Big Brands Want Ads On Instagram, But Facebook Is Focused On Growth For Now

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Facebook says that there are no plans for now to add advertising to Instagram, even though advertisers are approaching them, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during the company’s Q1 earnings call. Adding ads could end up stunting Instagram’s rapid growth. He said, more than once during the call, that Instagram is currently growing at a faster rate than FB did at the same age, and it now has 100 million users.

“They’re really doing well and growing quickly and that is the right focus for them,” Zuckerberg said. “They have the opportunity to…build community. I am really optimistic about the business and the opportunities.” But he also noted that “big brands are approaching us” about doing more on the platform — perhaps commercializing more, is the implication here. Instagram is already a pretty substantial marketing platform.

Facebook faced an outcry last year when Instagram updated its terms of service, with many concerned about how Instagram would get commercialized, specifically around selling ads against users’ photos. The company ended up reverting back to its original terms. At the time, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom noted,

“Going forward, rather than obtain permission from you to introduce possible advertising products we have not yet developed, we are going to take the time to complete our plans, and then come back to our users and explain how we would like for our advertising business to work.

On one hand, the decision to hold off on adds on Instagram runs counter to how Facebook has been running the rest of its mobile business. The company has been focusing a lot on mobile advertising, which now makes up 30%, or $375 million, of all of its advertising revenue. For now, Facebook seems happy instead for Instagram to provide a complement to the increasing commercialisation on Facebook’s main platform, which includes lucrative app install ads.

On the other, there’s still a lot of evidence here that points to Instagram still lacking the scale to be an effective ad platform for the company. While Instagram now has 100 million users, mobile active users for Facebook are now at 751 million.

Google Announces App Activities Coming To Search, Showing You Information Based On Usage By Other Google+ Users

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Google’s No. 1 strength is its search product, so it makes sense that all of their products feed back into it somehow. Today, the companyannounced the introduction of “App Activities” into Search. What this means is that when you search for something like “Fandango,” which uses Google+ sign-in, you’ll see top movies based on what users are rating.

Today at Disrupt NY, Seth Sternberg, Director of Product Management for Google+, and Ardan Arac, Product Manager at Google, are demoing the new feature.

The plan is to surface interesting in-app content, using search to dig deeper into what people are doing on those apps. The launch apps are music and movie ones, which lend themselves to lists of top content based on listens and ratings. Google is rolling this out in the next few weeks for Fandango, SoundCloud, Deezer, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza and TuneIn. Up until now, app activity was only showing on profile pages:

Of course, this all relies on users authenticating with Google+, something the company has been trying to get developers interested in leveraging since it was announced in February. This will work for iOS, Android and web apps.

Google Partners With Monotype To Bring Its Web Fonts To The Desktop

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Google’s Web Fonts collection of open source fonts is now available on the desktop (Mac and Windows). At first glance, that doesn’t make all that much sense, given that the whole idea of Web Fonts is that they bring new typography options to the Web that were previously only available on the desktop. As Google notes, however, having these fonts available locally on your desktop means that your browser doesn’t actually have to spend time fetching them over the web.

Google is using SkyFonts, a tool from font specialist Monotype, to allow you to install these fonts. The advantage of this, the company says, is that this tool also ensures that the fonts are regularly updated when new characters are added or the designers make other changes to it.

Google launched Web Fonts in 2011. The service currently offers access to over 620 font families and all of these, of course, are now also available on the desktop. When it launched Web Fonts, Google said that it was doing so to free designers from having to use Flash or embed text in images to bring better and more interesting typography to the web.

Google is obviously just one player in this market. Adobe, for example, offers similar features with its freemium TypeKit service and Edge Web Fonts for free and open source fonts.

It’s also worth noting that many of the fonts available through Google Web Fonts were alreadyavailable for the desktop.

App Install Ads Could Be The Growing Cash Calf Of Facebook’s Earnings

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How do you get hundreds of millions of people to consider downloading your app? One of the only answers is Facebook’s app install ads. With the app stores overrun and every company going mobile, app install ads are Facebook’s big chance to monetize mobile. Companies like 1-800-Flowers and Poshmark say the ads are already a hit, and I think they could be the star of Facebook’s earnings tomorrow.

PUTTING NEEDLES ATOP THE HAYSTACK

If you’re unfamiliar, Facebook launched app install ads in October 2012 to let developers pay to promote their apps in the mobile news feed of Facebook’s apps. The ads show the app’s name, a short description, the category of app (i.e. adventure game, ecommerce app), a big image of the app, and an obvious “Install Now” button that opens the app’s page in the Apple App Store or Google Play so it can be quickly downloaded. On iOS, the App Store can even be opened in an overlaid window so users don’t feel like they’ve ditched their friends on Facebook.

Why are these so important? Because app discovery is a mess right now, yet mobile is becoming critical to nearly every business — web giants, mobile-first startups, game developers, name-brand retailers, and with time, even smaller businesses.

Beyond word of mouth, the only reliable way to get an app discovered for free is to climb onto the frequently browsed app store charts…which requires tens of thousands of downloads in the first place. That leads developers to try to buy installs however they can, but often they end up with users that never really use their app. It doesn’t matter how cheap they are to acquire if they don’t generate any return on investment.

A BIG BANG THAT GETS YOUR BUCKS BACK

What app makers need are legitimate downloads. Downloads from users that will engage, share with their friends, and pay. Lots and lots of downloads. Few channels are big enough to deliver app discovery at a massive scale. There’s the existing favorite, Google AdWords, which are popular and making Google a ton of money. But increasingly, developers are turning to Facebook’s app install ads. In its last earnings call, Facebook said that since the launch of app install ads, 20% of the top 100 grossing iOS apps are using them.

Today after his talk at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, I asked Facebook’s product director of advertising Gokul Rajaram how mobile install ads are doing. He candidly told me “They’re performing well, and we’re seeing them deliver really high quality users that take actions.”

Facebook’s clients agree. 1-800-Flowers.com’s VP of Mobile and Social Amit Shah tells me “Our ability to reach hundreds of millions of US users who are accessing Facebook every day on their mobile devices is phenomenal. Other than Google search ads, there’s not another discovery medium at scale if you want to drive a large number of downloads.”

Mobile-only fashion marketplace app Poshmark’s CEO Manish Chandra concurs, “We’ve been using mobile install ads since their beta and they’ve been incredibly cost effective. We’ve found no difference in the acquired users, whether from Facebook’s organic shares or mobile install ads, in terms of their engagement and overall behavior, so we’ve been using them as one of the largest sources of user acquisition for Poshmark.” Meanwhile, Canadian ecommerce discounts app Checkout 51 was able to pull in 10,000 installs over two days using app install ads. The cost per install came in at just $0.60.

U.S. Court Rules For Facebook In Its Case Against Typosquatters On 105 Domains; $2.8M In Damages

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A victory for Facebook in its case against typosquatters — those who own domain names that are similar to those of a popular site, which they use to confuse people and potentially capitalize on that. The U.S. District Court for Northern California has ruled in favor of the social network in an action it took against several squatters, recommending the turnover of 105 domains and statutory damages of $2,795,000.

Not only should this mean that Facebook will be getting control of some 105 domains, but it looks like this makes Facebook one of the first big companies to win liability damages in a case tried under the U.S. Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act. This act was formed to protect companies against those who create/register websites that allow typosquatters to monetize their domains. Up to now, liability has only been determined at the “motion to dismiss stage,” we understand, not the ruling stage.

As the ruling embedded below notes, some of the typosquatters would continue the initial typed confusion with “misuse of Facebook’s marks, typesetting, and color scheme” to lure people into entering personal information and other actions.

The original list of domains included sites like dacebook.com, facebokook.com, faceboocklogin.com, faacebok.com, facebookfreezer.com, facebooll.com, facegbook.com, gfacebook.com, and zh-facebook.com. No site on that particular list appears to be active at the moment. Many were registered in batches by single entities. For example, Newgate, the filing notes, registered 50 domains that sounded similar to Facebook, “registering and using infringing domain names to divert traffic from Facebook’s website in an effort to deceive users and make money.” In this case, the court applied a formula to each defendant, based on the number of domains held and other factors such as how they were used. The per-defendant breakdown ranges from $5,000 to $1.34 million.

With the suit going back to July 2011, Facebook has already recovered hundreds of domains named in it (including that list above). But there are still more, and Facebook says it will be pursuing them, too:

“We are pleased with the court’s recommendation. We will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to enforce against those who attempt to take advantage of the people who use our service,” said Craig Clark, Associate General Counsel, Facebook, in a statement by email.

Microsoft Sued By CopyTele Over Alleged Skype Patent Infringements, Wants To Bring Cases Against 100 More Web Conferencing Services

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CopyTele, a “patent enforcement entity” based in New York, has filed a patent infringement suit against Microsoft in connection with its Skype IP calling and messaging service, now used by 280 million people every month. The two patents in question come from Secure Web Conference Corporation, a subsidiary of CopyTele. They are 6,856,686 B2 (’686 Patent), and 6,856,687 B2 (’687 Patent), respectively covering “method and apparatus for securing e-mail attachments” and “portable telecommunication security device.” “The Patents-in-Suit, generally speaking, relate to secure web-based peer-to-peer communications,” CopyTele writes in its complaint.

If things go CopyTele’s way, this is just the beginning: Robert Berman, the CEO of CopyTele, tells TechCrunch that there are between 90 and 100 web conferencing companies that CopyTele believes are also violating the same patents. “This is a $4 billion industry,” he said. “This is the initiation of what will be a broader patent enforcement campaign.”

CopyTele will have to get in line for its Skype suit: as of last month, the Microsoft subsidiary is also being sued by VirnetX over patent infringement claims (for the second time; they’d already settled past claims). A case brought by a company called Via Vadis, both in Europe and the U.S. back in 2011, around the time that the deal between Microsoft and Skype was first announced, was thrown out in a German court in January.

Nor are these the first patent infringement suits that CopyTele has brought against the tech community. In January, it filed suits against E Ink and AU Optronics Corp, related to technology used in products like Amazon’s Kindle and the Nook from Barnes & Noble, among others.

CopyTele is also amassing other patent portfolios and plans suits against other entities. These include companies that offer loyalty programs. It’s also bought a Windows patent portfolio (for actual windows — not Microsoft Windows).

Companies like Google, BlackBerry and Earthlink have lobbied against patent trolls and what it calls “patent privateering,” when patent enforcement entities make deals with larger companies to take over their portfolios and bring cases against competitors. But Berman paints himself as something of a patent enforcement crusader and takes issue with the categorically negative picture painted around patent trolls.

“I think every patent case needs to be judged on their own merits,” he said. “Just as there are good and bad personal injury lawyers, there are good and bad patent assertion companies. I don’t think it’s fair to assess every company that doesn’t make products as a villain. We are not in the nuisance lawsuit business, particularly when large companies make money out of licensing. What gives large companies the right to do this and not small companies?”

As of today, Senator Charles Schumer is also wading into these waters with proposed legislation that will change how these kinds of cases are brought to court. He’s suggesting that each suit should be reviewed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office before it can proceed through the court system, so that it can vet the cases and decide whether they have any merit on patent grounds. In Schumer’s estimation this should ferret out illegitimate claims while letting genuine patent violations proceed along the costly route to court appearance, or settlement. In theory, if this legislation passes, if CopyTele (or any other company) believes that it has a legit case, it should have nothing to worry about.

LinkedIn Now Lets You Add a Visual Portfolio to Your Profile

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LinkedIn now lets users add visual content like photos, presentations and videos to their profile pages — a feature that has been in high demand with creative professionals like designers and photographers.

The new LinkedIn Professional Portfolio feature turns the bare, word-heavy resumes of LinkedIn into potentially very image- and video-heavy portfolios. It’s an especially important enhancement for people who absolutely need to provide examples of their visual work to get a job, but could also be useful for others who just want to add some depth to their resumes.

“From the analyst who makes annual predictions on tech trends to the 3D animator who is looking to fund a new short film, the opportunities are limitless for how professionals can now use the LinkedIn profile to help showcase these unique stories in a visual way,” LinkedIn Project Manager Udi Milo wrote in a blog post.

You can upload any number of images, videos and presentations directly into the summary, work experience and education sections of your LinkedIn profile with descriptions of the work. For example, a designer can upload a magazine spread and describe their thought process behind the design. Or an actor can upload a short clip of a recent performance. All of these visuals show up as thumbnails on a user’s profile page, directly beneath a specific job, work summary, and education history. You can then click the thumbnails to get full-screen views. LinkedIn will eventually add the ability to like and comment on individual images and videos.

This is an important addition to LinkedIn, which has traditionally been a professional network for office-bound, white-collar workers. The move could potentially attract many more creative professional, who can now display their portfolios alongside their resumes.

The LinkedIn Professional Portfolio feature begins rolling out in English-speaking countries today.