Also: Warner Music's web TV service | Russia's AllofMP3.com is closed down | Bebo and Current TV team up | What's the value of a Facebook application?
Another very interesting Google acquisition: phone management tool Grand Central. Google confirmed the purchase yesterday, which is believed to be around the $50m mark.
Grand Central provides users with one single phone number they can use for life, for all their different phone accounts. Users decide which number a person is routed to, depending how they are set up in the address book. All very sensible stuff, and based around VOIP phone technology. The service is free for light use but about $10 per month for most users.
Mike Arrington on TechCrunch called it "one of the standout startups of the last twelve months" and has a detailed profile of how it works.
Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet of Grand Central gleefully declared the acquisition on their blog yesterday, saying it will enable them to add more innovative features, many of which will remain free.
And how does this fit into Google's masterplan? "We think GrandCentral's technology fits well into Google's efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users," says the Google blog. It will add more fuel to the speculation that Google is preparing a mobile device. (Reuters)
Warner Music's web TV service
Warner Music has launched an online TV service called Rhino that it hopes will generate new advertising revenue on its considerable archive of music videos. Warner is planning a bunch of similar services, with this first platform offering 2,000 videos for free with various paid-for extras such as ringtones, downloads, and band merchandise. Videos are all tagged for easy searching and with various editorial features, including a "new" Doors interview that has never before seen the light of day, and certainly not the internet. Users can add content to playlists and also embed the site's Rhino TV player on their own sites and social networking profiles, a la YouTube. The service is in Beta to begin with and the full consumer launch is planned for the autumn.
Russia's AllofMP3 is closed down
The music download site AllofMP3.com has finally caved in to months of pressure from the Russian authorities. AllofMP3 was one of the world's largest online collections of pirated music, with 5.5m subscribers paying between 10 and 20 US cents for each download. At one point the site was estimated to be the second most popular downloads site in the UK after iTunes, generating around $30m revenue every year.
Last year the site was singled out by American trade representative Susan Schwab as an obstacle to Russia joining the World Trade Organisation. Russian authorities pledged to close the site down in September, but the team behind AllofMP3.com had insisted that the site was complying with Russian law by paying royalties to the Russian Licensing Society.
An alternative service, mp3sparks.com has instantly appeared to take its place. (Times Online)
Bebo and Current TV team up
Bebo and Current have partnered on a scheme to swap video content for a scheme that will showcase new TV talent. Al Gore's online video network will offer Bebo users a go at presenting in front of a camera for a day. The Your Shout! weekend will ask Bebo users to submit video of themselves introducing a Current TV clip, which they upload to Bebo's video section. Current TV and bebo users will vote for five winners who will host the Your Shout! weekend on Current TV. Current TV, meanwhile, gets a branded channel on Bebo video, which means users can swap clips and post them to their profiles.
What's the value of a Facebook application?
According to Facebook watchers on Inside Facebook, the value of an application user is about 1% of the value of having a user directly on your site. That's a strange calculation, given that applications will drive new traffic, but in advertising terms the value is 50c to $1 on a destination site and 1% of that on an application. Chuck the exchange rate in too and that really seems a pittance.
"On a destination site, you can probably get a $0.50-1 CPM, whereas the CTRs and conversion rates on Facebooks apps imply a much lower CPM. Facebook app users are potentially worth about 1% of what users on your website are worth in my view, but the opportunity is to make it up in bulk." (Inside Facebook)
