Google Docs and Spreadsheets has hit a bit of a growth curve since June. About 1.6 million people used the Web-based service in October, compared to 635,000 in June, according to Compete. That is a nice jump, but 1.6 million is still a marginal number compared to the desktop productivity apps (on just about every PC) that it is trying to replace. But, hey, it is still early days.

Notice in the reproduced chart below that Google Spreadsheets seems to be a tad more popular than Google Docs. The same trend is true on average time spent on each app (8 minutes per month for Spreadsheets, versus 6 minutes for Docs). For right now, I think that online Spreadsheets are the more compelling app. I use Google Spreadsheets on occasion to organize conferences and such, but have yet to write anything on Google Docs other than to test out the service.

I think that is because the utility of these services is as a collaboration tool and spreadsheets offer a way to structure information that lends itself to that type of usage. For documents, it is more often a read-only experience, for which e-mailing the document still works. If I do need to collaborate on a document, I do it in an online editor that is also a publishing system (Wordpress).

Beyond these numbers, what I’d like to see is a comparison to other online productivity apps from Zoho, Glide (which recently came out with a spreadsheet that works offline and syncs to the Web), and others.

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Compete sent me comparable numbers for Zoho, Officelive, and Thinkfree, and Zimbra. (see second chart below). Google Docs and Spreadsheets dominates on monthly uniques. For November 2007, it had 1.6 million, versus 133,000 for Zoho, 168,000 for Officelive (which really isn’t a competing product yet), 46,000 for Zimbra (also not fully comparable since that is an e-mail client mostly), and 18,000 for Thinkfree. On a more apples-to-apples comparison, Zoho Writer had 31,000 unique visitors in November, versus 677,000 for Google Docs alone. Zoho Sheets had 12,000 users versus 694,000 for Google Spreadsheets. So even Google is leading by a mile here.

But Google cannot sit on its haunches. When you look at pageviews, Officelive, which is still a joke (although that will be changing soon), actually beats Google Docs with 4.8 million versus 3.5 million for November. Google Spreadsheets had 7.5 million pageviews, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets (including Presentations) had 17.3 million. (See third chart below, followed by a table with the corresponding pageview numbers).

₀_1197116678“,„zo­ho“); ₁_1197116678“,„tran­smedia“); ₂_1197116678“,„li­vedocuments“);

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

<![CDATA[ There's no question that Facebook's Beacon initiative has taken a beating over the past few weeks. The feature automatically collected and published users' activities at partner sites, and almost immediately attracted criticism. MoveOn launched a campaign in opposition to Beacon. Horror stories of accidentally disclosed purchases — like engagement ring purchases and Christmas presents — began to circulate. The early word was decidedly negative, prompting some partners to begin to jump ship. Facebook has weathered similar storms before: its minifeed feature was met with a hostile reception, but is now emulated by virtually every new social network. But this time they caved: on Wednesday founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote a rather contrite blog post:

We've made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we've made even more with how we've handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

…

Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we're releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely.

It remains to be seen whether users will opt out en masse — there are indications that many may still not be aware of Beacon. But the negative press seems likely to scare away potential partners. So while it would be premature to declare Beacon a failure, it seems very unlikely that it will ever achieve its intended net-spanning potential.

I think there are three reasons why this happened. First, Beacon's simply not a feature that people — as opposed to companies — were clamoring for. Facebook noticed its users expressing opinions about products and saw a great opportunity to make money. But they couldn't resist removing the messily inefficient human portion of the opinion-expression process. Unfortunately, users didn't get much value from having that process automated.

Second, and perhaps most obviously, Facebook bungled the deployment of the feature. As Zuckerberg admits in the above-linked post, the company didn't think hard enough about how users would respond, and was too slow to react to how they did.

But the third factor may be the most problematic for Facebook: they're just too big. I don't mean to call MoveOn's anti-Beacon campaign dishonest, but it's not exactly in keeping with the organization's sty­le. It's hard to imagine they'd have undertaken the effort if there wasn't plenty of free press attention to be had by attacking Facebook. The social network has achieved a level of popular attention that makes them an attractive target (and, if you subscribe to the nightclub theory of social networking, one that could presage a no-one-goes-there-because-it's-too-crowded problem).

Of course it would be silly to spend too much time doomsaying — the site's pageviews continue to grow at a healthy clip. But in the wake of the partial collapse of Beacon, it's hard to imagine Facebook launching another initiative as ambitious — and it's even harder to imagine them launching one successfully.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story ]]>

As expected, EchoStar has filed with the SEC to split its business in two, reports GigaOm. The two businesses will be the Dish Network satellite TV service and its set-top box business. That set-top box business includes place-shifting Slingboxes, which Echostar acquired with its $380 million purchase of Sling Media in September.

The satellite TV business will change its name to DISH Network, and the TV technology company will be called EchoStar Holding Company. Charlie Ergen will remain CEO of both. My suggestion: Sell the satellite TV service to AT&T or some other buyer and buy TiVo (current market cap is $820 million). Then start selling combined TiVo-Slingboxes to all the cable and satellite TV companies. Make sure they all have Ethernet jacks to incorporate Internet TV services so that I can watch everything from Joost to Youtube and Hulu on my TV. That assumes Ergen can succeed in selling these boxes to cable companies, an area where TiVo has struggled. But his status as one of the old boys in the industry (remember when he was considered a maverick?), could help him win over the incumbents.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

The Web is coming to your airplane seat, real soon. And not just e-mail and IM on one JetBlue plane. Starting in March, I am told, American Airlines will start offering Web access on-board, followed shortly by Virgin America. Both will use an air-to-ground system from Aircell. (Boeing’s failed Connexion broadband in the air service, in contrast, was an unwieldy satellite system). Alaska Airlines also has plans to offer Web service next year, but I believe that is a satellite-based system as well.

Inside the plane, some of these will be Wi-Fi. Newer planes, like Virgin America’s, that already have Ethernet jacks at every seat, will have both wired and wireless connectivity. Both plan on charging $10 a flight for Web access. I know I’d pay that. But it could be worth a lot more to them to offer it for free, and use it to build loyalty. Virgin America, in particular, has more to gain by offering its Web access for free. I personally have already started flying Virgin America (AKA the Blogger’s Airline) just because I know I will have an electrical plug no matter what seat I get. If I could get free Internet access, I wouldn’t fly any other airline. I am sure there are enough other frequent flyers out there who feel the same. Enough to keep Virgin America’s planes full, which is the only way you make money in the airline business, not by squeezing another $10 from each passenger with a laptop or an iPhone. They can also subsidize the Internet access with ads.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

<![CDATA[ Last month's launch of Amazon's e-book reader, Kindle, has people talking about ebooks again, with some questioning whether or not the potential popularity of the reader combined with the ease of viewing unauthorized ebooks on it would lead to an increase in e-book „piracy.“ Reader Carolyn writes in to point to a terrific rant about how this assertion is misplaced. The writer, Kassia Krozser, notes that it's not the Kindle's fault that people will use unauthorized content – it's the fault of publishers for making it inconvenient for people to do what they want with content. It's the same thing that we said when JK Rowling refused to offer the Harry Potter books as ebooks out a fear of unauthorized copies getting out. That's ridiculous of course. In doing so, you guarantee that the only digital copies are unauthorized, even if someone wanted to pay for them. It's this thinking that helped screw up the recording industry as well. If the industry had recognized early on how Napster showed how people wanted to consume music, they could have offered a compelling solution that people would have paid for. Instead, they resisted and fought it, and now the problem is much worse. The problem isn't with the device, but with publishers not giving people the content in a format they want. As Krozser says (and we used for the headline of this post): „Devices don't make pirates. Unreasonable barriers make pirates.“

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story ]]>

Adult dating site AdultFriendFin­der, rumored to have been acquired in November for $1 billion is on the wrong side of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a settlement that restricts AdultFriendFin­der’s promoti­onal activities.

The FTC said in a statement that AdultFriendFinder affiliates used pop-up ads to drive traffic to the site, and exposed consumers, including children to sexual explicit images when search for terms including “flowers,” “travel,” and “vacations.” More seriously the FTC alleged that the ads were also distributed with spyware and adware.

The FTC found that “the practice of displaying graphic pop-up ads without consumer consent was unfair, and violated the FTC Act;” essentially saying that porn pop-ups are illegal.

AdultFriendFinder agreed to a settlement with the FTC which sees the company admitting no guilt in return for not displaying sexually explicit ads to consumers unless they’re looking for that sort of content (or are already on an adult site) and to cease using pop-ups. AdultFriendFinder must also force affiliates to comply with the settlement or terminate them should they not comply. The last point is the interesting one because AdultFriendFinder has one of the bigger affiliate programs online, and would certainly have the largest affiliate program of any dating company; affiliate promotion is their bread and butter and if suddenly affiliates left the program or were restricted in ways that dramatically reduced clickthrus to AdultFriendFinder, the $1 billion sales price starts to look a little high; perhaps the later rumored price of $300 million at 3× EBITDA was such a low multiple because they saw this coming?

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

<![CDATA[ Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about some new research showing how violent video games impacted the brains of children as monitored using fMRI equipment. The end result was basically that there was an effect – but it was basically what you'd expect. Violence made stimulated parts of the brain corresponding to being „emotional,“ which is what anyone would expect. Slashdot is now reporting on a similar study that really doesn't seem all that different (even if the press release about it claims that there hasn't been such evidence „until now“). Basically, the finding shows that when viewing violent media, the part of the brain that suppresses inappropriate aggression is less active. Again, though, that seems perfectly reasonable. If you're witnessing violence, it seems perfectly natural that your brain would prepare you to be ready for violence yourself if needed. What it doesn't show is that it actually does make you more violent. Unlike some research, this seems like perfectly good research and the researchers don't seem to be pretending it says more than it actually does. However, for those looking to support the idea that violent video games makes people violent, they won't find it here (unless they extrapolate out well beyond what the study covers).

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story ]]>

3i has invested €2.6 million in shopping search engine Twenga. Similar to other shopping search startups, Twenga is a meta search engine for products from online merchants. Twenga’s search results include user reviews and images on top of the usual price comparisons.

There are a ton of shopping product search engines out there right now. It’s a crowded space and to distinguish themselves companies have been focusing on advanced features such as deep product feature search (Retrevo) or price trend tracking (Mpire) to stand out. There’s The Find, Mpire, Crowdstorm, Bountii, Retrevo, SmartShopper, Pricefight, Ugenie, and many more. Google had it’s own notable stumble in online product search as well.

Of the engines, Twenga is most like “The Find”. Search results are returned as a wall of product images and can be refined by price and features. It also has several advanced features include price tracking and user reviews. This allows the engine to run more complex searches properties such as a 10% price drop. It also focuses on Europe and comes translated in an impressive six different languages (French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and English). The network reached 7 million visitors in November 2007 and indexed over 40 million offers from 25,000 merchants

With so much choice, there’s no excuse to not get the lowest price on your Christmas gifts.

₀_1197121695“,„twen­ga“); ₁_1197121695“,„the­find.com“); ₂_1197121695“,„crow­dstorm“); ₃_1197121695“,„bou­ntii“); ₄_1197121695“,„re­trevo“);

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

<![CDATA[ Rich Kulawiec writes in to let us know about a Boing Boing post about some fairly ridiculous limitations on Western Digital's networked drives. Apparently, once you've set up the drive, you can subscribe to a service that will allow others to access your drive from the internet (rather than on the local network). You can set up accounts for specific people, including highlighting what is available to be shared with that person. However, Western Digital has simply decided that under no circumstance can you share a variety of multimedia filetypes, such as mp3s, wmvs, aac or others. Its reasoning is that this is „due to unverifiable media license authentication,“ which is basically a gibberish way of saying that you might be infringing on someone's copy­right. Of course, you might not be either. There are an awful lot of media files out there that are perfectly legitimate to share with others. Certainly, this sort of action makes this service useless to a musician who records tracks and makes them available to his record label using such a drive. The key question, though, is why Western Digital should bother at all. There's certainly no legal reason for Western Digital to do such a thing – and all it does is make their drives a lot less useful for perfectly legitimate activities.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story ]]>

CNET Networks, the parent company for CNET.com, MP3.com, TV.com, GameSpot and several other web destinations, has released a set of widgets for embedding their videos on non-CNET websites.

The widgets are well-designed and currently available for BNET, CHOW, CNET.com, GameSpot, and TV.com. Whichever the source, they show some branding, a video clip, a selection of other video clips, and an advertisement. We’ve embedded one from GameSpot below (although they say it can take up to 15 minutes for the widget to start working).

In CNET’s words, these are meant to “offer publishers the opportunity to integrate quality editorial and programming from five CNET Networks brands into their site environments.” Will CNET share revenue from the advertising with participating sites, or pay them for spreading their brand? That doesn’t look like the case, especially since CNET insists that the widgets are meant to “enhance their users’ site experience, increase user engagement, and expand their ability to offer quality video.”

We’ve submitted an inquiry to CNET for more details, but I don’t think they’ve provided enough incentive for publishers to spread these. Perhaps they expect that only publishers with which they have formed customized partnerships will use them.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0