References to hashtags in Facebook’s code suggest the social network could be working on bringing the feature — popular on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr — to its own platform.

Developer Tom Waddington from Cut Out + Keep, who has discovered a number of unreleased Facebook features in the past, today pointed us to a mention of the word “hashtag” in Facebook’s Javascript SDK. He says this likely for an XFBML hashtag plugin, similar to the hashtag tracking widget Twitter offers developers and publishers.

Another mention is in the live source code for Facebook.com. A reference to ”EntstreamHashtagOverlay” links hashtags to Facebook’s hovercard feature. This suggests users will be able to hover over a hashtag to get more information, similar to what they can do for people, apps and pages, as seen below.

Waddington also noticed that Facebook.com/hashtag redirects to Facebook.com, leading us to believe the company could be saving this page for an unreleased feature, otherwise it would lead to a 404 error page.

In March, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal, AllThingsD and TechCrunch that Facebook was working to integrate hashtags into its service to help users follow trending topics, search for news and contribute to conversations around a particular issue. That same month, Facebook added a job listing for a data editor to join the consumer communications team “responsible for amplifying the many exciting ways people are using Facebook and connecting with others during global events, holidays and other significant moments in time.”

Shortly after, the company added a multiple listings related to strategic partner development, such as roles focused on entertainment companies and public figures in Brazil and Asia, as well as musicians and athletes in the U.S.  In April, Facebook added a listing for a Public Content Partnerships Analyst to use “quantitative analysis, data mining and the presentation of data to communicate how our partners engage with our product.”

Facebook has not commented on the possibility of hashtags on the platform. Users can already include hashtags in their posts — and many do, often for stylistic reasons — but these do not generate links to more posts with the same hashtags. On other services, hashtags serve to label and group conversations. Although they are most associated with Twitter, they have roots in early Internet chat networks and have more recently taken off on Instagram, which Facebook now owns.

Hashtags could give Facebook users new ways to engage with people and content outside their network of friends. The feature could also lead to better ways of searching posts. With Graph Search, Facebook removed the ability to search public conversations. Hashtag search could replace that and improve Facebook’s existing photo search by letting users tag their contents as they do on Instagram.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Shazam and Rdio have offered something wonderful for U.S. users as of fall 2012, providing full track streaming for tagged music via Rdio, thanks to a “Listen Free on Rdio” link within the Shazam app. That means that once you use either the free or paid version of Shazam to identify a song from your device, you can then listen to the entire track, so long as you’re either an Rdio subscriber or have signed up for a free 14-day trial. Now, the service is available to Rdio and Shazam users in Canada, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and the UK in addition to the U.S.

That means it’s now available to a potential combined audience of 120 million users of Shazam’s free app, which is great news for Rdio. Rdio has only around 1 million monthly active users according to AppData, which means it stands to gain a lot from the increased exposure afforded it by getting in front of Shazam users. And of course for Shazam, it offers another incentive for users to access its services.

Rdio is still getting the better end of the bargain, however, unless Shazam is also taking in referral fees for any subscriptions that come out of tags it sends Rdio’s way. That’s because this provides a big jump start to the customer acquisition and conversion funnel that Rdio has in place, which depends on convincing free trial users into subscribers at either $4.99 per month for the Rdio web plan, or $9.99 per month for the unlimited version which includes mobile apps access and offline storage.

Another recent win for Rdio is being selected as a streaming partner for Twitter #Music, the recently launched app from Twitter based on its acquisition of startup We Are Hunted. Both introduce it to new users, who might not have found the service through other means. Rdio still trails far behind rival Spotify in terms of user base, but its services compare favorably to that company’s in my opinion. Hopefully these new inbound customer streams start paying big dividends for Rdio.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, gaming console and software company OUYA announced that they have closed a $15 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, and with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Ocean Partners. This marks one of the largest institutional investments to go to a project that had its humble beginnings on Kickstarter.

OUYA is a company that launched back in 2012 on Kickstarter under the guiding hands of Julie Uhrman, a video game industry veteran who believes that gaming should be affordable and enjoyable for everyone. She and the team developed a $99 Android gaming console, which hooks into the TV and comes with automatic access to free-to-try games. It launched on the crowdfunding site to much fanfare, scoring $8.6 million in funding, which ends up being around 9x more than OUYA asked.

Along with the $15 million round, which brings OUYA’s total amount of funding to $23.5 million, the company will also be bringing KPCB General Partner Bing Gordon on to the board of directors. Gordon brings with him years of experience from Electronic Arts.

Here’s what he had to say about the funding:

OUYA’s open source platform creates a new world of opportunity for established and emerging independent game creators and gamers alike. There are some types of games that can only be experienced on a TV, and OUYA is squarely focused on bringing back the living room gaming experience. OUYA will allow game developers to unleash their most creative ideas and satisfy gamers craving a new kind of experience.

The OUYA hardware has proven its spot in the market with the successful Kickstarter project, followed by an institutional investment led by a firm such as KPCB. “The message is clear: people want OUYA,” said Uhrman.

But the same story rings true for software, as the company has seen over 12,000 developers sign up for the platform to build games and monetize them in any way they’d like. This is up from 8,000 developer signups in March.

And if that weren’t enough, OUYA has been picked up by major retailers like GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon, with availability originally intended to begin June 4. OUYA is pushing that back to June 25, however, announcing the delay today as a result of a desire to be able to meet initial demand.

Clearly, the affordable gaming console speaks to people. But is it enough to make OUYA profitable? In an interview with TechCrunch, Uhrman explained that OUYA essentially breaks even on the hardware from the $99 gaming console, and that all games will be free-to-try. Curious if that was sustainable, we asked Uhrman if free-to-try would always be the case with OUYA games.

“Free to try is a core tenet of OUYA,” said Uhrman. “We wanted a gaming experience for the television that’s inexpensive to get into. Developers monetize however they’d like to, which is why we have games with unlockable demos inside a fully paid version, or micro-transactions, and even a donation based game. I’m looking forward to the first episodic, subscription-based game,” she said.

According to Uhrman, the latest round from KPCB and friends will go toward further supporting game developers and development, bringing in exclusive and unique OUYA content, and meeting the demand seen from all parts of the world, including Japan, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When it comes to quickly growing markets, it’s hard to beat Brazil, where an emerging middle class is driving strong demand for all kinds of products — particularly in the e-commerce sector.

The latest startup primed to take advantage of this boom is Basico, which just raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Initial Capital, the Israeli/Brazilian VC fund headed up by investor (and frequent TechCrunch contributor) Roi Carthy, along with Brazilian angel investor Guilherme Soarez.

Basico aims to essentially be Brazil’s answer to Everlane, by being the country’s first online-only premium basic apparel brand. The company, which has a full-time staff of seven, will use the new funding to gear up for its public launch slated for the first week of June, CEO Alexandre (Bio) Veiga tells me.

Basico’s first line of products will include t-shirts, polos, tank tops, and underwear for both men and women. Basico’s apparel will be made in Peru, as that’s where high-end Pima cotton is grown, Veiga says, and t-shirts will cost the equivalent of $25, half the typical retail price for comparable Pima tees sold in Brazil.

Veiga explains the concept thusly:

“These are the same factories used by big brands such as Abercrombie, Polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, and many others. We have the same material, the same factories, and sometimes an even higher quality control. The idea is to have always the best raw natural materials (Pima, alpaca, merino, Argentinian leather, cashmere) worked by the best factories in the world.

This is a kind of business that is much easier to do online and with a fully verticalized strategy. Of course more people have seen this [work recently] after the business cases from Everlane, Bonobos and many others that are focusing on cutting the middleman and assuring that their quality is premium.”

Indeed, it’s a solid concept that has proved successful in other markets such as the United States. And of course, it bears mention that Everlane is actively working on international expansion of its own, so the race is on to establish a foothold in the Brazilian market. But Basico has in its favor the local connections, manufacturing know-how, and now the funding often necessary to make a business work in its native land — so it is off to a good start of its own.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon quietly launched its Appstore in China this weekend in a surprise move that paves the way for the rollout of Kindle devices in that country.

At the same time, Amazon also debuted its Chinese-language Web site for developers (link via Google Translate), promising that they will soon have access to customers in 200 countries.

A Sina Tech article (link via Google Translate) outlined why the Amazon Appstore might be an attractive alternative to Google Play for Chinese developers. Reasons include: easier access (Google Play isn’t widely available in China and most developers sell through third-party app stores); a more open and “friendly” environment (the article cited Kongregate’s 2011 ban as an example of problems with Google Play’s TOS); a worldwide customer base; and an attractive revenue sharing model.

China had not been included in the list of 200 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea, that Amazon recently said it would bring the Appstore to. In addition to the Kindle reading app and e-books, messaging apps are currently available for download, as well as popular games like Angry Birds and Temple Run. Amazon says it will offer popular games and apps from Chinese developers like Tencent and Sina.

The launch of the Amazon Appstore in China comes less than a month after the company rolled out Cloud Drive there. The Kindle Store was launched in China at the end of last year, at the same time the Kindle iPhone and iPad apps became available to download for users in that country.

There have been years of speculation that Amazon will finally release Kindle hardware in China, but the launch of its Amazon Appstore there is the most concrete step so far. Another clue is the possibility that a $99 Kindle Fire 7″ tablet will begin shipping this year. The low price point would help the device compete in China, where tablets are often sold for less than $100.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Major League Baseball has always been very strict about its content appearing on YouTube and other video streaming sites. Peruse YouTube for highlights from your favorite players and teams, and you’ll find it nearly impossible to find quality footage. As soon as a clip from a game goes up on YouTube, it’s taken down. Up until now, it’s just a collection of slideshows and footage uploaded from fans’ shaky hand-held cameras at the ballpark. Finally, Major League Baseball is stepping up its effort to tear down those walls.

Today on Google+, the company announced that MLB is finally bringing baseball to YouTube. While this is a significant partnership for YouTube, which continues to roll out new content initiatives and partnerships, don’t expect it to be fully baked quite yet.

Through its YouTube channel, MLB will begin offering game highlights from the current season, which will be uploaded 24 to 48 hours after the game. Not only that, but it will be offering classic fare, with thousands of hours of archived games going back to 1952, along with clips from “Baseball’s Best Classics” and “Best Moments.”

MLBAM first began putting full-game archives and highlights on its YouTube channel back in 2010, which were only available to viewers in Australia, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand and Russia. The new channel update will now bring that content to an even wider, global audience. However, it is missing a few key markets.

Under YouTube’s new partnership with MLB, viewers will be able to watch two live games per day during the regular season. For free. However, for baseball fans living in the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, we have some bad news. No two-live-games-per day for you.

Naturally, it seems a little ill-conceived for the partnership to be announced without the ability to air in the U.S., Japan or South Korea, which happen to have two of the largest markets for baseball in the world. That being said, it’s a great start, and baseball fans will appreciate the ability to find highlights from their favorite players and teams on YouTube, just one click away from cute cat videos.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Here’s a speed summary of the just-published Financial Times 2013 special report on Digital & Social Media Marketing (PDF (FT subscribers only)).

It’s a long report, published in tandem with today’s FT Digital Media conference in London, but we’ve summarised it down to key bullet points for you.  And if that’s too long, here’s the one word summary.

Television.

From ‘second screen’ TV experiences on tablets that boost TV advertising effectiveness to ‘addressable advertising’ (personalised and hyper targeted TV ads delivered digitally) and the shrinking of TV ad slots to fit digital attention spans, the FT paints the future of Digital & Social Media Marketing with television, not instead of it.

So standing atop the $205bn TV advertising mountain is the smartest place to be in digital and social media marketing right now; this makes sense – the secret to success has always been, and always will be, to stand next to the money.

Advertisers look for ways to follow consumers Emily Steel

• The big change in digital marketing is not that marketers have shifted nearly a fifth of their budgets to digital outlets, but that the divide between digital and traditional media is so blurred it may soon disappear.
• Rather than threaten the $205bn television ad business, digital promises to grow it, by helping advertisers understand the messages that will best resonate with a target audience, target the right ad to the right person at the right time, and make it easy for people to share those messages with their social networks, catapulting the brand to the centre of digital chatter.
• Whilst social media has now found its place in the world of digitally enhanced marketing as a strategic insight and targeting tool, mobile media has yet to find its niche; mobile is expected to capture more than 20 per cent of media consumption in the next five years, yet it receives only a minuscule portion of total advertising revenues, and a glut of mobile advertising inventory is causing mobile ad rates to plummet

Media: Watching television no longer rates as passive pastime Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson

• The average American still spends about five hours a day glued to TV; the smart money in digital is being invested in making TV advertising better
• TV is not dead, it is just evolving into a two screen experience, the TV display and a tablet or smartphone.  “Lean-back” TV experiences, passively consumed from the comfort of the couch, are giving way to ”lean-in” TV experiences, where viewers multitask viewing and interacting on smartphones and tablets
•  A survey by Time Warner’s Medialab found that 65 per cent habitually multitask with a digital device while watching TV. Much of this activity is in social media discussions of TV shows (tripled in the last 12 months), stimulated by TV networks to sell TV advertising space by showing their content is more engaging
• “I have no interest, frankly, in just growing the successes of Twitter and Facebook,”  says Philip Bourchier O’Ferrall, senior vice-president of Viacom International Media Networks: “My number one role … is to drive TV ratings.” To this Nielsen’s SocialGuide found that an 8.4 per cent increase in Twitter volume correlated to a 1 per cent rise in ratings for new shows among viewers aged 18 to 34. But for 35- to 49-year-olds, however, it took a 14 per cent jump in tweets to produce the same 1 per cent ratings bump.
• The rise of second screening is spawning a new generation of specialist second-screen agencies, creating content, data and tools to support the new twin-screen TV advertising industry. Viggle offers loyalty rewards to fans who “check into” shows, GetGlue, a social TV app developer has 3m users who have checked into, rated or reviewed 500m shows, and Bluefin Labs and SocialGuide, purchased by Twitter and TV metrics giant Nielsen respectively, analyse social TV chatter.

Online video: Web of creativity means greater opportunities to boost sales Matthew Garrahan

• The big idea is “addressable advertising“, a fancy name for online ad targeting, and the big opportunity is to turn TV advertising into addressable advertising, using personal data to get the right ad in front of the right person. DirecTV and Dish Network, two satellite operators, and Hulu are already with online addressable TV advertising
• As TV and video consumption moves online, there has been an explosion of professional content to wrap advertising around.  Rapidly expanding audiences are only doing so much to ease the downward trend of advertising CPM (cost per thousand impressions) rates. Down 15% from 2011, eMarketer expects video CPMs to fall a further 30% from  $45 in 2010 to $31.20 in the next four years.
• With more much more content funded only by a little more advertising money (up from $4bn in 2013 to $8bn by 2016), the future will belong to content producers who can produce premium quality original content that consistently attract eyeballs

Networking apps: Agencies scramble to find the next big thing Tim Bradshaw

• Advertisers should focus on trends that lie behind technology, not the technology itself – whether geeky and gimmicky Google Glass or popular networking apps (video, image, chat and data sharing).
• It may be better for advertisers to use Instagram-style posters with comment-style tag-lines in traditional media than to run an Instagram campaign.  Likewise it may be better to shorten TV ads, from the 30-second sport to a 6-second Vine-length video than to run a campaign on Vine itself. “Five seconds is the right length” for a TV ad today say TV ad man Trevor Beattie
• The challenge is to make advertising fit new media expectations set by trends digital; this means becoming masters of short, snappy visual content.
• The opportunity to create trans-media advertising adapted to digital trends.  For example, advertising content from Starbucks, Nike, MTV and Forever 21 is created to be sharable on networking apps such as Instagram. Meanwhile, leave Google Glass to the geeks.

Privacy: Data industry scrutinised over profiling Emily Steel

• Global data brokers such as Acxiom and Datalogix are coming under scrutiny from authorities as they amass consumer data and use it to improve marketing ROI
• Axciom, that collects information about more than 700m people across the world and sells that information to more than 7,000 clients, uses credit card transaction data, primary research, geographic information and other demographic details to improve as targeting and can triple the return on investment of ad campaigns, and boost targeted consumer spending by 50%
• Facebook has integrated Datalogix data into its ad offer, allowing brands to buy ads targeted at people based on their spending habits, for example, people who spend three times more than the national average on children’s cereal. Advertisers can then can tap the Datalogix data to figure out whether or not people who saw the ad end up visiting the store and buying the advertised product.
• Although lawmakers may sympathise with consumer privacy advocates who fear a world where the tracking, collection and selling of personal information creates a so-called “database of ruin” of past financial, sexual, and medical follies/woes, they is a conflict of interests. Politicians deploy the same tracking, analytics, personalisation and targeting technologies as corporations in their election campaigns.

Future of search: Keyword-driven system requires refinement Richard Waters

• Although Google search remains the undisputed king of online advertising, traditional keyword-driven search advertising is set to evolve, with Facebook and Amazon poised to move in
• The future of search is hyper-targeted advertising based not only on search terms, but Amazon / credit card purchase data, Facebook personal data, and mobile location data.

Smartphones: Canny advertisers target your mobile phone Robert Cookson

• After a slow start, mobile advertising is taking off; in the UK, mobile advertising spend more than doubled in 2012 to more than £500m, and in the US, mobile ad spending has become the fastest growing among all media categories as smartphone ownership surged past 50%.
• Nevertheless mobile advertising only represents less than 3 per cent of total ad spend across all media, and currently there is more mobile ad space available than advertising to fill it, resulting in average ad rates (cost per thousand impressions) slumping to well below $1.
• One of the reasons for the slow ramping of mobile advertising is that it has been stuck in a search and display ad rut, serving canned text, static images or dumb videos.  The opportunity is to reinvent mobile advertising with immersive rich-media interactive features. Nuance, a US company that develops speech recognition technology, this month launched a product that allows advertisers to create ads that respond to a user’s voice. And Blismedia recently bought up ad space on smartphones near ad agency offices with an interactive ad that used the gesture control functionality of handsets
• The future potential of mobile advertising lies not only in getting the right message to the right person at the right place at the right time, but in improving the advertising experience.

Real-time marketing: Instant response requires cultural change by brand owners Rob Budden

• The future of marketing is agile marketing, responsive and reactive creative that responds in real time to events with interesting content.  This means creating creative in minutes, not months. Coca-cola has committed to doing doing 30 per cent of its marketing in an agile way.
• In agile marketing, time is everything; similar creative placed just hours apart can have vastly different results.  Mondelez (makers of Oreos cookies) and Motel 6 were both quick to create content around this year’s Super Bowl power cut, and both with similar content.  Mondelez took minutes, Motel 6 took hours.  Mondelez’ content was shared more than 15,000 times, Motel 6 less than 30 times.
• Agile marketing requires a mind-shift from brands, brands can no longer get away with telling consumers they are interesting when they want to tell them, they have to be interesting when consumers want to listen

People: Struggle to stay on top of a moveable feast April Dembosky

• A talent war is raging between advertising agencies and tech companies, both are looking for technical talent and marketing strategists – ideally in the same person.
• But what’s required in terms of technical talent and strategic planning is a fast-moving moveable feast, understanding the role of search in the marketing mix used to be key, then it was social media, then apps, and now user experience.
• The talent war is making recruitment difficult, especially for ad agencies who find the allure of the ad exec lifestyle waning. Young talent want to be part of the change, not the old guard, and have a mission to change the world, whilst working in a flat non-hierarchical organisation (with share options).
• Ad agencies are having to adapt and reposition themselves by abandoning the language and corporate paraphernalia of traditional advertising; Aegis media have gone so far as to jettison the terms ‘advertising’ and ‘consumers’

Social network: Facebook measures up for marketers Emily Steel

• Facebook has spent the last year reinventing itself to become more attractive to advertisers and to transform itself from “just being a social media conversation… to being an indispensable media partner”. Ads are now far more prominent in users’ newsfeeds, especially on mobile devices, targeting is better, and advertising metrics have been improved.
• And it looks like it is working; a year after announcing that it would stop announced it would stop buying Facebook ads because of questions over what returns the ads generated, General Motors is back testing Facebook’s new targeting and measurement offerings for a mobile ad campaign promoting its Chevrolet Sonic sedan.
• Developments in Facebook ads have helped Unilever understand how Facebook ads lift sales, spurring big promotions such as a recent campaign in Brazil for Seda hair products. Unilever designed a campaign with mobile ads featuring a soap opera actress. The company credits the campaign with boosting market share.
• Overall, advertisers are expected to spend more than $5.6bn on Facebook advertising this year, up more than 31 per cent from $4.3bn in 2012, according to eMarketer. On mobile alone, Facebook is expected to earn $1.5bn this year, more than three times the $471m it earned in 2012.

Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited the game category on the Amazon Appstore as their leading revenue driver.

Previous reports have confirm roughly the same thing: that Android developers are turning to Amazon’s Appstore in greater numbers, and are seeing the benefits. Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23.

But this was over a year ago; App Annie itself said this month that Apple’s was still the store to beat, in terms of revenue.

Today’s report also found that top paid iOS and Google Play applications have higher average price points than those on Amazon. Comparing the average price of the top 400 paid apps, the company noted that Amazon’s average was $1.73 compared with $2.21 on iPhone, $3.39 on iPad, and $3.55 on Google Play.

However, it might be a little early to paint such a rosy picture, depending on whose data you believe more. For instance, App Annie competitor Distimo also released a report this month, examining similar trends among the two leading Android app marketplaces. Its findings were a bit different.

Although it too saw Amazon’s influence growing, it found that overall, Google Play was still beating on revenue. Distimo said that the number of paid downloads in Google Play is twice the size of paid downloads on Amazon, but the revenue gap was smaller. According to its analysis, the top 200 paid applications in Google Play in the U.S. made $5.2 million in March 2013, making Google Play 1.7 times bigger than the Amazon Appstore by revenue.

However, that report noted that there were some examples of applications that did better on Amazon, which essentially backs up the broad strokes of what App Annie is saying here. Simply put, for some developers, Amazon is proving more successful than Google Play, and its potential is growing as Amazon’s store scales.

Also in the new report, 56 percent of the developers App Annie surveyed were said to focus on gaming, and over half (51 percent) said they decided to publish on Amazon because of how easy it was to port apps. Other top reasons included a belief that Amazon’s Appstore marketshare would grow, and that the Kindle Fire would become a leading device.

That second reason – marketshare growth – is already happening, of course. Amazon announced on the 17th that it was expanding its Appstore to cover nearly 200 countries, including notable additions like Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, South Africa and South Korea. Before, the store was only available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

But Amazon’s potential isn’t only tied to its growing reach, but also to its deep experience with e-commerce and related infrastructure. Amazon customers have their account information on file, and can use 1-click purchasing to buy apps. The store lets users test drive apps, and promotes free apps daily, which drives traffic. Amazon also curates apps, so unlike Google Play, those that fill its charts have been scanned for malware and for other bad behavior.

For developers looking to have their app found, and more importantly, purchased, these strengths can add up to drive sales.

Correction: an earlier version of this cited Amazon’s Appstore as a leading revenue driver. This should have said the games category on Amazon was. This has been updated.  

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Assured Labor, a New York, Mexico City and Sao Paulo-based startup that helps low- and middle-income workers across Latin America find jobs through their mobile phones, just closed $5.5 million in funding led by Mexican private equity firm Capital Indigo. Other existing investors include Great Oaks Venture Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Kima Ventures, Enzyme Venture Capital, Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin.

The company, which came out of MIT’s Media Lab, runs two big job-hunting services called EmpleoListo in Mexico and TrabalhoJá in Brazil that now have 500,000 job seekers and 16,000 employers. They’re growing at a clip of about 1,000 employers per month. (They only just broke into the Brazilian market a year ago.)

With Assured Labor, employers looking for potential hires can put job descriptions in through the company’s website. Assured Labor will find the most qualified candidates and text message or e-mail them.

Workers register on computers either at home or through web cafes. Once they’re in the system, they’ll get text messages any time a company posts a relevant position and they can text or call back through a private number. Naturally, employers pay to find candidates.

This company isn’t really competing with higher end services like LinkedIn. “LinkedIn is going for the opposite end of the job spectrum,” said CEO David Reich.

Reich says Assured Labor is more of a social enterprise that targets the lower-earning segment of the market. If you look at the job listings on Empleolisto, they’re for positions like customer service representative or bilingual executive assistant.

Many of their clients are still on feature phones, as Latin American markets are only beginning to experience an oncoming wave of affordable Android phones.

“I wish that transition with smartphones would happen faster,” Reich said. “A lot of users would have a better experience with us through smartphones. They still have very small penetration, maybe only 10 to 15 percent in most countries in Latin America.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon today took a big step forward in its strategy to take its app distribution business — and its Kindle Fire hardware business — global: it announced that its Android-based Appstore will expand to cover “nearly 200″ countries, including adding Australia, Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico, Canada, South Africa and South Korea. Up to now, the only countries where the Appstore was available were the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Developers interested in distributing their apps to these new international users can start submitting their apps today, Amazon said. The storefronts themselves will be coming “in the coming months” when Amazon officially launches its Amazon Appstore for Android internationally.

Last quarter, Amazon missed on almost all analyst estimates but its stock soared anyway, partly because, as the WSJ points out, it was showing improvements in its operating income — a sign that its business of selling online on a grand scale continues to progress.

Amazon is due to announce its next quarterly results on April 25. Putting the news out today that it’s growing the scale of its digital content business even further helps them continue to sell that message in the lead-up to that.

It’s also an important message to lure more developers to its platform.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, VP of Apps and Games at Amazon, in a statement. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Amazon, as we have all come to expect by now, doesn’t give out specific numbers on how well apps (or its devices) are selling. (However, Flurry a year ago estimated that the Appstore generated nearly as much as Apple’s App Store, at 89% of Apple’s app revenues, with Google Play significantly behind them, making only 23% as much as Apple.

Since first launching the store in 2011, Amazon has gradually been offering different features in the Appstore to give developers more flexibility for how they charge users.

These include single-click purchasing, in-app purchasing, A/B testing capability, and GameCircle, launched last year, specifically to promote and use gaming apps. Amazon says that a study of 500 games that utilize in-app purchasing on Amazon found that those enabled to work via GameCircle earned 83% more average revenue per user than non-GameCircle games.

Amazon started as an online bookseller but has since expanded into electronics, home goods, fashion, digital content and much more. With that, it has built a business model around being aggressive on prices for consumers, making up for it with economies of scale. In that sense, taking its Appstore (and probably its hardware) to as wide an audience as possible is an essential move for the company.

But there could be another reason for ramping up Appstore distribution: Because a more powerful app storefront has become a prerequisite for many consumers when considering what mobile hardware to buy, the move is also a sign that Amazon could be gearing up to get more aggressive with its hardware strategy. Amazon currently sells Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets built on a forked version of Android. Many believe that it will add a smartphone to the lineup soon.

While Amazon has yet to announce a phone, there have been various signals that it does plan to do more with smartphones soon. Included in this is a carrier billing deal it has signed with Bango, which has yet to come into effect but looks like it might finally this year. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets largely work on WiFi connections (there is one model, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD with LTE access, but so far this is only sold in the U.S.). But a smartphone would be more closely linked with mobile operators, making it more logical for Amazon to look for a way of making it easier for users to pay for content on its Appstore, especially in countries where credit card penetration is low.

Release below.

Amazon Expands Global App Distribution to Nearly 200 Countries – Developers Should Submit Their Apps Soon to Reach Millions More Active Amazon Customers

Developers around the world reporting high monetization rates with Kindle Fire and Amazon Appstore

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 17, 2013– (NASDAQ: AMZN) – Amazon.com, Inc. continued the global expansion of its Appstore today by announcing that developers can now submit their apps for distribution in nearly 200 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. These apps will be made available in the coming months when the Amazon Appstore for Android launches internationally for consumers. Registered developers who want international distribution will have their apps automatically made available for download, unless they designate otherwise. This international expansion is the latest in a series of Amazon Appstore for Android launches, which have included the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Signing up is easy and developers can get started today by visiting the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal.

Developers throughout the world are experiencing strong monetization and user engagement through Kindle Fire and the Amazon Appstore. The success is being driven by Amazon’s large customer base and industry-leading e-commerce features like 1-Click purchasing, Amazon’s APIs for In-App Purchasing (IAP) and A/B Testing, and GameCircle, Amazon’s gaming experience for Kindle Fire. A recent study of more than 500 games that utilize in-app purchasing on Amazon found that GameCircle-enabled mobile games earned 83 percent more average revenue per user (ARPU) than non-GameCircle games.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Monetization Success
P2 Games is a UK based publisher of interactive games. “We launched our Kindle Fire version of Peppa Pig in January 2013 and within a couple of weeks we saw the sales on Kindle Fire overtake Google Play to a factor of four or five times,” said Peter Sleeman, Director, P2 Games Limited. “Kindle Fire is now a legitimate contender and although our apps have been out much longer on the iOS formats our current rate of sale is close to parity with iOS most days.”

Mobile Deluxe is the creator of popular games like Big Win Slots and Jewel Factory. “We see superior engagement, retention, and monetization from players who download our games from Amazon,” said Sean Thompson, Vice President of Mobile Deluxe. “The GameCircle integration is helping us achieve 40 percent better per-user monetization rates compared to non-Amazon players. We’re excited to continue this momentum as the Amazon Appstore grows into more and more international countries.”

Playmous is a UK mobile games publisher. “We were excited to see how fast the Kindle Fire install base was growing in the UK and other European countries,” said Anton Volnykh, Playmous. “Our initial launch on the Amazon Appstore in October was targeted to Europe only and we saw 4x growth in paid downloads when we launched the second campaign in just 6 weeks after the initial release. Moreover, our conversion rate from the free version to the paid version of the game has been 30% higher than on other app stores on average with the same product.”

Anuman Interactive is a French multimedia publishing company. “With 30 apps released since April 2012, more than 80 percent of the Anuman’s Android sales were realized on the Amazon Appstore,” said Stephane Longeard, CEO Anuman Interactive. “This store is extraordinarily easy to use with its recommendations system and secure 1-Click payment technology. We are really glad to reach people all over the world, thanks to Amazon Appstore.”

Developer Support
Big Duck Games is the developer of the popular puzzler Flow Free. “We’ve been distributing our games on Amazon since May 2012. Today, we have many hundreds of thousands of daily sessions on Amazon,” said Sharon Newman, Vice President, Big Duck Games. “It’s a great audience that deeply engages with our games, and we’re excited to reach an even larger audience with the added international launches of the Amazon Appstore.”

Imangi Studios is the creator of the popular game Temple Run. “We’ve integrated with Amazon’s In-App Purchasing and GameCircle APIs, which was a breeze,” says Keith Shephard, CEO of Imangi Studios. “We’ve seen significantly higher customer engagement with Temple Run since the integration, making the few, short steps worth it. We’re looking forward to following the Amazon Appstore as it expands into more international countries.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch