Ajax Girl

We reported last month that Seattle-based ImageKind, where artists can upload their work and sell custom framed prints to others, was in acquisition discussions with Amazon. ImageKind competes with Art.com’s new Sistino project - rumor had it that Art.com was also looking at the company late last year for a possible acquisition.

At the time of our post, ImageKind CEO Kevin Saliba said all discussions were around a financing, not an acquisition (and he only confirmed that he was talking to “large online retailers” and wouldn’t confirm the Amazon discussions). From what we are hearing, the company has closed that round of financing and will announce it next week. Noticeably absent from the investor list, however, is Amazon.

The round was a total of $2.6 million, and included investments from Holtzbrinck Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia), Tom Hughes, the Samwer Brothers, Nick Hanuaer, and Bill Trimarko.

There are also rumors that ImageKind has closed a deal with a large search portal, and that the partner required ImageKind to do a round of financing to prove itself financially viable over the near term.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/96033912/

Google has a hefty lead in getting small publishers to put Google-powered ads on their websites. There is no negotiated deal - advertisers agree to take whatever Google decides to give them. Revenue share terms are not disclosed to these small publishers. The publisher simply places a piece of JavaScript code in the code of their website, the ads appear, and a check comes in the mail. For some, this is easy — for most, they don’t know the first thing about getting code into other code; so they likely hire someone to do this for them, then just leave it alone.

So there’s a large base of small (and some not so small) websites out there that now use Google AdSense to make some money. Plus, Google has a stranglehold on the pay-per-click (PPC) text ad market (just look at their earnings), which means increased advertiser competition, which drives cost-per-click (CPC) up on ads, which provides publishers with maximum revenue potential — well, assuming the rev-share % Google provides is the same as Yahoo!, Microsoft, or AdBrite. But no one really knows how much Google provides (99% of) the publishers using Google AdSense, which is really kind of a shocker — we’re all just trusting that Google is compensating us well, when really they could be taking 70% of the ad revenue and only giving publishers 30%. Google doesn’t disclose the rev-share to publishers.

Yahoo! was slow to the contextual ad game, but they are here now. They finally rolled out Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN), but it’s still in beta — you can’t actually get an account immediately, but rather only be considered for the program. Publishers have been using Google AdSense — why would they switch? Plus, publishers don’t want to mess with their code — removing Google and replacing with Yahoo code.

One way Yahoo can compete is on price and transparency. Simply giving publishers a higher percentage of the total pie, and actually disclosing what that percentage is, would convince many publishers to switch. But not all - the fact is that Google’s AdSense code is embedded on many websites and the switching costs are enough that they just won’t change to Yahoo.

Enter MyBlogLog

However, many publishers are finding the value in MyBlogLog — a distributed social networking platform that allows readers of blogs to learn more about each other and communicate with each other. Publishers — mostly bloggers — have been adding this code to their websites. Once you can get a publisher to add code to their website for your widget, they typically aren’t going to take it down.

I’m sure Yahoo! has plans for taking advantage of having this MyBlogLog widget code on many websites, to somehow edge their YPN code on to these websites — or simply integrate YPN into the MyBlogLog widget that already exists, so that publishers wouldn’t have to touch a thing. Coincidentally, MyBlogLog (Yahoo) is also tracking information on Google AdSense — how many clicks Google AdSense ads are receiving (on webpages that have both MyBlogLog and AdSense installed), the ad unit size, and what webpage those clicks occurred. Yahoo doesn’t know the CPC for each of Google’s ads, but they do know the click-through rate (CTR) — and can specifically target high CTR publishers first, with their YPN offering.

But even with the MyBlogLog widget access, publishers are looking for more money at the end of the day — the YPN offering would have to practically guarantee much more money to the publisher, in order to spur adoption and convert AdSense customers. Considering Yahoo doesn’t have as many advertisers as Google does, I imagine that 9 times out of 10, Google is able to compensate publishers more per click (once again, depending on the rev-share percentage back to the publisher).

Editor’s Note: Post by Steve Poland, whose blog Techquila Shots brainstorms web start-up ideas.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/95839626/

MySpace has been acting a bit odd all year. Last month all Flash embeds on the site were turned off for a few hours. Some people speculated that they were testing the waters, seeing what kind of backlash they would see from user complaints. MySpace PR flatly denied these speculations, however, saying it was nothing more than a bug.

Still, some sites are seeing what look to be permanent bans from the site. Vidilife, Stickam and Revver widgets cannot be placed on the site, and MySpace hasn’t said why, or if they’d be let back on. These services are at a loss as to what to do - in a recent post on the Revver blog they ask for users to email MySpace and request that the service be turned back on.

Tonight we’re hearing that popular widget provider Imeem is the latest service to be banned.

It’s clear that MySpace isn’t happy with the fact that other services are building their business on the back of their massive user numbers - Peter Chernin, the COO of News Corp. (MySpace’s parent company) said as much late last year and specifically named YouTube, Flickr and Photobucket as services that were “really driven off the back of MySpace.”

Industry insiders have said (and continue to say) that MySpace has had enough of building third party widget providers into massive businesses. They say MySpace is preparing to block all widget providers over time and will let only those who pay a “toll” back in. MySpace PR denies this as well, saying that the January block was a developer error, and not commenting at all on the recent service-specific blockages.

If MySpace does eventually go the route of generally blocking widget providers, except those willing to pay a fee, they’ll be called to the mat for previously saying that they have no plans to do so. And whether these blockages really are developer errors, or in fact shots across their bow, widget companies that rely on MySpace for users are literally quaking in their boots, waiting to see who’s next to get blocked.

I’ve pinged MySpace for a comment on the Imeem blockage, but don’t expect to hear back from them until Monday.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/95680100/

We’re hearing that Amazon has invested $1 million or so in Seattle based Shelfari, beating out at least one venture firm that competed for the deal.

Shelfari is a website where users input all of the books they own, and have an online visual representation of their library to share with others. Users can share their library through the Shelfari website or via a widget, and make money by linking to the books for sale at Amazon. They launched well after competitor LibraryThing, which was itself partially acquired last year by ABEbooks.

The company won’t comment on the financing, so this isn’t officially confirmed. We expect an announcement shortly, however.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/95665125/

It looks like Fonpods, which allowed users to listen to podcasts over the phone, has become the latest victim of the big carrier lawsuits against startups leveraging a FCC regulation that provides kickbacks on incoming calls to rural phone companies.

Like AllFreeCalls, which shut down on February 16 and is yet to come back online (and it probably won’t), Fonpods is now offline after being named a defendant in that expanding litigation. The domain name appears to be under the control of Qwest, the plaintiff who named Fonpods in the lawsuit.

We’ve put them in the TechCrunch DeadPool. See here for our previous coverage of the company.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/95665126/

This video presents a fairly compelling case that Apple will be getting into the Ringtone business with the release of the iPhone. Ringtone sales are big business, accounting for 10% of so of the global music market, and well over $1 billion per year in sales (see this old study for 2003-2004 industry numbers).

This news comes as others are talking about the price of the iPhone, which studies are saying is too high for consumers to stomach. My instincts tell me the studies are meaningless, though, and that Apple will sell these things as fast as they can produce them in Taiwan.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/95658222/