Category: Tech news

It appears that BlueStacks isn’t just a flash in the pan. The Silicon Valley-based startup, which makes software that allows users to run their Android apps on Macs and PCs, said today that it has passed 5 million organic installs through its homepage. Vanity stats like this are annoying, yes, but what’s notable is that BlueStacks hit this milestone in under eight months. And the news comes on top of its recent partnerships with AMD and Asus, which have announced their intention to pre-load BlueStacks’ technology on over 100 million units.

In September, BlueStacks announced a partnership with chipmaker AMD, which brought its app catalog to AMD-powered Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines through the launch of its new app store, AppZone. As Sarah pointed out at the time, much like AppUp, Intel’s app store for PCs that “has been optimized to run on Intel-powered Ultrabooks,” with AppZone, the chipmaker optimized BlueStacks’ technology for AMD GPUs and APUs.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before the chipmakers began implementing the startup’s technology, as AMD was the lead strategic investor in BlueStacks’ $6.4 million series B raise in October of last year. The round brought the company’s total investment to $15 million and saw AMD join investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Ventures, Citrix and Qualcomm.

It’s unusual for software makers and manufacturers like Citrix, Qualcomm and AMD to show up on the same roster of investors, yet, as Sarah said, it was a demonstration of an eagerness among investors to leverage the Windows ecosystem as a platform to run Android apps.

The partnerships with AMD and Asus and its backing from Qualcomm also set the stage for BlueStacks to team up with additional manufacturers to pre-install its technology on PCs. The big-picture goal for the startup is to help bring the some 750K Android apps to each and every one of the billion-plus PC users out there. It’s a sizable opportunity, another part of the reason investors (and chipmakers) are eager to test the waters.

BlueStacks’ technology allows users to run graphics-intensive Android apps on desktop PCs via its patent-pending “Layercake” technology, which initially enabled Android apps to be compatible with x86-based PCs, followed by Macs, and now includes those developed for ARM processors — Angry Birds Space and Fruit Ninja being two familiar examples. (More on this below.)

The company has been looking to build a developer platform, as well, and has been partnering with the makers of apps like Fruit Ninja, SliceIt!, Townsmen, Evernote, StumbleUpon and Barnes & Noble (Nook). The main selling point being that developers don’t have to modify or port their apps to run them on PCs, which means less heavy lifting for those who have already developed apps for Android.

To this point, HandyGames CEO Christopher Kassulke let it slip last night at Mobile Gaming Europe that HandyGames will be launching their uber popular Clouds and Sheep as a PC game using BlueStacks. And the more big app development houses begin signing on, the more BlueStacks thinks that it’s helping to create a crack in the wall between mobile and PC gaming.

But here’s what could be most exciting for developers (and users) looking at developing for (or buying) Windows mobile devices. The newly released Windows RT, for those unfamiliar, is a special version of Windows 8 built for mobile (specifically ARM) devices — so, really, tablets. If somehow you haven’t noticed, Microsoft has been pushing its new Surface tablets pretty aggressively since their initial release in late October, partly manifesting through that snappy, percussive ad campaign you’ve probably seen by now on the tube. The main mobile OS being offered by the Surface? Windows RT.

As of now, consumers can buy a number of ARM-powered Windows RT devices, and there are more coming. But Surface currently has the highest profile among these tablets and devices, yet, the problem is that they’re not selling as well as Microsoft would have hoped. According to Tech Report, MSFT’s initial order of 4 million Surface devices has been cut in half thanks to slow sales.

Leaving the device itself out of it, probably the biggest reason for this boils down to apps. Compared to iOS and Android, few developers have built native apps for Windows 8. Even if consumers want to buy the Surface, many would rather opt for an Android or iOS device, because they offer far more access to the apps we’ve all grown accustomed to using on a daily basis.

So, naturally, rumors have begun to mount that BlueStacks’ next project will be to make its tech available to Windows RT users. As evidenced in this forum, hilariously, it appears that Microsoft salespeople have even begun to suggest using BlueStacks if users want to buy a Windows device and get access to Android apps.

The Droid Guy was one of the first to pick up on the BlueStacks, Windows RT rumors, as a BlueStacks team member recently divulged in a separate forum that the company was in the process of bringing those 750K+ Android apps to Windows RT. BlueStacks Engineer Deepak Sharma, via The Droid Guy: “We are considering offering BlueStacks for Windows RT next year.”

BlueStacks team members approached by TechCrunch would not confirm that this is in fact happening, but from what we’ve been able to gather from other sources, it seems there’s a good chance this could happen in early 2013.

However, as The Droid Guy points out, Microsoft’s Windows Defender could pose problems in this regard, as it could force BlueStacks to release its own app on the Windows Store, which, knowing Microsoft, would likely be disapproved. Until then, BlueStacks works well with Windows 8 Pro-based tablets and devices, but if BlueStacks is able to produce an ARM version of its technology, this could be a big boost both for the startup and for those looking for access to a viable app platform on their new Windows device.

With support for both ARM and Windows 8 Pro, developers could significantly increase their distribution without having to develop native apps for Windows devices — great for them but, again, not something that Microsoft is likely to get too jazzed about.

For more, find BlueStacks at home here.

As if Netflix didn’t have enough problems: The company announced today that it is being investigated by the SEC for a post that CEO Reed Hastings had made on his public Facebook page in June. In an SEC filing earlier today, Netflix reported that it received a notice from the regulator, which might seek a cease and desist or injunction against the subscription video company and its CEO.

At issue was a post in which Hastings announced that Netflix subscribers had watched more than 1 billion hours of video in June. That post got picked up by a number of news outlets, and Netflix stock rose that day. But as a result, the company is facing regulatory scrutiny for violating Reg FD, which is designed to provide equal access to material information among all investors, whether they be at big institutions or own small amounts of Netflix stock individually. That regulation requires public companies to issue a press release or Form 8-K when making material public information available.

Hastings took to Facebook (again) to defend his actions and to call into question the SEC investigation. He noted that the Facebook post was widely disseminated by the media, and compared the post to a previous statement the company had made on its blog, for which Netflix also didn’t release a press release or 8-K.

Among other things, Hastings wrote:

“First, we think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers.

Second, while we think my public Facebook post is public, we don’t currently use Facebook and other social media to get material information to investors; we usually get that information out in our extensive investor letters, press releases and SEC filings. We think the fact of 1 billion hours of viewing in June was not “material” to investors, and we had blogged a few weeks before that we were serving nearly 1 billion hours per month.

Finally, while our stock rose the day of my public post, the increase started well before my mid-morning post was out, likely driven by the positive Citigroup research report the evening before.”

Blogs, Twitter accounts, and now the public Facebook pages not only of a brand or corporation, but also of its officers. That’s the brave new world that the SEC is faced with regulating, and one that it doesn’t necessarily seem ready for. It’ll be interesting to see how this particular issue is resolved, and how it might affect future statements from Hastings and other high-profile executives on social networks.

For Hastings, hopefully it’ll be resolved sooner rather than later: “We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process,” he wrote.

Cloudera has raised $65 million to further fuel Hadoop adoption and expand its European operations. The new round led by Accel Partners, brings the total raised to $140 million. Existing investors Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and Meritech Capital Partners all participated in the round.

Cloudera has established itself as one of the true leaders of the big data movement. The company pioneered the use of Hadoop, top-tier Apache Foundation distributed-storage and data-analysis open source technology. Cloudera offers its own Hadoop distribution for enterprise customers that it will further develop with the new funding.

Cloudera says sales, customers, employees and data have all doubled in the past year under current management. Its customer base includes AOL (TechCrunch’s parent company), CBS, EBay, Morgan Stanley, and The Walt Disney Company. The company is not disclosing its actual revenues, according to AllThingsD, which broke the story today.

Cloudera’s customer list exposes the company’s strengths and its weaknesses. The strengths lie in offering the technology and the expertise to large enterprise customers. Its weakness is in the manpower and resources it costs to set up a Cloudera cluster.

New players in the market are tackling the same problems that a Hadoop installation can solve but at a fraction of the cost and with no need to hire highly sought data scientists, engineers and operations pros. Treasure Data, for instance, borrows from Hadoop but its service does not require an infrastructure investment.

Cloudera is making pains to make its technology easier to use. It has partnerships with such companies as Dell, which offers a Cloudera Hadoop configuration packaged with its servers. The packaging helps remove some of the complexity that comes with integrating Hadoop in the enterprise.

The Hadoop marketplace has diversified over the past few years. Last year, Yahoo spun out its Hadoop group to new startup HortonWorks. EMC’s Greenplum now has a Hadoop integration for its data analytics solutions. IBM Infosphere has also invested deeply in Hadoop. Other startups to watch include Map R, Pentaho, Datameer and Cleversafe.

But the market is gigantic, considered to be as large as $50 billion, according to Wikibon’s Jeff Kelly. and Cloudera has the leadership to steer to an IPO or a massive buy out. All Things D reports the company is now valued at $700 million.

Cloudera CEO Mike Olson was formerly CEO of Sleepycat Software, which was the creator of the open-source embedded database engine, Berkeley DB, which was acquired by Oracle in 2006. Earlier this fall, Cloudera hired Jim Frankola, the former CFO of Yodlee and Ariba.

The Frankola hire raises questions about Cloudera’s plans that possibly could mean an IPO. That’s a likely scenario and also points to an expected market consolidation that we should expect in the next two years.

Custom photography and video marketplace SmartShoot has released a new feature allowing you to browse the profiles of the filmmakers and photographers on the site.

The company was previously known as TurnHere, and it focused on creating promotional videos for businesses. However, it relaunched in October as a more general marketplace for photo and video services, such as finding a wedding photographer or a videographer for a recitcal.

You can post your job to the SmartShoot site, the professionals on the site bid for the work, then you browse their bids and profiles and choose the one you want to work with.

Now you can browse profiles without even creating a job. Instead, when you look at different SmartShoot service pages, like this one for wedding photography in New York, they include a list of some relevant professionals, and you can follow the links to their profiles, which include jobs counts, ratings, and portfolios. For example, here’s the profile of a photographer in New York.

For now, the usefulness of those profiles is a bit limited — I’m guessing that they’re being used primarily to convince newcomers that yes, SmartShoot does have some talented people. (The company says its network includes 15,707 creative professionals who have delivered 53,884 projects and been paid $13 million total.) In fact, when you’re reading a profile, you can’t actually interact with the photographer or filmmaker — instead the site directs you to create a proposal that’s posted to the general community.

However, it sounds like SmartShoot has plans to expand the profile functionality in the future, for example by adding a search feature. And a spokesperson tells me that the company is open to the possibility of allowing users to reach out to the professionals directly: “If this happens to become a frequently asked request we will definitely build it.”

By the way, if you want to try out SmartShoot, the first 100 users who mention “TechCrunch” in their product description will get a 10 percent discount.

More news from YouTube! While on the creator side of things, the company is working on finding the next crop of collaborative geniuses, the product team has been busy building a new homepage experience. That experience is being rolled out as we speak, so users should begin to see it later today.

The new version of the homepage is centered around the YouTube Guide, which shows all new videos from channels that users have subscribed to. It also recommends channels that you might like, based upon your viewing habits, as well as those that your friends are watching. The new Guide feature doesn’t just live on the web in the browser but will also be the focal point for viewers on a wide range of mobile devices and connected TV platforms, including Android, iOS, Playstation 3, and Google TV.

One of the big complaints about the old YouTube design was just that there was too much going on, which distracted from the thing that most people came to YouTube to do — watch videos. The new site changes that by putting the actual content front and center when you go to a video page. All the other features — the subscribe button, the social sharing features, related metadata and all the rest — have been moved down below the video.

Video playlists — which allow for more concurrent, uninterrupted video — are moved to the right side of the video, which will hopefully keep more people watching for longer periods of time. While much of the YouTube traffic has been driven by search in the past, it is making a concerted effort to get viewers to stop snacking and get feasting on multiple related videos.

YouTube’s new design comes about a year after its latest refresh, which was designed to help users start subscribing to more video channels. While channels have existed since 2005, the company has been trying to increase video views from channels over the last year, especially as it’s investing in more Original Channels.

That plan has apparently worked, as the number of users who subscribe has more than doubled during that time. YouTube users are subscribing to about 50 percent more channels, and view time from channels has grown 30 percent. YouTube now claims to have more than 800 million users showing up every month who watch 4 billion hours of videos during that time.

There are reasons why we go where we go, eat where we eat, and drink where we drink. Maybe it’s the ambience, maybe it’s that cute waitress or waiter, or maybe it’s karaoke night.

Today, Foursquare has announced that businesses can now add events to their venues. This is a pretty huge step toward helping you find new places to go and tell your friends about why you go there…without doing any work.

The cool part about this, which is already available for things like movies, is that you can check-in to the actual event at the venue. This records what you’re doing as well as where you are.

Here’s what the company had to say:

People can already see movie, concert, and sporting events in the Foursquare app (and you should be able to see and edit those on your location). Now you’ll be able to add your own, be it an author appearance, arts and crafts fair, or a fundraising event.

Not only is this important for businesses and consumers, but it’s important for Foursquare as a company. This is yet another deep data point that the company is collecting about our tendencies. You know what that means, right? Better targeted specials.

The march to more revenue continues for Foursquare. What the company has done brilliantly is instead of embracing existing “ad models” that don’t always work, it has created its own that fit within the Foursquare experience. That’s good for users and businesses. And eventually, Foursquare itself.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

After a difficult quarter for GREE with profit declining year-over-year, the Japanese gaming company is having layoffs in its U.S. offices. The company just came off a very poor quarter where it was hurt by a stricter regulatory environment in Japan and the rising costs of its campaign to expand internationally outside of Japan. The company saw net profit dip by about 4 percent to $110.3 million after several quarters of dramatic sequential increases.

Buried in a release today about a new venture effort to fund gaming companies was a paragraph describing “redundancies.” It said:

“As part of the company’s internal US reorganization, a majority of the GREE games platform team will be transitioned to new departments with redundancies in some areas. The overall GREE Platform business will begin transitioning to its operations in Tokyo as a part of this change.”

GREE hasn’t added any additional statements on how many layoffs there were, but we’re hearing of more than 30. We’re also hearing that most of them came from the OpenFeint team or were direct hires for GREE’s U.S. efforts. We’re not hearing of any layoffs for employees who came from the $210 million acquisition of Funzio.

GREE paid $104 million for mobile-social gaming network OpenFeint back in 2010 but it hasn’t really used much of the technology. The company recently announced it was closing OpenFeint, which rankled many developers. Shutting the platform down would break many popular games if the studios behind them don’t move fast enough to push updates.

Both GREE and DeNA are pushing abroad as they face slower growth and other pressures back home. Not only is there a changing regulatory environment over the types of game mechanics they use, their margins are hurt by rising adoption of iOS and Android devices. In the feature-phone era, they retained a higher share of gaming revenues because they paid less than the typical 30 percent platform cut to mobile carriers. But now, any games their platforms support on Google Android or iOS have to hand over a 30 percent share to the platforms. Plus, Apple has designed its ecosystem in such a way that it’s difficult for any third party to have much distribution power.

That said, both companies are astronomically more profitable than U.S. freemium gaming companies like Zynga. The company made $110.3 million in profit on $460.7 million in revenue in the last quarter.

Kubi means “neck” in Japanese and that’s just what this new telepresence product is supposed to reproduce. This rig, designed to work with any tablet, essentially creates a user-controlled pivoting system that allows the person you are video-calling to control the position, angle, and rotation of the tablet camera.

It’s not amazingly complex nor is it completely mobile, facts that make Kubi far more interesting for, say, a small office or conference room. Controlling Kubi’s neck, the caller can look around the room, tilt the camera up and down, and keep the camera and tablet a safe distance from the proceedings. As a parent, I’d see Kubi being useful when talking with the family. Rather than one kid hogging the iPad, I could control my position remotely and see everyone in the room from a slight distance.

I talked with Kubi’s creators, Marcus Rosenthal and Ilya Polyakov, both of whom have extensive experience in robotics. They said that they didn’t want Kubi to be mobile “because motors are expensive” and the batteries used to power an upright robot would be prohibitively costly. In short, it was far simpler to create a cool telepresence system than a sub-par roaming robot.

As we tested the Kubi it became clear that this pair was onto something. By giving each party control over their view, the Kubi becomes a sort of surrogate head rather than a stationary webcam. Being able to move from person to person and look each participant in the eye is a cool feeling.

They’re selling pre-orders on the device for $200 on Indiegogo and are looking for funding of $200,000. I doubt it will be difficult.

Short Version

The Nokia Lumia 920 can be used with any gloves: it’s a miracle. But for the vast majority of other smartphones, that’s not the case, so there are a variety of sellers making touchscreen compatible gloves. Netherlands-based Mujjo was one of the first to try making some that are actually stylish and durable. This year, they updated their basic model (as well as introduced some expensive leather ones), and the improvements make them an even better buy.

Long Version

Features:

• Entire glove surface works with capacitive screens, not just fingertips
• Improved anti-pilling and insulation
• Variety of color options

Info:

• MSRP: €24.95 ($32.40 U.S.)
• Availability: Some varieties available now; others shipping Dec. 15
• Product page

Mujjo Touchscreen Gloves Are…

… gloves that are actually decently warm, comfortable and good-looking, while still offering very accurate and responsive compatibility with standard capacitive touchscreens like those used on the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. These are also a step above the generic ones you’d find on Amazon, though they’re also a tad more expensive.

Buy Mujjo Gloves For…

… people who like to stay warm but also use their devices while outside, perhaps in the harsh winters of Canada, Fargo or Alaska. Actually these are just about the right comfort level for anywhere where it gets cold enough to snow, and do a good job of keeping digits insulated without making your hands sweaty.

Because…

… they’re a cut above the rest of the pack in terms of quality, durability and design. And they’re made by a small accessory hardware startup in the Netherlands that got started in 2010, so you’re supporting entrepreneurs committed to creating awesome products and also helping a friend or loved one keep their hands warm and also touchscreen-friendly.

We’ve written numerous posts about the Lytro camera and have done gift guide reviews on it, so we thought — why not give one away? Thanks to Lytro, we have one free 8GB camera to give away.

The Lytro is one of the most sought after cameras out there right now because it’s so different. By using propriary systems, the photograph’s point of focus and now perspective can be altered after it’s shot. There isn’t another camera that can do that. Sample photographs and giveaway instructions are below.

They also just launched Perspective Shift and Living Filters that add new dimensions to pictures taken with the Lytro, allowing anyone to shift and share pictures on Facebook, Twitter, and on other social channels.

Want to win one? All you have to do is follow the steps below:

1) Like our TechCrunch Facebook Page:

2) Then do one of the following:

– Retweet this post (making sure to include the #LytroMeTC hashtag)
– Or leave us a comment below telling us why you want one

The contest will start now and end tomorrow, December 7th at 6:00pm PT. That gives you only one day, so be sure to enter quickly. Please only tweet the message once or you will be disqualified. We will make sure you follow the steps above and choose our winner once the contest is over.

Hang on a second though, there’s another fun contest you can enter. Right now, anyone can have a chance to get “Lytro-ized” by submitting a weird, funny, or bizarre picture to @Lytro on Twitter with the hashtag #LytroMeTC. If interested, this will enter you for a chance to have your picture selected and turned into a Claymation by the creators of MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch. It’s awesome. Be sure to visit lytrome.tumblr.com to check it out and tweet @Lytro if you would like to enter.

Good luck everyone!

Editor’s Note: Semil Shah is an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners and has been a contributor to TechCrunch since January 2011. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

“In the Studio” begins to wind down the year by hosting someone who can lay claim to the following roles — developer, engineer, CTO, VP of Engineering, and founder — and now, after a few years of angel and seed investing, has moved down to Sand Hill Road as a partner at a large venture firm.

You may not notice on first glance, but Ross Fubini has racked up a diverse set of experiences in his 15 jam-packed years in the Valley. Well-known among technologists in the Valley, Fubini is otherwise another quieter builder who has amassed a dizzying array of experiences since interning at Netscape while studying engineering at Carnegie Mellon, moving from an engineer into leadership roles with more management responsibilities, founding his own company and quarterbacking the investment and acquisition process, and then getting involved with companies at the seed level as an angel investor with Kapor Capital in San Francisco. Fubini is also sought after for his opinions on core technology, and is a formal advisor to Palantir.

Now, in moving down south to Sand Hill Road, Fubini joins Canaan Partners, a large venture capital firm with an international presence. (TechCrunch’s Anthony Ha covered Fubini’s move earlier this year.) In doing so, Fubini is part of a line of operators turned angel investors with impressive portfolios who have taken partnership roles on Sand Hill Road, a trend started when Reid Hoffman went to Greylock a few years ago, and exemplified by others such as Shervin Pishevar (Menlo Ventures), Mark Goines (Morgenthaler), Mike Abbott (Kleiner Perkins), and most recently, Chris Dixon (a16z). In this discussion, Fubini and I discuss the arc of his career, from his days interning at Netscape to working as an engineering leader, to founding and selling his company, to his style and approach to investments, and what he hopes to do now as he moves away from seed stage and tries to work with companies in building more sustainable businesses, operations, and technologies.

Sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That is especially true in the online video world, where collaboration between two individually popular creators often leads to greater awareness of both. Entire networks of YouTube creators have sprung up to spur collaboration and leverage the network effects that occur when various talented and popular YouTube personalities work on projects together and cross-promote one another.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed at the online video giant, where it is launching the next round of its YouTube NextUp program with collaboration in mind. YouTube will choose 30 creators who have decided to partner up and create videos together and provide them with funding, equipment, and some classes to help them jump-start their work together.

Those who are chosen will get $3,000 in funding, as well as $4,000 worth of production equipment to create higher-quality videos. They’ll also be asked to participate in two week-long Creator Camps at YouTube’s new LA offices in January and March 2013 to actually film their videos.

Ever since acquiring New York City-based Next New Networks, YouTube has run a series of NextUp contests, aimed at identifying and providing money and guidance to promising creators. Since launch, they’ve had more than 215 creators from 15 different countries participate.

Applicants interested in participating need to find another creator they’d like to work with and apply through the program site.

Social media research company Peanut Labs is launching a new product today called Samplify, which co-founder and CEO Noman Ali described as a “DIY” approach to the company’s core sampling product.

Normally, setting up a sampling project (i.e. surveying a representative sample of the population for market research) with Peanut Labs or another company requires a lot of back-and-forth, Ali said, often over email: “from delivery feasibility to cost estimates to project set up to soft launch and then continuous monitoring while the project is in field.”

“While this is effective and probably a good fit for some agencies, it is not the most efficient process and sometimes takes days, let alone hours,” he added. “With Samplify, we aim to enable market research firms — of all sizes — to be able to field their research projects in a matter of minutes without sacrificing the quality, either for the sample or for the research process itself.”

With Samplify, the company is giving researchers a dashboard where they can design and run the projects on their own. The dashboard allows researchers to check on the feasibility and pricing of their projects, test project links, target respondents based on more than 100 different attributes, then launch the surveys and check on their progress at any time. Ali said projects should take only a few minutes to set up, and only a few more minutes for results to start coming in.

Peanut Labs, which was acquired by E-Rewards in 2010, says it has built up a respondent pool of “tens of millions of consumers and business professionals,” thanks to partnerships with hundreds of websites and social networks. The company has been launching a number of products, such as CrowdVi.be, to make the research process quick and affordable.

“After I left Facebook and became an investor, I started looking at every single music service out there,” said Sean Parker today.

It was a side comment, made at the Spotify event in New York, as he shared a stage with long-time adversary, Lars Ulrich from Metallica. The two announced that the band’s music was finally coming to the platform. (More on that here.)

But it’s a very revealing side comment and reminds us that Facebook, even when it was still a fledgling college-only social network (much smaller than the 1 billion users it is today), already had people behind it with much bigger ideas of where it would eventually go. It seems that one of those places was in building a music service of its own.

This was something that Facebook was considering as far back as 2008.

“We believe, based on discussions with a number of sources, that Buzznet, iLike, iMeem, LaLa, Last.fm, Rhapsody and other services were contacted and provided with a document (sometimes referred to by sources as an RFP (request for proposal), other times called a term sheet) that outlined certain goals of the new Facebook music service,” Mike Arrington wrote here. He speculated that this was partly fueled by MySpace: Music was the one thing that MySpace was offering users that Facebook was not.

As it turned out, MySpace imploded on its own, and labels didn’t really want to make music with Facebook. And, perhaps, nothing was good enough for Parker, who had cut his teeth in the music business with Napster.

Nothing, that is, until he saw Spotify.

“This company knew that product and experience dictate the design,” Parker said about his first impression of Spotify. “They were stubborn in a good way and got the deals that enabled Spotify to be a success in the first place.”

That was what led him to invest in the service, and it almost certainly played a role in how Spotify eventually became one of the first music companies to integrate its streaming service with Facebook’s open graph — and the only one that was allowed on stage with Facebook to show off how well it worked when it was launched in 2011.

Spotify’s Facebook association has been a big part of how well the company has grown in the U.S., where, it revealed today,  it now has 1 million paying users. The company also reported a wider global user base of 5 million paying users, and 20 million users overall.

Yes, today’s launch of a discovery platform, complete with the ability to follow influencers and artists — along with the ability for musicians to push music directly to their fans — interconnects with Facebook, Twitter, and (for good measure) Tumblr.

But today Spotify also seemed to carve out a stronger place for itself, more than ever before, as a platform of its own. That gives it some distance from Facebook.

As Facebook looks for more ways of engaging its users, and developing new revenue streams, will that journey take it back to a replay of its old music strategy?

A new report from mobile ad network Chartboost suggests that while the iPad is the best platform in terms of getting return on advertising spend for mobile game developers, the iPhone is still seen as the marquee iOS platform for mobile games, since it commands an impressive 61 percent of all gaming time spent on iOS devices. So despite lower acquisition costs on iPad (and iPod touch), advertisers are still willing to pay more to gain access to the much broader audience of iPhone gamers.

iPad owners are more than twice as likely (113 percent more likely, to be precise) as people playing games on iPhone to respond to interstitial ads and purchase new gaming titles based on that marketing channel, Chartboost finds, and iPod touch owners are more than 85 percent more likely to do the same. Why the gulf? It’s hard to know for sure, but it’s possible that users spend a much greater percentage of their time on iPads and iPod touches playing games than they do on their phones, since those devices come in Wi-Fi-only flavors that are often used more exclusively for entertainment purposes compared to a smartphone.

Still, the iPhone wins by session volume, grabbing the most eyeballs overall, and it leads by a wide margin, too. It has 5 times the gaming sessions of iPod touch, for instance. The iPad has more than double the gaming sessions of the iPod touch, but still less than half those on the iPhone. So even though the cost-per-install advertisers have to spend on iPhone is around 12 cents more on average on iPhone than it is on iPad, it’s likely seen as a fair trade in order to potentially get much greater download volume.

Chartboost thinks that there’s an opportunity here to make smart investments on iPad-specific marketing campaigns, especially for teams with a smaller budget that might face a lot of competition with other similar titles on the iPhone. Pushing for iPad customers might mean grabbing a bigger chunk of users early on for less than you’d pay to get the same number on iPhone, and there’s also higher average revenue per user on iPad to keep in mind. That means that free-to-play titles could actually stand to gain more revenue overall with less initial investment by targeting a smaller audience on iPad, vs. the larger pool of potential users on iPhone.

It’s definitely an interesting look at the nitty-gritty behind iOS advertising, but building a sustainable business on mobile platform gaming isn’t just about making something people will enjoy; correct positioning is key when there are a million titles all vying for the same limited attention span of mostly casual gamers. And with only a small percentage of mobile developers earning the bulk of revenue, taking a long hard look at ad placement is even more important.