SlideRocket’s Impressive Online Presentation App Hits General Release

by Jason Kincaid on October 28, 2008

SlideRocket, an online presentation application that produces slideshows that rival (and in many cases, better) PowerPoint, has launched to the general public. The site hadpreviously been available under a public beta, and is now removing the beta tag and introducing a set of pricing tiers along with some impressive new features.

Since we last wrote about SlideRocket the site has introduced new collaboration tools that allow users to share slides and other assets between presentations. Users can establish which assets will be made available to specific groups of peers using granular permissions control. The site also supports a conference mode similar to WebEx, allowing users on different computers to view the same presentation simultaneously (unfortunately this doesn’t yet support audio so you’ll need to set up your own phone or VoIP call independently).

The site has also introduced a storefront described as an “iTunes For Presentations” that allows users to purchase assets for their projects. Users will be able to buy stock photos through a partnership with Fotolia, graphics and backgrounds from PresentationPro, and printing/delivery through Mimeo.

Even though some of SlideRocket’s cloud-based competitors are free (SlideRocket charges for its more advanced features), the site is still very impressive and will likely draw a steady stream of business. It will be hard to displace PowerPoint as the de facto tool to build presentations, but SlideRocket is a great alternative, especially because users don’t have to deal with incompatible file formats and different versions of Office.

Other players in this space include 280 North, Empressr, and Zoho.

Cloud, SaaS, ASP, Web Services – Microsoft Live Services, Windows Azure, Live Mesh Adds to Confusion

Ed: Do we need more confusion? Here it comes – more jargon from Microsoft. 

IBM offers hosted or outsourced services. Google Apps offers free, hosted, outsourced services. Microsoft leverages it’s many products and intellectual property into a new service – sold for an undisclosed rental fee over the web. Let the new war begin.

I prefer simplicity for consumers, customers, and partners.

Ray Ozzie Has His Head In the Clouds

Microsoft wants in on cloud computing. At the company’s Professional Developer’s Conference today, Microsoft’s chief software architect Ray Ozzie announced Windows Azure, its “internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers.” Windows Azure will only be open as a technology preview to a very limited number of developers for now, and no pricing details have been revealed that I can find. But this is basically Microsoft’s answer to Amazon’s Web Services and cloud computing initiatives from other enterprise IT players, including everyone from IBM to RackSpace. Azure will run Windows servers and the .Net framework in the cloud as a hosted, pay-as-you go service. It will be part of what Microsoft is calling Live Services, and it will run Live apps, .Net apps, SQL server, Sharepoint servers, and Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM…

Microsoft PDC2008: Ozzie Introduces Azure

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie started off the company’s 2008 Professional Developer Conference With a discussion of the back-end , server parts of the company’s “software plus services strategy.” This doesn’t get the attention that goes to client solutions – like Windows, which I expect we’ll hear more about tomorrow – but it is crucial for developers and corporate users.

Ozzie said that Microsoft’s big advantage in writing platforms comes from three items: It builds its own apps on the platform, which makes sure the platform works. Because of the size of Microsoft, its platforms are likely to reach critical mass. Microsoft has always understood that ISVs need to be successful for the company to be successful.

There’s a lot of truth in that – there are many companies and developers who have grown using Microsoft’s tools. But Microsoft has been a very aggressive competitor to some of its ISVs, a point Ozzie didn’t make. Perhaps as a result, is seeing more competition than it has in years – particularly from open source software on the server and tools side…

Ray Ozzie Announces Windows Azure – “Windows in the Cloud”

Ray Ozzie opened the Microsoft PDC ‘08 this morning with a keynote speech. In it he announced Windows Azure, Microsoft’s “Windows in the cloud”. It is a new service based operating environment. He described it as a massive highly scalable service platform. What is being released today is just a fraction of what it will become. It will be Microsoft’s highest scalable system enabling people and companies to create services on the Web.

On the new webpage for Windows Azure, it is described as follows:

Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers.

To build these applications and services, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, and XML. Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments.

Use Windows Azure to:

* Add Web service capabilities to existing packaged applications.
* Build, modify, and distribute applications to the Web with minimal on-premises resources.
* Perform services (large-volume storage, batch processing, intense or large-volume computations, etc.) off premises.
* Create, test, debug, and distribute Web services quickly and inexpensively.
* Reduce costs of building and extending on-premises resources.
* Reduce the effort and costs of IT management.

Why Platforms Are Letting Us Down – And What They Should Do About It

In good times everyone wants to be a platform. But when times are bad and platforms are just an expense, the resources suddenly shift away. The recent re-design of Facebook, the slow down of Google’s Open Social, and Flock closing its extension site – these are all part of the same pattern. Platforms that don’t have monetization wired in are only good for marketing. This is why the platforms of the future need to think about not just short-term marketing and buzz, but long-term sustainability and monetization.

Last week Flock’s community manager Evan Hamilton emailed all developers who had submitted extensions to Flock to announce that Flock will no longer support most of the extensions hosted on extensions.flock.com.

The justification was that Mozilla was doing a better job hosting and promoting the add-ons, and the majority were the same for Flock and Firefox. Since Flock does not have enough resources to support the extension site, Evan announced the decision to “cut the fat that is our unwieldy extensions system”. (Note the keyword ‘fat’, it will be important in the rest of the post).

In itself this move was not surprising. Flock’s team has just released version 2.0 of its social browser and has other battles to fight. IE8 is coming out soon with innovative features. Mozilla is racing forward with Ubiquity and the upcoming Geo-aware Firefox 3.1. And Google threw its hat into the browser ring with Chrome, so competition is getting tight. For Flock to be a player in the browser market, it needs a razor focus on building a base of diehard fans. Extensions are not helping much in that respect, they’re an expense, so it was logical to cut them.

Facebook Platform – The Big Up and The Big Let Down

When the Facebook platform was unveiled in 2007, it was called genius. Never before had a company in a single stroke enabled others to tap into millions of its users completely free. The platform was hailed as a game changer under the famous mantra “we built it and they will come”. And they did come, hundreds of companies rushing to write Facebook applications. Companies and VC funds focused specifically on Facebook apps.

It really did look like a revolution, but it didn’t last. The first reason was that Facebook apps quickly arranged themselves on a power law curve. A handful of apps (think Vampires, Byte Me and Sell My Friends) landed millions of users, but those in the pack had hardly any. The second problem was, ironically, the bloat. Users polluted their profiles with Facebook apps and no one could find anything in their profiles. Facebook used to be simple – pictures, wall, friends. Now each profile features a zoo of heterogenous apps, each one trying to grab the user’s attention to take advantage of the network effect. Users are confused.

Worst of all, the platform had no infrastructure to monetize the applications. When Sheryl Sandberg arrived on the scene and looked at the balance sheet, she spotted the hefty expense that was the Facebook platform. Trying to live up to a huge valuation isn’t easy, and in the absense of big revenues people rush to cut costs. Since it was both an expense and users were confused less than a year after its glorious launch, Facebook decided to revamp its platform.

The latest release of Facebook, which was released in July, makes it nearly impossible for new applications to take advantage of the network effect. Now users must first install the application, then find it under the application menu or one of the tabs, then check a bunch of boxes to add it to their profile (old applications are grand-daddied in). Facebook has sent a clear message to developers - the platform is no longer a priority.

Google’s OpenSocial and The Me Too Syndrome

Apparently Google was threatened by the Facebook platform. Its quick response was OpenSocial, the open platform for social applications. Unlike Facebook, which was proprietary and closed, Google’s was open to everyone. When OpenSocial was announced, techies raised their eyebrows – it looked raw and unpolished. Some of the existing iGoogle container APIs were mixed in with a new contact sharing library. But, being Google, a lot of people signed up to support it.

Fast forward one year later and how much has been done? Well some companies did implement some elements, but the overall buzz died. Why wouldn’t Google put more resources and marketing behind it? Because now it doesn’t matter. The Facebook platform play is over and so the marketing strategy called Opensocial is not a top priority for the search giant anymore.

Why Apple’s App Store Will Be Different

Next we turn to the latest platform getting buzz, Apple’s iPhone App Store. At first glance it’s much like Facebook, but in reality it isn’t. Firstly, the user profiles aren’t visible – you can’t see applications installed on your iPhone. Each user can decide which apps to get, based on a simple review-based dashboard. There’s no promise of a massive network effect, although there’s a simpler user experience.

Importantly, Apple wired the monetization into the App Store right from the start. Sure there are free applications, but for companies that want to invest resources and play on the iPhone for a long time, there is an instant, simple opportunity to monetize. Note that paid applications get priority listing in the App Store, which is no accident.

Apple took care of the most important part of the equation – the transaction. It was also able to insert itself in the middle and recoup some costs associated with building the App Store. In the future, if it takes off and sustains the growth, App Store will ring in significant revenue for Apple. Jobs and his team were smart to wire monetization into the platform at the outsert.

The Future of Platforms

Where does all this leave us? Certainly it’s absurd to say that having Web platforms is a bad idea. Yet we’re left with a bitter taste in our mouths after the latest moves from some big platform players. The platforms of the future need to think about not just short-term marketing and buzz, butlong-term sustainability and monetization. Here are some questions that companies need to ask themselves before delivering a platform:

• Why are we building a platform?
• How will we monetize this platform?
• Will the platform make us money, and how much will it cost?
• How will applications be able to monetize the platform?
• Can we support the platform for years to come?

Our culture of sensation and free makes it much harder for platforms to think deeply and be disciplined. Google felt they had to come out with something to stop Facebook’s momentum. Facebook rushed to create a completely open infrastructure; and it backfired both for users and developers. Having been burnt by Facebook, small and large companies alike will now think twice before investing in a presence on platforms. This is a shame, for we need platforms and we need them to work well.

Let us know what you think about the opportunities to plug into major platforms? What are your thoughts on the recent platform dynamics that we have witnessed?

Ed: Agreed. Platforms need to become one-step monetization. Multiple steps interest few developers in bad economic times.

Federated Media Unleashes The Conversation As An Ad

Federated Media (our advertising partner) has been experimenting with “conversational marketing” almost since their launch in 2005. Today they are launching a new marketing toolbox for advertisers which gives them tools to track all the ways users interact with these ads.

The goal, says Federated Media, isn’t just to track ad impressions and clicks, but also to look at a new set of metrics like posts, trackbacks, votes, RSS subscriptions, comments, etc, where users somehow interact with the advertisement and talk about it. Hopefully, a conversation occurs between users, the ad publisher and the advertiser, which gives the advertiser’s brand more face time. An old example of this is Hakia’s ad that asks bloggers what better search means. Other examples are here.

The definition of conversational marketing is a little squishy. But the general idea, which Federated Media founder John Battelle writes about in the primer below, is that you as an advertiser figure out which content sites best associate with your brand, and then you grab the leader in that space and pay them to start conversations on your behalf:

Early efforts didn’t pan out so well as authors were accused of conflicts of interest – users didn’t know where editorial stopped and advertorial began. It’s not clear those issues have been resolved, but Federated Media says a proper disclosure policy is the right place to start.

Convinced? It’s certainly controversial, but brands love it because they get a higher return on their advertising investment. That means it’s here to stay.

tEarn Exitmercial Cuts Transaction Time by 50 Milliseconds

Our engineers have trimmed another 50 milliseconds off each transaction time. Why is 1/20th of a second so important?

tEarn Exitmercials

The tEarn exitmercial platform monitors websites for publishers and bloggers, determines the relevancy of a visitor to a website in realtime, and delivers exitmercials relevant to the qualified readers. Our technology is a break-through for delivering high valued advertising that benefits both advertisers and publishers.

Speed is Everything

Our system depends on fast, sophisticated processing that analyzes the second-by-second actions on a page, makes the right decisions, and delivers results – without disrupting the user experience. 

Starting with beta1, we’ve been silenting working with the fastest transaction engine that delivers in 150 milliseconds. This compares to Google Analytics that uses 400 milliseconds to report or AdWord that uses more than 400 milliseconds to deliver one set of classified ads.

For beta3, our engineers sliced another 50 seconds from the average transaction time.

Why is Speed Important?

Good question. Like Google Search that delivers quickly, we believe speed matters. Faster speed means:

• Less delay
• Scale to billions without hurting the user experience
• Greater accuracy of recorded data (Google Analytics is notorious for undercounting.)

We’re proud of our engineers and encourage them to continue the innovations that bring good change to online advertising.