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Posts Tagged ‘wolfram-alpha’

There’s a lot to love about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app. But as regular readers will know, one of them is not the price. At $50, it’s just way too hard to justify the purchase when you can get all of the information online, for free. So just in time for the holidays, Wolfram Alpha is doing something about it: Slashing prices!

The app will be on sale for a much-more reasonable $19.99 starting tomorrow and running through the end of the year. I’m still not sure that that isn’t a little high ($9.99 seems more a bit more in-line with the current app economy, but obviously that’s entirely up to Wolfram Alpha). The company also notes that despite the three-week discount, they absolutely plan to jack it back up to the regular $50 price after the first of the year.

I asked the company to give me some sales figures, but they declined. They did say that the app sales are “robust” and have “beaten our expectations solidly.” Those two things can mean just about anything without some solid numbers, obviously. At the same time, the company noted that it was very much thinking about other discounts/promotions in the future for the app. In other words, it might not be the smartest thing in the world to shell out of the $50 even if you do think it’s worth it.

Curiously, they also decided to remove the iPhone-formatted version of the website a while back in a move that I’m positive was in no way meant to spur app sales. That was sarcasm.

But again, the app is solid, and if you’re looking for a better than 50% off deal on it, check it out tomorrow in the App Store. The company also has a little blog post about some holiday-themed searches you can do with it.

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Is there something about people who use Microsoft products that makes them more likely to click on an online ad? Some data from search advertising network Chitika suggests so. Earlier this week, we noted that people coming to Websites from Bing are about 75 percent more likely to click on an ad than those coming from Google.

Following that post, Chitika ran some analysis on browsers and operating systems, and it found that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer are about 40 percent more likely to click on an ad than Firefox users, about 50 percent more likely than Apple Safari users, and 80 percent more likely than Google Chrome users.  The numbers are based on Chitika data from 134 million across 80,000 sites.

When it cut the numbers by operating system, Chitika a similar trend.  Windows users are about twice as likely as Linux or Mac users to click on ads. All of this data comes from one advertising network, so I’d say it is more suggestive than scientific (I’d love to know if other ad network are seeing the same trends). But it is a large sample.

Assuming they are representative, you can look at these results two ways. One is that Microsoft users are more valuable to advertisers since they click more. The other conclusion you could come to is that they are simply more gullible and are twice as easy to dupe into clicking on an ad than users of other products. That of course would bring you back to point No. 1, that they are more valuable to advertisers.

The thing that strikes me is that you’d expect to see similar behavior among the mainstream users of whatever brand. For browsers and operating systems that is Microsoft. The users of other brands are more likely to be switchers who are at least technically savvy enough to try something new. Those are the same types of people who are savvy enough to ignore (or actively block) ads.

But this hypothesis fails when you look at the search engine data. In that case, it is Google which is the dominant brand whose users include more of the mainstream, average consumers. Bing users are the switchers. Yet they are more click-happy than Google searchers. Why is that?

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Monetizing remnant advertising is not an easy task, but 5to1, a TC50 finalist, seems to be off to a good start, and they’ve added on another $1.81 million to their previous round of $4.5 million from existing investors Fuse Capital and Prism VentureWorks. The platform employed by 5to1 gives content owners the ability to place ads in relevant places at the right time, and to the correct audience. The company is run by former Fox Interactive executives Jim Heckman and Ross Levinsohn and this extension brings its total intake of funding to just over $6.3 million.

Jim Heckman, the founder and CEO of 5to1, says the following about the funding:

“5:1 secured a small extension of funding to add a little runway so we could stay focused on growing the business. Wasn’t an urgent move, but our adoption is much better than expected, so didn’t want to risk any loss of focus. No new partners or investors were involved and we don’t expect to be engaged in money raising activities in the near future.”

5:1 did note the extension, when final paperwork is filed, will “end up at $2 million” and the company is days away from surpassing 400 million duplicated uniques amongst 30 distribution partners.

For more information on 5to1, check out our TC50 coverage.

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A couple months ago, Wolfram Alpha launched an impressive iPhone application based on their “computational knowledge engine” (a fancy word for search engine predicated on math) of the same name. Unfortunately, they horribly miscalcuted what it should cost when they set the price at $50. But rather than simply lowering the price, they’re trying another trick.

As we pointed out at the time, one of the most humorous things about the app’s pricing is that the mobile version of Wolfram Alpha was completely free. Free beats $50 any day of the week, and I think WolframAlpha finally realized that as they have decided to destroy the mobile web version that was tailored for the iPhone and iPod touch, which TUAW noticed today.

Now, when you point your iPhone’s browser to wolframalpha.com, you’ll be greeted by a pop-up letting you know that the WolframAlpha app is now available in the app store, complete with a link to go there and download it. You can also click the “X” to close this popup, but if you do, you’ll be greeted by a version of the site that is the same as the regular web site — which is to say, not at all tailored for a smaller mobile screen. It’s still usable of course, but it is much worse than the previously custom formatted version.

If you try to go to wolframalpha.com/iphone (the page where wolframalpha.com would redirect to if it detected mobile Safari), you’re greeted with a full page once again touting the iPhone app. What’s humorous about this page is that it’s also not at all tailored for the iPhone. Come on guys, you could have at least made the page that is trying to sell the iPhone app to iPhone users look nice on the device.

Despite Apple featuring the app in the App Store, indications are that it’s simply not selling like hotcakes. One indicator: There are only 30 reviews for the app so far. Many popular apps have thousands of reviews. And many of WolframAlpha’s reviews are simply bitching about the price. Another indicator: The app is nowhere to be found in the top 100 grossing apps, the area Apple made in the App Store specifically to help showcase more expensive apps. If a $50 app is not among the highest grossing, that’s not a good sign for its sales.

The bottom line: The app is still too expensive. And nuking the iPhone-optimized version is not going to change that.

If you do happen to have $50 just burning a hole in your pocket, you can find the app here.

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Wow. Marketing email software provider ExactTarget has secured another $70 million in funding, according to an SEC filing, bringing the startup’s total funding this year alone to $145 million. The company raised $70 million earlier this year from Battery Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Montagu Newhall. Not too shabby considering the state of the economy.

The latest round of funding comes from Technology Crossover Ventures, (TCV) according to a report in the Indianapolis Business Journal. The VC firm has also invested in HomeAway, Zillow, eHarmony, WhitePages.com, Expedia, Orbitz and Netflix.

When we reported on ExactTarget’s earlier funding, the startup said it would delay its IPO plan and had withdrawn its application with the SEC to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol EXTG. Interestingly, TCV has helped guide many startups in its portfolio to an IPO, so it makes me wonder if ExactTarget is readying itself to go public in 2010.

ExactTarget’s software provides enterprises with email marketing platform that powers everything from email coupon offers and automated fraud alerts to e-statements and SMS text messages. ExactTarget’s software provides email marketing tools for a widespread group of big-name clients, including CareerBuilder.com, Expedia.com, the Gannett Co., and The Home Depot. The software is also integrated on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

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AOL won’t officially become an independently traded company again until December 10 when CEO Tim Armstrong is scheduled to ring the bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. When AOL announced the details of the spin-off last month, it was possible to estimate a valuation for AOL at about $3.15 billion, but as I noted then, we wouldn’t really know for sure until the shares start trading. Well, some shares already are trading ahead of the official spin-off, settling at around $24. With 105.7 million shares to be distributed, that gives AOL a market cap of $2.5 billion.

It seems like AOL’s value just keeps on going down every time you look. Now, the shares are being very thinly traded right now, and we could still see a pop on December 10. But what is more likely is that there will be continued pressure on the stock as existing Time Warner shareholders take the money and run. It doesn’t help that some Wall Street analysts don’t forecast any growth whatsoever in either revenues or profits over the next four years.

For investors, AOL is really a turnaround and cost-cutting story. But Armstrong is hoping to change that perception. For instance, JP Morgan analyst Imran Khan writes in a note that he came away from a meeting with Armstrong with the impression that AOL will “pull back premium inventory from Ad.com and begin monetizing this inventory at a fuller valuation.” AOL’s own sites command higher ad revenues than the ads on its Ad.com network, but since 2007 it’s been making AOL ad inventory available through its ad networks, pushing down the value of those ads. If Armstrong follows through with this plan, it would be a step towards creating more scarcity for the ads which run on AOL properties, and could perhaps lead to higher revenues.

Armstrong needs to find more ways to juice revenues and profits if he wants his AOL options to be worth anything. A year from now, how much will AOL be worth?

By The End of 2010, What Will AOL’s Market Cap Be?(poll)

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Remember the flurry of new features Bing rolled out last week?  Bing announced Wolfram Alpha results for nutrition searches, more in-depth weather results, enhanced hover previews, better maps, and turned MSN Video into Bing Videos. Well, it turns out it is also quietly launched another feature which highlights the latest posts from news sites.

If you do a search for “TechCrunch” or “New York Times,” for instance, underneath the summary information and deep links there are the three latest headlines under “Latest posts.”

This format is similar to when you search for certain widely-followed Twitter users and you get their latest Tweets. It’s part of Bing’s obsession with providing realtime results. Just as the recent broader integration of Twitter into search results brings the latest conversations into search, showing the latest headlines for news sites shows readers what’s breaking on the site without having to click through. Funny that it doesn’t work for the “Associated Press.”

Just to be clear, this is different than searching for a topic which is in the news and getting news results at the top in the form of headlines, which all search engines do. The “Latest posts” appear when you do a search for a specific news site. You’d think it would work for any blog with a feed, but it doesn’t seem to come up for many smaller blogs I tried.

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There are a host of directories of iPhone apps on the web as well as applications that make personalized recommendations of apps, such as Chorus, that might catch your fancy. Mplayit enters this space hoping to combine these two ambitions into one, comprehensive Facebook app.

Mplayit’s directory of iPhone and mobile apps includes all 100,000 plus iPhone apps and a smattering of other mobile app as well. Each app has a dedicated page where Mplayit will post videos of the app (created either by the developer or pulled from YouTube), a detailed description of the app and reviews. You can also click to buy the app from Apple’s App Store (from which Mplayit receives a affiliate fee).

Once you start clicking on various app and downloading apps, Mplayit will begin to recommend apps to you based on your behavior on the site. And you can share apps on Facebook and Twitter. The Facebook page also shows the activity that’s taking place in other app stores, such as Apple’s, to show users what apps are receiving the most downloads, reviews and more. Users will also be able to see the “apptivity” within their social network, so they can clearly see what apps their friends and family are most interested in. Similar app directories will be rolled out in the Facebook app for the Blackberry and Android in the next few months.

Mplayit already helps major carriers, such as Sprint, power app directories for games and apps, so the startup has experience in the space. Mplayit founder and CEO Michael Powers, says that Facebook is the ideal platform for the the app discovery engine because of the ability to tap into your social graph to discover and share apps. The app is comprehensive and does give you more details about apps than the reviews in Apple’s App store. Mplayit is definitely worth a look.

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Ever since Microsoft launched its Bing search engine last May, there’s been buzz that it’s been talking with Wolfram Alpha to license some of its search data. In August, I was able to confirm that a deal had indeed been struck between the two. Today, Bing is finally rolling out its first integration with Wolfram Alpha for searches around diet and nutrition.

Whenever you do a nutrition or diet-related search on Bing, it will serve up structured data from Wolfram. For instance, a search for any food item will bring up a nutrition tab and summarize nutrition facts about that kind of food, including the total fat in a single serving, along with the percentage of the recommended daily allowance that represents and other nutritional data. The results will be marked as “computed buy Wolfram Alpha.” Wolfram will also power a body mass index (BMI) calculator which lets you enter your height and weight, and calculates your BMI.

In that August post, I speculated:

Perhaps Bing’s deal with Wolfram is to license some of its data to create a specific science category search or a Q&A portion of the site.

Whatever it is, if it turns out to be popular, Bing might end up licensing more data for more categories of search. In the end, Wolfram could have more luck licensing its data to other search engines than bringing people to its site, despite the surge in “fall traffic” Stephen Wolfram is still hoping for.

There has been no discernible surge in fall traffic at Wolfram’s main site. Striking licensing deals with Bing could prove much more lucrative since Bing has much more search traffic and does a better job presenting complex data in an intuitive way.

Bing is also releasing two other improvements today. When you hover over a search result, it will bring in more information into the pop-up preview pane, including deep links to the most clicked-on pages in that site and a search box which lets you search the site without leaving Bing. If the result is a Facebook profile page, it will show the person’s picture, their network, and allow you to send a message or friend request.

The second improvement is a weather results page which brings together all sports of weather data whenever you search for a place or weather. Much of the data is what you can already find on MSN Weather—multi-day forecasts, satellite maps, and monthly averages—but it gathered on the fly in a new Weather Results page on Bing. You get the feeling that, just like it did yesterday with videos, this may be another content category Microsoft will eventually move entirely from MSN to Bing.

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Apple wasted little time approving Wolfram Alpha’s new iPhone app, which we hinted at last week. Just a few days after they submitted it to the store, Apple sailed it right through the approval process with such speed that it even surprised the Wolfram Alpha team, which had hoped to get some feedback from testers before the approval. I was one of those people, so rather than send them feedback, I’ll write it here.

There are two key points about Wolfram Alpha’s iPhone app: 1) It is pretty cool, and very nicely done. 2) They’re insane for trying to sell it for $50.

I’m going to mainly focus on second point here, because if you’ve used Wolfram Alpha, you don’t really need much explanation about this app, which is a slick interface for the service. And while I get Wolfram Alpha’s logic behind selling the app for $50, I think it’s faulty logic. Here’s what they’re telling us:

A note on price — it is listed at $49.99, which is basically less than 1/2 the price of a graphing calculator with inferior functionality in comparison, which is how the company came to that number. Or, as we’ve been saying, the price of 12 lattes from Starbucks…

Both of those points are true, but the App Store has created a different economic reality than say, walking into an Office Max and buying a graphing calculator. It’s no secret that most apps that sell well tend to be cheaper — as in, free or $0.99. Apple has recently tried to de-emphasize this by adding a “Top Grossing” section to the App Store. That’s fine, but with the exception of the $90 Navigon GPS turn-by-turn app, all of the top grossing apps are under $10. And most are under $3.

The reality is that you can probably count the number of iPhone apps over $10 that sell really well on your hands. Of those, the number over $20, you can probably count on one hand. And of those, if you remove the GPS turn-by-turn apps and maybe a few apps meant for doctors, you’re probably down to a couple fingers.

And I’m sorry, but Wolfram Alpha does not yet have the clout of Navigon, nor is it in the hot turn-by-turn GPS space that would warrant such a high price. “We do plan to offer regular discounts and sales,” the team tells us. But if they really want this app to sell, they’re going to have to knock off like 90% of its price. Actually, to be honest, even at $10, I’m not sure how many people would buy this app.

And that’s too bad for the team. As I said, the app is a solid one, but this is the reality of the App Store. Games that sell on systems like the Nintendo DS for $30, are $3 on the iPhone. Hell, there are even some games that sell on the bigger consoles for $60 that are less than $10 on the iPhone. They’re not quite as good graphics-wise, but I would argue that they’re every bit as fun. And don’t think for a second that studios like EA wouldn’t sell them for $30 if they could, but they realize that they can’t.

Wolfram Alpha may have to figure that reality out the hard way. It’s fine that it can replace your $100 graphing calculator, but it’s also limited because it requires WiFi or a 3G connection to do so. And the iPhone already comes with a calculator, which can turn into a more advanced one, and both of those are free. And there are dozens of graphing calculator apps in the App Store that sell for a whopping $0.99.

Okay, you might say, but Wolfram Alpha does offer a lot of interesting data far beyond graphing calculators. That’s also true, like giving you a detailed read out of how many calories are in a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke. But if you’re using this on your iPhone or iPod touch, you already have access to Google, and more to the point, the mobile web version of Wolfram Alpha, which is free.

Clearly, the service had some insight into how controversial the price will be. They go on to note:

The core WolframAlpha site will always be free. This is one of several “premium” experiences that the company will offer in addition. The app is targeted at the most serious users, and is priced as such. Likewise, we feel that the app’s egonomics and speed make it well worth the investment.

I can only assume they mean “ergonomics” there, but we’ll forgive them for that Freudian slip.

The app absolutely does offer a nice experience, one that yes, is better than the free website. But $50 better? No. $10 better? Maybe. $5 better? We’re getting closer. Again, right or wrong, this is just the reality of the App Store economy.

As we’ve noted previously, the iPhone app is the first example of Wolfram Alpha’s new APIs that they hope will extend their most valuable asset: Their data. But if you’re trying to get more people to use access your data, charging $50 is not a great play. A better one may be to get people hooked on your data, then charge down the road when they realize how valuable it is — if they ever do, which is still far from certain with Wolfram Alpha.

It’s also interesting to note that despite talk of a deal with Bing, the defautl web search in the Wolfram Alpha app is Google. Both Bing and Yahoo are options, but you have to change it in the settings.

You can find the Wolfram Alpha app here in the App Store.

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