Daily Marauder

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The government is issuing around 240,000 tickets to President Elect Obama’s inauguration on January 20. But many more people than that want to be there, and there are plenty of parties and other activities for them to attend. The big problem, though, is finding a place to stay.  Hotels were sold out long ago, and without a place to stay it’s basically impossible to be there. That’s where CrashTheInaguration comes in. The site is powered by AirBed & Breakfast, which we covered in August. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/11/use-crashtheinauguration-to-find-a-place-to-stay-in-dc-and-see-obama-become-president 12/11)

I’m going.  Who wants to come with me?  I’m think the inauguration will be a perfect spot for a jump event. . .

Only a few days after the launch of its new task manager, Gmail has introduced a new feature allowing users to send free SMS messages through its integrated Chat. To activate the feature, visit the Gmail Labs page and scroll down until you see the appropriate listing (you may also want to activate a few of the other nifty features while you’re at it). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10/gmail-enables-sms-messaging-from-chat 12/10)

Video portal Koldcast.tv signed on to distribute a new web series Invention from comedy team David Beeler and Tom Konkle. Beeler stars as Brian Forbes, a stuffy British television interviewer who, like Sisyphus, is forced to interview the same guest each episode: self-styled inventor Sir Reginald Boy-Hey No (Konkle.) Look for new episodes on the site every fortnight. A new Koldcast integration with TivoCast will enable Tivo subscribers to watch the show on their home sets beginning later this month. (Cynopsis 12/11)

Forbes.com continued its ongoing redesign launching a new video player featuring 16:9 aspect ratio and HD quality video streaming. Forbes Video Network programming is now embeddable on third party sites and viewable on multiple devices including the Palm Treo and the Samsung Blackjack via the Kinoma player. The site also debuted a real-time stock quote ticker using BATS exchange trading data. (Cynopsis 12/11)

After showing hockey-stick growth leading up to the U.S. Presidential Elections, Twitter took a breather in November. According to comScore, unique U.S. visitors to Twitter.com grew less than one percent sequentially from October to 1.466 million. U.S. pageviews declined more precipitously to 19.7 million, from 37.2 million in October (a 47 percent decline). (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/11/twitter-and-huffpo-take-a-post-election-breather 12/11)

Facebook tallied over 180,000 votes to narrow the field of developers who applied for fbFund awards to 5 grand prize-winners. Each app creator will receive $250,000 in funding to help develop their application:

• Groupcard collects messages, photos and music to send to your friends on Facebook
• MouseHunt is a casual social game in which you trap mice invading your kingdom
• Weddingbook helps plan for the big day by interacting with and introducing guests, sharing photos and keeping friends and family updated on plans
• Wildfire helps create contests, sweepstakes and giveaways on Facebook
• Kontagent helps developers analyze data for their online businesses

Just a couple of months ago Facebook redesigned its home page and changed its tagline to simplify new user signups.   Now they’re testing an even simpler interface – instead of getting things started by asking for your name, email, password, sex and birthday, all you have to manage is your actual name. If conversions go up, expect this to be rolled out to everyone. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/11/facebook-testing-even-simpler-sign-up-closing-the-gap-with-myspace-in-the-us 12/11)

Social networks need to find a way to make money fast. Online advertising never really worked well on social networks in the first place, and with online advertising feeling the same pressure as everything else in the economy, new sources of revenue must be found. Internationally-oriented social network hi5 is turning to virtual gifts, which can be bought with virtual coins that members buy with real money. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10/hi5-hopes-to-make-real-coin-with-virtual-gifts 12/10)

With Qik, Kyte, and FlixWagon all battling for their share of the live mobile broadcasting market, is there room for another contender? Ustream.tv seems to think so. Techcrunch received word (and even better, video) of a Ustream.tv mobile client already in the works. (http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2008/12/11/ustream-working-on-mobile-streaming-app-to-take-on-qik-kyte-flixwagon 12/11)

Tween and teen-targeted virtual world Habbo launched a new kind of currency for its virtual hotel. In addition to using “credits” to purchase clothes, furniture and the like, the site’s 10 million users can now use “pixels” to buy or rent other items at a discount. The site also introduced some new special effects to spruce up virtual rooms and avatars. (Cynopsis 12/11)

Microsoft’s Live Labs has just released Thumbtack, a web clipping service that allows users to compile links, media, and text snippets into online storage bins for future reference. Users can also share their Thumbtack collections with their peers, allowing them to collaborate by adding new clips and notations. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10/microsoft-live-labs-tackles-web-clips-with-thumbtack-still-needs-polish 12/10)

eMarketer downwardly revised its social networking ad revenue projections once again to $1.2 billion for 2008, down from May’s projection of $1.4 billion. That’s still represents a healthy 33% growth rate from last year but underscores the challenges the Facebooks and MySpaces continue to face in translating loyal use into brand advertising. (Cynopsis 12/11)

US Online Social Network Advertising Spending, by venue
2008 & 2009 (millions & % of total)
Venue                        2008   2008 %   2009  2009%
of total            of total
MySpace                    $585    50.0%   $630    48.7%
Facebook                   $210    18.0%   $230    17.7%
Other social nets         $340    29.0%   $365    28.2%
Widgets & apps            $40      3.0%    $70     5.4%
Source: eMarketer