’re Drinking Enough Water

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Summer’s all but over, but it’s no less important to stay hydrated. According to the CDC 43 percent of Americans drink fewer than four glasses of water a day, and while the actual amount you should drink varies from person to person, four glasses probably doesn’t cut it.

That’s where Caktus, a neat Finnish hardware startup that presented at TechLaunch’s second New Jersey demo day, comes into play. Their mission? To fix that dearth of drinking with an app and a curious sensor that straps onto your water bottle.

The sensor (called, adorably enough, the Hug) is a foam-lined gizmo that wraps itself around a water bottle and quietly tracks its motion. It’s not just a pint-sized koozie though — the Hug quietly monitors the bottle’s movements so it can provide its user with a rough idea how much fluid they’ve imbibed so far. Think of it as a giant Jawbone Up that straps onto your water receptacle and you’re on the right track.

As always though, the hardware is only part of the equation. A companion app (iOS only for now) uses an algorithm to suss out which of those motions actually correspond to the user lifting the bottle to drink and which are just noise caused by random movements. The app also tracks ambient temperature and keeps tabs on what sorts of exercise you’re doing (you still have to punch that in yourself) so it can update your hydration goal in real time.

To hear founder Panu Keski-Pukkila tell it, the Hug (and the rest of Caktus) was born out of pure necessity. An avid extreme athlete, he grew used to his girlfriend reminding him to drink more water while he was out carving up slopes in the Alps. When she moved to New York, though, that useful feedback mechanism disappeared and Keski-Pukkila set out to create something that could fill that particular hydro-centric void.

And you know what? As downright kooky as the whole thing sounds, the combo of the Hug sensor and the app actually worked really well. In a brief demo, the sensor was accurately able to determine that roughly two ounces of water were squeezed out of the bottle, and the partner app updated almost immediately. With the Hug, you’re not quantifying yourself so much as you’re quantifying the stuff that goes in your body. That said, the team is taking a proactive approach when it comes to all those fitness-tracking gizmos floating around out there. They’ve already managed to bake in Fitbit support so users won’t have to punch in how many glasses of water they’ve downed in a day.

For now the device is still strictly in its prototype phase, but the team is eagerly working to get the Hug, its partner app, and a dev-friendly API ready for prime time by early next year. So far they’ve locked up $25k in seed funding from the TechLaunch accelerator, and they plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign in early 2014 to lock up the cash necessary to start producing these things en masse.

Why High-Skilled Immigration Reform Is Stuck

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In April, the Senate put together a comprehensive immigration reform bill that was then sent to the House of Representatives where it currently languishes. Once wrapped into the larger comprehensive immigration reform push, high-skilled immigration reform’s success became dependent on the passage of the full bill.

It wasn’t always this way. In the Senate, for example, the Immigration Innovation Act from early 2013 would have raised the hard cap of H-1B visas to 300,000 per year over time, and grant U.S. companies free rein to apply for H-1B visas for workers who graduated from U.S. universities with technical degrees. It was a simple and bipartisan proposal.

It didn’t work. Certain members of the political establishment lined up against the idea of doing immigration reform in pieces. Detractors included former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who wrote an op-ed that included the following bit of language:

Some policy makers are calling for piecemeal changes—such as issuing visas for high-skilled workers and investors, or conferring legal status on immigrants who were illegally brought into the country as children. Congress should avoid such quick fixes and commit itself instead to comprehensive immigration reform.

Following several failed attempts to pass something to help ease high-skilled immigration’s current bottlenecks and difficulties, the issue was wrapped up into what appeared earlier this year to be a possibly functional bipartisan effort to pass quite a bit of reform at once. The Senate got its bill together after extensive horse-trading.

However, once it landed in the House, it was essentially ignored, with the leading party of the lower chamber stating that they wished to work on it in pieces rather than considering the Senate bill as a whole. Since then, little has happened. And as such, high-skilled immigration has stalled.

2012

Given how stuck we now appear to be, it’s worth looking back to when we almost — maybe — had something. Rep. Lamar Smith introduced a bill in late 2012 that would have allowed for 55,000 more green cards each year for foreign STEM graduates of U.S. universities. A modest but perhaps workable idea. However, Rep. Smith included in his proposal the deletion of the green card lottery (which is officially known as the Diversity Visa Program). That’s where the 55,000 figure came from: The green card lottery awards 55,000 visas per year.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren then introduced a similar bill, awarding the same number of visas, but without ending the green card lottery. So Rep. Smith, a Republican, and Rep. Lofgren, a Democrat, had legislation in mind that would add the same number of visas, with only a single difference. Surely something could be worked out? No.

2013

So where are we today? Mired. In late August, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent asked publicly if immigration reform is dead, concluding that:

Ultimately the outcome will turn on whether the GOP leadership allows votes on enough piecemeal measures — or even a vote on a comprehensive House gang of seven bill — to take to conference negotiations; whether the GOP leadership will decide to go to conference at all; and whether the leadership will allow a vote on something out of conference that lacks a majority of Republicans.

Today, that chance appears low. As quoted The Hill this week, Alfonso Aguilar, an activist in favor of comprehensive reform, is concerned over hearing the phrase “if we have time,” regarding progress on the immigration question. If reform of the U.S. immigration system remains a low priority, there will not be enough political will or momentum to do a damn thing.

And that keeps high-skilled immigration moot as a topic, as it has now been lashed aboard the larger immigration wagon of non-change.

There has been a recent media wave of discontented parties bemoaning the slow death of comprehensive reform. Politico wrote “Outside groups try to revive immigration reform,” while The Hill published “Dems tire of waiting on immigration reform.” All this is capped by today’s news that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is in Washington pushing for reform.

As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Zuck discussed reform holistically. Claiming to be “optimistic,” the technology leader went on to state that “addressing the 11 million undocumented folks is a lot bigger problem than high-skilled workers.”

That’s actually true, but it’s impossible to separate the two at the moment as we won’t get one without the other, unless the House moves forward with its plan to do reform in chunks and the Senate agrees to go along with the plan, forsaking its own bill.

What impact might Zuckerberg have on Capitol Hill? There doesn’t appear to be much enthusiasm. Slate’s Dave Weigel has I think the best take on the situation: “Wait so Zuckerberg gave an afternoon panel talk in DC, and that’s gonna bring back immigration reform? Hahahahaha.”

Why This Matters

In the first application period of the 2013 H-1B visa application process, 124,000 requests were filed, shooting past the 85,000 cap for the year in five days. The U.S. government treats the first five days of the application process as a single day, and thus the H-1B visa window closed as quickly as it opened. The demand far outstripped supply.

There are strong voices in favor of high-skilled immigration reform, and there are strong voices in opposition. The pro perspective can in this case be summarized as the corporate view, with companies such as Google and Microsoft calling for change. Back when the Immigration Innovation Act wasn’t dead, both companies wrote blog posts in support of its general tenets. As I reported at the time:

This morning, on the introduction of the Immigration Innovation Act, tech giants Google and Microsoft published blog entries in favor of the proposal. […] According to Google, 40 percent of technology companies that have been founded in the United States, were financed by venture capital, and went public, were founded by immigrants.

Microsoft was explicit:

It’s critical that America address the shortage of workers with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills. There are many high-skilled, high-paying jobs being created by American businesses across the country that are being left unfilled because of this gap.

How fair are the above arguments? Google’s facts are sound – many technology companies were and are founded by immigrants. You can run that math yourself. But is Microsoft’s point that there is a worker gap reasonable? It is commonly argued that the U.S. has a surplus of STEM graduates that are citizens, and that to therefore import talent from abroad harms our local populace. The idea has some merit, but does conflate the ownership of a degree with a certain tier of competence.

One large technology company, I was once told by one of its employees, hires every single applicant that passes its standards testing and interview process. They want all the top-tier talent they can get, and nothing less. So, the problem becomes that, implicitly, our ability to turn out STEM graduates here doesn’t mean that our kids are qualified for the positions that are open. After all, why would companies go through such work and expense to hire foreign workers if they could hire at home?

Also, the idyll that we produce far more computer science graduates, say, than jobs is a bit of a myth. According TownHall, a Bureau of Labor Statistics study indicated that “the economy creates 3 jobs requiring a B.S. in computer science for every one college student graduating with a B.S. in computer science.” So, the idea of importing the best from abroad to augment our home-grown labor force doesn’t appear to be too batty.

That said, we should be sympathetic to those with STEM degrees who are out of work. That empathy, however, should not decide the larger issue.

Finally, speaking more broadly, I view technological progress as an inherent good for human society. That bias colors how I view this issue specifically (though being the grandchild of immigrants isn’t a small part of my perspective, either). The idea that we are keeping away from our shores brilliant minds who want to work and build here is, to me, prima facie ridiculous.

What’s Next

The simple depressing fact is that not only does no one know, but the cynical take might be the accurate perspective in this case. There appears to be little political will to take up immigration reform in the House ahead of the 2014 elections and their potential primary battles on the right. The Senate bill remains moot in the House. And looming crises involving foreign policy and financing government currently engulf our national attention.

I was worried when high-skilled immigration lost its individual agency and was instead strapped to the larger reform push. It could have worked: Momentum in favor of high-skilled reform could have helped propel the comprehensive bill. But here we are, without progress on any immigration front.

And I don’t see that changing.

Top Image Credit: ttarasiuk

Announcing The First Hardware Battlefield Where One Startup Will Win $50,000

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Hardware is king. VCs are investing, hackers are taking notice, and a subculture of “artisinal” design, prototyping, and manufacturing has grown almost overnight. And now we’re looking for some of the best hardware startups in the world to compete in something completely new and completely cool: The TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield.

What is it? It’s a competition to pick the best hardware product. The winner gets $50,000 and, more important, notoriety and access to a group of early adopters who love cool new gear. Like our Disrupt Battlefield we will run the contest in front of a pack of hand-picked judges who will award the prize live on our site. The best thing? The Hardware Battlefield is taking place at CES 2014 in Las Vegas but is open to all comers and you don’t need a conference badge to enter, attend the battlefield events, or simply spectate. Our goal is to find the diamond in the CE rough. We don’t care about Samsung, Sony, and Philips – we care about you.

Entry is free and is open to all hardware companies who are planning to ship product in a six week window before or after January 10. You can still be in prototyping stage but you must have a working, usable product by January 7 and be ready to offer pre-orders on that day or soon thereafter. We recommend launching your crowdsourcing page during the event, however, as it will have maximum impact.

We will have more detail shortly but for now we invite you to submit your product now. The rules are simple:

1. You must launch your product or crowdfunding campaign before January 7.
2. You must be a single proprietor or small company.
3. This must not be a feature update to an existing product.
4. You must be able to attend rehearsals and sessions in Las Vegas prior to CES and during the show.
5. You must launch first with TechCrunch and approach other media after you appear on our stage.

We will pick 15 entrants on October 30 and announce the location, time, and judges closer to the event. The grand prize winner will get $50,000 to go towards research, development, or whatever else a hacker needs to get by.

We are very excited about this new event and we want to make it the best one ever. Remember to email [email protected] if you’d like to sponsor the festivities and if you have any questions email [email protected]. We look forward to seeing what you’re working and we hope to see you in Vegas!

iOS 7 Lock Screen Vulnerability Discovered Which Gives Access To Photos And Social Sharing, Apple Is Working On Fix

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Vulnerabilities in Apple’s iOS lock screens have become a fixture of new iOS releases over the past few years, and iOS 7 is not exempt. A new method for bypassing the passcode on a lock screen has been discovered by idle hands and reported by Forbes’ Andy Greenberg. Update below.

The lock screen bypass method involves sliding up Control Center, tapping on the timer button and holding down the power button until the cancel option comes up. You then tap on the cancel button then double-tap the home button. This gives you access to the multitasking UI. While most apps are locked out, the Camera option is accessible.

This allows you to access the camera interface, but with the ability to scroll through all of the owner’s photos, not just the ones shot in the time since the phone was last locked — in the manner that the camera has worked for some time now.

Not only can you scroll through the photos, but you can also tap on the share button to send photos out via email or social channels like Twitter or Facebook. So once you’re in you can post photos to Flickr or send them via email. Though Greenberg characterizes this as ‘hijacking’ those accounts, that seems a bit dramatic. Still, there is potential for embarrassment or harm if sensitive (ahem) photos get stolen or shared out through your social accounts.

The bypass method has been verified by us to work properly and to not be overly difficult to execute. It took me about three tries to get it right on an iPhone 5 running iOS 7. As Greenberg notes, it’s hard to tell whether this works on an iPhone 5c or iPhone 5s as of yet. Of note: once you’re on the share sheet, you can choose a contact to send the item to, technically gaining access to the contact list (but not their details) of the device’s owner.

Note that this vulnerability is incredibly easy to prevent for now. Just visit Settings>Control Center and toggle off ‘Access on Lock Screen’ to patch it up.

The discovery was made by Jose Rodriguez, a soldier in Spain’s Canary Islands, who has a history of discovering these tricky bypass methods. His secret? Plenty of time waiting in cars in his former job as a driver for government officials.

With past vulnerabilities, a software fix has come in a ‘point’ release of iOS 7. iOS 7.0.1 is already floating out there and contains a fix for Apple’s TouchID fingerprint scanner. So any fix for this would likely come in iOS 7.0.2 or later.

Apple has added a variety of security features to iOS 7, including Activation Lock, which renders stolen phones unusable, even if they’re wiped. But it looks like it needs another lock screen audit just to be sure.

Update: Apple Spokesperson Trudy Muller told TechCrunch that “Apple takes user security very seriously. We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.”

So, yes, the fix for this little bug will come in a future point release of iOS 7.

15Five, The Employee-Manager Feedback Network, Launches 2.0 With Like Buttons, Private Messaging And More

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15Five, a startup backed by the likes of 500 Startups and Yammer’s David Sacks that provides a platform to help the working world communicate better with its managers, has had a dose of its own medicine. Taking feedback collected from its users since its exit from beta in August 2012, the company is today rolling out a rebuilt version 2.0, with a smoother interface, an easier way to get new employees involved, and more features geared at larger groups and teams with matrix reporting structures — that is, teams reporting to more than one manager.

The app, founded and run by David Hassell, is also adding two new investors to the company: CTO and co-founder Dharmesh Shah, whose company is one of 15Five’s customers; and another founder who wants to remain anonymous, but whose startup is also using 15Five. Their investment brings the total raised by 15Five to $1.4 million.

15Five has been picking up steam in the last year, now serving 600 businesses and increasing revenues five-fold. Hassell declines to say how many people are using 15Five within those businesses except to note that they range from small startups to groups at larger organizations like Citrix. Indeed, as with the companies of 15Five’s two newest investors, early adopters of the service have been startups and other tech companies, but that is slowly changing to include bigger organizations and those in other verticals, because everyone can benefit from improved communication at work. This was part of the reason for the new version.

One of the new features creates a separation between users and groups, with users now able to report into different groups led by different managers. This is a way of better representing structures at organizations that follow the matrix-management model. Managers who do not necessarily always work with a particular person can now request to follow them on the platform for periods of time — say, when they are on a project together.

Another new feature — which really should be a part of any collaboration software, and yet so often is not (hello, Convo) — is a “follow-up” section, where users can flag conversations they would like to track. Once something in the follow-up section is finished, it can be moved to another new section for resolved conversations and threads.

15Five has taken a lot of clues from social media in its very conception. After all, the infinite loop of feedback that you can have on sites like Facebook and Twitter has made the idea of providing feedback online in the workplace more natural. In this new version, it has added another feature for people to acknowledge other people’s comments: a “like” button. And you can also comment on it publicly or privately on any post.

There is also an improved inbox-style dashboard to be able to see all your ongoing conversations whether you are a manager or employee.

Hassell says that this new version has been nine months in the making; he calls it his second baby, since right now his partner happens to be around nine months pregnant. But while babies are perfect things, the products of a startup sometimes are not. Hassell has described 15Five more than once to me as a “lean startup.” When the $1 million round was being announced, he even said he intentionally wanted to keep funding low in the early days to make sure that what they were making was matching what users actually wanted and needed.

“We didn’t invest in underlying infrastructure because we did it on a shoestring,” he recalled.

But what that also meant was that in creating version 2.0, the team realised they needed to start from scratch to rebuild the whole platform more flexibly using Python. This is not an easy thing to do, but it was worth it. Hassell says that the new platform gives 15Five a “phenomenal testing framework” that now lets the company make rapid changes when they are needed.

The lean model 15Five adopted from the start has also helped it to learn other things about its users. Hassell likens the tendency for services like 15Five’s to gym memberships, if not done right: “I looked at the gym membership model, and you can see that the reason they do annual plans is because they know all members are unlikely to come in all the time. I was conscious of that, and I wanted to know in real time if people were using and leaving the service.” This is partly why the company decided to offer shorter contracts of usage to businesses.

Initially, he says, churn on the site was 4 percent per month, and “that was too high.” The beta tests of the new platform indicate that now it is well below 2 percent. Similarly, there is the issue of getting people in the workplace to use it. “Compliance doesn’t have to be 100 percent to work, but just has to be enough so that people are using it and getting something out of it,” he says.

Hassell is aware that the use of gamification has become quite trendy in the world of HR, but he has so far resisted incorporating that into the site. “With gamification, you are playing into someone’s psychology to be competitive. But we are focused on how to make this platform so valuable that people feel compelled to use it,” he says.

That said, the company is working on something that sounds more like something from the quantified self movement, he says, by providing more information to employees about their usage statistics on 15Five, and those of the rest of the company. “We’ll build it ourselves and won’t make it quite so bubbly or gamey.”

15Five is $49 per month per business for the first 10 employees, and then $5 per employee per month, with different bulk-pricing options for larger teams. Today there are lots of small companies in the 10-15-user range, he says, and then some bigger customers in the 500-800-employee range, with 20 percent at 50 or more users.

The new version out today is geared toward serving bigger businesses to better serve the Fortune 500 companies that Hassell says 15Five is starting to acquire as customers. But Hassell says 15Five is not yet at the point of expanding its existing self-service model to the “full enterprise” structure that would require larger sales forces and other kinds of infrastructure. That could, however, be the next step after 15Five raises its next round.

Pinterest Will Start Showing Ads As Traffic Keeps Growing But Shifts To Mobile

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After four years, Pinterest is taking its first serious steps towards monetization [Update: as its traffic moves from the web to mobile]. CEO Ben Silbermann today told users “we’re going to start experimenting with promoting certain pins” because “it’s so important that Pinterest is a service that will be here to stay.” The announcement signals a shift from web growth to mobile growth and business for Pinterest.

The initial tests of ads will be in search results and categories feeds. For example, when you search for Halloween, you might see a costume on sale at a local shop that had pinned the outfit. The format follows in the footsteps of other social advertising successes like Facebook and Twitter. Both similarly let businesses amplify the reach of their organic content by paying for “promotion”.

Where Pinterest Is Now: Mobile

Pinterest was founded in 2009 to let people collect and share links and photos of things they love. For a detailed analysis of its history, check out our piece “The Pinterest Roadmap Revealed”. It explains how Pinterest hit a rapid growth period in 2011 causing significant scaling challenges. In 2012 it focused on mobile, and 2013 has been about adding value to pins in the form of context, purchase links, and related content.

In 2011 and 2012 Pinterest worked with analytics company SkimLinks to track traffic it was driving to ecommerce sites and earn small referral fees. Despite rumors it was earning significant revenue from the partnership, we heard the income was relatively small. Pinterest stopped working SkimLinks awhile back, lending credence to the idea that referral fees weren’t enough to support the company long-term.

That’s why Pinterest has had to raise $338 million in total funding, with its latest $200 million Series D led by Valiant Capital Partners, and joined by Andreessen HorowitzBessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital. That capital has helped it scale its team, product, and engineering to accommodate the sizable user base it’s amassed.

comScore pegs Pinterest.com at 46.9 million monthly unique visitors  worldwide as of July, down from a high of 54.2 million in April. The analytics firm says Pinterest.com had 3.8 million average daily visitors in July. Its users skew significantly female compared to the rest of the web. They’re somewhat centered in the 15-34 years old demographic, but Pinterest is relatively balanced across ages. 60% of its traffic comes from the United States with 25.6 million monthly US uniques in August down from 29.4 million April, while 20% comes from Europe, and 10% comes from Asia Pacific.

Fellow analytics service Compete places Pinterest’s US monthly unique visitors at 29.6 million, down from 32.2 million in May, mirroring comScore’s signals that Pinterest’s web traffic is fading. Quantcast’s numbers look a bit more erratic, but also show a drop from April and May to now.

Note that it’s not clear what Pinterest’s mobile user count is, though it has between 10 million and 50 million installs on Android according to Google Play. Users may simply be shifting the way they access the service.

[Update: My hunch was correct. Pinterest is experiencing the shift to mobile. While its web traffic may be declining, mobile and its total traffic is growthing briskly. After asking whether its total traffic was in decline, or only its web traffic, a company spokesperson supplied this statement:

“The world is going mobile and we’re excited about that trend. Traffic continues to grow, breaking records consistently month over month and week over week. Mobile usage became the majority of traffic last summer and continues to grow in absolute numbers and as a percentage of traffic, which may account for third party discrepancies in measurement.”

We’ve seen this same shift play out for Facebook and other companies, and Pinterest will have to grapple with the same changes including thinking mobile-first for product.]

Though Pinterest isn’t nearly as large as Facebook or Twitter, the referral traffic it drives is lauded for its ability to inspire purchases. Now it’s time to use that reputation to seduce ad buys from brands and small businesses.

The Pinterest Ads Game Plan

Pinterest is working with a select group of brands to pilot its ads experiment, and at first they won’t pay for the promotion. Pinterest wants to make sure the ads work well first and deliver value to advertisers without disturbing users.

To that end Silbermann defused fears, writing “I know some of you may be thinking, ‘Oh great…here come the banner ads.’ But we’re determined to not let that happen.”

Specifically, he lays out that the ads will be:

  • Tasteful—No flashy banners or pop-up ads.
  • Transparent—We’ll always let you know if someone paid for what you see, or where you see it.
  • Relevant—These pins should be about stuff you’re actually interested in, like a delicious recipe, or a jacket that’s your style.
  • Improved based on your feedback—Keep letting us know what you think, and we’ll keep working to make things better.

Along with building out a sales team, Pinterest will need to do exhaustive analysis to find the right balance of ads and organic content that earns revenue but doesn’t scare users away. Expect it to err on the conservative side at first. It will also need to learn to measure return on investment for its advertisers by determining which ad views and clicks lead to purchases.

If it follows the Facebook and Twitter playbook, Pinterest will first hold the hands of big advertisers as they run experimental campaigns. It would then enlarge the private test of managed sales advertising to encompass more brands. Next it would look to create a self-serve tool open to all businesses wishing to advertise. Meanwhile it would set up an ads API that would let big brands and developers build tools for running huge, efficient ad campaigns efficiently.

Nesting As A Business

Pinterest is one of many Silicon Valley startups hoping to gain traction first and figure out monetization later. Most never achieve the former and fold before they get to the latter. But Pinterest found a place in the hearts, bookmarks, and home screens of many by translating our collecting and nesting instincts to the digital world.

You might never be able to afford that dress, that car, or that vacation home, but there’s satisfaction in simply saying “this defines me”. Now it just needs to convince advertisers of the value of a spot in our homes of 1s and 0s.

[Image Credit]