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There may only be over 12 million iPhones in the wild, but that hasn’t stopped iTunes users from downloading more than twice as many apps as songs during the store’s first two months of availability, according to a report.

Steve Jobs said at Apple’s press event last week that users have now downloaded over 100 million apps. Assuming it maintains the same rate of 70 million app downloads it witnessed in August alone, it could hit 1 billion apps by the end of the store’s first year of availability, sometime in 2009. iTunes song downloads didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until its second year of availability.

But in reality, 1 billion downloaded apps could happen much sooner than the middle of next year. As apps become a key selling point for Apple going forward and more iPhones and iPods get out into the wild, more users will find reason to download apps and in turn, increase the download rate.

Apple has yet to comment on the possibility of hitting the 1 billion downloaded apps mark sooner than it sold 1 billion songs, but rest assured that the company’s hype machine will be in full swing as that time nears.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1lBR4axKAgE/

Get ready for MySpace Music, because you are going to be hearing a lot about it over the next couple of weeks as it prepares for launch.

The new joint venture, which tosses music rights from the big labels together with the existing MySpace Music property and users, is announcing a number of launch advertising partners this afternoon, including McDonalds, Sony Pictures, State Farm and Toyota. Each of these ad campaigns are rumored to be in the single or double digit millions of dollars.

But the big news is that MySpace Music has also been having exploratory meetings with private equity shops around a huge venture capital raise, say sources with knowledge of the process. The company is said to be considering a raise of well over $100 million, at a valuation of $2 billion or more. The money is there for the taking, we’ve heard, although the valuation is still up for negotiation.

Hulu, a TV and film joint venture between MySpace parent company News Corp. and NBC, raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation in August 2007 from Providence Equity Partners, a Rhode Island based private equity firm.

We’ve confirmed that Providence Equity Partners is one firm that has expressed interest in investing in MySpace Music as well.

That joint venture plus a big capital raise worked out well for Hulu and News Corp., so it makes sense that they’d be looking to duplicate the process with MySpace Music. Our sources say no deal is imminent, however. At the very least investors may want to see a CEO in place before they put that kind of money into the venture.

I interviewed MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe on a wide range of topics last week at TechCrunch50. Skip to 7:24 to hear just the discussion around MySpace Music:

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Source: TechCrunch
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At a time when most social networks are still trying to figure out how to make money from advertising, one social network is bucking the trend. LinkedIn, the social network for business professionals, has so much demand from advertisers that it will be launching its own ad network on Monday. In conjunction with ad network Collective Media (which targets high-end media sites), LinkedIn will let other select sites target its users when they visit those partner sites.

Most social networks have a hard time selling ads at more than $1 CPMs (cost per thousand impressions), but LinkedIn’s rate card shows display ads starting at $30 CPMs and going up to $76.50. Text ads range from $12 to $20 CPMs. Even with the regular discounting from the rate card that many advertisers might recieve, LinkedIn is still doing much better than most social networks. That is because it has a more desirable audience that advertisers want to reach.

LinkedIn claims 27 million registered users. According to comScore, 5.2 million from the U.S. visited the site in July (8.7 million worldwide). LinkedIn claims that the average household income of its members is $110,000, 64 percent are male, the average age is 41, and 49 percent are decision makers. (In contrast, the average Wall Street Journal reader, according to LinkedIn, makes $102,000 per household, is 48 years old, and only 40 percent are business decision makers).

LinkedIn already sells ads against this audience on its own site, targeted by industry, seniority, company size, geography, gender, and number of connections. Now, it will expand that targeting to other partner sites. Publishers will have to apply to become part of the ad network, but LinkedIn will probably try to sign up some of its existing content partners such as the Businessweek, CNBC, and the New York Times.

Whenever someone visits LinkedIn, a cookie will be placed on their browser, which will identify them as a LinkedIn member when they visit a partner site. Personally identifying information will be removed, but members will be grouped into different, targetable categories. As with Yahoo and Google’s similar ad-network targeting, anyone will be able to opt out of this program.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the social networking game is not just about who has the largest audience, but also about who has the most valuable audience. The dominant social networks like MySpace try to maximize advertising dollars by focusing on the most lucrative geographic markets.

LinkedIn knows it has a valuable audience, and now wants to sell access to that audience to others. Although LinkedIn will always make more money off the ads it shows on its own site (since it doesn’t have to split those ads three ways with Collective Media and the partner sites). Perhaps LinkedIn realizes that it will never become a big enough site on its own to justify its recent $1 billion valuation. (Although employees can only sell shares at a $500 million valuation). This will create incremental revenues for LinkedIn. And for publishing site partners it offers a potentially more lucrative set of remnant inventory that it can throw ads up against.

Is this the future of all destination sites—tio become ad networks and sell their audiences everywhere to the highest bidder?

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/JEFtcbsB3k4/

If we can learn anything from the troubled launch of Spore, a videogame many people have been looking forward to for years, it is that binding products with digital rights management (DRM) restrictions hurts more than it helps. Spore, designed by Sims creator Will Wright, went on sale a week ago. It is expected to sell 2 million copies in September alone, and is currently the No. 3 best-selling game on Amazon.

But it also has one of the worst ratings on Amazon (2,016 out of the 2,216 ratings are one star) because of a concerted campaign by fans protesting its DRM. It has also been downloaded an estimated 500,000 times on BitTorrent, and is well on its way to becoming the most illegally downloaded game ever.

The DRM that comes with the official game only allows customers to use it on three machines (after that you have to call EA for permission to activate the game on additional machines). This is nothing more than an inconvenience. Gamers, in general, are more likely to have more than one computer, and to cycle through computers faster than other PC owners because they always want the latest, greatest, and fastest machines. Many will hit that three-machine limit quickly.

Maybe EA should join the rest of the entertainment industry in coming up with a consistent DRM policy. Unlike iTunes, which imposes a five-machine limit on most purchased songs and movies, there is no way to associate new machines or disassociate old ones from your account online. You have to call. That does not scale.

So now EA has a consumer backlash on its hands, and not because consumers don’t like the game, but because they don’t like EA telling them what they can do with the game after they’ve paid for it. What is worse, the DRM is obviously not stopping pirated versions from getting out there. And since the pirated version is DRM-free, many gamers consider it a better product than the DRMed one that Electronic Arts is trying to sell.

The silliest part of this whole affair is that EA has a much more effective weapon against piracy than the DRM: the game itself. Many of Spore’s most interesting features, such as the ability to upload characters you create and explore worlds created by other players, have an online component. These are integral to the gameplay. All EA needs to do is to turn these features off to anyone who cannot prove that they’ve actually purchased the game. Then no self-respecting gamer will want that pirated copy.

There is a lesson here for all media companies. Whether they are producing videogames, movies, or music, adding DRM won’t stop piracy. The best way to stop piracy is to hobble the pirated version, not the official one.

(Image via Danja Vasiliev).

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Source: TechCrunch
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Developers like Frasier Speirs and Dave Winer are protesting Apple’s rejection of some iPhone applications, and saying they will no longer develop on the platform (let’s leave aside the fact that as far as I know Winer never developed for the iPhone in the first place).

The problem is that Apple rejects the applications only after they’re built and ready to roll into the app store. And recently Apple has moved beyond rejecting applications on technical grounds or simply because, in Apple’s opinion, they add no value to the community. Now Apple is explicitly rejecting applications because they are competitive with Apple applications.

So first off, I agree that it’s unacceptable for Apple to reject applications on discretionary grounds and without any “clear and unambiguous rules,” as Speirs puts it, as to what will and will not be accepted. In a happier world, developers wouldn’t waste their time building applications that can never be used by iPhone users. But none of that matters - developers will keep on building new applications even with the very real risk of rejection at the last moment hanging over their heads.

We’ve seen this all before with the Facebook platform. Facebook doesn’t block new apps from launching, but they’ve shown that they’ll compete with third party developers, give preferential treatment to revenue partners and won’t hesitate to suspend applications that that are annoying or harmful to users. Developers protested, but the apps keep on coming.

The fact is that there are more than twelve million iPhones in people’s hands today, and another 800,000 or so are likely sold each week. That is too much of an opportunity to pass up. Developers will complain, but ultimately they’ll play by whatever rules Apple demands. Even if those rules are ambiguous and subject to change regularly without notice.

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