Register for Inside Bitcoins Conference before Midnight

There has been a lot of talk surrounding virtual currency and Bitcoin, but what impact will virtual currency have on businesses and how can one make money in this space? Explore the future of this emerging field with industry influencers at our Inside Bitcoins Conference, July 30 in New York City.

Attendees will discuss what business and investment opportunities exist, as well as the legal issues facing virtual currency. Don’t delay– prices increase at midnight tonight.

You’ll hear from 20+ bitcoin experts on topics including The VC Take on Bitcoin, Bitcoin Boom: The Business Adoption of Bitcoin, Bitcoin and Freedom of Speech, Rethinking Content Monetization with Bitcoin, and more. View the full program here.

The evening’s drinks reception also provides the ideal forum to network with like-minded peers. Developers, entrepreneurs, investors, finance professionals, consultants, lawyers, media, and online retailers will all be present.

Featured Sessions:

*		Keynote: Bitcoin and The Future of Currency Charlie Shrem, Vice Chairman of Bitcoinfoundation.org and CEO of BitInstant, will explore how this peer-to-peer, decentralized currency is attracting the attention of Wall Street and financial institutions.
*		Legal & Regulatory Issues Facing Virtual Currency James White, Director of Tax Issues at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, will help technology companies building bitcoin software learn about the bounds of financial regulation.

This conference is one of the first to allow attendees to pay for tickets in bitcoin. Each registrant will also receive a bitcoin paper wallet with a 0.01 bitcoin.

Save $300 off on-site prices and register before midnight tonight.

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Yelp Rolls Out On-Site Commerce, for a Fee

Yelp today introduced a “Call to Action” feature that allows merchants to support a single type of transaction on their business listing page on the website.

“Consumers come to Yelp ready to make a spending decision and they rely on Yelp’s wealth of valuable content to find a local business to fit their needs,” wrote Vivek Patel, the company’s vice president of business products.

A storage business could allow users to reserve a unit directly from Yelp. Ticketmaster is also using the feature to sell event tickets on the website.

Yelp is selling the feature as a form of advertising, and will allow businesses to customize the transaction their listing supports.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman indicated earlier this month at LeWeb London that the company was looking into supporting commercial transactions on the website.

The Call to Action feature works on both desktop and mobile.

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Facebook Mishandled Novice Interest in Its Stock, Experts Say

A major factor in Facebook’s botched IPO in May 2012 was interest in its stock by uninformed investors who recognized the brand but didn’t know about the company’s financials, experts said this afternoon at a panel on technology IPOs at Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing Summit in Half Moon Bay.

“There are certain companies where you’re going to have unlimited unsophisticated demand, and clearly Facebook was an example of that. In those cases I’m a strong advocate of another kind of IPO,” said Lise Buyer, a principal at Class V Group, which advises companies on going public. Buyer referred specifically to the so-called Dutch auction style of initial sale that Google opted for in 2004.

Kate Mitchell, a partner at ScaleVP venture capital firm, agreed that overheated interest among non-institutional, or “retail” investors had caused an overly high initial price on Facebook stocks.

“They waited an awful long time to go public,” she said. “You don’t want to go too early, but you don’t want to go too late, especially with these consumer brands that get hyped too darn much.”

Mitchell said there were signs that the IPO would go badly when institutional investors such as fund managers and investment banks, who drive most of the U.S. market, were backing away from the deal while retail investors were not.

The amateur interest proved especially troublesome as Facebook had changes in its business outlook just weeks before its public debut. Institutional investors had better access to that information. Facebook should have opted to delay the IPO at that point, Buyer said, but acknowledged that doing so would have been difficult once the wheels were in motion.

Facebook’s failure caused a substantial bout of bearish investing, particularly in consumer-facing technology companies, even though few other companies have as high a profile when they go public, the experts said.

“It really hurt the U.S. capital markets that summer. There was a big black eye given to the U.S. capital market,” said Doug Chu, who leads the Western region of NYSE Euronext.

Consumer-facing software companies are only now beginning to march at a normal pace toward toward public offerings, Mitchell said. Because many companies file in secret in the wake of the JOBS Act, she said, she couldn’t name specific companies, but Twitter, for example, is widely expected to hold an IPO late this year or early next.

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San Francisco Mayor Applauds Tech Industry as Public Concern About Skyrocketing Rents Grows

San Francisco mayor Ed Lee today pointed to the growth of the technology industry as a major success of his administration, even as anger in the city has mounted over skyrocketing rents and urban congestion worsened by the fleet of private buses that take workers to and from the campuses of the largest technology companies in Silicon Valley.

San Francisco, with a population of 800,000, is home to more than 1,800 technology businesses that employ 42,000 employees. The city has claimed a larger share of startups since Lee made the controversial move of waiving Twitter’s payroll taxes if it located in the city’s troubled Mid-Market area last year.

Lee said the same pocket of the city is now home to nearly a dozen other companies as well.

But even at the business-friendly Bloomberg Next Big Thing Summit in the swank Ritz-Carlton hotel in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, the interviewer and audience members wondered whether Lee hadn’t been too generous to technology, as skyrocketing rents have spurred an epidemic of evictions. Locals recently protested the private tech buses that deliver the tech workers to their San Francisco homes.

Lee pointed to a recent study that found that four additional jobs are created for each new position in the tech industry, as workers buy lunch and coffee and get haircuts. Unemployment rates have fallen from 9.6 percent to 5.4 percent since he took office in early 2011, he said.

Near Twitter’s offices, some 4,400 rental units are under construction, Lee said.

Asked whether it might be dangerous to bet so heavily on an industry that is notoriously volatile, Lee said, “It’s very critical for any mayor not to put all the eggs in one basket.”

Tourism remains San Francisco’s strongest industry, Lee said. But the policy efforts the mayor cited as a basis for the city’s long-term economic health relied on his partnerships with technology companies, such as his efforts to raise money for the city’s public schools with the help of Salesforce. Lee also recently sponsored a hackathon in search of improvements to city government and bureaucracy.

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Streaming Won’t Change TV As Much As Viewers Might Hope, Say Companies

As a television viewer to describe the perfect living room world, and s/he would likely say unlimited content on demand for free and with no ads. Internet-based streaming devices such as Roku and Aereo will likely deliver just a small part of that utopia, according to those companies’ CEOs.

Speaking at Bloomberg’s Next Big Thing Summit in Half Moon Bay, Roku’s Anthony Wood said that live TV was “dying quickly.”

“Most TV on Roku is on demand that’s the real benefit. The top 25 percent of Roku users stream 30 hours a week, and almost all of it is on demand,” Wood (top left) said.

Roku originally launched as a set-top adapter that allowed Netflix subscribers to watch programming on their television sets. It has since expanded to include content from Hulu Plus, HBO GO, sports programing and Internet radio from Pandora and Spotify.

But Wood and Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia (bottom left) said that neither channel bundling nor advertising were likely to go away as video programming is increasingly distributed through the Internet.

Aereo allows consumers to record traditional network programming using a cloud-based DVR and watch the programming later. Its main use case is that it allows viewers to watch programming on their own schedules.

“Behavior and habits are changing, and to be where the consumer is at a certain point in time is a good thing,” Kanojia said.

Aereo is fighting a number of legal claims from media companies that claim that the subscription-based service deprives them of advertising dollars, as ratings companies are unable at present to count viewers using the service. But the service does not remove advertising.

Internet-streaming services like Roku and Aereo will reduce the bundling of channels that cable companies use to push viewers into higher-cost subscriptions. (For instance, consumers cannot subscribe just to HBO, but must purchase a bundle of channels that includes HBO.) They may also reduce the amount of advertising, but they won’t eliminate either, the executives seemed to agree.

“We’re fraying the bundle, but there’s still going to be bundling,” Wood said.

“What’s happening is fundamentally more choice. Customers do like bundling; it’s over-bundling they don’t like,” he said. “The least popular way to purchase content online is a la carte, because it’s expensive.”

Kanojia was more critical but still depicted streaming as a supplementary solution to conventional content packaging.

“Technology aside, the business models are still stuck in the 50s. New niche producers can’t get in front of the consumer. If that’s what it’s going to be, let’s create a very wide fringe,” he said.

Some products in the bundles Roku and Aereo provide rely more heavily on advertising than others. For instance, Netflix subscribers don’t see any advertisements, but Hulu Plus’s do.

“The amount of advertising per content that Roku users watch is generally a lot less. Ads per content will grow but I think there’s always going to be less,” said Wood.

Kanojia, given his company’s precarious legal victories over media companies, was terse.

“We have a philosophical bias that content creators should deal with advertisers, not us,” he said.

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Social Media Newsfeed: Facebook Announcement This Week | Google’s Project Loon

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Facebook to Debut ‘New Product’ June 20 (AllFacebook)

Facebook alerted journalists by mail — snail mail, not email — that it will debut a new product this Thursday (June 20) at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Joanna Stern of ABC News reported on the event and scanned the invitation she received, saying that it arrived in a “clean white envelope sent via snail mail.” Inside Facebook The invitation reads: “A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and to learn about a new product.” As Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s co-Founder and CEO, previously explained, there are three pillars of Facebook: timeline, News Feed and Graph Search. GigaOM In related news, the social network announced late Friday that it has reached an agreement with national security authorities that allows it to provide more information to the public about the government’s requests for user data. The company will now be able to include information on all U.S. national security-related requests in its disclosure, including those made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. AllThingsD According to a post on the company’s website, government agencies requested information on somewhere between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook accounts. In the post, Facebook general counsel Ted Ullyot said that the company had received a total of between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from government agencies, meaning that about two accounts were involved for each request received. USA Today Google did not release its own numbers, saying late Friday that it was waiting to be able to reveal more specific and meaningful information. “We have always believed that it’s important to differentiate between different types of government requests,” Google said in a statement. “We already publish criminal requests separately from national security letters. Lumping the two categories together would be a step back for users. Our request to the government is clear: to be able to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately.”

Google X Announces Project Loon: Balloon-Powered Internet for Rural, Remote and Underserved Areas (TechCrunch)

Google X, the secretive lab behind projects like Google Glass and Google’s self-driving cars, announced its latest project Friday: balloon-powered Internet access for those areas of the Earth where regular terrestrial Internet isn’t a good option. Last week, Google started testing these balloons, which are meant to provide Internet access comparable to 3G networks while sailing the stratospheric winds, in New Zealand.

An Inside Look at Social TV in Sweden (LostRemote)

Like.TV is a second-screen platform gaining traction in Sweden and Norway. We interviewed Jacob Leander-Olsson, a product manager at MTG Digital Media, the digital arm of the MTG broadcast and entertainment company that runs Like.TV about social TV in the region.

Salesforce and Omnicom Media Group Announce Strategic Partnership (SocialTimes)

Omnicom Media Group announced Friday that Salesforce Marketing Cloud will power its social marketing and advertising services across its entire global agency network, including 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries. “What the Omnicom group is doing is they’re standardizing the marketing cloud for all things digital when it comes to social publishing, social listening, and social analytics,” explained Vivek Kundra, executive vice president of emerging markets at Salesforce.

Saudi Arabia May Block WhatsApp Within Weeks (CNET)

Saudi Arabia plans to block WhatsApp in coming weeks if the makers of the mobile chat app don’t comply with local regulations. The warning comes after the Communications and Information Technology Commission blocked popular voice and messaging app Viber last week.

Study: The More Often You Tweet, the Bigger Narcissist You are] (AllTwitter)

A new study conducted by University of Michigan researchers Elliot Panek, Yioryos Nardis and Sara Konrath found that social media reflects and amplifies the culture’s growing levels of narcissism. In the words of the researchers, “Facebook is a mirror and Twitter is a megaphone.”

Pandora, Zillow and Brightcove are Back on the NASDAQ’s Internet Index (The Next Web)

The Internet Index now enjoys the presence of the following companies: Brightcove, Ctrip.com, NQ Mobile, Pandora Media, Support.com, SciQuest, Xoom Corporation, YY and Zillow. You have to love the idea that a company with “.com” in its name was for a short-term docked status as an Internet company.

Microsoft Launches Office Mobile iPhone App (SocialTimes)

Microsoft has unveiled an iPhone app that lets you open, create and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on the go. But here’s the catch: You have to be a subscriber to its productivity suite, Office 365.

Celebs Dish on Twitter Tactics at Cannes Ads Festival (USA Today)

Be open and authentic, for better or worse: That was the takeaway from three well-known personalities during a free-flowing discussion Sunday about celebrities and social media on the kickoff day of the world’s biggest advertising festival. Lifestyle expert Martha Stewart, singer and former Spice Girl Melanie Brown and comedian and TV host Nick Cannon spoke of expressing themselves openly on social platforms during a seminar at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

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Social Media Jobs: Factory PR, Remedy Health Media, ARINC

This week, Factory PR is hiring a social media strategist and community manager, while Remedy Health Media needs a web producer. ARINC is seeking a social media and web specialist, and Disney Babble is on the hunt for a social media marketing analyst. Get the scoop on these openings below, and find additional social media jobs on Mediabistro.

• Social Media Strategist and Community Manager Factory PR (New York, NY)


• Web Producer Remedy Health Media (Arlington, VA)


• Social Media and Web Specialist ARINC (Annapolis, MD)


• Social Media Marketing Analyst Disney Babble (New York, NY)


• Social Media Manager SinglePlatform (New York, NY)

Find more great social media jobs on our job board. Looking to hire? Tap into our network of talented SocialTimes pros and post a risk-free job listing. For real-time openings and employment news, follow @MBJobPost.

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Who’s Listening to You Online? [Cartoon]

First marketers began listening to our online communications and then the government. Can’t a guy buy a gallon of milk in peace?

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Oxford English Dictionary Adds ‘Tweet’

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The Oxford English Dictionary, the authoritative lexicon of proper English, is adding the word ‘tweet’ as both a noun and a verb, the publication said today.

“The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on,” said editor John Simpson in a statement.

Other current technology additions to the dictionary include big data, crowdsourcing, e-reader, mouseover, redirect as a noun and stream as a verb.

The OED defines e-reader as “a person who reads electronic text; spec. a reader of an electronic version of a book, newspaper, etc., esp. as distinguished from a reader of the paper version” and as a hand-held device on which electronic text is read.

It stakes a claim for big data as that which is so large that “its manipulation and management present significant logistical challenges.”

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Neighborhood Social Net Nextdoor Scores Deal With NYC

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The City of New York will release public information to citizens through the hyperlocal social network Nextdoor, the city and company announced today.

“Nextdoor gives New York neighbors an easy way to connect and communicate with those who live around them. It also provides the City with a direct line of communication to residents about important and often critical updates,” New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The deal is a big one for San Francisco-based Nextdoor. New York is the highest profile city to use the platform, which is currently tapped for official communications by the second-tier cities of San Diego, Dallas and San Jose. The Big Apple also brings 1,800 new neighborhoods onto a platform, that previously represented 14,000 — an increase of more than 10 percent.

The city and the company will work together to train the new users on the service. New York will continue to use other social networks, such as Twitter and Tumblr, but Nextdoor will allow officials to target information by neighborhood.

Local residents maintain their own social groups using Nextdoor, but city officials will be able to post information, including emergency instructions, to those sites. They will not be able to access the residents’ websites, contact information, or content.

New Yorkers who are interested in signing up can do so here.

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