Wired Magazine's iPad Demo: Why I'm Excited

Why am I excited about the forthcoming iPad? It has an opportunity to change our reading behavior... much in the same way that the iPhone (and Android and other mobile computers) have changed web consumption. Below is an example of Wired Magazine on the iPad - a product being collaborated with Adobe. Imagine this for your favorite magazine, newspaper, or book. While the Kindle is beautiful in its simplicity and storage - the below demo showcases a different kind of beauty: interactivity, expansiveness, user experience, etc. For most publishers, this is not feasible - let alone scalable... but is a hint of what can be developed and how our reading habits might change:

Read more about the Wired demo here.

In Response to iPad, Amazon Pushing Kindle Through Email, Facebook

As many of us predict the iPad will lead to the Kindle's demise, Amazon has begun pushing the Kindle through email, Facebook and their homepage (in conjunction with Valentines Day).

Here is the Amazon homepage - promoting the Kindle as their best-selling, most-wished-for and most-gifted product, making it a great Valentines gift (which the iPad will not be released in time for):

And here is the email ("Kindle, Amazon's #1 Bestseller") that hit my inbox early this morning - again hinting at a Valentines gift. The email includes Kindle cases (which are also aimed at females). And at the base, there is a prominent banner to follow the Amazon Kindle on Facebook. Considering the success of the Kindle, it is surprising that the page only has 24,000 fans. It is updated quite frequently and is used to promote new titles, unique publications and special deals.

The iPad: The Price is as Important as the Tablet

30 hours after Apple's iPad announcement, everyone has expressed their opinion (examples: Benioff, MG Siegler, and New York Times) ... which seems to be more negative than positive. Not that you need another opinion, but here is my short review:

1. Brad Stone disagrees, but the Amazon Kindle is dead. Why? 2. Because the price of the iPad is surprisingly (and impressively) low. The biggest announcement yesterday was the price. I kept waiting and waiting for the big "splash" and then Jobs said it would start at $499. That price point is low enough that it is immediately competitive with the Kindle while alleviating the pain of not having other key features (more below).

3. The iPad hums. It is a powerful, fast machine that is ideal for web and content consumption: email, web, video, books, etc. The ability to store video, books and music - and access the web through wifi and 3G - in a 1.5lbs device is rather remarkable. Add a 10 hour battery and a familiar touch interface... and content can will consumed in a powerful, brand new way.

4. Many of the iPad's shortcomings can be resolved by software upgrades... whenever iPhone OS 4.0 comes out?

5. Speaking of those shortcomings: Five particular concerns for me:

A. Multi-tasking. Part of the value of a large screen is having the real-estate to run different applications and programs. Fortunately, this can be resolved through a software upgrade.

B. Video camera. I was hoping for an integrated camera for video-chat... this unfortunately cannot be resolved!

C. Flash. As an example, the iPad + Hulu could entertain you during a cross country flight.... but unless it evolves to support Flash, there will need to be "an app for that".

D. Widescreen. Particularly useful for video... but widescreen dimensions would have been nice.

E. The iPad's bezel is ugly. Why is it so thick? Minor complaint but it is wasted space.

Had the device been $1,000 (as we all expected), the above five complaints would have driven me (and many others) away... but at $499, the first two points are incredibly compelling: at the price point, it is the ultimate content machine and nothing else comes close.

Twitter Local Trends: Local Search is About to Change

I might be in the minority here, but I consider Twitter's launch of Local Trends Twitter's most significant product advancement since... launch? It will no doubt be overshadowed by tomorrow's Apple announcement - but local trends are important for, among numerous others, three primary reasons: 1. It marks the next generation of Twitter: geo-location posts, communities and trends. Tonight is step one (you could argue the Town.me acquisition and some of their key hires were actually the first steps... but you get the point). 2. Twitter's Developer-friendly platform will enable rampant development and innovation in the local and social spaces. Imagine Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, etc all on steroids.

3. Facebook's location play must be coming. With Facebook and Twitter already dominating social discussion and mobile usage, they both have a chance to redefine 'check-ins', location based services...

4. ... and geo-location based advertising. Which could be Twitter's revenue fountain, open up a compelling off-Twitter ad network and/or be the next evolution of mobile advertising. Each of these points are relevant to Facebook as well - should they move aggressively into local.

Sure... I might be speculating too big and too far - but Twitter and Facebook can (and I predict will) revolutionize "local", both disrupting the landscape and enabling development / innovation.

As an aside, take a look at the difference between the national Twitter trends and San Francisco's trends... it is very clear (as if we didn't know), that we are far geekier than most. Our top trends are: "iPad", "McGraw-Hill", "Local Trending", etc:

Tapulous' Tap Tap Revenge: A Top Grossing App Despite Being Free

A week ago, I wrote that only three of Apple's top twenty grossing iPhone Apps feature in-app purchases. I wondered whether developers have determined that direct sales were more dependable and profitable than relying on user-engagement to derive revenue. Proof it can be done the other way: Tapulous' hit iPhone application, Tap Tap Revenge, is a free application... and it has now cracked the top twenty-five grossing apps - purely through the in-app downloads / purchases. Tap Tap Revenge went free just before Christmas and had over 2,000,000 downloads in the subsequent week:

Tapulous, developers of the popular Tap Tap Revenge series, check in with good news. They’ve pulled down over 2 million installs of Tap Tap Revenge 3 since going free last Wednesday, 700,000 of which came on Christmas day. Between Tap Tap Revenge 1/2/3 and the Metallica/Lady GaGa editions, Tapulous now has 5 applications in the Top 100 grossing apps. (More on TechCrunch from Daniel Brusolovsky)

Tap Tap Revenge's top in-app purchases are all 'packs': nine of the top ten are either two or six-track downloads. Two-packs are $0.99 and six-packs are $2.99. Interestingly, the only individual track is the Avatar theme song (Avatar also has the #22 top-grossing app at $6.99). The paid applications are in addition to the weekly free apps released each Thursday:

Tap Tap Revenge comes with more than 40 free songs! Best of all, we offer Tap Tap Thursdays: every Thursday we feature a FREE hot new or exclusive track from top artists. So far we've featured songs by Katy Perry, Anberlin, Everlast, Michael Franti, Lady Antebellum, Lee Perry, 3OH!3 and Bitter:Sweet, to name just a few. Check out the full list here.

Not that it is directly related to the their revenue success, but Tapulous also does a great job communicating with their users through their outstanding blog. It is regularly updated with status updates, contests, new music, etc. But despite having over 4,000 Facebook Fans, their Fan Page is totally empty:

Sephora: Online User Reviews in Live Stores

I spent part of Sunday afternoon at Sephora in Union Square - we made a trip to purchase Living Proof No Frizz for Anette (who now swears by it!): While we were there for Living Proof, I did notice the following signage throughout the store and attached to various products:

I love it:

- these are product reviews from real shoppers at Sephora.com

- the review includes the users' name, text, location, and rating (in stars)... giving a very personal feel and incenting users to review products so that they can be included in the live shopping experience

- those shoppers are referred to as "Clients", which is sophisticated, upscale, etc

- it features Sephora Mobile: m.sephora.com - which is a great way to promote and integrate the mobile web experience:

"go to m.sephora.com on your phone's web browser to read more reviews"

I am not sure how scalable the integration is (after all, this is printed and placed - web-based would be more expensive but more flexible) - but I love the creativity and the execution.

As an aside, Living Proof recently introduced a new product: Full:

"Flat, lifeless hair results from each strand being so smooth and fine that it lays quite literally flat, one on top of the other. Full Thickening Cream is a lightweight formula that features Poly Beta Amino Ester-1, a new technology invented by our scientists that creates a micro-pattern of thickening points on each strand. Full creates beautiful, natural fullness and touchable body that lasts throughout the day. Because it's a completely flexible technology, your hair won't collapse or become stiff and crunchy. Great for colored hair, too."

You can see more on Living Proof and on Sephora (the reviews are outstanding!):

MyTown Social Gaming Strategy

MyTown is best described as Zynga meets Foursquare. Take the best aspects of social gaming (Zynga) and combine them with location based networking (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp) and you have MyTown: a game that awards points based on live social game mechanics built atop location-based check ins. You can own real properties (akin to being the mayor) and then collect rent (similar to Mafia Wars, Farmville) based on popularity and live activity (again like Foursquare).

MyTown's point structure is particularly clever and powerful because it creates an incentive structure predicated on routine usage and social sharing. Two great examples that were perfected by Zynga:

1. Deprecation. Farmville is the master of this: because rents cap out at a specific amount, users must collect rent regularly (ie hourly) to maximize potential revenues. As a proxy, if you do not return to harvest your crops in Farmville, they actually deprecate. 2. Social Sharing. Check-ins are rewarded with points (ie 150 points). But large bounties are provided for social actions like: connecting the MyTown account to Facebook Connect, broadcasting your location via Facebook and/or Twitter, and adding commentary on the location.

Below is a strategy to MyTown from town billionaire Kirk Nguyen. Fascinating stuff:

Try to maximize your points payload with multipliers. It's a combination of using multiple multipliers, obtaining the multipliers that yield the most return, and holding out until your base check-in worth is substantial enough (think long-run diminishing returns).

Upgrade as soon as you can, but it starts to get costly after level 5 or 6. Once the upgrade cost got to $7+ million, I bought free upgrade power-ups to maintain my cash for purchasing properties padding my towns total worth.

Finally, keep an eye on trending, number of owners, and popularity - ESPECIALLY popularity: it determines the maximum property value and maximum rent cap.

And if you want to stay on top of the leaderboards for your properties (and other non-owned properties), only keep local properties in your stable. I was in SF last night and bought some high-value properties, but then realized that I couldn't buffer my leaderboard weight for them when I got back into San Jose. I'll probably sell them sometime soon. Oh well, see ya Adidas Concept Store!

All in all, I try for check-ins worth between 45k-60k points, single-ownership of long-lasting, high-popularity businesses, and I collect all 20 of my level 11 property rents with one click.

Once you start rollin', you'll see how ingenious Booyah!'s micro-transaction business is. They made it very accessible and compelling.

My town is worth $2.5 billion, but I feel I could be doing better.

Good luck and happy hunting!

Are Google Nexus One Ads Location Aware?

You may have noticed that ads for the Google Nexus One have been appearing all over my site... perhaps due to my fanboy-like coverage! Today I noticed a new version of the 728x90 unit that focuses on the Nexus One's navigational system. Notice that the ad includes directions that are relevant to my location (the Embarcadero in San Francisco). This could be the default image - but, knowing Google, I suspect that they feature directionally-relevant images for top DMAs (like San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, etc):

Only Three of Top 20 Grossing iPhone Apps Have In-App Purchases

I am very surprised to see that just three of the top twenty grossing iPhone Apps include in-app purchases:

- The Sims 3 (#5) - Madden NFL 2010 (#8) - Tap Tap Revenge (#13) It wasn't long ago that free iPhone Apps were moving into the top grossing ranks due to in-application micro purchases. But just a couple months later, it appears as though there has been a shift in developer philosophy and/or consumer behavior... the latter of which I find difficult to believe (thanks to Zynga, Facebook and so on). It could very well be that iPhone development and mobile behavior make it difficult to fully capitalize upon in-app purchases. Of course, it could also be that the economics clearly suggest that it is in the developer's best interest to capture the revenue up front. In-app purchases obviously require significant and ongoing engagement - so this could also suggest that the lifecycle of an iPhone game is shorter than anticipated.