German Proposal For Search Engines To Pay For Displaying Publishers’ Text Snippets Gets 2nd Reading, Google Rails Against “Mad Law”

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Google is sounding a warning klaxon about a proposed law change in Germany which aims to strengthen copyright law for press publishers by requiring search engines and online news aggregators to pay a royalty to display snippets of copyrighted text — such as the first paragraph of an article displayed within a Google News search. If the ancillary copyright law passes, fines would be imposed for unlicensed use of publishers’ snippets.

The draft ancillary copyright law (online here in German) gets its second reading today (German law requires three readings before a law can be passed), and is backed by the majority of the governing coalition — having being included in the coalition agreement between the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party.

Currently displaying text snippets is free and legal in Germany so Google argues that the proposed amendement is a complete legal reversal. The issue is known as ‘Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger‘ in German, and has also colloquially been dubbed a ‘Google tax’.

Mountain View is of course ideologically opposed to the proposal — calling it a “mad law” and arguing that it breaks the “founding principle” of the Web’s hyperlink-based architecture. From a business perspective the company questions why it should have to pay for helping publishers to acquire readers.  ”We are bringing massive traffic to the publishers’ websites,” Google Germany spokesman Dr. Ralf Bremer told TechCrunch. “We cannot see a reason why we should pay them for bringing them the readers.”

Setting aside the inconvenience to its business, Google also argues that the law will be damaging for web users because it will make it harder for them to find German documents because the context provided through use of snippets will be lost. Why should German publishers be treated differently to other publishers, it says. There’s no question of Google agreeing to pay for the snippets — you can imagine the company viewing that path as a slippery slope leading to an avalanche of copyright claims falling on its head.

There’s little doubt Google is being directly targeted by the proposed law. It specifically cites search engines as the target entity for the additional publisher “protection” — and Google is far and away the dominant search engine in Germany. But Mountain View claims the law is not just going to cause it pain — but could also apply more broadly to other online companies and startups that make use of text snippets.

The text of the current draft of the law states that the proposed protection “is only against systematic access to the publishing performance by the search engine providers” (translated from German via Google Translate) – and goes on to add that other web users are not included (“such as Blogger, other industrial companies in the economy, Associations, law firms and private and voluntary users”). However Google says the wording of the draft law also references “suppliers of search engines and suppliers of such services, who process content similar to search engines” as falling within its remit — a vague definition that it says could even apply to social networks.

“The question — which services are meant by the latter [portion of the draft law’s wording] — is controversially debated. The latest interpretations, we have seen, assume that Twitter, Facebook and the like will also be affected,” said Bremer. He argues that every web service or information-based startup that wants to use publishers’ snippets could potentially be affected — adding that many such companies won’t have ‘Google-levels of resources’ to ensure they are able to comply.

“As soon as this law comes into place there will have to changes made by every platform working on the web,” he said. “It’s not just a law about Google… it’s about the entire startup scene that we have in Germany, and especially in Berlin. Because potentially every company that works on the web has to deal with snippets, more or less, in their business.”

“From the day this law comes into place, every company that wants to use these snippets… would have to reach out to publishers and call them individually — ‘hi, can you please allow me to use your snippets and what do I have to pay for that?’ And if you understand there are more than 1,200 publishers you can imagine that it is simply not possible,” he added.

Another problem with the draft law, as Google tells it, is that it does not nail down the definition of a snippet — meaning it would be left to courts to decide whether a snippet means a few sentences, a few words or even just a URL. “It is not even sure the pure hyperlinks are free because some hyperlinks contain part of the text,” Bremer added.

If the law is passed — and Bremer concedes it looks likely, thanks to the backing of the governing coalition – Google says it would have to pull German snippets from search results. Setting aside the ideological position of not being willing to pay for something it believes should be free to use, it argues that the legal risk of displaying snippets when the law is so ambiguous would be too “fraught”.

According to Bremer Germany’s big publishing houses originally lobbied for the law change. He describes them as politically well connected — and also points out that it’s an election year in Germany this year, arguing that politicians are more likely to want to cosy up to publishers than counter their wishes. “Pressure from the publishers is really high to get this law done within the coming months,” he said.

Bremer said today’s second reading — which will involve input from a panel of eight experts (ostensibly independent but three of whom Google argues “belong to the publishers’ lobby”) and at which Mountain View has not been invited to speak – could be “the last change to get this law off the table or to shape it in a way that is not so dangerous today for the web architecture”. Google’s hope, says Bremer, is for the governing coalition to listen to the views of the independent experts and think again.

“The arguments against this law are very strong. The arguments for this law are very weak,” he added.

So what about the arguments for the proposed law? German publisher Axel Springer – whose publications include the newspapers Die Welt and Bild — is an active supporter of the proposals. Asked to respond to Google’s arguments against the copyright extension, Christoph Keese, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Public Affairs for the company and chair of the joint copyright committee of Germany’s newspaper and magazine association, told TechCrunch that “Google’s statements are unfair and disproportionate” and “in no way represent what this law is really about”.

Keese also rebutted criticisms about the potential scope of the law, claiming it will “have no effect on the right to quote or link”, and that “citations and links stay free”.

He continued:

It is neither “mad” nor will it harm users, the internet, open society or information pluralism. To the contrary: This reform brings German copyright law much closer to the US concept where publishers traditionally enjoy strong rights. Over here publishers have no rights on their own to this very date even though music, film, television and performing arts have enjoyed ancillary rights since the mid sixties.

What this reform does is very simple: It establishes on opt-in model for commercial copies of content and parts of content. This will lead to license agreements between publishers and aggregators.

On the specific point about the impact on startups, Keese argued that being as the pricing for licensing the snippets will be “reasonable” then “no business model shall be discouraged”, adding:

We have carefully considered impact on the thriving start-up culture especially in Berlin. There will be no negative effects. To the contrary: New innovative business models will arrive built on legally licensed content. Even before the law comes to effect we observe rising demand by start ups seeking investment and licensing opportunities.

This law will help establish a market for aggregator content which at the moment is non-existent. Google (>90% market share) displays monopolistic behavior by trying to impose its legal view on publishers to protect its margin. While publishers respect Google’s technological and entrepreneurial achievements we are not prepared to give content away for free. Search indexing is more than welcome. But aggregators have gone far beyond that.

The royalty rate that publishers would charge has not been determined yet. On the question of pricing, Keese said: “Parliament has not decided yet if it wants the right to be exercised through a collecting society or not. Absent this decision it would be premature to speculate about pricing.”

Why Did $AAPL Stock Go Down After Beating Earnings Estimates And $AMZN Stock Go Up After Missing?

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Editor’s note: Howard Lindzon is co-founder and CEO of StockTwits, a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. You can read his full bio here and find him on Twitter @howardlindzon.

If we had the answer to this question, life would be grand. Grander if we knew the reaction to the answer beforehand.

The moves in different directions for Amazon and Apple have been about expectations and guidance. Wall Street has higher expectations for Apple and ‘different’ expectations for Amazon. Wall Street wants Apple’s ‘gross margins’ to grow. They don’t expect Amazon’s ‘profits’ to grow. It sounds silly, but if Apple has reported lower profits and a huge gross margin increase the stock might have shot up. If Amazon had reported record profits today on decreasing margins, Wall Street might have panicked.

Learning the language of the market is not easy. Wall Street loves it that way. If Spanish or Chinese were easy to learn, every American would speak it. The stock market is all about supply/demand, earnings, expectations and mood. The financial media is about headlines. I have spent over 25 years investing and trading and the dirty secret is that survival is about risk management. The best of the best are wrong 50 percent of the time.

Apple and Amazon have been fantastic investments if you have owned them for the last 10 years. Recently Apple has been the ugly duckling of Wall Street. The mood has soured on Apple. It is in uncharted territory as the largest and most profitable company in the world. There is no possible way that Wall Street can predict the earnings, margins, or growth of Apple, let alone the mood of the market one year forward. But… they will try. They have expectations and they get set to spreadsheets.

Those that own Apple (I do) point to the cash balance and earnings and declare the market is rigged or broken (I don’t). Wall Street has stopped caring about Apple’s profits today. They were displeased with forward guidance. Growth rates have slowed measurably at Apple which is understandable for a company of its’ size. Wall Street is worried that growth is slowing and competition from Google and Samsung are taking a toll. Apple has given Wall Street so many wonderful surprises so magic has become the norm. Now that Apple is boring, they have run for the hills.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been able to avoid the ‘profit’ seeking eye of Wall Street analysts. Jeff Bezos has done a miraculous job keeping Wall Street focused on sales growth, market share, the cloud, and now with today’s announcement… margins. Amazon reported margins of 24.1 percent and that was the number that made Wall Street happy.

Next quarter things could change.  But I would keep an eye on the gross margin direction of Apple and Amazon until profits come back in vogue. Got it?

The 17 Winners Of The Facebook, Gates Foundation’s Education App Contest Are Making College Easier

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Back in September, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched a contest that aimed to challenge entrepreneurs and app developers to build awesome, innovative education apps on Facebook’s platform. The so-called College Knowledge Challenge kicked off with an EdTech hackathon co-hosted by the Gates Foundation and Facebook, located at the social network’s headquarters in Menlo Park.

As Josh wrote at the time, the contest called on developers of all ages to create apps that “build pathways to college, build peer groups for in-coming college students and assist with college admission and securing financial aid.”

The co-hosts distributed $18K in hackathon prizes in September, with the winners of the overall challenge vying to earn one of the $100,000 grand prizes. Today, The Gates Foundation and Facebook announced the 17 startups and apps that will be taking home those grand prizes. [For more, see below.]

But first, while social technologies are certainly a fundamental part of the ongoing seachange currently taking place in education, one might ask, why encourage developers and entrepreneurs to build for Facebook? Instead, it might seem as if we should be encouraging builders to focus on disrupting archaic K-12 infrastructures, encouraging WiFi support and penetration in schools, helping low-income students to smart, digital devices and Internet access and push computer science and technology education into the core curriculum of our schools.

To that point, Gates Foundation Deputy Director of Education Stacey Childress said at the time that “social networking sites are emerging as critical platforms for students — and low-income students especially — to allow them to build social capital outside the boundaries of their neighborhoods. Facebook contribues not only to academic success but their persistence as well … They feel more connected and are more likely to stay in school.”

In turn, technology has proven its ability to democratize the access and distribution of information and Elliot Schrage, VP of Public Policy at Facebook added that Facebook’s Open Graph sharing system reduces friction and gives young people the opportunity to have their content or experiences go viral. Bringing social networking and education together, he said, has the power to use sharing to transform the way students live their lives and the way they learn.

The Challenge focuses on developing apps for low-income and first-generation college students in particular, and many of the contest’s winners seek to capitalize on a growing trend within education technology: The personalization of the learning process, especially within the framework of education targeted at low-income and first-generation college students.

But, without further ado, meet the 17 winners of the College Knowledge Challenge, with basic information about the startups copied below:

Applyful — Currently in private beta, Applyful is a collaborative college selection platform, designed for college applicants to collect and share information with one another on the road to choosing a college. As applicants use Applyful to manage research during the application process, Applyful surfaces trends and insights to encourage more informed decision-making, while developing peer groups to offer support and broaden one another’s horizons.

Career Connect by ConnectEDU & CareerVillage — The Career Connect app is a partnership between ConnectEDU, a technology company committed to connecting the world’s learners to life’s possibilities through clear education-to-career pathways, and CareerVillage, an edtech venture that creates social games that prepare students for careers. The Facebook app creates a forum for students to get answers to their college and career planning questions by leveraging their social network. Questions are searchable by any topic and multiple app users can respond to each question.

Coach Me, Beyond 12 — Beyond 12 is a technology-based service organization dedicated to increasing the number of underserved students who graduate from college. The startup’s new app, CoachMe, aims to provide college students with automated alerts delivered to their mobile devices and Facebook accounts to help them keep track of key deadlines. Students will be rewarded, in the form of badges, for completion and mastery of certain tasks and skills, and will be able to share their successes, challenges and key lessons learned with their support network and peers. Ultimately, CoachMe will bridge the “information gap” and help students master the activities, behaviors and habits that increase their success in college – and beyond.

College Abacus — The Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced that College Abacus has given net price calculators “the Kayak treatment”; much as Kayak.com created the “search one and done” experience for travel, College Abacus is the free one-stop search for comparing higher education pricing. Now available in Spanish and English, College Abacus allows college-bound students and their families to search and compare net prices – tuition and fees minus grant aid – across more than 2500 schools (and counting).

CollegeGO by The College Board — The College Board is a not-for-profit membership organization whose mission is to connect students to college opportunity and success. The College Board’s “CollegeGo” mobile app is an interactive college action plan that puts under-served students on the path to college enrollment by helping them explore the key components of effective college planning: academics, career discovery, college exploration, paying, and applying. The app takes a step-by-step approach through the process, visualizes student progress, and includes a built-in support and encouragement system.

CollegeZen by The College People — The College People LLC a Pittsburgh based company started by former higher education administrator Wahab Owolabi and Carnegie Mellon University engineering student Neil Soni with the mission of creating software to increase college access and provide tools for education administrators. Their first product CollegeZen.com is a community centered web application that simplifies the college search, decision, and funding process while enhancing the experience for prospective students and parents with the belief that there is a perfect college for every student.

The FAFSA Community by NerdScholar — The NerdScholar FAFSA Community App will create a Facebook-enabled support network of students, parents, and administrators. This resource will aim to increase the FAFSA completion rate among low income and first-generation college students. By promoting a social community and the support of a peer network, NerdScholar aims to improve financial literacy and enable any student to achieve their college goals. NerdScholar is a service of NerdWallet, empowering students to make better decisions about their higher education.

FastForward by Unigo — FastForward helps high school students, community college students and any college student struggling with their future plans to: visualize potential career paths; develop personalized college/career action plans; and locate resources for taking action. FastForward puts the student in the context of various career paths, using their own photos and Facebook timeline as a starting point for exploration, discovery and planning of careers. Unigo adds FastForward to its growing collection of tools, http://www.unigo.com, one of the largest college resources on the web.

GradBadge by GradGuru — GradGears’ mission is to increase completion rates among community college students and accelerate their path to completion. We build student-centered products that increase retention, reduce drop-out rates, and accelerate students’ academic success. Our first product is GradGuru, your community college advisor in your pocket. Through earning badges, GradBadge helps enrolled community college students more easily understand and learn from their peers what behaviors lead to faster completion. GradBadge leverages the GradGuru platform, Mozilla Open Badges and Facebook.

I’m First by The Center for Student Opportunity — Center for Student Opportunity (CSO) is a national nonprofit empowering first-generation college students on the path to and through college. Our I’m First project is collecting pledges and stories from first-generation college graduates—and students who will be—to inspire the next generation of students who will be first. The I’m First web application will feature tools and resources to help aspiring first-generation college students and their supporters take the steps necessary to pursue and succeed in college.

Logrado by Mission Control Center — Logrado is a social-mobile guidance system to support students in accessing, persisting in and completing college. Students use their mobile phone or Facebook to access interactive missions that guide them through critical steps in preparing for college. Missions leverage Facebook as students collaborate with peers and form personal success teams of family, mentors and friends for encouragement. Logrado enables schools and college access programs to improve the quality and scale of guidance, communication and individualized support for low-income and first generation students.

PossibilityU by Cambium Enterprises — PossibilityU is an online program designed to help students find the college that fits – academically, socially and financially. Its blended learning curriculum and data driven tools are designed to give context to the $1 Million decision that each high school student makes, often with less than 1 hour of individual guidance. The company uses technology to personalize each students search, to visualize important trade-offs in the process, and to persuade them to stay on time/on track.

Raise by Raise Labs — Raise Labs is rethinking how college scholarships are accessed and distributed, particularly for low-income and first-generation college students. The Raise platform enables high school students to earn “micro-scholarships” towards college starting in 9th grade based on their individual achievements and progress towards graduation. Raise helps students pursue their college ambitions with confidence and adds transparency to the scholarships process.

Step2College — Step2College aims to make the college-going process more transparent, cooperative and easier to navigate for all students, and particularly for underprivileged youth. We will build an app that provides a comprehensive and resource-rich list of college readiness tasks which are specific and personalized to the user’s needs, including state-specific requirements. Our app will leverage social media platforms such as Facebook so students can publish the completion of their tasks, connect with friends and access additional functions.

Transfer Bootcamp by The Melville Institute — Transfer Bootcamp is an online guidance application for students seeking to transfer from community college to a four-year university. We build a plan for each student to help them identify their unique goals, graduate from community college on time, select the right courses for transfer and to better understand their financial aid options. Transfer Bootcamp will eliminate the confusion of community college transfer and make higher-education accessible for millions of students.

What’s Your Road by Roadtrip Nation — Roadtrip Nation started in 2001 when a group of friends took a Roadtrip with this simple idea: talk to people who do what they love, and you’ll get a better understanding of how to build a life you love. What started as a Roadtrip sparked a documentary series, live campus events, a video archive of hundreds of interviews, and most recently, curricula and resources to help at-risk students in disadvantaged communities gain access and exposure to life pathways. Roadtrip Nation’s latest endeavor, “What’s Your Road?”, is a virtual roadtrip experience (in Facebook) where youth explore pathways aligned with their aspirations and connect with mentors in those fields.

Zombie College by Get Schooled — Get Schooled is a non-profit that engages and motivates students using the media, technology and popular culture integral to their lives. It has designed Zombie College, an app that will be as entertaining as it is educational. The game has a low barrier to entry – no complex instructions – and is played in short bursts. The twist? The Zombie College game map is the college going map. Students will continually play the game because it is an “addicting game”, while internalizing the key steps to go to college.

Michael Dell Seeking Majority Control Of Dell Inc., Contributing As Much As $1 Billion Of His Own Personal Funds

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Michael Dell is trying to get control of Dell, Inc. with as much as $1 billion of his own personal funds. His goal: shift the company’s focus from PC sales to a more enterprise-focused company that can operate without the pressures of being publicly traded.

According to Bloomberg, Dell, who now owns 15.7 percent of the company, may contribute between $500 million to $1 billion to the buyout led by Silver Lake Management with potential support from Microsoft Corp. With the personal investment, Dell’s value in the company would be $3.45 billion.

With the investment, Dell’s contribution would be more than half of the total “$8 billion to $9 billion equity check, with the remainder of the takeover financed by debt and possibly some of the $11 billion of cash Dell reported it had as of Sept. 30. Silver Lake and Microsoft would invest $1 billion to $2 billion each, said the people with knowledge of the talks.”

For its part, Silver Lake has raised about $15 billion. According to sources, Bloomberg reports that the deal would put Dell’s value at about $23 billion to $24 billion, priced at $14 a share.

I like Dell’s cloud strategy. At initial glance it looks like the right mix of services for customers that want to use a more elastic infrastructure.

Box CEO Aaron Levie tweeted recently about what it says when a company like Dell has to go private to innovate. In any case, it’s pretty damn exciting for someone like Michael Dell to make such an aggressive move for control of a company he started in his college dorm room so long ago.

Report: 2,277 Private Tech Companies Were Acquired For Over $46.8B in 2012; Google And Facebook Were Most Active Acquirers

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Private company M&A database CB Insights released a number of interesting data points tonight in a report focusing on M&A transactions in the technology sector. According to the report, 2,277 private tech companies acquired in 2012. The acquisitions of public tech companies (i.e. Priceline buying Kayak) were not included. You can check out the full report here.

In terms of pricing, $46.8 billion was the total price tag of 331 private companies acquired in 2012 (for those disclosing valuations and financials of the deals). Clearly this number would be much higher if incorporating the financials of those which were not disclosed. The report shows that 50 percent of exits are less than $50 million. Of the group, there were only eight $1 billion private tech companies acquired in 2012 (2.5 percent of all transactions). In fact, 80 percent of transactions were less than $200 million.

Of the 2,277 companies bought in the year, 94 percent of them were acquired by strategic acquirers, with the remaining 6 percent taken out by private equity firms. And 76 percent of tech companies acquired in 2012 had not raised investment prior to acquisition.

By sector, web and mobile commerce saw the most acquisitions, followed by advertising, sales and marketing and online news and information.

No big surprise — Google and Facebook were the most active acquirers in 2012. Both did 12 private tech company acquisitions each. According to the CB Insights data, Facebook did more talent acquisitions (five in the year). Cisco and Google disclose valuations and financials most often. Following Google and Facebook, Cisco, Groupon, Twitter, And Oracle rounded out the top six in terms of quantity of private tech company acquisitions.

Another non-surprise from the report — California saw the most private tech companies acquired in 2012. The state had more private tech companies acquired in 2012 than the next five states combined. New York came in second followed by Texas and Massachusetts. New York saw the highest share of Internet acquisitions.

The UK led international markets with the most private tech company acquisitions in 2012 followed by Canada and India.

So what’s the forecast for 2013? “With cash stockpiles of big tech companies and as non-tech companies see ‘software eating the world,’ expect a busy 2013.” In related reading, check out CB Insights’ report on VC funding and deals in 2012.

Foodspotting CEO Alexa Andrzejewski On The $10 Million Sale To OpenTable, And The Importance Of Telling Your Startup’s Story [TCTV]

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The startup world woke up to some exciting news this morning, with the $10 million cash sale of restaurant dish photo sharing and recommendation app Foodspotting to online restaurant reservation giant OpenTable.

So were very pleased to have Foodspotting co-founder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski stop by TechCrunch TV this afternoon (after what was certainly a very long day) to give us the scoop on the deal and what’s next for Foodspotting now that it’s part of a larger company. First, she said, the good news for Foodspotting’s several million users is that the app is not going anywhere — OpenTable is committing to keeping it intact and continuing its development.

But I especially liked hearing about what Andrzejewski learned as a startup CEO, now looking back just after attaining the highly-sought-after “exit.” Here’s a bit of what she said:

“For me the big thing was just being driven by a clear vision, and getting people excited about that vision, and being able to tell great stories. Back four years ago when I started, it was just the seeds of this idea. And the most important thing was communicating that to other people and saying, ‘Are you excited about this idea, would you use something like this?’ Being able to find a cofounder was about telling a great story, like, ‘I have this vision for this app whwere you can find bacon milkshakes or okonomiyaki. Would you want to help build this with me?’ Throughout the way, meeting investors was about finding a great story, meeting potential acquirers was about figuring out a great story, saying, ‘What would this look like if we could work together?’ And crafting that story with the team we were working with.

I think the one thing that I’ve learned is that the most important thing you can do as a founder is talk about your idea publicly. Don’t try to keep it held back. And share your story with everyone who will listen, because you never know who you’ll meet or connect with on any day.”

The entire interview was very interesting, so please watch the video embedded above to see Andrzejewski talk about where Foodspotting will go next, the company’s history of pretty amazing parties, that highly-hyped “crackdown” on people taking photos in restaurants, what her favorite (non-foodie) app of the moment is, and more.

Samsung Did Not Willfully Infringe On Apple Patents, Says Judge Lucy Koh

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In the latest development in a long and complicated series of ongoing lawsuits between the two companies, Judge Lucy Koh has found that Samsung did not willfully infringe Apple patents. Last August, a jury ruled in favor of Apple, awarding the Cupertino company $1.05 billion in damages after it found Samsung guilty of infringing on patents for features including the ’380 “bounce back” scrolling functionality. Samsung’s lawyers asked Koh to consider whether or not the ruling could be challenged during the post-verdict proceedings. While Koh overturned the jury’s ruling that Samsung’s acts of patent infringement were willful, she denied Samsung’s motion for a new trial. This means that she also denied Apple any damages enhancement for willful infringement, which could have resulted in a tripling of parts of the award, according to Foss Patents’ post detailing the case’s background and analyzing Koh’s latest ruling.

The Verge has posted a PDF copy of Koh’s ruling.

City Authorities Confirm Apple R&D Center Will Open In Shanghai This Summer

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According to a report in the China Business News (link via Google Translate), the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce has confirmed that Apple will open an R&D and procurement management facility in the city this summer. Apple has been emailed for comment.

The facility will consist of three buildings in Pudong district that will cost Apple a total of $8 million in rent each year. According to Tech In Asia, Apple posted Shanghai-area job listings on third-party HR sites on January 27. The positions it wants to fill include an AppleCare team manager, SPS business analyst, and an admin assistant for the Apple Online Store.

The new Shanghai R&D center is yet another sign of how important China is to Apple’s growth. Earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook said during a visit to China that the country, now Apple’s second largest market, will soon become its most important. In a data sheet it released with its earnings report last week, Apple started breaking out China as a standalone region after including it for years in a group called “Asia-Pacific.” Apple’s revenue from China jumped 67% year-over-year to $6.8 billion and in the company’s earnings call, chief financial officer Peter Oppeheimer said the company established a new operating segment for China “given the contribution of that region to our business.

Chief Game Designer Brian Reynolds Leaves Zynga

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Another key member of Zynga’s team has left the beleaguered social game maker. This time it’s chief game designer Brian Reynolds, as reported on Bloomberg. The company confirmed Reynolds’ departure, but did not offer any details about why Reynolds is leaving or his last day. In a statement, Steve Chiang, president of games, said:

“Brian has a long history in the game industry and has been a great partner to the creative leaders at Zynga. I want to thank him for his leadership of the Zynga Baltimore studio in the design and development of FrontierVille, which brought many innovations to social gaming. We appreciate Brian’s contribution and we’re proud of the deep bench of creative leaders who are leading the next wave of game innovation at Zynga. We wish Brian the best in his next chapter.”

Reynold has worked at Zynga since 2009, when he was hired to found and lead Zynga East in Baltimore. Prior to that, he was a co-founder and the CEO of Big Huge Games. Reynolds was a lead designer on games including Civilization II and Alpha Centauri.

This is the latest in a series of high profile executive exits over the past year. In November, treasurer Mike Gupta left to take on a new role as vice president of corporate finance and treasurer at Twitter. Gupta’s exit came the same week as CFO Dave Wehner, who left Zynga to take a job at Facebook. Other resignations since summer 2012 include COO John Schappert, infrastructure CTO Allan Leiwand, chief creative officer Mike Verdu, chief marketing and revenue officer Jeff Karp, chief security officer Nils Puhlmann, among others. In addition, the company also had a mass layoff in October, including the closing of its Boston office. Zynga replenished its executive roster with a series of new hires, but the company’s shares have struggled over the past year, falling more than 80% since the beginning of March.

Zynga has been emailed for comment.

Intuit’s New Payments Directions In NFC, Passbook And Facebook Revealed In 20+ New Products

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Yesterday Intuit took a step into social commerce with the acquisition of the team, technology and patents of social payments startup Payvment. Today, it’s revealing more about how it plans to expand its services into new areas to complement its bread-and-butter business of payrolls and accounting software, with over 20 new products. They include those in payments technologies using NFC and Apple’s Passbook, consumer-focused big data apps, and new products for its Mint financial-management range.

A handful are getting launched this year and some tomorrow, while the rest are still in the experimental phase, Mint says.

Although today’s event is happening one day after the Payvment acquisition, Intuit tells me that’s more coincidence than intentional, but taken together they point to how the company is trying to be more aggressive and innovative about how it plans to develop its product lines going forward.

The various products were unveiled at an innovations showcase at Intuit’s HQ in Mountain View. Here is a rundown of some of the more interesting among them, with some comments from CEO Brad Smith on the wider trends that they speak to:

Facebook marketing (experiment). This is one area where Intuit may expand on Payvment’s technology in  social commerce and advertising, the two services that Payvment already offered to businesses. Here the idea will be to use Intuit’s mobile and online commerce platform, GoPayment, to push out discounts to customers via Facebook after they make a payment, facilitating repeat purchases.

Brad Smith, Intuit’s CEO, confirmed that Payvment’s technology will be going here, but also into other areas in Intuit’s portfolio. “We were most excited about exploring the opportunities,” he said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We wanted to get the team on board; it was an acqui-hire in that sense. Facebook marketing is one of several areas they will work on but what I like is how they can bring the social aspect into other areas.”

Optical Card Scanning (launching on Wednesday). This is a new extension for GoPayment, where users will now be able to use a smartphone or a tablet’s camera to scan cards for payment, rather than use the swiper. This is similar to the service provided by PayPal’s Card.io.

I asked Smith whether he thought the mobile payments space would inevitably consolidate, given how many players are built on the Square model of dongles-and-mobile-devices. “Mobile payments right now is not a zero sum game,” he said, noting that 55 percent of businesses in the U.S. still don’t accept credit cards. “We are going to have tons of category growth, but it will come down to who has the best overall value proposition. Payments have to work with banks, accounting packages, and so on. We have all that. That’s why I feel good about our package. We have an ecosystem that supports payment. Consolidation will come down to a handful of people, but it will be about people who have the ecosystem and scale.”

Passbook Discounts (experiment). This will be Intuit’s first foray into Apple’s Passbook loyalty and coupon/ticket aggregating service. Similar to its Facebook marketing experiment, Intuit will use Passbook to push discounts to would-be customers; here the idea is to make the service location-based and send them out when they are near a particular store via geo-fencing technology.

NFC (experiment). Yes, Intuit is looking to take the NFC plunge, but it is still in the process of figuring out if the technology is something that its customers would actually prefer to use instead of cards. “I can’t say it’s inevitable but it’s one potential scenario,” said Smith. “Whether we’re looking at NFC or the dongle, we’re casting all those scenarios. We need to have a bet in all of them but then let the market decide who will win. It’s the power of customer data. Not opinion.”

QuickBooks Online (launching). This is one of several products where Intuit is looking to add more social services. Here, the company is expanding its invoice service QuickBooks to 40 markets, and in the localizing effort, it’s adding a wiki-style, crowdsourced element to let locals contribute new data to help others in their regions. Generation Demandforce, Intuit’s automated marketing tool, now will give its users access to an online community to “connect and share unique insights with thousands of other business marketers.”

“Social is huge for us,” said Smith. “We are looking at trends and how they will shift in the next 10 years and how companies will operate. And what we’ve found is that we no longer want to be consumers. We want to be participants: we choose what we want so we have to make our products configurable from actions to interactions. When you have 60 million customers who can share their wisdom, it can help power people as individuals.”

Data Connections (experiment). The idea here is to develop a big data-based service for small businesses and individuals. Using anonymized data from across Intuit’s 60 million existing customers, individuals will be able to get insights into how particular businesses or business segments are performing.

“We see data as one of two things,” Smith told me. “The first is that it helps you do more things and the second is that it delivers new insights to help you improve your life, using data to get a better return on investment. Very few people have the data we have: We process 40 percent of the U.S.’s tax returns; we pay 1 in 12 Amercians, and we’re the fifth-largest bank in the nation based on bank data. So with users’ permission we can produce a lot of interesting insights.”

The full list of products covered today by Intuit:
QuickBooks Online Global
TurboTax CPA Select
Mint Home and Business
Purchase Rewards
GoPatient (a mobile companion app for doctors’ patient portals that lets patients refill subscriptions, see lab results, make appointments and pay their bills)
Data Connections
Tablet Banking (this is taking a current iPad app to Android)
Intuit Payment Network
Intuit Partner Platform
QBO Cloud Ecosystem
QuickBooks Financing
Snap Payroll
Health Debit Card
Live Customer Community
SnapTax Expanded Capabilities
TurboTax CPA
TurboTax for iPad
TurboTax Military Edition
TurboTax Refund Tracker

FCC Documents Reveal A Smaller, More Powerful Apple TV Is Coming Soon

apple-tv-fcc

There’s a new Apple TV on the way. Per these FCC documents, the new model is physically slightly smaller and as noted by TheNextWeb, rocks an A5X SoC. With the faster core, the new model should provide a better user experience with a smoother UI and improved app performance. Plus, with the recent Apple TV update that added a bunch of features, it seems the Apple is about to make another assault on the living room.

In traditional FCC fashion, the documents fail to reveal anything tantalizing about the upcoming model. There’s no mention of additional capabilities over the current model — nothing about Siri, motion control or anything hinting that this is something special. Without additional information, this model looks like an exercise in supply chain management rather than reinventing the Apple TV experience.

It only makes sense for Apple to move the Apple TV onto the A5X, the same chip used in the third-generation iPad. It had to happen sometime. As Apple moves other products off the 32 nm A5 chip, it cannot forget its little hobby in the Apple TV.

The revised 32 nm A5 chip is still used in the iPad 2, iPad mini, and the latest iPod touch. But with the exception of the evergreen iPod touch, the other two are set for changes sooner versus later. The iPad 2 will be cut from the team while Apple will likely release an upgraded iPad mini with an A5X to allow the hot little tablet to keep up with iOS revisions.

Apple has long treated the Apple TV as a so-called hobby. But even though the company doesn’t treat it as a pillar of its business, the Apple TV remains the company’s best path into consumers’ living rooms. During its Q1 2013 conference call last week, the company revealed that it sold 2 million Apple TVs during the holiday quarter, an increase of 60 percent over the previous year.

There’s no word on when this new model will hit stores. But chances are, since it passed through the U.S. government wireless gatekeepers, it will be in the near future — maybe as soon as this week.

WTF: Amazon Barely Ekes Out Profit On $21B In Sales, Hits Negative P/E, Misses Estimates, Guidance, Yet Stock Jumps 10%

Screen shot 2013-01-29 at 4.10.24 PM

You really have to hand it to Jeff Bezos and Amazon, which seem to continuously defy reality — and gravity. Amazon just announced its fourth-quarter earnings, and if you listen to the press, you’d think it was another home run. And if you are watching Amazon trade after-hours, you’d think this is the most buyable stock since the last time MG wrote about AAPL. Amazon is up nearly 10 percent since the market closed and, as Reuters points out to wit, the stock hit a record high on January 25th.

In part that’s because, yes, Amazon is the Walmart of the Internet, an the e-commerce giant. Thanks to network effects, it’s impossible to ignore. In fact, I’m using it to buy a tinfoil hat right now. The other contributing factor is, of course, that Amazon increased its revenues, or global sales, by 22 percent to $21.27 billion in the fourth quarter.

That’s huge, right? The list of companies doing $21 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter isn’t long.

Cue the confetti.

Those who regularly have the distinct pleasure of listening to Amazon’s quarterly conference call for investors know that the company rarely says anything of substance in these calls. Usually, executives deflect questions, reading canned lines and sticking to the appropriate PR speak. But this quarter’s investor call may have been the shortest in history.

That’s probably because Amazon’s press release only tells one side of the story, and executives probably aren’t too eager to respond to any of those pesky naysayers. Here’s why: In spite of its $21 billion in sales, Amazon underperformed compared to analysts’ expectations. Of course expectations were high thanks to the usual holiday shopping bump for retail and e-commerce, but Amazon was expected to hit $0.27 EPS and $22 billion in revenues, and Amazon instead underperformed, coming in at $0.21 and $21 billion, respectively.

That may not sound like a lot, and Amazon executives clearly think there isn’t much to be worried about, especially considering the company has $8 billion in cash. That’s nothing to scoff at, clearly, but there’s also the fact that the company’s net income decreased by 45 percent in the fourth quarter and growth is slowing. Amazon saw just $97 million in net profits in Q4. Yes, $97 million. That would be a big win for a company with $1 billion in revenue, but I’m probably not going out on a limb to say that it’s a red flag when you’re doing $21 billion.

If you look at the profit/loss graph in Leena’s post from earlier today [also included at the bottom of this post], one sees that Amazon hasn’t tallied more than $177 million in profits … well, for quite some time.

What’s more, as Zero Hedge points out, it’s almost comical that Amazon’s stock jumped after-hours. The irrationality of the markets in top form. The stock shot up this afternoon even after Amazon lowered its top-line guidance, projecting sales of between $15 to $16 billion, along with operating income.

On top of that, Amazon’s physical book sales had the slowest growth rate it’s seen in the last 17 years. Of course, thanks to the new age of eBooks and its quarterly increases in revenue, Amazon has continued hiring, growing its staff to a record 88,400 in 2012. Meanwhile, global net sales saw the slowest year-over-year growth in recent memory, down 30 percent from Q3 and down 34 percent from Q4 2011.

But here’s the real kicker: As Zero Hedge has pointed out, the company’s LTM net income is “now officially negative.” From Zero Hedge, that means that “as of this moment, the company with the idiotically high PE has an even more idiotic N/M PE.” In other words, N/M represents the correlation between the company’s market cap and its net income is now negative. [See the last graph here.]

Paul Vigna of the WSJ also noticed this P/E horror today, saying:

For the year, the company reported a loss of $39 million, or 9 cents a share, compared to net income of $631 million, or $1.37 a share, in 2011. Incidentally, that means the company doesn’t actually have a trailing-12-months price-to-earnings ratio, since there were no earnings for the past 12 months.

Yep, you read that correctly. There were no earnings for the past 12 months.

HUZZAH! Hooray! Take my money, please. Take it!

For some reason, the fact that Amazon is dealing with 1.9 percent margins, halting guidance, slowing growth, earnings and income misses and tiny profits seems not to matter to investors. People continue to buy Amazon stock, and the stock market at large continues to push higher as the Fed continues dumping money into banks instead of lending. But, don’t worry, Paul Krugman says everything is going to be fine. Phew.

Well, you’ll have to pardon me, Paul, but I think I’m going to go against the grain on this one and offer the world’s slowest slow clap to Amazon while continuing to hoard all of my cash under my mattress and consider a move to Antartica. Next thing we know Bitcoins will be the new standard.

I know Jeff Bezos has a giant brain and everything, but it’s hard not to look at Amazon earnings, mixed with the overall macroeconomic conditions, and not feel slightly to moderately nauseous. Or like you need a strong drink.

More in Leena’s coverage here.

NOTE/UPDATE: Before the heavy, mediocre breath from the confederacy of dunces gets too thick, let’s get a few things straight. Amazon is an incredible business, offers extremely valuable services and has weaved itself into the very fabric of American (and soon global) commerce. As such, it’s part of one of the fastest growing market segments on the planet. I’m not suggesting Amazon is going anywhere anytime soon, nor should it. It’s not going to crash, lay everyone off and run around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Yes, part of the reason Amazon demonstrates such low profits is because of the amount of investment it has been pouring into innovation and infrastructure and diversification across what seems like 50 different markets and categories. That’s not rocket science. But therefore, no one should expect the company to be remotely profitable, right? Who cares, it totally makes AWS, geeks declare. And earnings shouldn’t enter the picture when you have a top line like that, right?

No. I’d say there’s a very strong argument in favor of the fact that Amazon is going way too far in this direction and is heading for a reality check.

Yes, Amazon credit for its focus on innovation. Case in point: Yesterday, the company launched Elastic Transcoder, a new service that “lets people upload digital video and put it into formats — h264, AAC and mp4 for now — that are usable on devices like smartphones and tablets, as well as PCs,” according to Ingrid. That’s a lot of free and cheap transcoding for the masses, potentially a threat to Zencoder and the Netflixes of the world.

Amazon has an enormous distribution mechanism — enormous — and has come to represent the classic case of long-tail domination. It staves off its flagging original core business (book sales) by out-innovating in video, giving Netflix a run for its monies. Amazon is busy expanding the size of the video streaming market with its products, creating parellel models without having to appeal to Netflix (or anyone else’s) core user base.

But Amazon is at risk of over-extending. It doesn’t break out numbers for the Kindle Fire, even though we’re told they’re totally doing fine. No, they’re contributing to the losses, which is fine for the company if it makes money elsewhere. But it’s not doing itself any favors by trying to lock users into its ecosystem around a mobile touchpoint that isn’t really up to snuff, even if it elbows users into having to buy it as its other businesses mature around it. None of this inspires confidence.

As Seeking Alpha points out, Amazon is nearly one-tenth the size of Walmart on the top line and, “while Walmart numbers there have grown just 10 percent in the last two years, it has in fact added nearly $39 billion in sales” … in turn, “Amazon’s 2011 sales were $48 billion.” Yet another reason this is unsustainable. The higher the numbers get the more pressure there is to maintain them. Icarus flies too high, etc.

And, yes, AWS is a juggernaut. We get it. It leads among cloud developers, is a point of pride for Amazon (as it should be). Amazon analysts claim that it could be a $19 billion business on its own or worth $30 billion at an 8x multiple. Of course, many fanboys claim that this is where Amazon will make all of its money, in digital and cloud services like these where margins are higher. But nothing about that makes you nervous?

All this is based on numbers Amazon doesn’t provide. It doesn’t break out its AWS margins and revenue, just to be clear. One analyst gives AWS 500+ gross margin points by 2015. Are you serious? And saying that when Amazon goes down and takes down a lot of familiar websites and startups with it, that it is somehow indispensable and therefore brilliant is just ridiculous.

Sure, Amazon is probably making money on AWS, but how much? We don’t know. 500+ points? No way. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention AWS has proven to be pretty unreliable over the last year and there’s no reason to believe that its unreliability somehow gives it more appeal as Amazon tries to court enterprise customers. Why wouldn’t they choose Rackspace … or, say, Google.

Sure, Amazon management looks brilliant because it goes against the grain and is willing to grind profits down to next to nothing for a long period of time to invest in growth areas and innovate. That’s great, but that can’t last forever. The fact that the majority of Amazon analysts consistently rate it a “strong buy” quarter after quarter is another sign that the motley fool momentum of its stock is bound to change. As Seeking Alpha notes, “the laws of economics deem that Amazon’s current business model is unsustainable and will continue to generate less and less marginal growth, to the point where we actually end up seeing negative returns produced by management.”

You can only give the middle finger to your long-term shareholders for so long before things get hairy. I think that point is coming very soon for Amazon. But, hey, I’m just one guy.

Search Ads, App Ads, Gifts, And FBX Could Make Or Break Facebook’s Q4 Earnings

Facebook Make It Or Break It Middle Done

Facebook laid the groundwork for several new money-makers in Q3 2012. Tomorrow’s earnings report will hopefully show if search typeahead ads, app ads, Gifts and Facebook Exchange are actually bringing home the bacon. If they’ve done well and are growing, Facebook’s future might look brighter to Wall Street. If not, Facebook will need new revenue building blocks to help it climb back to its $38 IPO price.

In Q3 Facebook beat expectations of $1.26 billion in revenue (up 7% from Q2), with $1.09 billion in ads (up 36%) and roughly $170 million in payments from games (down 9%). Those are the numbers Facebook is trying to beat handily tomorrow. It’s been a strong quarter for Facebook. It salvaged its share price from $19.50 before Q3 earnings on October 23rd to over $30 now. It also weathered its biggest stock lockup expirations without a share price crash, which allows investors to forget about the IPO’s messy aftermath and focus on Facebook’s business.

The bulk of Facebook’s revenue is likely to still come from its traditional bio and interest-targeted web and mobile ads. Facebook has had time to teach marketers how to use them and get them built into its Ads API for running massive campaigns. How it fares compared to projections will depend on if these achieved steady growth.

The biggest news of the Q3 earnings call was that mobile had grown from zero in March 2012 to make up 14% of its total ad revenue by the end of September. A report from ad platform Kenshoo earlier this month said it saw 20% of ad spend going to mobile, so the new official figure could be in that ballpark. Watch out for the percentage of ad revenue coming from mobile in the Q4 earnings report as a measure of how Facebook is doing today.

I personally expect Facebook to show strong revenue progress and a big gain in mobile advertising, both as in total revenue and percentage of Facebook’s overall business. Unfortunately, this may be coming at the expense of user experience. The volume of ads on mobile and their prominence has noticeably increased over the last quarter, which is probably annoying some picky users and subtly diluting the value of the news feed for others.

Looking closer, search ads, app ads, Gifts, and FBX will be critical to Facebook’s Q4 2012 and beyond. Even if their total contribution to Facebook’s current revenue and profit isn’t massive, it’s their trajectory that’s important. If they falter, Facebook may be in a bit of trouble. The final quarter of 2012 didn’t see it announce any other significant new revenue streams. Since they always take some time to rev up, if these four aren’t showing promise, it could be awhile before Facebook has machinery in place to convince Wall Street $FB is worth more than the $30.79 it closed at today.

Typeahead Search Ads Foreshadow Graph Search Ads

On August 22nd, Facebook officially launched its Sponsored Results search typeahead ads after two months of testing. They let advertisers butt in and show their app, Page, or other Facebook property above organic search results. For example, Zynga could show ads for FarmVille 2 at the top of the typeahead drop-down results for searches for the game “Dragon City” by competitor Social Point. Advertiser interest and click-through rates were both high in initial tests of Sponsored Results by Facebook’s adtech partners.

With a full quarter of ability, it’s time for Facebook to share some official results on their performance with users and their revenue contributions. If they’re raking in cash and if interest is growing, it proves the potential of a Facebook ad unit that doesn’t take up space in the news feed or sidebar like its primary ad products.

This is so interesting because Sponsored Results in the typeahead are the model for monetization of Facebook’s new Graph Search feature, which will replace the old internal search bar where these ads live now. At the launch event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered my question on how Facebook would make money on Graph Search by saying typeahead search ads “extend quite nicely to this.”

If Sponsored results are already performing well, Graph Search could become a core revenue stream in time in addition to a way to make Facebook more useful. The possibility of earning vast sums without filling the feed with ads that could drive away users might get Wall Street’s hopes up.

Download This

Facebook has an enormous opportunity to be the gatekeeper to paid discovery for the burgeoning app economy. With the App Store and Google Play overflowing with choices, and breaking into the top charts the only way to rise from obscurity, developers need ways to gain traction. Launched in August, Facebook app install ads let developers pay to show off their apps in Facebook’s mobile news feed, with clicks/taps opening the App Store for free download or purchase, sometimes without even closing Facebook.

Initial reports indicate app install ads are in fact delivering new users at a reasonable price, so there’s big potential for them as more and more companies go mobile. They only became buyable through the Ads API a week before Q3 earnings were released, so we didn’t see their impact by then. On the Q4 earnings call, investors should be tuned into whether users are finding the ads inviting and if Facebook’s able to milk a bigger margin from them than its standard mobile ads.

Are People Buying Gifts?

Facebook’s entrance into e-commerce that lets people buy physical gifts and gift cards for friends rolled out to all U.S. users on December 11th. That means it was only available to Facebook’s local market for the last three weeks of the quarter, the holiday gifting season, and its novelty may influence the initial rate of purchases. Still, what matters is essentially how many Gifts each user is buying.

I ran some rough calculations about potential revenue from Gifts using the total number of U.S. users (170 million), the ballpark average price of a Facebook Gift ($15), the percentage Facebook may be earning per gift (perhaps 10% to 20%), and how many Gifts people will buy per year. For example $15 x 170 million x 10% x .5 = $127.5 million in revenue per year in U.S. on Gifts. That’s a pretty paltry sum. If Facebook can swing $15 x 170 million x 20% x 2 = $1.02 billion, that’s much stronger, but getting the average user to buy two gifts a year is going to be very tough.

The numbers would look better if Facebook can figure out how to scale Gifts to international markets. Issues with localization, shipping, and less buying power in some nations may make that tough. There is a chance that Facebook could make it work in Western Europe, or at least the U.K. But first, Facebook has to prove that its birthday alerts, gift recommendation engine, giving flow, and ease of delivery can get people to open their wallets and eschew Amazon.

Facebook Exchange Could Steal Google Ad Revenue

The real-time bidding, cookie-based retargeted ads that Facebook launched as Facebook Exchange (FBX) in June are now in full swing. They let advertisers target people who almost bought something on a site the next time they visit Facebook.

Marketers are giddy over their strong performance in delivering easily measured returns on investment. Meanwhile, advertising technology platforms like Triggit are raising huge rounds and betting their companies on the success of FBX. They’re essential to Facebook’s long-term revenue growth because they let it operate in the lucrative demand fulfillment part of the advertising funnel that Google search ads dominate, instead of the tough-to-measure demand-generation space. Some advertisers report FBX performs significantly better than Google’s retargeted ads and may be shifting ad spend to the social network.

If FBX is as popular as people think, expect Facebook to make its performance a centerpiece of the Q4 earnings call. Facebook recently paused development of its off-app mobile network — another product with vast potential. My theory is that Facebook may be redirecting resources to making FBX ads able to appear on mobile. It’s a big opportunity because mobile devices don’t store cookies that power retargeting, but Facebook’s cross-platform identity system would let it show people mobile ads based on their web browsing habits. An announcement about FBX for mobile during Q4 earnings or down the line could have investors excited.

Check back to TechCrunch tomorrow at 1pm PST for our coverage of Facebook’s Q4 2012 earnings report. And analysts, if you don’t hear Facebook talk about the products above, be sure to ask.

VidCaster Integrates With Salesforce To Introduce Its Leadwall, A Paywall For Collecting Contact Information

vidcaster logo

Last summer, video platform provider VidCaster rolled out a paywall feature, letting its customers collect money for access to their videos. But its clients also asked for a way to request viewer contact information, and so VidCaster is now rolling out its new “Leadwall” feature.

Instead of having users pay for access to individual videos or pay monthly subscription fees for access to channels, VidCaster is offering the opportunity to provide their contact information instead. That contact information could then be used by a company’s sales or marketing department to try and convert users who were interested in those videos.

Collecting leads in exchange for content is nothing really new and is already used by webinar providers and other services. But the feature is new for most on-demand video viewers. For VidCaster, the new feature was introduced after a few of its clients requested the ability to request leads in exchange for access to videos.

Companies like Cloudwords and SafeNet are already using the feature to collect viewer contact info, but VidCaster is rolling out its Leadwall to other customers. Instead of offering it as an add-on, customers will have access to the feature as long as they’ve signed up for VidCaster’s Business Plan or higher service plans.

At launch, clients will be able to feed contact information into their Salesforce CRM, thanks to an integration that VidCaster worked on for that platform. Users need only add their Salesforce OID and choose which information they want to collect to get the feature up and running. While Salesforce is the first integration, VidCaster co-founder Kieran Farr says more are forthcoming. That will include additional CRMs, marketing automation platforms, and even other identity providers — such as Facebook or LinkedIn.