Posts Tagged ‘internet’

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Hulu Makes A Grab For Your Wallet

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Hulu is introducing a paid subscription model in addition to its existing service.

  • Hulu Plus, Hulu’s new subscription service, charges a monthly fee in exchange for offering users a much wider range of episodes and programs, including full seasons of current shows and back seasons of past programs.
  • Hulu Plus will be available on many different devices, including laptops, the iPhone, iTouch, and iPad, Samsung TVs, and Blu-ray players. A deal with Sony to bring the service to the PS3 is expected, and it will also be available on the 360 next year.
  • Hulu Plus’ biggest challenge will be attracting users who are used to getting the same programs for free on regular television.

Facts and Figures

  • The starting subscription fee for Hulu Plus is $9.99 per month.
  • Three of the four major broadcast network owners- General Electric (NBC), Disney (ABC), and News Corp (Fox) – hold equity stakes in Hulu. CBS Corp is the only holdout.

Best Quote

“We believe that any lasting solution to the challenge of making TV show discovery and viewing dramatically easier has to work for all three of our customers, and those are our end users, our advertisers, and our content suppliers.”  Jason Kilar, Hulu Chief Executive

Your Clickable Drugstore, Complete With Robots

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Soap.com will revolutionize, digitize your drugstore experience.

  • The owners of Diapers.com, a company that turns an impressive profit selling, yes, diapers, have decided to take on all commonplace household products digitally by launching Soap.com this summer.
  • Although big sites like Drugstore.com and Amazon.com already offer online drugstore products, Soap.com believes its strong grasp on logistics will set it apart.
  • Soap.com possesses a unique warehouse technology that includes robots which determine the most efficient way to pack products. They also physically retrieve the items from the warehouse shelves.
  • Orders arrive within two days, and shipping is free.

Facts & Figures

  • Diapers.com sold $182 million worth of diapers and baby products in 2009 and anticipate $300 million in 2010.
  • Soap.com expects to carry 40,000 products by the end of the year.
  • Currently, the offline drugstore market generates $125 billion. The online market makes $8 billion.

Best Quote

“These are products you bought a thousand times before and don’t need to see or touch them again.  These are chores.” - Vinit Bharara, Cofounder of Quidsi, which owns Diapers.com

iTunes Invades the Internet

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

iTunes became the mp3 champion of the world by curbing illegal downloads while still allowing customers to “own” their purchased music files, but now the company is considering an entirely different model based on paid access, not ownership.

  • Apple is planning to extend its mp3-selling business beyond its popular iTunes music store, which keeps purchased music files saved on a single computer.
  • Having just absorbed lala.com, which allows users to purchase music that is stored remotely and accessible anywhere there’s Internet, Apple is considering a web-based mp3 storage model that will have a significant impact on the industry.
  • Making music purchases available outside of the iTunes program will allow the company to reach more customers through search engines and websites.

Facts & Figures

  • Apple paid $85 million to acquire LaLa Media Inc.
  • Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was the biggest supplier of music until last year, when Apple usurped it.
  • iTunes forecasts revenues of $2 billion this year.

How Do You Get a $2,000 Dress for $100? Rent it!

Friday, November 13th, 2009
Will rental haute couture be all the rage?
  • Rent the Runway is a new website that lets women rent dresses from high-end designers for about a tenth of their retail asking price.
  • Although the launch has been met with enthusiasm, the business model does face a few risks. Fashion tends to have a short shelf-life compared to rental DVDs. The site is also invitation-only, which limits its customer base. There’s also the enormous customer service risk. If your Netflix movie arrives a day late, that’s one thing, but if the dress for your Saturday wedding comes the following Monday, Rent the Runway has a big problem.
  • Retail stores in big cities have rented dresses for years, but the company believes its online convenience will create a surge in the market even though women won’t be able to try dresses on beforehand.

Facts & Figures

  • The rentals run $50 to $200 for a four-night loan and are shipped directly to the customer.
  • Each dress order includes a duplicate dress in a back-up size for no additional charge.
  • More than 20,000 women signed up for the service for its first week.

Best Quote

“Here was this young girl who loves fashion and was willing to spend a good portion of her salary on a dress that she’s only going to wear once or twice, and I thought, there has to be a solution for this.” – Jennifer Human, Co-Founder of Rent the Runway

Philanthropy’s Information Revolution

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Philanthropy: Optimized by Google

  • Google is dramatically changing the landscape of the philanthropic sector.
  • While Google’s overall impact has been negative for the newspaper and music industries, the “googlization” of philanthropy has benefited the nonprofit world by giving more people access to information that helps them donate.
  • Guidestar, Charity Navigator, PubHub and Social Actions are all sites that aggregate information for donors about non-profits.

Facts & Figures

  • PhilanthropySearch.org scans the websites of the 100 largest foundations, philanthropy consulting firms, university reserarch centers and other philanthropy-related sites.
  • SocialActions.com aggregates more than 50 sources of online social activity, including change.org, globalgiving.org, razoo.org and volunteermatch.org.

Best Quote

“Most important, the Googlization of philanthropy means that organizing the information will not be done by the information creators, but by third parties and – excitingly – the people who want to consume that information.” – Sean Stannard-Stockton, The Chronicle of Philanthropy

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From Bite-Size To Feature-Length

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

Video producers are wising up to your extended viewing capabilities.

  • When web videos were first created, the rule of thumb – due to both technological limitations and the perceived attention span of the audience – was that shorter was always better.
  • Today, many creators of Web content, aided by technological advances, are proving that people are perfectly willing to watch longer videos if they’re of good quality.
  • The creators of online videos are acting increasingly like television producers, using the low production costs and the watch-whenever flexibility of the Web to distribute the online equivalent of TV shows.

Facts & Figures

  • According to comScore, the average Internet user in the United States watches 97 online videos a month.
  • An estimated one in four Internet users visits Hulu at least once a month.
  • In 2008, 24 of the 25 most popular videos on Blip.tv, a Web series distributor, were shorter than five minutes. Thus far in 2009, the average video is 14 minutes long.

Best Quote

“Historically it has been very much a clip-based experience online. We believe we are moving into a transition period where more of that viewership is going toward long-form video.” – Jon Gibs, Vice President for Media Analytics at Nielsen

Taking Netiquette To A New Level

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
This is just a quick, fun piece about an interesting new business. See if you want to give it a try!
  • Alexa and James Hirshfeld, two siblings living in New York City, have started Paperless Post, a Web-based business that allows users to design and send invitations through e-mail.
  • The business was created to cater to the needs of people who want something more upscale than Facebook invites but don’t want to go through the time and expense necessary for printed invitations.
  • Paperless Post seems to be growing in popularity, boasting such clients as Zac Posen and Diane Von Furstenberg.

Facts & Figures

  • The Hirshfelds have sent out 60,000 invitations since January 2009, and 150,000 since the previous fall.
  • Paperless Post boasts a variety of letterhead templates, fonts, motifs, border patterns, paper colors, sizes, stock, and textures, as well as an RSVP tracking system.
  • The carbon footprint of Paperless Post is virtually zero.

Best Quote

“The Internet has been a kind of vacuum in terms of aesthetics. We wanted to leverage functionality with design.” — Alexa Hirshfeld, Co-Founder of Paperless Post

Hey Hulu Addict, Wanna Watch That Show On Your Big Screen?

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

This write-up explores the changing ways in which people watch TV and get their news, and what that means for businesses in the industry.

  • Cable-television companies struggle to respond to our growing interest of watching television online. The companies could easily sell us web connection, allowing us to choose exactly which programs we want to watch, but they won’t because of the consequences.
  • These companies make money by selling packages of channels, though we end up only watching a small handful. That’s why they’ve resisted the trend so strongly. Unfortunately for them, they may already be too late.
  • A slew of start-ups and savvy electronics makers have stormed the scene, giving us a number of new options to bring internet television into our living rooms.

Facts & Figures

  • The average American household pays $700 a year for over 100 channels of cable television but watches no more than 15.
  • New technology bringing internet television to the living room includes: a few new TV sets come with Ethernet sockets to connect to the internet, video game consoles can stream films and TV shows from Netflix, and specialized boxes like Vudu, Roku, and Boxee can access thousands of videos online and connect them to your TV.
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Twitter Needs Novelty

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

As the times change, we expect our favorite web programs to keep coming up with new ways to impress us, right? But this article explains how Twitter has actually been stagnating over time.

  • Although Twitter is enjoying more and more popularity, it has not been significantly updated or enhanced for two years.
  • Instead of developing new updates for Twitter on its own, the company has relied on third-party applications to improve its service.
  • It makes sense for Twitter’s board and co-founders to focus on managing its exponential growth, but that doesn’t mean they can’t also focus on innovation.

Facts & Figures

  • Because Twitter gets so much traffic, it is plagued by periodical crashes. This problem had previously been addressed, but a popularity spike in the last few months has seen its return.
  • Twitter currently has 43 employees, up from 20 in previous years.
  • It would cost Twitter a projected $4.3 million annually to sustain itself at its current size. The company has already raised more than $55 million.

Best Quote

“For the entire history of the company, most of the resources have gone to managing growth, and that is still the case. If it weren’t growing nearly as fast, we would be building a lot more things.” – Evan Williams, Co-Founder and CEO of Twitter

Craigslist – If Only It Were *Your* List

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Interested in web businesses? Here’s a great example of a traditional industry that is able to thrive online, while its offline counterparts aren’t faring so well.

  • Craigslist is a free classified website that only charges for certain services in major U.S. cities.
  • It is a private company that does not disclose profits or revenue and so consulting companies frequently have to estimate these numbers.
  • While the newspaper and print classified ad industries have been downsizing, Craigslist has been bringing in record revenue.

Facts & Figures

  • Craigslist’s estimated revenue for 2009 is $100 million – a 23% increase from 2008.
  • In newspapers, classified advertising declined by 29% in 2008.
  • Craigslist is on track to generate $17.7 million in New York City alone in 2009.

Best Quote

“This is a down-market for just about everyone else but Craigslist.” – Jim Townsend, Editorial Director of AIM Group

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