The Midnight Epiphany That Changed Like.com From An Over-Hyped Failure To A $100 Million Acquisition

Riya.com did sound promising. Big-name venture capitalists like Bay Partners and Leapfrog Ventures had invested $19.5 million in the startup and co-founder Burak Gokturk was gifted with the technical know-how: he was a Stanford PhD and an image recognition expert with more than a dozen patents to his name. The facial recognition startup was barely out of alpha testing in 2005 when the acquisition hype began. "The rumors about a Google acquistion (sic) were neither confimed (sic) nor denied by anyone in the know…but there sure is a lot of buzz around this company right now," wrote TechCrunch's Michael Arrington in a blog post following Riya's alcohol-fueled launch party held in his backyard.

Riya promised to automate the process of image search by dispensing with the need for metadata and actually recognizing the faces and objects in a photograph.
Computers were already pretty good at tracking down a string of text in 2005, but ask one to look at a photograph and tell you what it sees, and it would look at you with a dumb expression on its face. Google attempted to solve its own image search problem by turning it into a game: players would create text to describe the figures in a photograph and Google’s search engine would sift through these words to project the images on your screen. The founders of Riya (which would subsequently be rebranded Like.com) thought there would be a great demand from people wanting to tag friends and others in pictures, which would make it possible to organize these photo libraries. The company could then amass a database of user-generated images that weren’t covered by copyright protection and eventually sell ads against them.

Riya.com Interface

They were wrong.

The system was overly complicated, a five step process with two branches. And the business plan itself was built on too many assumptions--“and this will happen, and then when that happens, and after that happens, then we’ll make money and it’s really oblique,” remarked co-founder and CEO Munjal Shah in a 2009 talk. (After several requests for an interview, Shah declined to comment for this article.) Riya needed a new strategy just a year after launch.

On April 25th, 2006, just after midnight, Shah was looking at Riya’s stats when he noticed that for every person uploading personal pictures and tagging them, 20 others were using Riya for search. He immediately emailed one of his co-founders, Gokturk, who replied within five minutes. “I wonder what they are searching for?” Gokturk wrote back. “Why are they using our site instead of Google or Yahoo Images?”

“Why are they using our site instead of Google or Yahoo Images?”

It didn’t take long to unravel the mystery. Riya wasn’t a replacement for Flickr or Y! Photos; it had become a search engine for images on the Internet. By their actions, people were indicating that they wanted a search engine for pictures that was smarter than Google’s image search.

Riya quickly rebranded itself as Like.com and attacked a new vertical by turning itself into a visual shopping engine for shoes, handbags, watches and jewelry. This second iteration of the Riya’s technology allowed users to find an image, say of a strappy red shoe, and request Like.com to do a “Likeness search” to find similar items. Users could find variations of products in different colors, shop for clothing similar to what celebrities were wearing, and upload images of their favorite items then scour the web for similar items.

Like.com

With this new spin on Riya, Shah and his team were able to raise an additional $50 million from investors. The company’s annual revenue grew to $20 million generated through a simple, direct process: customers browsed for products, clicked, were diverted to retail sites like Amazon.com and Zappos.com and Like.com pocketed the 5- to 15-percent commission. By 2009, Like.com was selling $100 million in products through leads to merchants.

In 2010, Google showed how much it either liked Like.com -- or was threatened by a competitor -- by acqui-hiring the team that built it for $100 million and eventually shutting down the service. Needless to say, Shah and Gokturk would have never gotten that point if they hadn’t managed to pull off a pretty elegant pivot.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Charlie Sheen Ruined My Brand: Ad.ly's Walter Delph

"I won't even say the words 'Charlie Sheen,'" says Ad.ly's Walter Delph, who became the social media startup's new CEO in March after a disastrous partnership. He's been scrubbing tiger blood stains out of his brand ever since.

"I am on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available. If you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

That was Charlie Sheen last year, during his bizarre, extended, very public mind freak, describing what a toot o' Sheen will do to your person. What he didn't say is that it might also annihilate your brand.

Witness Ad.ly.

In 2011, the Los Angeles-based startup, which tied celebrity endorsements to social media, made waves for signing Sheen to its roster of A-listers. Sheen's outbursts brought Ad.ly universal media attention (from the LA Times, Forbes, CNBC, and so forth), and solidified him as a Twitter-advertising powerhouse. But like so many celebrity endorsements and partnerships, there was an inevitable downside. When the tiger blood buzz wore off, Ad.ly found itself trying to contain a rare, unpredictable species of Hollywood animal.

Walter Delph

"You won't hear me talk about Charlie Sheen--I won't even say the words 'Charlie Sheen,'" says Ad.ly's Walter Delph, who became the company's new CEO in March. "We are not working with Charlie Sheen. I just think it was detrimental to our business."

Delph adds that associating with the wrong celebrity--in this case, Sheen--can, in Hollywood speak, get your brand typecast. And Ad.ly found itself in a role it never intended to play. "It ruined our credibility around town, meaning Los Angeles," Delph says. "And it made this entire space--not just Ad.ly, but influence marketing in general--weaker. It dumbed it down. It took this business back six to 12 months."

Sheen's taint was so bitter that Ad.ly has decided to pivot. Delph says he has replaced most of "the old regime with new people" and changed the company's business model from one that focuses mostly on tabloid stars to one that relies on an increasingly niche set of influencers. The Kardashians are still free to use Ad.ly, of course, but it's looking to expand its roster to include less expected "publishing partners," Delph says. "I wanted to reposition the business away from just talking about celebrity tweeting ... we're not just working with celebrities, but artists and musicians and chefs and physicists and business leaders--anyone who has an engaged audience." Additionally, the company has expanded to Facebook and YouTube, and is looking into other platforms such as Pinterest and Tumblr.

Ad.ly pivot's allows for the company to provide its sponsors with better branded content, which is far more authentic than it ever was with Sheen. "GE, for example, will not be a good match for the Kardashians," Delph says. "If we're working with Nikon, for example, I'd prefer to have 10 photojournalists over one Kardashian [sister]."

Delph acknowledges that it will take some effort to change the perception of Ad.ly as a platform for Charlie Sheen and any associated warlocks. He points to Ad.ly's influencer roster, which has grown to about 2,100 relationships, as evidence that progress is being made. But growing that roster effectively and authentically is likely to get harder as the startup transitions from mass-marketing to specific, niche markets like travel and leisure or food and wine.

"We recently got a request for a vegan product, so we put together a list of top-tier vegan and vegetarian influencers," Delph says. "They came back and said, 'We just want vegans.' I was like, 'Guys, this is not that easy to do! There isn't a Vegan 'R' Us out there!'"

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

The Dreamforce Takeaway? Salesforce Gears-up to Takeover the Enterprise

And you say you want a revolution, we all want to change the world….

Once upon a time Salesforce.com was a startup that provided hosted Sales Automation solutions. Co- founded by former Oracle executive and Larry Ellison protégé, Marc Benioff, the company’s explicitly stated mission was “the End of Software.”

Today Benioff is credited by many, including Wikipedia, for “turning the software industry on its head” for using the Internet to “revamp the way software programs are designed and distributed.” Salesforce’s annual user conference, Dreamforce, which ends today, welcomed more than 90,000 registered participants (I suspect some of them virtual), displacing Oracle OpenWorld as the largest Enterprise software conference in the world.

Fait accompli Mr. Benioff?

Apparently not. A guy like Benioff, who walks over hot coals and jumps off tall bridges in the dark of the night, isn’t the type who rests on his laurels.

Last Tuesday, using a Show ‘N Tell keynote as his medium, Benioff declared revolution again.

If the Salesforce CEO has his way, a few years from now, information workers all over the planet will be working from his company’s “social stream”, Chatter, and their desktops might look like Enterprise versions of Facebook.

Altimeter Group founder and author of best-selling Groundswell, Charlene Li, summarized Benioff’s keynote in a tweet:

And if you look at everything that Salesforce has acquired of late and with how the purchases are integrated into Salesforce’s various clouds, it’s hard to argue Li.

Consider that since 2010 Salesforce has purchased:

• Sitemasher, now known as site.com
• Activa Live Chat, now known as Salesforce Live Agent
• Heroku, a Cloud Application Platform to deploy and scale powerful apps
• Etacts, a technology that connects with your Gmail account (using oAuth), and integrates with your inbox to build out your list of contacts. The service also allows you to connect your mobile phone and will track who you talk to frequently over the phone or SMS
• Dimdim which provides for real time, rich-media collaboration and meetings
• Manymoon (Fe) — now known as Do.com
• Radian6 which helps companies listen to what people are saying about them online and engage in those conversations across the social web
• Assistly, now known as Desk.com — Model Metrics which delivers applications and services as part of the Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service
• Rypple (now Work.com) an application for Social Employee Performance Management
• Stypi, a collaborative real-time text editor
• Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers
• ChoicePass, a customized corporate perks and employee rewards technology company
• Thinkfuse, an enterprise SaaS provider that integrates closely with email to streamline scheduled communications
• GoInstant, a co-browsing solution that allows two or more people to browse the web together in a real-time interactive session.

Much of the Dreamforce Conference was spent explaining how all of these acquisitions will be/have been integrated into Salesforce to transform the workplaces of today into the socially connected Enterprises of tomorrow.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Collaboration Startup ClearSlide Aims at Sales Teams

Shopping around for an online collaboration suite just got a little more interesting as startup ClearSlide has raised nearly US$ 30 million in new funding.

The slide sharing and web based meeting platform is geared toward sales teams, but it could be an intriguing option even compared to industry mainstays like WebEx and GoToMeeting. 

Love Those Videos

Who doesn't love to watch videos online? What about videos of your coworkers during meetings? Not quite the same thing, but for people who need to take video meetings, share documents, make presentations and generally work together from a distance, this kind of tool is quite powerful.

Because there are so many options out there for videoconferencing, anyone looking to implement a new system at their company is probably looking for something very specific. This is actually pretty important, and searching for which system to use can get confusing fast if there arent particular tools that are needed or even known about. 

In fact, that's one reason why systems like WebEx are so popular. Companies have been using it for years and have a level of familiarity that breeds both contempt and satisfaction. WebEx is great for things like screen sharing, and even desktop remote control during a training session, for example. WebEx has native apps for BlackBerry, iOS and Android for those who need to meet with customers, partners or coworkers on the go.

ClearSlide also offers web based video meetings, but it adds lots of support for sales teams with things like highly integrated email, analytics and tracking. The Live Pitch feature allows for presenting to prospects without having them download anything and the ability to jump between slides and websites.  

Analytics and Prospecting

Clearslide offers Salesforce integration, detailed reports and public links to share with prospective new clients. WebEx doesn't go quite as deep on the analytics, but it does offer up to 720p resolution during video calls. It's not clear what kind of video quality ClearSlide is offering at this point. 

For GoToMeeting, there's also less of a focus on the analytics and reports. However, Citrix, the company behind GoToMeeting has recently acquired collaboration suite Podio, and it's now integreated with GoToMeeting for a more robust workfow and productivity oriented package. 

Pricing and Other Features 

ClearSlide appears as the much simpler solution compared to WebEx or GoToMeeting. It's more focused on one particular thing, and that's helping companies close sales. That might be good for them as they try to disrupt the web conferencing business, but for potential customers, it may not be quite the right fit. For example, WebEx integrates with Microsoft Outlook and GoToMeeting has the Podio ingegration mentioned above.

Furthermore, in June Cisco announced WebEx Social, an even more ambitious project that will integrate more social media features and document collaboration couresy of Microsoft Office. Both WebEx and GoToMeeting have US$ 50 per month packages, but ClearSlide pricing is not given on its webiste. There are free, trial and enterprise level packages available. 

It comes down to what exact features a company might need, and no doubt all three platforms will continue to evolve. For those companies already doing business with either Cisco or Citrix, breaking in might be a bit tougher for ClearSlide, but then again, those companies may really like the mix of features ClearSlide offers. Tell us in the comments what collaboraton tools you use and what you like or don't like about them. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com