Anuj Agrawal

Shopflick: Personalizing Online Selling

There is a new service out called Shopflick, that allows online sellers to augment their item with a video ad.  After poking around the site, I find it to be a fresh and entertaining way to engage buyers in the online shopping experience.  Many of us have either bought or sold things on eBay and see the same stock product description and image that everyone else posting the same item has used.  Now, video will be able to provide much more differentiated information on the product and allow a stronger connection to be formed between the buyer and seller.

Shopflick: Get Mini Smart Cars yourself!
See more of ShopflickTV Features on Shopflick!

The Line Between Gaming and Music Companies Is Starting to Blur

It didn't take long for the recently merged Activision and Blizzard Entertainment to make some interesting strategic moves.  They recently announced a plan to launch a new digital music store to compete with iTunes.  Wait, aren't these two companies in the gaming business? 

As we have seen, many of the recent blockbuster game titles have been music-focused.  Rock Band and Dance Dance Revolution have been major hits over the past couple of years.  Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero is the hottest selling game over the past year and has shown to dramatically affect sales of songs included in the game. For example, the chart below (or in the extended post) shows the impact that the GH3 launch had on digital sales of songs in the game (chart courtesy of Ars Technica).  Not only did song sales make a dramatic leap, that leap continued to grow and sales remained high even weeks after the launch of the game.

HD Movies At Home Shortly After Theatre Release?: Make It Happen FCC!

An interesting battle is going on in the movie industry.  The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has recently filed a petition to have the FCC waive its restriction on using selectable output control (SOC).  SOC is used to restrict which output is used to transmit content out of a device. 

The MPAA is advocating for the FCC to remove its waiver of these restrictions in order for theatrical movie releases to be distributed in high-definition to homes prior to their availability on DVD, which is generally 120 days after theatrical release. By removing the waiver, the MPAA can be assured that digital outputs utilizing copy protection would be used to transfer this content to displays, ensuring that illegal copies are not created and distributed before official DVDs hit the market. The MPAA is saying that removing this waiver would only affect content that is distributed prior to DVD release.  After that, there would be no restrictions, similar to what happens now.  Thus, there is little change in what the customer experiences, except that now consumers get to watch new releases at home much earlier than before.

Limiting the Downside: Finding The Best Time To Buy Stock

Over the past couple of weeks, the Dow has taken a nosedive into sub-11,000 territory and is currently trying to fight its way back.  However, this is still way off the highs it set just last October when it hit the 14,000 mark.   Of course, the economic problems will likely keep the market from retouching those lofty levels, but it is safe to say there is probably more upside than downside at this stage of the game.

This is how I try to look at individual stocks.  Upside vs. downside potential.  I have had my fair share of bad buys over the years listening to the so called "experts" on CNBC.  So I set out to educate myself on better understanding optimal times to buy stocks.  Obviously, no one is able to predict which way a stock is headed, so the name of the game for me is to figure out the best time to enter that will maximize the upside/downside ratio.   There are many sites on the Web to learn about the various candlestick patterns representing bullish and bearish signals which can be used to trigger appropriate buy/sell signals.  I often evaluate these charts, but for me, I tend to keep things simple with 2 basic metrics:

Book Review: Invisible Engines

Invisible Engines (MIT Press) is an interesting look at how companies develop two-sided software platforms to drive business growth.  The term "two-sided" refers to a platform delivering value by having two sets (i.e. sides) of customers where each side finds the other valuable.  For example, online auctions such as eBay are only valuable for sellers if there are a lot of buyers bidding up the price of an item.  Similarly, it is only valuable for buyers if there are a lot of sellers offering a broad depth of items for sale.

The authors take a look at a variety of high-tech industries driven by two-sided platforms including video game developers/game consoles and operating systems/software applications. They also discuss the three-sided Internet media player platform (i.e. Real Player) with end-users/content providers/developers relying on each other to build a high-value offering.

The two-sided platform is difficult to build, but once done, it lends itself to tremendous network effects.  The trick is to figure out how to build the first side in order to attract the second side.  For a large company with an established brand, this can be significantly easier.  Think about how when Microsoft releases a new OS, there are already a plethora of software titles available on the day of the launch.  Developers know Microsoft's product will sell well in the market, so they have no hesitation in investing resources to develop applications prior to Microsoft building an installed base of customers. 

Nokia: Expanded Services Portfolio Is Starting To Come Together

With all the noise Apple is making around the 3G iPhone,  Nokia has been making tremendous waves recently that should leave the company in an interesting position to maintain its relevance and spot as a major player in the mobile market.  One of its primary new initiatives is Ovi, geared at providing new Internet based services to mobile devices.  They have also been on an acquisition spree to strategically expand the range of its businesses. It will be interesting to see how Nokia is able to integrate these various components into a cohesive customer experience.  Here is a quick rundown of some their major announcements over the past year: 

1. Comes With Music

For starters, they will soon be releasing their "Comes with Music" initiative, a subscription music service that will waive the fee for the first year with purchase of a new Nokia music handset that supports the service.   The big attraction is that for the first year, a customer can download as many tracks as they want and store them on their PC even after their subscription expires.  There is a hot debate on the "catch" to this.  There must be some sort of DRM that limits the amount of songs you can download, otherwise everyone can go out and buy a huge hard drive and go nuts.  In any event, Nokia can now have a stronger hold on the customer experience by selling the hardware and supporting it with music content. 

Dash Express: Still A Few Turns From Its Destination

I recently came across a new GPS device from Dash called the Dash Express.  It is marketed as the first ever Internet connected GPS device. Given that it uses both Wi-Fi and GPRS, users are almost guaranteed to always have access to the Internet and can use the embedded applications such as local Yahoo! search for movie times and restaurants, real-time gas prices, and over-the-air map updates.  The last one is great for convenience so that you don't have to connect your device to a PC to get your updates.  The other interesting feature is Send2Car, where you can send an address from your PC to the device over-the-air.

But the most intriguing use of the Internet capability is the Dash Driver Network, which uses real-time information from Dash Express users to update traffic conditions.   This supplements the historical traffic data and sensors that Dash uses to provide an additional layer of precision to its traffic results. 

The Top 5 Most Influential Products of the Last Decade

I went to Best Buy last weekend even though I didn't need to get anything specific (do you really need a reason to go and play with gadgets?).  Even though I was disappointed that there doesn't seem to be a gadget these days calling my name to "BUY ME" (hopefully this will change as holiday season rolls around), I left with a real appreciation of where the digital media industry has come. 

As I thought about how I took the current products on the market for granted (HDTVs, snazzy cell phones, and digital cameras), it made me appreciate how far technology has come in the past decade.  The last decade has seen some amazing breakthroughs in consumer products that have changed the landscape of the industry and what users have come to expect in their products.  Here is my list of the top 5 products and services of the last decade  that have had a lasting impact on the market:

TiVo (March 1999)    

Our short little friend has had quite an impact on how we watch TV.  Now, our entire TV experience is effectively an On-Demand experience, letting us watch "time-shifted" content whenever it's convenient.  Of course, the impact its had on the ad industry is well-documented.  It still remains to be seen how the advertisers will deal with this.  I've started to notice ads created with the characters from the show I'm watching, making me think my show is resuming.  Sneaky, but ultimately, they'll need something better than this to get me to see ads again.   

Napster (June 1999)

They may not have been the first peer-to-peer network, but Napster is the brand name that everyone remembers that really turned the music industry upside down.  The music industry is still trying to figure out how to grow profits in a world of highly available pirated music.  Even though the original version of Napster is long gone, many others such as BitTorrent have taken its place. A recent report from Sandvine just came out showing that 44% of North American traffic is peer-to-peer file sharing.   It's safe to say the original Napster has left its mark on the content acquisition world.

Microsoft Live Search: New Dog, Old Tricks

It's been about a month now since Microsoft launched its Cash Back promotion around its new search engine, Live Search.  When I first saw the promotion, I found it to be an interesting concept.  Setup a standard affiliate program (although MS probably gets better rates than others) and pass back the affiliate commissions back to the consumer.  However, in looking at the rates on the Cash Back offers vs. the affiliate rates posted on their retailers sites, clearly Microsoft was giving more than standard affiliate rates.

In actuality they're giving consumers a portion of their ad revenue. They are applying a new model to search by collecting payment from advertisers after SALES instead of CLICKS.   This is clearly a strategy to differentiate from Google and lure advertisers to the Microsoft engine.  But my question is, what is the sustainable advantage for this model?  If this turned out to have traction in the market, Google could simply create a similar program to eliminate any incentives advertisers have in going to Microsoft.  And all this would lead to eroding profits in the online ad world as all the search engines one up each other with cash incentives.

For An Effective Mobile Ad, Send a Text

Up until the last few years, the majority of non-voice revenues from mobile phones has been in the form of SMS and mobile content such as ringtones, games, and more recently, ringback tones.  But now that the market for mobile advertising is starting to become real, we can start to assess which modes may be the most effective in terms of both customer experience and click through rates.  Having managed products in the mobile content industry, I am a stickler on keeping an optimal customer experience on a mobile phone and to me, understanding the mobile customer experience will be the main driver in determining which ad formats will ultimately prove to be successful.

The majority of ad placement is currently distributed via banner ads on popular WAP sites or applications (as in the picture above). For me, these are ineffective for 2 reasons: 1) waiting for banner ads to load on WAP pages detracts from the experience of the WAP page and 2) given the already limited amount of relevant information on a WAP site due to a lack of screen real estate, if I need to spend additional time waiting for subsequent pages to load, I am highly unlikely to spend the time clicking on an ad vs. clicking on more info from the WAP site I am visiting.  Also, on a handset, I don't have the luxury of clicking through to advertisers sites and clicking back to the publisher site easily due to the fact that pop-up windows are not prevalent on handsets (yet).  This all makes banner ads ineffective for the publisher, advertiser, and consumer.