Pandora Audio Ad for Mozy

I always feel some joy when I hear an audio ad on Pandora. Just heard this great one for Mozy on Pandora. Pandora is a remarkably captive environment to reach users. I love how it's so uncluttered and sparse from an ad perspective. When an ad plays, it really stands out. Reaching listeners midday with audio has been a challenge, hence the popularity of am/pm drive times. Reminds me a lot of marketwatch.com where the daytime usage made it a core buy. That said, all the mobile and at home listening is spreading usage across dayparts nicely.

Divine Caroline featured in new Yahoo

Check out the new format of Yahoo here. You can either type in divinecaroline.com or click "+Add" next to "My Favorites" on the left. You'll see DivineCaroline listed in alphabetical order. They will publish the freshest stories each day to this widget on Yahoo! Nice implementation. Give it a shot.

Pandora top 3 iphone app after Google and Facebook

from Apple



http://www.apple.com/itunes/billion-app-countdown/

Divine Caroline bigger than iVillage

Congrats to Kate and the team.

Meredith Corporation (NYSE: MDP) announced that DivineCaroline®—the flagship site of Real Girls Media Network and an integral part of the Meredith Women’s Network—has cracked Quantcast’s Top 200 sites in the world. With 5.3 million users, DivineCaroline has now eclipsed longtime online traffic leaders such as iVillage.

DivineCaroline offers a unique platform that publishes user-generated content alongside expert-guided editorial to offer consumers a fully engaged community in which to share experiences and form connections. It targets women in the highly desirable 25-54 age group and has experienced strong and steady growth since its launch in 2007.

“The growth of Divine Caroline is a testament to the vibrant community of women online,” says Kate Thorp, CEO, Real Girls Media Network. “Sharing, helping, and participating in the world around them are an important part of our lives.”

Thorp notes that women now represent 53 percent of the total U.S. online audience, and “women's community” was the most visited and fastest growing internet category, acccording to ComScore Media Metrix’s year-end report.
The Meredith Women’s Network, which attracts 15 million unique visitors monthly,* is the first network comprised of premium, branded websites geared towards the topics that matter most to women. It includes The Better Homes and Gardens® Network (Better Homes and Gardens, Better Recipes and the recently launched MixingBowl™); The Parents® Network (Parents, American Baby and Family Circle); and The Real Girls NetworkSM (DivineCaroline®, Fitness, More and Ladies’ Home Journal).
“The success of DivineCaroline reflects the power of this exciting new brand and its connection to female consumers,” says Meredith Chief Development Officer John Zieser. “Real Girls Media is proving to be a perfect complement to the Meredith Women's Network, and we will continue to seek out partners where we can replicate this ‘one plus one equals three’ relationship.”

Pandora crossing into mass market

According to NPD, awareness and usage of Pandora, a leading online radio station, doubled year over year to 18 percent of Internet users; one-third of those who were aware of Pandora report using the service. Similarly, the percentage of consumers claiming to listen to music on social networks climbed from 15 percent in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2007 to 19 percent in Q4 2008. Nearly half of U.S. teens are engaging with music on social networks, which is an increase from 37 percent a year ago; among college-age Internet users, the percentage increased from 30 percent in 2007 to 41 percent in 2008.

Stanford VLAB event redux

Great event at Stanford VLAB Tues eve. Packed room with 250 plus people at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. On the panel on Music Models online, moderated by Paul Bonanos, MC Hammer, Jessica Kahn of Tapulous, Jordan Kurland who manages Death Cab For Cutie among others, Dorrian Porter of Mozes and Jeff Yasuda of Blip.fm. I was pleased with the feedback to private beta of a new music search and ID product that will be coming out from Melodis. After asking the audience to let me know if they wanted to beta test it, I got over 50 cards handed to me.

MC Hammer has a new show called Hammertime coming out on A&E. The camera crews were there in full force. He has over 150k people following him on Twitter, underscoring how powerful the artist fan connection can be. Twitter is clearly gaining a lot of momentum with its "real time web" experience.

Among the interesting data-points were that Tapulous has had over 6 million downloads of its free app with hundreds of thousands of paid purchases of it's artist centric apps at $5 each. Nice people. great app and glad they are doing so nicely.

I highlighted that music is a true passion point for users. It's how they want to spend leisure time and get joy in spite of the economy. That time translates to money in terms of commerce and advertising. Figuring out how to be at the heart of discovery, search and / or listening are the power centers. Notable that 2 of the top 3 apps on the iPhone are music (Pandora at #1 and Shazam at 3).

The mobile phone market feels like the Internet in the mid 90's on DOS and dial up. Crappy and slow. The iPhone on 3G is a crucial platform to get a glimpse of the future. In a broadband mobile world (and we all know that 3G is still "mid band" speed at best), time spent goes way up, as does commerce and advertising. iPhone sales at 14 mm units or so last year is just a remarkable validation of consumer demand for a next gen mobile experience and the app store. Finally a way for third parties to market their products directly to consumers on mobile. Every major phone maker and service provider is rushing to replicate the app store model.

Looking forward to the app store enabling recurring revenue models / subscription and easier in product commerce.

Pandora on Blackberry

It's out. Went to Pandora.com on my Blackberry Bold. Found the mobile page, clicked on Blackberry install and voila. Loaded easily. A little bit of delay on my first time log in as it found my account. Worked flawlessly on my way to San Francisco this morning. Got a call, took it and then it returned to Pandora after the call was done. Radio remains on when I went to email too... including send and receive. This is a really big deal as the iPhone does not enable multitasking like this. UI works great through I prefer the UI and bigger screen on the iPhone more, but the multitasking is quite compelling. Thanks Pandora.

Here's a link to the Boy Genius report:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/03/18/pandora-for-blackberry-finally-launches/

Social networking overtakes email

Social networking is now the most popular web activity, surpassing even email, according to a new study issued by information and media firm Nielsen. Active reach in what Nielsen defines as "member communities" now exceeds email participation by 67 percent to 65 percent, the firm reports--among all Internet users worldwide, two thirds visited a social networking site in 2008. Facebook now leads the pack: Three out of every 10 web users visit the site at least once a month, and in all, Facebook experienced a 168 percent increase in users in 2008, galvanized by growth among the 35-to-49 demographic.

Mobile social networking is most popular in the U.K., where 23 percent of mobile web users (about 2 million subscribers) now visit social networks via handsets--the U.S. follows at 19 percent, or 10.6 million subscribers. Mobile social networking usage increased 249 percent in the U.K. in 2008, and grew 156 percent in the U.S. Nielsen notes that the most popular social networks via PCs and laptops mirror the most popular services on the mobile web--Facebook is the most popular in five of the six countries where Nielsen measures mobile activity, with Xing proving most popular in Germany. In addition to the mobile web and dedicated mobile social networking applications, users are also interacting with their social networks via SMS--according to Nielsen, at the end of 2008 almost 3 million U.S. users were texting Facebook on a regular basis.

For more on social networking's growth: read this Nielsen report

Read the full article here

Mary Meeker preso

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: advertising web)

Here are Mary Meeker's slides from her presentation at the Web 2.0 conference. For a slightly more upbeat perspective, see Pascal Levensohn's VentureBeat post about the growth of innovation in economic downturns.

Webcasting Bill Passes Senate

In a big step forward for Pandora, yesterday, the Senate passed HR7084. Here's what Pandora founder Tim Westergren had to say:

September 30, 2008
WEBCASTING BILL PASSED !!

This evening the Senate approved passage of HR7084. Hooray! We still have to finish up the negotiations, but now the table is set.

Thanks to everyone for your incredible support over the past few days. It was just extraordinary. We had some terrific allies on the Hill; a hearty thanks to our sponsors on the House side - Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) pictured on the floor below, and Donald Manzullo (R-IL), and Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) who shepherded the bill through the Senate. And a special thanks to Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) for his key role as Chairman of the IP Subcommittee.

Behind all the activity within the halls of congress was the tireless advocacy by you, our listeners. None of this would have been possible without your overwhelming public support. Your voice was a constant reminder to everyone involved in this process about the importance of internet radio to music lovers and musicians alike. Your level of involvement was unprecedented. We are eternally grateful.

Thank you again for your amazing support. We will continue to keep you apprised as we work diligently to complete the process.

Jason Calcanis on Demo'ing Your Startup

Jason Calcanis has come up with a great list of pointers for entrepreneurs who are presenting their startups to investors.

Paper Power

This chart from the July, 2008, issue of Wired depicting the growth in pre-trial discovery documents points to H5 Technologies' enormous market opportunity.

Now I Understand Why I Never See Ads on YouTube's Home Page

From the June 16th issue of Forbes magazine:

An ad on the YouTube home page ... now costs $175,000 a day, plus a commitment to spend $50,000 more in ads on Google or YouTube.

The New Norm?

I really hope this isn't the new norm for funding announcements ...

[Editor's note: Here's a remixed version, courtesy of Valleywag.]