Posts Tagged ‘product’
Amidst Controversy Storm, Kwedit Reveals Repayment Rate Already At 26%
Kwedit, the innovative and suddenly controversial payments platform for virtual goods, is releasing some early data.
The service lets users promise to pay later in lieu of a direct credit card payment when they want virtual currency for social games like Farmville. It’s not a legally binding promise, but users have an incentive to pay amounts owed because that allows them to get more virtual currency through the service. Users can pay by, among other methods, mailing in cash or paying at a 7-11.
When the product first launched they had no idea what percentage of promises would be repaid. Anything at all is incremental revenue to game publishers, and since the stuff they’re selling has no marginal cost (virtual currency), it’s all upside. But after nearly two months of being live, they say the repayment rate is 25.9% If you’re a credit company that would put you out of business.
But for game publishers, that’s a staggeringly attractive monetization option. Hopefully the company (or its partners) will also disclose the monetization rate as well down the road. Because right now game publishers are only able to get cash out of 1-3% of users. If they can get another few percent to pay via Kwedit, and 25% of that money is actually paid, revenue from games can double or more.
It’s controversial because Colbert made fun of it, and then the Huffington Post and CBS jumped on the bandwagon. CBS actually called it “toxic.”
Founder Danny Shader posted a long response here. But the short version is this – the criticism is ridiculous. It’s coming in one case from a competitor (the Huffington Post article was written by the CEO of a company that promotes Visa cards to teens and adults, without any sort of disclosure on the conflict). And the author of the CBS article doesn’t appear to actually understand the product and seems more concerned with getting parents all worked up.
The really scary stuff in social games was the Scamville nonsense where teens and pre-teens where being tricked into putting long term subscription charges on their parent’s cell phone and credit card bills. Kwedit isn’t even close to that kind of evil. It’s simply a very clever way of monetizing social games, and the most innovative new payments product I’ve seen in a very long while.
Google Cuts Milo At The Knees With Its Blue Dot Specials
Google just launched a new feature on the mobile version of Google Product Search which could take local shopping search startup Milo out at the knees. Whenever you do a Google product search from a mobile phone, blue dots will appear next to items which are in-stock at nearby stores. The image at right is from a search I just did for “HDTVs.” The blue dots are subtle, but they certainly distinguish those results. Google has partnerships with Best Buy, Sears, Williams-http://www.crunchbase.com/widgetSonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm to show local inventory, and it is inviting other merchants to apply to participate as well. Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra previewed the local product search last December, but it is now live.
Highlighting local inventory in product search results is exactly what Milo does, although it works on the Web as well as mobile. Milo will have to try to keep one step ahead of Google now that its business has been targeted as a feature of Google Product search.
The good news for Milo is that nobody really uses Google Product Search. It is not even highlighted as one of the products on the Google iPhone app, for instance. Maybe that will change, now that it has a geo-enabled set of results.
When you are looking for stuff to buy, it always helps to know where you can buy an item nearby. The vast majority of people who shop on the Web actually just use it for research, and then go local to buy.
Milo CEO Ted Dziuba responds via a Tweet:
Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro.
How long before Google closes that gap?
Google Product Search has availability for 5 retailers vs. Milo’s 49. Super cool web service, bro.
Best Buy Magnolia stores to sell Panasonic 3D bundle starting tomorrow
Samsung will soon have a bit of competition in Best Buy’s 3D TV department. A $2,899 Panasonic VT20 plasma, Blu-ray player and 3D glasses bundle will go on sale tomorrow expect not all Best Buy stores. It’s a Magnolia exclusive
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Best Buy Magnolia stores to sell Panasonic 3D bundle starting tomorrow
Ezy Tablet PC features 10.2-inch multitouch screen, runs Windows
I’ll leave the comparisons between the Ezy Tablet PC and a certain device to be launched in a little under a month up to you. Actually, aside from the casing and the 10.2-inch multitouch LCD, there’s not a whole lot else in the way of commonality. The Ezy Tablet PC features the following: 10.2-inch multitouch display with 1024
GameStop selling 250GB Xbox 360 drive
Well lookie at that, GameStop is selling a 250GB Xbox 360 drive separately from a console. Microsoft has said in the past that they don’t plan on selling the larger drives without a bundle, so I doubt these are a new or official product, but rather GameStop coming up with something on their own. The listing for the drive popped up on GameStop’s website for $129.99 , but the product isn’t available until 3/23.
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GameStop selling 250GB Xbox 360 drive
Cadence wants you to learn how to tell time in binary
Here’s a geeky watch that won’t destroy your budget. Cadence teamed up with designer John Flear to produce the 4-BIt watch. The geek angle
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Cadence wants you to learn how to tell time in binary
InFocus aims new Thin Display Series flat screens at boardrooms, schools
InFocus is under new management and ready to thrive again. The company is now more lean and ready to strike at the flat screen market. But not with a home AV flat screen or even a dedicated signage panel, but rather with a boardroom flat screen set that blends the low price of a consumer-grade TV with many of the features found in a commercial model
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InFocus aims new Thin Display Series flat screens at boardrooms, schools
I wouldn’t know what to do with the Monochron
From the product description, We wanted to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a seperate battery-backed RTC to desiging the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled.
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I wouldn’t know what to do with the Monochron
The Back-Up: Access your shotgun while in the lying position
$39.95. That’s all you have to spend to protect your home from the comfort of your bed.
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The Back-Up: Access your shotgun while in the lying position
Stealthy Knowmore Loads Up On Talent To Silence The Social Noise Problem
Fundamentally, what I liked about FriendFeed was that it gave me a way to take all kinds of social data and create a tailored way to view it. And though the idea never took off in the mainstream before their acquisition by Facebook, the desire for a service that can do this, remains. Despite their efforts, Facebook hasn’t solved this yet. And despite all the hype, neither has the new Google Buzz. There are at least a dozen other startups working on this problem too, but no one has even come close to FriendFeed yet. But a new one, still in stealth, offers hope.
Knowmore, is a New York City-based startup founded by Julian Gutman (ex-Google) and Joseph West (ex-Akamai). They’ve already assembled a team that includes Jeremie Miller, the inventor of XMPP/Jabber, Wilson Bilkovich one of the core developers of Rubinius (a Ruby implementation), and Wes Augur, a former principal R&D engineer at Digg. It’s a wide range of talent across a bunch of different fields. The total team is already up to 20 people, according to their jobs page.
Talent aside, what sounds interesting about Knowmore is their approach to the social noise problem. Rather than focusing on complex technologies that only seems to make social data more complicated (“why is this being shown,” etc…), Knowmore is building its product around user experience and human-centric design. The person who helped steer the early design of the product itself was Chad Pugh, the visual designer of Vimeo (though he’s not full time with the team).
As you can see on their splash page, Knowmore’s slogan is the “dashboard for the social web.” As you might expect, the idea is to port in your data from a variety of social networks, and let Knowmore serve it up to you in a way that cuts through the noise. As Mike wrote earlier this month, “social today feels like search a decade ago: lots of noise and lots of spam.” That’s exactly the problem Knowmore is going after.
They believe Facebook and Twitter cannot tackle these problems because they are communication pipes at their core. Knowmore is aiming to be a consumption platform instead.
So will it work? That’s impossible to know without seeing the product in action (the tentative launch date is Q2 2010). But the pedigree of the talent behind this startup and a simple execution of the core idea certainly makes it one worth watching.
