For pretty much as long as anyone can remember, a relationship triangle, or a “love triangle” if you will, has taken shape between companies and the PR firms that represent them and the press that covers them — existing in some sort of recursive loop. Yet, while that triangle should have come to represent a symbiosis and a valuable communication network, somewhere along the way the triangle broke down. (Defying the laws of Geometry, even.) In reality, today this relationship is more like the Bermuda Triangle.

While the matter of who is responsible for the disconnect is subject to debate, the PR industry (for right or wrong) usually takes most of the blame. While the causes are numerous, in the end, most of the problems inherent to the startup-PR relationship are a matter of transparency (or lack therof) and the inability for either side to find the best (and most mutually beneficial) match on the other.

AirPR launched into private beta last year with $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Mohr Davidow Ventures, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and others to help solve this problem by creating a marketplace in which startups can find PR representation that’s right for them, and vice versa. Pitched as a kind of “Match.com for PR,” at launch AirPR focused primarily on matching top, pre-screened PR talent in the U.S. with technology startups looking for (and able to pay for) representation.

Last week, after a year of testing the system in closed beta, iterating and tweaking, the San Francisco-based company has finally opened its marketplace to the public. With its public launch, AirPR is opening its doors to all tech startups, expanding its marketplace to include companies in the lifestyle and consumer goods verticals and adding a few tweaks to its formula.

After watching 70 companies go through its PR matchmaking system and processing feedback from PR veterans, AirPR cut its onboarding process in half. Now, in order to find the best match, startups enter the date they want their PR campaign to begin and then answer a series of questions about their focus, stage of development, what kind of help they’d like, how much funding they’ve raised, and so on. AirPR then screens the startups and, if they meet its quality standards, uses the startup’s answers to match them with reps whose experience best fits that criteria. If not, they’re declined.

After being alerted to the incoming business leads, reps then place bids for the client, at which point the startup can sift through the offers, compare them, select the best option and pay for a 60-day contract.

Based on feedback from startups and PR pros, at launch, the platform also now includes a recommendation system, in which AirPR provides the top three matches based on the data its collected on the PR side. Initially, the company provided a list of all possible matches, but the co-founders tell us that companies were often overwhelmed by an abundance of choice and were less inclined to finish the process than if the system served provided three of its closest matches at the top.

In turn, by recommending PR reps and being more proactive in pushing reps to reach out to specific companies, the conversion ended up being faster and a higher percentage of companies closed the deal.

While there may be contention over the cause, most will likely agree that the PR model as it currently stands is in sore need of improvement. As someone who stands at one of the corners of the PR Bermuda Triangle, I can attest to this. PR reps have a tough job, and, as in any interest there are incredibly talented, bright firms and reps that get lumped in with the offenders who blanket journalists inbox with copy-and-pasted pablum and poorly worded pitches that aren’t even relevant to a writer’s beat.

Any improvement on the overall quality of the PR-startup relationship stands to benefit everyone involved, and while it’s still early to say just how effective AirPR’s model will be, it’s worth the effort.

While the startup’s matching algorithm and marketplace model are familiar, what may be even more valuable to the Bermuda Triangle (and to the industry at large) is the insight that can be pulled from the data AirPR collects on how startups are using the system, what they want help with, how effective PR is at meeting its goals, costs, publications they want to speak to, among other things. This data can help both startups and PR people be more effective and precise with their pitches and outreach. (One can also, much to the delight of everyone except PR, imagine AirPR eventually using this data to make a list of the “Top 10 Most Effective PR Firms,” for example.)

AirPR allowed TechCrunch an early look into some of the data (and insights) it’s collected thus far, and the conclusions are telling. For starters, as Alex Wilhem of TNW shared earlier this week, the most popular keyword or service startups were looking for help with was “Growth,” with 84 percent of companies listing that as top priority, followed by 69 percent of companies looking for “Brand Awareness,” 36 percent for “Launch,” 25 percent for “Fundraising,” and 16 percent for “Recruiting.”

Next, another one that will be of interest to PR reps: The company found that fixed bids (a bid with one amount, like $20K for a 4-month project, for example) were 29 percent more likely to close than retainers (monthly bids). In explaining just why in the sam hill we should care, AirPR CEO Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer explains that, historically, the PR industry has primarily operated on a retainer model.

However, the monthly averages for both fixed bids and retainers are almost the same, he says, so the data thus far seems to show that the reliance on the retainer model is psychological, rather than what its customers want. Clients seem to appreciate the one-time fee with specific deliverables, the CEO explained — a conclusion that helps startups and PR move closer to transparency rather than clients being forced to ask “what exactly are we paying for?” each month.

To date, AirPR has found that the average bid accepted on the platform breaks down to roughly $5K/month in fees (whether fixed or retainer) for an average of 5 months. In other words, companies that have between $500K and $4 million in funding want shorter-term contracts with lower rates. This, in and of itself may not be surprising, but the more data it collects, the more it will be able to reveal correlations between not only funding and how much they’re willing to pay, but size of bids and the work they want done, the industry they’re in, and so on.

The CEO also tells us that several of the PR reps on the AirPR platform have doubled their business since joining and are “now looking to grow their practice with other folks on the platform, like a co-op situation,” he says. To this point, the idea from the beginning has been to not only help startups who often have no idea where to start when looking for PR, but to serve PR firms and reps that are looking to expand their practices. In the end, the AirPR co-founder tells us, this helps them weed out lower quality PR and put the best firms and people in control.

If AirPR can follow through on that idea, its marketplace could end up providing a lot of value to both startups and the PR firms that love them by helping them navigate the Bermuda Triangle and get more bang for their buck.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Bloomberg, Lee and Jack Dorsey. vine.co/v/bl3dmAdeLTB—
Chris O'Brien (@obrien) June 14, 2013

Square CEO Jack Dorsey and the Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced today that they will be collaborating on a digital technology summit, to be hosted on September 30th in the Big Apple. At a press conference at Square this afternoon, SF Mayor Ed Lee gave a few details about the upcoming summit, which will bring together industry stakeholders for a big-think meeting of how to solve social issues.

NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who is in town to give the Stanford commencement speech, stole the press event with a few jokes about Dorsey’s “plans” to run for his job. Talking about Dorsey’s hypothetical campaign, Bloomberg said he could have “”140 character campaign speeches. 6 second campaign videos, and your pledge that everyone can pay their taxes using square”.

For good measure, in response to Mayor Lee prodding New York City about snow problems, Bloomberg joked, “Climate change has taken away the snow so we really haven’t had much”.

In response to a question from me about New York’s legal warfare against sharing economy apps, such as Uber and AirBnB, Mayor Bloomberg responded that, ” regulation becomes a crutch… It’s the old entrenched industries, under the shield of regulation,” that prevent meaningful competition. No word on how exactly he’ll support them, other than wanting to “F***ing destroy” the taxi industry.

We’ll see if actions follow words. Or conferences.

Vine via @Obrien.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Here’s an example of a company using Optimizely‘s A/B testing tools for a high-profile game launch.

The startup, which recently raised a $28 million Series A, is releasing a case study today about how Electronic Arts used Optimizely to boost preorders for the new version of SimCity. Prior to the SimCity launch (and before all of that launch’s attendant problems) EA division Maxis was trying to drive online pre-orders by offering a discount, and it was promoting the deal in a large banner on the pre-order page (as seen below) and in ads — but it wasn’t seeing the improvement that it expected.

So it turned to Optimizely to test out different ideas about how to lay out the preorder page, each one corresponding “with a hypothesis the team had set beforehand regarding placement, color, and display of the promotional offer.” They also had a version that removed the promotional offer altogether. Since Maxis wanted to find an answer quickly, it ran these tests with 100 percent of its site traffic, and it found a surprising result — the preorder page with no offer whatsoever drove 43.4 percent more purchases than the others.

That seems pretty counterintuitive. One explanation offered in the case study is that the offer was pushing the actual call-to-action (namely, the preorder button) down the page. Whatever the reason, that approach clearly seemed to work, and it’s the one that Maxis adopted for its preorders.

Ultimately, SimCity launched on March 6. In May, EA announced that it had sold 1.6 million copies, and about half of them were digital downloads.

“Optimizely helped us learn a lot about our users – what’s working and what’s not – so we could make changes on our site to optimize our conversion percentages,” said Mike Burk, senior online product manager at Maxis, in the press release. “In the end, this translated to higher revenue for us.”

You can read the case study here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The PRISM story has progressed significantly since last week, when Mark Zuckerberg published Facebook’s official response to the reports that it is among a group of tech companies that have been secretly cooperating with the United States government to provide user data. But at Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting held today in Millbrae, California, Zuckerberg said the company continues to stand behind that initial statement.

“I wrote this statement last week that I published on Facebook that I think is basically the fullness of what we believe,” Zuckerberg said in response to a shareholder’s question about the general national security reports in the press. He went on to add more detail:

“We don’t work directly with the NSA, or with any other program. Nor do we proactively give user information to anyone, nor has anyone approached us to do that.”

He also reiterated his statement that no agency has “direct access” to Facebook’s servers, and acknowledged that that phrase has led to questions as to whether that means that the company is providing some kind of indirect access to its data. “The reality is anyone can go to Facebook.com and get indirect access to our service,” he said. “No agencies have direct access and can plug into our servers and get information… the process that government agencies go through if they want to get a warrant is similar to what police do in any court case, and we basically give the minimum amount of information” necessary to comply with any request, he said.

Of course, these statements don’t come close to addressing the full spectrum of possibilities about what PRISM could actually be. And Google, for one, has stepped forward and issued an updated official statement today about the situation. After Zuckerberg and team return from the shareholder meeting (which included a very drawn-out Q&A session with an interesting batch of investors), perhaps they will take a more serious second look at updating their stance.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

While Microsoft busies itself trying to explain away a series of really bad decisions, Sony swoops in with a perfectly executed haymaker straight to the chin.

Really though, Microsoft: When the competition is getting standing ovations at their press conference by simply not doing what you’re doing, it… might be time to reconsider your strategy.

[- Signed, A guy who has happily played three Xbox 360s into the ground]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

H.Bloom has been disrupting the land of floral gift-giving for quite some time, but the startup is ready to spread its wings and fly into new territory. According to a release, H.Bloom will be expanding into five new cities in the U.S. over the course of this summer.

Currently, H.Bloom operates in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas. New cities to join the fold include Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami. They’re calling it the “Summer in Bloom.” Clever.

It’s been a solid year for H.Bloom. The company recently launched an iPhone app with more gift-giving options beyond floral arrangements, and 2013 also saw the introduction of H.Bloom’s Hero products on Valentines Day.

The first two new markets to get service will be Boston and Atlanta, which will launch on June 11 and June 18, respectively. According to the press release, H.Bloom can expand so rapidly due to its ability to reduce spoilage to two percent, far below the industry average of 30-50 percent.

The idea is that low spoilage rates can keep costs down to the end-consumer.

We spoke with H.Bloom founder and CEO Bryan Burkhart who explained that the system is paying off handsomely, with H.Bloom doing $5 million in revenue in 2012.

“Our ambition is to be the luxury floral brand recognized around the world. It is a massive market that has been lacking in technology innovation for some time,” said Burkhart. “We are focused on perfecting our operations as we continue to open in new markets, so that we can continue to provide a world-class product and service to our customers.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Back before Tumblr and its billion-dollar exit were even a twinkle in David Karp’s eye, there were few places for non-techies to go to create professional-looking websites. While Tumblr, WordPress and others would soon make it easy for anyone and their mother to start their own blog, Wix.com launched in 2006 to do the same for websites — to allow anyone to build their own Flash-enabled homepage or widget overnight.

Riding the growing demand for DIY website tools, Wix has grown into a sizable company and now employs nearly 400 people in its offices in Tel Aviv, New York and San Francisco. The Israeli-American startup is backed by just under $60 million from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark, DAG Ventures and IVP and has a user base of more than 27 million registered users who have created over 23 million websites (as of December). Behind its continuing growth, it appears the company is ready to take the next step in its development, as it today submitted a “draft registration statement” to the SEC, which officially puts it on a collision course with the public markets.

In a statement today, the company said that this proposed offering is “expected to commence after” the SEC “completes its review process.” Naturally, this announcement from Wix does not in and of itself constitute a definitive declaration that it will go public, or set a date, nor does it act as an offer to sell or solicit securities. But it is very definitely the first step in the process of pursuing an IPO.

The announcement today follows several months of relative quiet for Wix, after the company made one of its biggest product announcements in the last twelve months, when it launched a new app market and SDK in October, enabling third-party developers to integrate their apps into its platform. The company had been steadily chugging along, adding functionality piece-by-piece until it launched its HTML5 builder in March of 2012, which allowed users to build sites that would “display across both PC and mobile browsers in a drag and drop format that co-founder Avishai Abrahami compared to ‘HTML5 for Dummies.’”

The push has been part of Wix’s efforts to stay with the increasingly mobile times, which seems to have been working, as Wix founder and CEO Avishai Abrahami claimed in December that its new mobile functionality made it the “largest mobile site builder in existence,” with users now creating mobile sites at a rate of 50K sites/month.

While the 27 million user milestone makes it clear that Wix has found steady adoption, Abrahami also said in December that the company has seen corresponding growth in revenue, “doubling or more” every year. It’s also good to see, however, that there’s been increasing competition in the DIY website building space of late, as Y Combinator grad, Weebly, which launched in 2007, has begun to nip at Wix’s heels. In May, Weebly launched a complete overhaul of its existing product, including a new planner, mobile editor and Android app, along with sharing the news that it has now seen over 15 million websites built using its products.

For Wix, it is not yet clear how the roadmap will unfold from here, or exactly how much the company plans to raise ahead of its IPO — or when it intends to go public for that matter — though Globes is reporting that it plans to raise $75 million at a $400 million valuation. Wix did not disclose any financial information and would not confirm these reports, because the filing was confidential.

However, both Wix’s announcement today and Weebly’s announcement last month are clear indicators that this space is maturing fast and has already minted a few sizable players.

Wix’s announcement is copied below:

Wixpress, Ltd., a leading web development and design platform, commercially known as Wix.com, announced today that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a possible initial public offering of its ordinary shares. The proposed offering is expected to commence after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission completes its review process, subject to market conditions and other conditions.

This announcement is being made pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135 under the Securities Act of 1933. As required by Rule 135, this press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities, and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of that jurisdiction.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Apple is said to be directing engineering and sales talent from its iAd business, which currently supports mobile display advertising run by Apple on iOS, to help further its new music service offering, which is rumored to be free and ad-supported. Businessweek claims that Apple will unveil the service next week, backing up what we heard yesterday, and that apple is changing its in-house ad strategy to help businesses build campaigns that address customers as they listen to songs on the new service.

The new report also establishes a timeline for launch for the “iRadio” service, as the press have dubbed Apple’s streaming plans. It reportedly won’t become available for use by the general public until later this year when iOS 7 is released, Businessweek reports. That’s likely to happen around fall, to coincide with the introduction of a new iPhone expected around that time.

That timeline makes sense, as it doesn’t look like Apple has worked out all the licensing rights for the streaming service just yet, so a release next week would be premature. The company has also pretty generally kept its release of other new media features like iTunes in the Cloud timed to the launch of a new OS, since they likely require more than just a simple app update to integrate deeply with iOS and become a system-wide tool.

Apple is said to be essentially adapting Pandora’s business model for use with its own streaming music service in the new report, and to de-emphasize its current iAd aim of in-app display advertising. The iAd business, which is helmed by Apple SVP Eddy Cue, hasn’t exactly been a break-out hit; Apple has had to cut pricing and change its strategy with the service in the past. Cue is said to be heading up the new change in direction, and the ads on the mobile music service will enable users to stream an unlimited library of content for free.

The streaming selection will be based on a user’s tastes, Businessweek says, with users able to create a station based on a specific song or an artist, and it can pull from a user’s iTunes library to generate suggestions and also offer easy purchase of songs users like. Apple will select a few specific launch advertising partners for the streaming service, and will also continue to use iAd to sell in-app advertising, too, according to the report.

Apple launching a streaming service makes sense, given that Google has just launched its own. Google’s All Access offering is paid, however, not free, and it seems like Apple’s will be based around a model much closer to Pandora, which is likely why Pandora’s stock fell 11 percent by market close yesterday, as rumors of an imminent iRadio launch took root.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It seems all you tech people are obsessed with making conferences work better, perhaps because you seem to go to a lot? Thus there are numerous “conference startups.” There are apps to schmooze at the event itself, like Bizzabo, Presdo, Oleapark, Shpare, Schmooze, CrowdVine, Eventasaur and Omyconf, not to mention generic location-based networking apps like Highlig.ht, Sonar, Ban.jo and Intro. And there are platforms for the conference organisers to get the word out, like ConferenceHound, AllConferences, Cvent, ConferenceAlerts and Lanyrd. Today Conferize joins them, claiming to be a full service content marketing platform for the conference industry.

Its Conferize Highlight Player is designed to enable event organizers to easily present an interactive version of their event by finding the relevant multimedia content from sites like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Slideshare and more. It’s like an About.me for conferences, I guess.

It then displays everything related to the conference or event in one central place without the need for the user to jump around. Sounds quite like Lanyrd then.

Supported content formats include YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Instagram, Twitpic, Yfrog, Twitter, Slideshare, SpeakerDeck and Prezi, as well as any live-stream service available.

Conferize monetises by offering a Highlight Player on a freemium basis to event organizers, speakers, venues and members of the press. It can then be shared to a site.

Conferize was founded by Martin Ferro-Thomsen, and launched at DEMO.

Ferro-Thomsen says “the idea for the new Conferize came from watching the flood of tweets from TC Disrupt last fall. We wanted to follow the best and most engaging stuff in a visual and fluid way that was more true to the conference format, and not just a gazillion tweets organized with a timestamp.”

Taking a look at the service it does seem pretty comprehensive. However, we feel Lanyrd has the platform head of steam right now, while Bizzabo and Shpare look like the ones to watch in the apps space. That said Conferize looks slick and probably serves a slightly different purpose, and it runs automatically whereas Lanyrd is much more manual and only presents links — no previews.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amidst widespread criticism, Mark Zuckerberg’s political advocacy group FWD.us gained some momentum today as it announced Steven Chen and Barry Diller have signed on as financial backers. Chen was a co-founder of YouTube, and Diller is the chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp which owns About, Match, Newsweek and Vimeo. Diller and Chen, an immigrant himself, will fund campaigns for immigration reform.

FWD.us has been quietly enduring an onslaught of negative publicity for funding ads promoting oil drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge and the Keystone XL oil pipeline run in exchange for support from political candidates it hopes will vote for immigration and education reform initiatives the group campaigns for. These projects clash with the liberal viewpoints of many of FWD.us’s backers. The scandal led eco-champion Elon Musk and Yammer founder David Sacks to withdraw support from FWD.us.

The fact that Chen and Diller joined the group is remarkable because some would expect no one would want to become affiliated with the group started by Zuckerberg and run by former Causes founder Joe Green in April. Critics believe FWD.us might fall apart entirely, especially if it can reverse public sentiment.

It hasn’t helped that some see the all-star crowd of tech luminaries, including Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and Zynga’s Mark Pincus, as interested in immigration and education reform because they would help their companies bring in better talent from abroad and at home. The group maintains that these reforms are stepping stones to a stronger U.S. economy.

Green has stressed that FWD.us is fundamentally bi-partisan. He sees providing political coverage to conservative campaigns that could hurt the environment as the price of winning allies for the group’s campaigns. But the “this is how politics works” mantra has fallen on deaf ears among much of the press. A deep dive into the formation and current affairs of FWD.us by Hamish Mckenzie at PandoDaily says the group is alienating many potential supporters.

Still, Chen and Diller signed up. In a FWD.us blog post, Chen wrote, “As someone who immigrated from Taiwan to the United States at a very young age, I know firsthand how welcoming and supportive our country is to those of us coming here to make a better life… I’ve seen firsthand the impact both of those communities can have on our economy and our country’s ability to lead the world in innovation.”

In the end, Green’s approach might not be popular, but it could get the job done. There were essentially two approaches he could have taken: Win the hearts and minds of America to immigration reform, which could have been hugely expensive and difficult if not impossible — or play the politics game, grease the wheels however necessary, and get immigration reform passed by the House and Senate even if the process angered the public.

FWD.us may be deserving of the harsh words it receives. Politics (with a capital P) as usual is a dicey dark art, and one that many hoped Silicon Valley’s elite would disrupt rather than play into. Still, if its campaigns find success, there could be positive outcomes for many hoping to come to America or get a better education there.

Time will tell if FWD.us’s bluntly pragmatic strategy works, or if the group disbands as its supporters buckle under the pressure to put their money where their liberals mouths are and retreat from FWD.us.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch