Anuj Agrawal

My Posts on TechCocktail

2012-02-12T16:58:50-08:00

When I first started this blog, it was a great place for me to throw out my perspectives on mobile and the tech world in general. But then I realized, it would be great if this site had an audience who could actually read this stuff. So I went out and started contributing to TechCocktail, a popular tech blog based in the DC area. TechCocktail is one of the most comprehensive outlets about startups and entrepreneurship across the country. My posts tend to have a bend on the product choices and strategy of the companies that I write about, both startup and Fortune 500. Below is a running list of my contributions to the blog:

11/22/2011 - App Review: Unleashing Your "Creativity"
10/6/2011 - The Apple iPhone Strategy: We've Seen This Before (picked up by Techmeme)
9/15/2011 - 9 Startups Created at Startup Weekend Delaware
9/1/2011 - ZipTip's Mobile Payment App Acknowledges Great Service
8/26/2011 - Jumio Update: Targeting Bloggers
8/12/2011 - 3 Ways to Survivie App Fatigue
8/4/2011 - Jumio: Processing Credit Cards Through Webcams
7/19/2011 - Goshi: The Location-Based Marketplace
7/5/2011 - MoviePass Launch Fizzles Out
6/24/2011 - "Shazam"ing Interactive Content on TVs
6/9/2011 - Food for Thought: Analyzing the Pizza Industry for Startup Ideas
5/27/2011 - Apple: Eating Their Own Dogfood
5/19/2011 - The Chicken and Egg of 3DTVs
5/5/2011 - Is the Battle for the Living Room Becoming Over-Rated?
4/21/2011 - Kindle Library: Driving Mass Market Customer Adoption
4/14/2011 - Newspaper Digital Paywalls: A Test of Consumer Loyalty
4/7/2011 - Mobile Payment Apps: A Starbucks Case Study
3/25/2011 - Keeping the Madness In Your Pocket With Live Mobile Streaming

"Checking In" On Location-Based Marketing

2010-08-01T15:12:22-07:00

So wouldn't it be cool if you could walk by a Starbucks and get a mobile coupon? Haha, just kidding. If you've been in the mobile space for a while, you know that has been the promise of location-based applications for nearly a decade. While mobile coupons are starting to appear, they aren't quite making the splash that has been promised since data started being delivered to the phone. But leave it to social networking to get things cranking around location-based services that are actually compelling, consumer friendly, and have real potential to be a serious marketing tool for businesses.

With social networking becoming mainstream over the last few years, location-based services are gathering the most traction through social networking tools like Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown. My early experiences with these services provide a sneak peek into how they have the potential to transform the loyalty program landscape. Before, other than standard reward cards almost every establishment offers, McDonald's Monopoly game was one of the more inventive and fun loyalty programs. But with restaurants beginning to offer discounts, no wait times, and even free vacations (Moby Dick's in the DC area had this running recently) for their Foursquare "Mayor", people are again incented to visit establishments to gather badges and mayorships to show off to their friends. I must say I myself have been caught up in this when I see an establishment offering up freebies to frequent, um, checker-inners.

While these services are just getting off the ground and have had some initial success (2MM users of Foursquare as of this post), there are a couple of key improvements I'd want to see happen from a product perspective:

They need to enhance the anonymous social check-ins to enable real-life encounters and socializing. Rather than simply checking in to alert your existing friends where you are and what no good activity you're up to, these apps should allow you to meet others, in real-time. I recently checked into a coffee shop and noticed 3 others had checked-in as well in the last 15 minutes. Being on the constant lookout to understand consumer behaviors, it would have been great to engage these somewhat early adopters themselves of location-based social networking, and generally just chat and meet new people with similar interests. Why not enable an IM client within the Foursquare app so that I can ping someone at the same place as me to see if they are open to meeting? Oh yeah the privacy thing. Of course, you could control if people can IM you via your personal settings. An even less intrusive way would be to have a socialize flag when you check-in at each location. When you check-in, hit the flag if you are open to meeting others at the same place using the application. These location-based applications can be a powerful method of meeting other like-minded people in person vs. simply exchanging friend requests online.

These services need to start incorporating auto-checkouts so that the retailer/restaurant knows how long someone has been at the establishment. So many people walk down a sidewalk and simply check-in to every store they pass. While these networks are clearly trying to leave things flexible to increase usage and early adoption of their services, at some point they will need to maintain their credibility and allow establishments to know exactly who their loyal fans are vs. people gaming the system. This will ultimately help the establishment reward the right people, keep people using the service, and ultimately increase the revenue prospects for these social networks.

iPhone 4: Thoughts On The New Video Features

2010-06-27T18:18:08-07:00

I will save the general iPhone 4 reviews to the thousands of other outlets covering the device (although I am pretty impressed with the elegant feeling hardware and updated iOS4 functionality. The updated iPhone 4 form factor reminds me a bit of the XM SkyFi3 from a few years ago, but with a much more premium and sleeker feel to it). For this post, I wanted to point out a couple thoughts as it relates to the video functionality within the new device:

1. FaceTime - wow, what a compelling app, but its use will be severely limited out of the gate. Actually, there are 2 points to bring up on this, which indicate it will still require time to realize the full utility of FaceTime.

Wi-Fi Only - Jobs mentioned that they have some work to do with the "carriers". That's carriers with an "s". So did he mean U.S. carriers? Is Verizon or another provider in the mix and determining the features of the current handset, or was he referring to the many international carriers who sell the iPhone around the world? With AT&T's recently revised data plans, AT&T shouldn't have had a problem with this appliciation being used over its network, thus its interesting that other carriers have forced Apple to make this feature Wi-Fi only. Of course, this severely limits the places where someone can use this. I'll pretty much only be using this feature when I'm at home (or maybe while I'm hitting lunch at a Panera, etc.), where I could already use Skype on my computer.

Open Architecture - clearly the other limiting fact is that there are no FaceTime compatible mobile devices on the market so there is no one to call to actually use it. Of course, this will change quickly as this iPhone sells millions over a short period of time, but it is limiting for the initial period. Thus, many people almost have to discount this feature if they are looking to upgrade their iPhone. If this is the killer feature for you, you may be best served waiting for iPhone 5 when there should be many other FaceTime devices on the market, and Apple has sorted out the carrier support. In any event, it was great to see them make this open source, which we all know is out of character for Apple, so the ramp-up of supported devices will hopefully grow quickly.

2. HD Video - when we recently added a little new member to the family, I had bought a Kodak Zi8 so we could take HD video at home and on the go. This is now relegated to an expensive paperweight thanks to iPhone's support for HD video. It is amazing how Apple just takes over entire product categories by integrating niche functionality into their multi-function devices (i.e. iPad is going to put a heavy dent into the e-reader market as well). Flip Video and others need to regroup and figure out how they survive now.

Overall, I am a huge fan of these video enhancements to the device, which may take video conference usage to a new level as well as lower the number of devices I need to lug around with me.

Can The Has-Been Handset Makers RAZR the iPhone?

2010-05-27T10:31:46-07:00

We all remember how cool the RAZR was when it came out with its super-thin design and “Back in Black” theme song in the commercials. It was the phone that changed consumer expectations on how small a mobile phone could be. Since then, things have gone downhill for Motorola, while the new 800-pounders are in Silicon Valley redefining how users interact with the web, play games, and socialize with their friends on their pocket sized iPhones and Android devices.

Now it may soon be Nokia’s turn to be the future "has-been" of dominant handset providers as they are steadily losing share to smart phones. What will they do to protect their turf? They still have a big lead worldwide as the graphic below shows, but clearly their growth is flattening as people move to Apple and Android based handsets.

This trend is likely to continue over an 18-24 month time frame, as iPhone and other smart phone prices will become more mass market in developing countries, further eroding Nokia in its dominant markets. In the U.S., Apple's share of the handset market will only keep increasing once their CDMA capable handsets hit the market and they can tap into the Verizon and Sprint customer bases.

Until now, Nokia has been focused on enhancing their services content (Navteq acquisition, Comes With Music) but what do they have up their sleeve from a device perspective? While software is starting to become a major criteria for hardware purchase with the mind-boggling success of the iTunes App Store, the hardware still needs to be compelling, especially as Apple and other Android based manufacturers continue to crank the product development engines.

However, it appears Nokia is continuing to focus on services, with their newly inkedYahoo partnership. This seems like a better win for Yahoo as they get a better presence internationally, where Nokia is the smart phone leader. Nokia only get maps/navigation on Yahoo services, which for the most part are losing steam to Google's services so fewer and fewer customers will gain awareness of what Nokia is bringing to the party.

For current incumbents like Nokia to protect their turf against the new smartphone leaders, they need to maintain focus on developing unique handsets that can leverage the investments they are making on the services side.

The Changing Landscape Of Online Video - What's Next?

2010-05-14T13:02:03-07:00

With Hulu’s pending launch of their premium service, let’s take a step back and theorize how the video content industry is changing. It is incredibly hard to get people to start paying for something that was previously free. While Hulu’s idea is to provide access to older episodes as part of the premium model, they are still asking people to pay to consume video online. In my view, the only way you can charge for content is to have access to some type of exclusive content that is not available on every other video aggregation site. Rather than trying to change consumer behavior to pay for online content, the more likely structural change will need to be on the advertising side of the equation, since consumers are already used to seeing ads.

Right now consumers create value in 2 ways: they pay a cable/satellite TV bill (the access fee), and they view ads. Online, they pay no access fees for video, and they significantly fewer ad spots. So of course more people are moving online, it’s basic consumer behavior! However, as this deteriorates the industry’s value, the structure of the business will need to change. Think about the value chain players: content creators, providers, distributors, and consumers. Providers ultimately get paid for ads, but those ads need to be seen by people, thus, the newfound power of the cable distributors to command higher fees from the networks. While there is a shift in consumer usage from the TV to a variety of online devices (PCs, gaming consoles, mobile devices), at some point content creators need to continue to be paid to actually be incented to create the content. But if people continue to cut their cable cords and too much value is taken out of the traditional distribution model, more expensive or higher volume advertising inventory will need to be created within online video streams.

Currently there are approximately 4 ad minutes per 60 minutes of programming online vs. 15 ad minutes per TV programming, so there is room to increase the number of online spots. I don’t see this as a problem since consumers are already used to consuming ads. There is no change in behavior required. Does it really matter to the advertiser if I watch an ad on my Panasonic TV vs. my Mac? And with the ability to suppress DVR capability during ads online, online ads have an advantage over TV ads in that I’ll actually have to watch them.

It’s unclear what the balance is going to be between rising cable/satellite prices and the shift to online consumption. Just as Apple has had to increase music pricing on iTunes to put more value back in the industry, at some point a structural change will occur in the video marketplace to continue to enable compelling content to be created.

Kindle In Retail - Finally, But Is Amazon's Choice Off-Target?

2010-05-14T12:43:20-07:00

With iPad stealing all of Kindle’s well deserved thunder, let’s not forget that it is still the top selling SKU on Amazon. However, it is clear the quickly evolving e-reader market has forced Amazon to tweak its selling philosophy for the Kindle. I had always found it hard to believe that consumers would be willing to shell out $300+ (its price for most of its lifetime) for a device that not only is a brand new product category in the industry, but also one that consumers could not demo prior to purchase!

I get that Amazon isn’t in the business of promoting retail sales, but if they are…were…serious about consumer electronics, they had to have retail distribution, even if only very limited. While I am happy to finally see them go the retail route, I do find the choice of Target to be somewhat surprising. When you think of the upscale brand image associated with the Kindle, it seems to clash with it being sold exclusively through Target, no? My guess is that the primary outlet for this, Best Buy, had already nailed down its e-reader partners for the time being, including their recently announced deal to sell the Nook.

I get that there are only a few retailers that will give you the mass market presence I am sure they were seeking, but what about regional places like Fry’s or 6th Ave? The early adopter types who will be buying a Kindle do not go to Target for their consumer products, and it’s not like a $259 device is an impulse purchase for the mass market. Could this be a signal that Amazon is finally looking to bring the pricing down to a sub-$200 mass market level?

I’m glad Amazon has finally decided to let customers touch and feel their once top-of-the-mountain product, but now with the iPad garnering all the attention (which was once the Kindle’s attention) they may have some catching up to do. Hopefully their entry into retail will keep them competitive in the market they put on the map.

Social Matchbox DC Spring 2010 - Recap

2010-05-02T16:54:19-07:00

Earlier this week in DC was the Spring installment of Social Matchbox, an event that brings together promising startups in the community to present their business ideas, seek funding, and gather feedback from a crowd of passionate digital media fans. It was an impressive roster of presenting companies with a heavy emphasis on consumer facing concepts. I fully expect at least a few of these companies to get funding. In particular, here are the ones who stood out:

Love this concept. I walk around with CVS, Barnes & Noble, and grocery store loyalty cards in my wallet, and each time I visit these places, I need to empty out my entire wallet to reach them. CardStar takes the hassle out of managing each card and makes the card available on your phone by re-creating the bar code associated with the card. The best part is that beyond the simple convenience factor, this allows retailers to push down special, personalized deals to your phone. This app is going to make my wallet seriously thinner...literally.

This was by far the most entertaining presentation of the night. In the spirit of Seinfeld’s NBC show “The Marriage Ref”, CouplesSpark aims to help couples “win” arguments by letting the general public weigh in on a dispute. For all us guys, we know we will never actually “win” the argument, but this kind of service can serve as an entertaining way to help support our point. Hard to say if the company will be able to create an active community of commenters, but the concept is hilarious.

While there were many ideas integrating services like Twitter and FB, Replyz had an interesting concept to help people get answers to questions they post on social networking sites. According to the founder, 85% of questions posted on Twitter go unanswered, so Replyz scours a variety of social networking sites and search engines to try to match up an answer and post it directly into the thread of your discussion, no matter if you started it on Twitter, FB or something else. I like the potential utility of the service and am curious how it will stack up against the variety of other Q&A type sites like Ask that exist out there.

Shopflick: Personalizing Online Selling

2008-08-25T06:32:47-07:00

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!

With Shopflick, the seller can give the buyer a much more personal view into the seller and the item. Maybe I have been watching too much Mad Men, but we know that engaging a buyer and getting them to feel something for a product are critical drivers in selling success. With a video, a buyer can now get a sense of who they are buying from and sellers can attach a story to the product that is not possible with simple text and still images.

The videos are sometimes produced by the seller or made with the help of a service from Shopflick. The ads tend to have a reality show feel, where you still feel like you are buying from an everyday person, instead of celebrities who you know have been paid to pitch the product.

Since the site is new (it's in beta), there are not a ton of listings yet, but it will be interesting to see how this catches on. The main question in my mind is that if it does take off, how will they keep companies like eBay from replicating a similar experience? If they become a niche player, then they probably won't have enough traffic to build a big business. If they stay mass market, they will need to build their brand and compete with the eBays of the world. All in all, I really like the concept and innovation behind this new form of online sellling. I'm hoping Shopflick is able to gather and sustain a presence in the market.

The Line Between Gaming and Music Companies Is Starting to Blur

2008-08-06T06:42:49-07:00

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.

An interesting demographic metric is that the average age of gamers has grown to 35 years old. Things certainly have changed over the past twenty years. Grown-up 35 year-old adults are driving the gaming industry. But wait it gets better. 40% of these gamers are women.

What's interesting about this demographic information is that it's the same demographic that buys music online. We know kids and teenagers aren't buying their music. But for most of the 30+ group, buying music is still a normal thing and thus represent a great opportunity for Activision Blizzard to create a new business around music sales.

Activision Blizzard isn't the only gaming company mixing in a music business. EA has recently started their own music label called Artwerk. Gaming companies have been sourcing game soundtracks from independent artists and when it's included in a popular game, often times the soundtrack becomes popular as well. Now, EA wants to be able to reap the benefits of these tracks, as I'm sure many other game publishers will do very shortly as well.

It remains to be seen how successful Activision Blizzard's new music store will be. It certainly has built a solid relationship with people in the right target demographic.

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

2008-07-30T12:50:31-07:00

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.

The opponents to this petition, mainly movie theaters who view this as a threat to their business, say that neighborhood cinemas will inevitably be shutdown and people who enjoy going to the movies will have lost out.

If you ask me, I am all for watching new movies at home sooner than I can now. My wife and I just went to see The Dark Knight, and after movie tickets, popcorn, and soda, it ran us $34. When I watch an HD movie On-Demand through Comcast, it costs me $5. It is great to see content distributors like MPAA developing new business initiatives that ultimately benefit the consumer. As for dealing with opponents, a few things could be done to make sure this becomes a win-win for everyone:

1. Make home viewing of HD movies available 60 days after theatrical release. This would keep movie theaters relevant as the die-hard movie buffs will still want to see the latest blockbusters on the first few opening weekends. This 60-day window should protect the majority of audience levels for movie theaters.

2. Set premium pricing for at-home viewing for the 60-120 day period between the time of home viewing release and the time of release on DVD. Thus, charging something like $12-13 (similar to pricing in hotels) would allow a family to be able to watch a hit movie for much cheaper than going to a theater. It would also allow the content owners to earn more revenue than they currently receive with standard On-Demand movies, which will help to offset their declining DVD businesses.

I also like how the MPAA is trying to entice the FCC to accept its petition by claiming that this new type of service will help to entice people to transition to digital TV by the February 2009 transition date. It's all about positioning...