Aereo has been making headlines lately, not only for expanding its streaming cloud DVR service to 22 new markets in the coming months, but for being in active litigation with some of the nation’s biggest and most powerful broadcast networks.

But founder Chet Kanojia isn’t going to let anything get the company down, which is why he’s bringing Alex Moulle-Berteaux to the Aereo team as Chief Commercial Officer. Alex was head of marketing and PR at Rockstar and a former marketing exec at Apple before that, so he certainly has the tech-centric marketing game down pat.

I spoke with both Alex and Chet about the challenges of marketing a service like Aereo, namely attracting users who are content with their cable service and TV to jump ship in favor of Aereo.

“We’re going up against a bunch of legacy behaviors here,” said Alex. “The key for us over time is to prepare the market for this new way of experiencing TV and play off of some of the frustrations associated with what’s currently out there.”

The marketing efforts will begin here in NYC next month, and using the data from that campaign, Aereo will then begin marketing in the 22 new markets that will be getting access to Aereo soon.

So far, Aereo has done almost no marketing. The service has simply grown based on word of mouth and media publicity.

The company plans on adding new social features to the platform, which is where Alex’s supreme community building skills from experience at Rockstar will become very important, Chet tells me.

But the challenges of marketing in NY are very different from those of other, less dense markets.

For example, many young people in the big city are perfectly comfortable downloading (both illegally and legally) video content and watching on their internet-connected devices, rather than paying over $100 for cable and owning a TV. However, outside of NY the cost of living makes the cable expenses a little less painful.

But Chet reminds me that the new markets were chosen based on specific criteria. “What we’re finding is that all the expansion cities have a similar demographic to that of New York, though that population might not be quite as big as it is in New York,” said Chet. “But whether it’s Chicago or Boston, the same demographic of young professionals, adults and students still exists in every city we’ve chosen.”

Aereo plans on investing “several million dollars” into its New York campaign to help raise awareness of the service.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Tap for Tap, a Victoria, B.C.-based startup that launched back in April, is already launching a significant shift to its business model called The Tap Exchange, just over half a year into its existence, based on feedback received from its initial crop of developers. Much like web rings of the early days of the internet, Tap for Tap hopes to help developers help each other by swapping unused ad inventory to promote downloads, but rather than basing things on the questionably valuable metric of impressions and offering only one method of advertising as it did originally, it now uses taps as the basis for earning credits, and offers three different ad formats to choose from.

The nice thing about Tap for Tap’s solution is that it’s an ad network that startups can use to promote growth, rather than to generate a revenue stream at a stage where their audience might not be mature enough to actually pull in significant paydays. Small fish can help grow with other small fish on a straightforward ad-trading basis, earning credits for generating taps to other content via either banner ads, interstitials or an app wall, which lives behind a button in a participating app. The options help developers pick an ad solution that works best with their existing app design, and there’s an exchange rate that helps developers trade more credits for better placement in more high-performing markets, including different app categories and geographic locations.

“We basically target and optimize on behalf of developers to get their tap-through rates up,” Ryan Gerhardt, Tap for Tap VP of Business Development explained in an interview. Co-founder Eric Dyck offered a little more detail about how exactly it’s working without any modifications or value-add features in play. “We’re going to value those click-throughs based on where they came from,” he said. “So a click from the U.S. would be worth a certain amount, and a click from Azerbaijan would be worth less. We’re going to try to give you the same mix of traffic that you yourself give at the base level, before you target anything.”

The monetization strategy behind Tap for Tap, which used to seek to pair small ads with paid ones from larger advertisers in a two-ad banner block, now shifts with the new model. Mostly, it’ll take the form of having advertisers who can afford it pay for premium placement, while still allowing developers to earn better placement and positioning via the exchange if they don’t have massive marketing budgets. Once the exchange is set up and running, Dyck says the company plans on adding a monetization layer that’s essentially ”a traditional ad network on top” of the exchange itself.

Other ad firms are still competition for Tap for Tap, but there’s one challenge that may loom above all others. Apple recently shifted its rules to forbid the presence of apps that mimic or replicate the functionality of the App Store, which could be interpreted as disallowing things like the app wall Tap for Tap offers as an ad format option. Dyck and Gerhardt don’t think they’ll run afoul of Apple with Tap for Tap’s model, however, since the apps it appears in aren’t trying to be app storefronts, and are merely linking back to the App Store, not providing direct purchase capabilities.

As an ad player, Tap for Tap has already attracted around 5,000 developers to its network, and is averaging between 5 and 10 million impressions and around 100,000 taps per day. The startup now hopes to jumpstart its fortunes with its new, more engagement-focused business model which it believes will benefit mobile developers and advertisers alike.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Fresh off a $600K round of seed funding, developer education startup Treehouse is launching to the public this morning, using videos, quizzes and badges to take ostensibly anyone from n00b to 1337 in months.

Unlike Codeacademy and Lynda, Treehouse offers a breadth of expert-curated web design, development and iOS development topics (HTML,

Quora, which is fresh of being one of the three chosen startups at Allen & Co conference, is adding the option to embed YouTube video in its answer pages, posts and question details this morning.

The Q & A site recently redesigned in order to offer users a better way to search for content and this latest step is yet another in its effort to provide a better user experience. “It’s going to make answers on the site great — It opens the door to the kind of answers you can provide,” says Quora’s Mark Bodnick. As an example he brings up the “Which are the best storytelling songs?” page, which now has around 60 videos. If anything, it’s a good bet video will increase user time on site.

YouTube video embedding on Quora will be retroactive, and all previous links will turn into embedded videos. Users will also be able to post multiple videos like in the example above and the site plans on adding other platforms like Vimeo soon.

While the first instinct is to chalk up the addition of more media options to the fact that the site has picked up popularity with the celebrity set as of late, Bodnick tells me that in fact there are a range of topics that could be improved with video, and that users are already completing the behavior manually by adding links. While Bodnick did not disclose any Quora usership numbers, he did tell me that the site currently has over 60K topics.

The feature will be inaugurated by answers that include video from New Jersey mayor Cory Booker and Muppet movie actor Jason Segel.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

From AdaptiveBlue to Zazzle, everyone has startups they go fangirl and fanboy over (hi Quora). To save you the trouble of obsessively scanning your RSS feed or setting up individual Google alerts, StartupFollower lets you subscribe to TechCrunch news about your favorite startups via email.

Using the Crunchbase API to find news, StartupFollower has a Google Instant-inspired interface which enables you to add and edit which startups you want to receive stories about. Just reply to the StartupFollower confirmation email and you’re all set to never miss Facebook’s next status update .

Creator Tim Suzman tells us that he plans on adding other publications as well as TechCrunch and eventually wants to set up email alerts for official company blogs, Techmeme, Hacker News and (of course) Quora.

Suzman explains that he’s waiting to do it right i.e. find a way to dedupe multiple stories, “It seems like TechCrunch gets you pretty far in the meantime though.”

Word.

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photo © 2008 Gloson Teh | more info(via: Wylio) Let’s say you’re a cat blogger who has just come across some breaking cat news, and you’re racing against the clock to beat the other cat publications to it but need a photo. By the time you search Flickr Creative Commons for something copyright friendly, resize it in Photoshop and attribute back to the original photographer, you’ve been beaten to the the post.

Wylio, a startup out of Dayton, Tennessee, has a solution for you. Wylio basically boils down the 20 or so steps it takes to find suitable blog photos into 1) Search Flickr Creative Commons through Wylio 2) Resize/position and 3) Copy and paste the Wylio code, which includes an attribution to the original photographer, into the post.

Wylio founder Dan Evans tells TechCrunch that the startup plans on adding more features like customizing the color of the Flickr photo credits, tracking photo use as well as building the option for user accounts in near future.

Wylio, which has been up an running in its present form for about a couple weeks, is looking for seed funding in order to expand what is currently a nifty blogger time saver into a full blown service.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Impeccably timed with the news that apps have become as popular as news and sports broadcasts (thanks Flurry) as well as the news that Apple has trademarked the phrase “There’s an app for that,” the folks at 148Apps have taken a cue from the Baseball Hall of Fame and today launched the App Hall of Fame, which honors 12 of the very best applications each month, “no matter if they have sold 6 million or 600 copies.”

In the October 2010 inaugural class? From left to right Angry Birds from Rovio, Flight Control from Firemint
, Doodle Jump from Lima Sky
, Shazam from Shazam Entertainment
, Evernote from Evernote
, Plants vs. Zombies from PopCap Games
, Pandora Radio from Pandora Media
, Simplenote from Codality, Twitter from Twitter, Inc, Instapaper from Marco Arment
, Homerun Battle 3D from Com2uS
, and Fieldrunners from Subatomic Studios.

I pretty much agree with all these choices except for the ones I haven’t tried, like Homerun Battle 3D. However, the fact that Homerun Battle 3D is now in the App Hall Of Fame makes me more likely to try it, which I guess is the point of this human curated endeavor in the first place.

From Jeff Scott, founder of 148 Apps,

“There are so many really fantastic applications that were released months ago yet we only seem to pay attention to the latest and greatest. These older apps and games are ones that users need to know about, but due to the constant deluge of new applications being released they may never discover these older gems.”

Selections were made by a committee of 47 app enthusiasts and industry influencers and the only criteria for eligibility is having been on the market for 6 months. And while currently the App Hall of Fame only inducts iOS compatible apps, Scott plans on adding iPad applications by the end of the year and Android Apps by 2011.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Curious what Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox means for those of us that use an IMAP or POP client like Mac Mail or the Mail function on an iPhone? Well as of yet the feature is not fully enabled on either IMAP or POP-compatible third party or mobile clients, leaving a large percentage of people who hate viewing email a standard web browser out in the cold.

If you try to use the service in Mac Mail right now the emails determined by the Priority Inbox algorithm to be “Important” are sent to an “Important” folder under Gmail. In order to reach them in Mail for the iPhone you also have to search for the “Important” folder under your Gmail account folder.

Priority Inbox is like a pet, you have to train it in order for it to function properly, and this training is partly accomplished using the up-voting and down-voting arrows currently only available in your browser. The algorithm also tracks archiving behaviors like starring , which are also limited when using IMAP/POP. And while Google plans on adding the training feature to both Gmail mobile browsers like Google for the iPhone and to Android, third party IMAP clients like Mac Mail will most likely be left out of the loop, at least for the time being.

The majority of complaints I’ve heard from Priority Inbox users (“It’s still showing me junk mail!”) are from people who basically don’t grasp the key fact that the algorithm needs to be trained to get good, which is hard to do if you’re primarily viewing email over the phone or through Mac Mail.

When the IMAP issues were pointed out, a Google spokesperson responded, unsurprisingly, “Priority Inbox is best when viewed in Gmail’s web UI.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Qilroy, a Qualcomm Service Labs-incubated project, launches today as a platform that groups tweets and other status updates by location. Like “calling a payphone at the mall,” Qilroy introduces a concept called peer-to-place communication, which enables multi-platform conversations to take place from anywhere in the world.

The name is a Qualcomm take-off of “Kilroy Was Here and the service lets users share their location with others and also see a visual of all the conversations happening around any location. Users can type in any zip code or place like “The Eiffel Tower” or “Athens, Greece” for instance and interact through the Qilroy platform, Facebook or Twitter with anyone in that location who is sending open updates from Twitter, Foursquare or Gowalla.

Like, “I’m near . What’s the wait like?”

Qilroy plans on adding more geo-streams soon, and is currently sketching out a more direct and deeper integration with Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places. It also has recently added features like notifications that someone has replied to your Qilroy post (which they can do on Qilroy or on whatever native service they originally posted the update from) and the ability to see links to Twitpics or Tweetphotos as actual photos on the Qilroy wall.

Qilroy is ambitious but still very much in beta (the service showed me an error message when I tried to log in with my Twitter account and I experienced various other bugs). However, what’s redeemable about Qilroy is that it fills a current void around the ability to communicate around location, a capability that will only increasingly be more important as LBS services take center stage.

And project manager Mike Bailey is not afraid that the product will be quashed by the plethora of geo-locational services already available, “Tweetphoto, Facebook, Google Buzz, Foursquare, and Gowalla — we root for the success of these other services because they make the view of any area really rich.”

Qilroy is available today in the App Store and on the web at www.qilroy.com, and will be coming soon to Brew MP and Android Market.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Preparing for an eventual public offering, Skype has now filed an IPO registration statement with the SEC. The maximum proposed offering amount is listed as $100 million, but that is just a placeholder amount.

According to the filing, Skype’s revenues for the first six months of 2010 were $406 million, with a net income of only $13 million. But a big portion of that was from interest income. That is only a 3 percent net margin, and this isn’t exactly a new business. Its income from operations was only $1.4 million for the six months. However, its gross margins are 51 percent, and have been expanding steadily as the company benefits from the scale of is operations and is able to negotiate lower telephone termination fees around the world.

On the IPO road show, Skype will no doubt point to its adjusted EBITDA (earnings before income taxes and depreciation) numbers, which conveniently strip out things like goodwill, stock-based compensation and litigation expenses. Adjusted EBITDA for the first half of 2010 was $115.7 million, up 54 percent from a year ago. The company currently has $85 million in cash. These numbers reflect pro forma adjustments to Skype’s historical financial statements. (Click on the financial results table below to enlarge):

One interesting tidbit from the filing is that Skype had to pay $344 million to settle with the Skype founders for the Joltid peer-to-peer technology that at one point threatened to hold up the spin-off of Skype from eBay.

The filing also reveals that Skype “users made 95 billion minutes of voice and video calls” during the first half of 2010, with a full 40 percent of those minutes being video. Skype users also sent 84 million SMS text messages through Skype during the period.

As of June 30, Skype was averaging 124 million users a month, with only 8.1 million of those paying users (out of a total of 560 million registered users). Those users, however, pay an average of $96 a year. Skype’s strategy is to keep growing its overall number of users and convert more of them to paying customers.

Getting more people to buy Skype-Out minutes will obviously not be sufficient. Skype also plans on adding advertising revenues and enterprise products (37 percent of users surveyed say they use Skype for business purposes). According to the filing, part of Skype’s strategy will be to:

Develop new monetization models, including advertising. Our users made over 152 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls in the twelve months ended June 30, 2010. We believe this represents a meaningful opportunity to increase our revenue from alternative monetization models, including advertising, gaming and virtual gifts.

The company is based in Luxemborg and is offering American depository shares. A new holding company will be created following the offering which will combine the ownership from public investors, private investors such as Silver Lake Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and employees. The convoluted chart below shows what the new ownership structure will look like:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch