The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘people-familiar’

Leading up to its January event, rumors were swirling that Apple was talking to the TV networks about offering possible subscriptions to their shows through iTunes. Of course, that never happened. While reports had CBS and ABC interested in such a deal, the other networks apparently were less enthusiastic about it — perhaps out of fear of repercussions from the cable companies. But that doesn’t mean that Apple is giving up.

A new report today in the Financial Times indicates that Apple will begin testing the sale of $1 U.S. TV shows this year. Specifically, the new pricing could launch around the time that the iPad does, which will be March/April, FT notes citing people familiar with the discussions. Apple currently sells its shows for $1.99 (standard definition) or $2.99 (high definition) through iTunes. These $1 would be the standard definition variety, apparently, as they will play on the iPad.

Obviously, by cutting the prices of the shows in half, Apple and the networks in the test are trying to see if it spurs sales. It undoubtedly will, but this remains a temporary solution. Apple still wants to do some sort of subscription service for the shows it offers through iTunes. And I would be all about that because it would strike a blow to the major cable operators that control the industry with an iron fist and make us all pay insane rates so they can pad their profits.

Also, a subscription version of television shows would mean you wouldn’t have to store all of them, all the time. It’s simply not practical to buy all the shows you want through iTunes right now. Even if you could afford it, the amount of space they take up would quickly overwhelm your hard drive. This is exactly why iTunes is inevitably going to move to the cloud.

Apple has been testing discounts on its TV shows even before this announcement. For example, if you bought the latest season of ABC’s show Lost early, you could get the season pass for $39.99 instead of the regular $49.99. It’s not clear how the new $1 pricing would change season passes, but presumably, they would be much cheaper as well.

When it came to Facebook and Twitter, it took brands a while to figure out how to take advantage of the social networks. With Foursquare, they have been much faster. But now with Google Buzz, they’re beating plenty of early adopters to it.

Samsung has already set up a Google Buzz account this morning and is already cranking out buzzes. Not only that, but they’re apparently trying to start their own trends on the service, as they have today tagged a bunch of their “favorite buzzers” and tagged the buzz with “#BUZZwednesday.” Of course, the problem here is that Google Buzz doesn’t support the “#” symbol the same way Twitter does (at least not yet). Still, you can search Buzz (right from within Gmail) for the term “#BUZZwednesday” and Samsung’s buzz will appear.

Of course, what’s annoying about the Buzz tagging mechanism is that it automatically sends these message to your Gmail inbox if you’re mentioned in one.

Hope everyone is ready for an onslaught of brands on the service! Need I remind you that Google Buzz just launched yesterday?

Update: And Samsung responds:

For the record, I think it’s smart for brands to hop on these services early — it’s just Samsung doing it’s job. But I think we can all see how this will get annoying quickly.

Update 2: And Samsung adds: “We agree that messages going to Inbox is not ideal. We need an @reply and DM section. Maybe even a comments, likes, and favorite sections.” A good idea, I think.

Facebook is reportedly still in the process of talking to several private equity firms about a significant follow-up investment in the company. According to the New York Post, which tends to be a bit sensationalist at times and is owned by News Corporation, the social networking juggernaut has already held informal exploratory meetings with Providence Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and others to date.

The article cites Facebook to be looking for fresh capital at a $5 to $6 billion valuation, with the potential investors only willing to pour more capital in the company in the $2 billion to $3 billion valuation range. We earlier reported that Facebook received a term sheet for an investment at a $2 billion valuation, but the New York Post claims no term sheets have been drawn up to date.

The articles cites unnamed sources with knowledge of the situation, but that none of the companies involved will comment officially or so far failed to return requests for more information. As soon as day breaks in the U.S., we’ll do a bit of poking of our own.

From the mouth of ‘people familiar with the matter’, Facebook’s attempt to raise additional capital is supposedly causing some friction with its existing investors (which include Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Microsoft and Peter Thiel), who are said to be against diluting their shares and urging the company to start squeezing some real revenue out of its now more than 200 million registered users.

As Michael wrote earlier, Facebook may not have a lot of choice:

They’re burning as much as $20 million a month in cash and are dealing with ridiculous growth. They likely have less than two years runway left, and possibly significantly less if they continue to add new users by the tens of millions that are currently flocking there every month.

To be continued, no doubt.

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This one slipped through the cracks, but apparently Brad Bostic, who co-founded mobile Q&A answer service ChaCha together with current CEO Scott Jones back in 2006, has stepped down as President of the company and will not be replaced.

In an interview with the Indianapolis Business Journal, Bostic stresses that he will stay involved with the company as an advisor and strategist, saying ChaCha has matured enough for him no longer to be needed for day-to-day operations.

“I’m doing some evangelism for the company at trade shows, at conferences. [To say I] ‘left’ is not the appropriate characterization,” Bostic said.

More interestingly, Bostic openly discussed the fact that ChaCha is struggling to become a profitable company in the current economic climate, despite the fact it fired 1/3 of its workforce and brought on salary cuts for the rest of the employees earlier this year.

ChaCha lets people ask questions from their mobile phones to have humans (so-called Guides, often part-timers working from home) attempt to correctly answer them by text message. ChaCha makes money by embedding advertisements in those answers, and advertisers pay only when users respond by clicking through to the text ad. In the past, we’ve questioned the scalability of its business model, and we’ve also made fun of some of the answers that have been sent to users by Guides.

We pegged the company’s total funding at $58 million, but Bostic in the interview says only $43 million was poured into the company, among others by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. He also said the company is not yet cash-flow positive, but that there is a consistent growth in audience and revenue is starting to come in.

Let’s hope for ChaCha that Bostic’s evangelizing at conferences spurs more thereof.

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