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If Google isn’t trying to snatch Waze away from Facebook, it really should be

Mathew Ingram — Fri, 24 May 2013 14:40:57 +0000

The plot has thickened around the potential acquisition of Waze, the Israel-based social-mapping service, with news from Bloomberg late Thursday night that Google is considering a bid for the company, which is already reportedly evaluating a $1-billion-plus offer from Facebook. While other sources have poured cold water on the Google news — and some speculate that it is just a gambit designed to draw a higher price from Facebook — there are some pretty compelling reasons for Google to acquire the company.

News of the Facebook bid emerged earlier this month via reports in the Israeli media, which said that the social network had offered up to $1 billion to acquire Waze, which adds a real-time social element to traffic maps and claims to have close to 50 million active users. More recently, however, the Facebook talks have apparently bogged down over issues involving whether Waze will have transfer most of its staff from Israel to Facebook’s home base in California.

As with many such reports, the Bloomberg news is couched in all sorts of qualified terms, quoting anonymous sources “familiar with the matter” who say the company “may be considering” an offer, and it’s not uncommon for companies to float such rumors when they are looking for more money — or when they want to convince their acquirer to drop certain conditions, such as the requirement that Waze move its operations to San Francisco.

Some Israeli news outlets have also reported that Facebook has locked down its offer with a clause that prevents Waze from negotiating with other companies. And Google may have decided that making a bid for Waze simply isn’t worth the hassle that it might generate from antitrust authorities, who are already said to be looking at the company on other matters.

Google needs Waze more than Facebook does

All that said, however, there are some compelling reasons for Google to make a bid for Waze, as I tried to outline in a recent post. While it would make sense for Facebook to acquire the company — if only because it would help cement the social network’s move into mobile, and broaden the range of behavior and location data it could use to target users — it makes far more sense for Google.

Google Maps is one of the core offerings the company has when it comes to mobile, arguably almost as important as search and email. And it’s clear that Google cares about evolving the service, since it continues to pour resources into redesigns and added features like the ones that Om wrote about recently. There’s also no question that the social data provided by users is a crucial element of maps — and that is what Waze specializes in, and has managed to build right under Google’s nose.

I would argue that Google can’t afford to let Facebook (or Apple, although it reportedly isn’t part of the current negotiations) get its hands on Waze — in much the same way that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg came to the swift conclusion that he couldn’t afford to let Twitter acquire Instagram, and made a surprise $1-billion offer without even consulting his board of directors. If Google hasn’t already made a bid for Waze, I think it needs to get busy working on one.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Dunechaser and Eva Blue

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Facebook sheds some light on what it can get out of Parse

Jordan Novet — Thu, 23 May 2013 21:09:13 +0000

When Facebook acquired Parse last month, it was unclear what good could come of the deal for Facebook. On Thursday, Facebook executives didn’t share detailed new plans for its developer platform or Parse per se, but they did lay out broadly how the social networking giant can benefit.

Mike Vernal, Facebook’s director of engineering, said the integration of Parse technology could boost ad sales by making development of cross-platform mobile apps easier to build and run.

If a startup builds an iOS app with a way to connect into Facebook, great, but its reach is limited to the number of people with iOS devices. Then the developers have to start over to build a version of the app for Android and Windows Phone operating systems.

That’s where Parse comes in. As a provider of a Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) with software-development kits for multiple operating systems, Parse lets developers quickly build out applications without having to worry about managing servers. When a startup expands its offering from just iOS to Windows and Phone and Android apps and drops them in app stores, promotion becomes important. Facebook can help with that, by getting ads in front of users. The ads expose the applications to the startup’s app, excite users and — here’s the important part — get more ad revenue.

Getting more from mobile has been a key area for Facebook, and that’s why the Parse deal begins to make more sense. This is particularly important following the mixed reception of Facebook Home.

Aside from being an ad revenue driver, Parse makes sense from a content perspective. Not every Facebook user updates his or her lists of favorite things and other fields, so enabling fresher content from more external sources is desirable; it could boost engagement. Facebook recently rolled out to all users the ability to be selective about what content third-party applications can push back to Facebook, and now users can confidently approve of this sharing of stories into the news feed and timelines through more and more apps that developers come up with.

Down the line, Facebook also wants to make this data more accessible through its newish Graph Search tool, Vernal said. That move would scratch another item off Facebook’s long Graph Search to-do list.

As for Parse, it will keep running the way it has been, Sukhar said, whether developers want to use Facebook as a means of promotion or not.

One unanswered question is what will happen to all the apps developers run on Parse. “It’s business as usual, so we’re actually staying on Amazon Web Services,” said Ilya Sukhar, a co-founder of Parse (pictured). But Facebook has a boatload of custom-built infrastructure. Couldn’t it just move Parse-backed apps to Facebook data centers, effectively turning Facebook into a quasi-cloud service provider? Apps will keep running on AWS “right now,” said Facebook’s director of product management, Doug Purdy. But the key words are “right now.”

Purdy made it clear that Facebook wants to just enable third-party developers to build and run apps that people can enjoy regardless of the device they choose. It turns out that’s in Facebook’s best interest, too.

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Sorry UK, Facebook won’t be sharing the HTC First with you after all

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:00:32 +0000

The HTC First, a handset with the Facebook Home software pre-loaded, won’t be arriving in the UK as planned. EE was set to be the exclusive carrier for the handset, but is now contacting those who pre-ordered the HTC First to explain the phone is not launching after all. In the U.S., AT&T is the exclusive carrier and has already discounted the device to $0.99 on contract, just weeks after introducing it.

According to U.K.-based site Mobile News, the decision was made by Facebook and not HTC or EE. Sources provided Mobile News the following quote:

“The HTC First has been pulled and will never go on sale in the UK. Sales in the US were poor and Facebook has taken the decision not to give it a more widespread release.”

That’s likely true given the relatively poor reception of the HTC First in the U.S. No official sales figures have been announced, but multiple reports have indicated sales are meager for the mid-range Android smartphone.

Engadget has confirmed the situation with EE, with the carrier saying: “Following customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding new customization features to Facebook Home over the coming months.” The decision is a sound one as there’s little incentive for people to purchase hardware when the software can be downloaded directly from the Google Play store if desired.

Facebook Home is only available for a limited number of Android phones, but, if the company is serious about increasing engagement through a custom launcher, it should expand availability to more existing phones. Trying to differentiate a piece of hardware through a single social networking interface isn’t the answer. Simply put: the HTC First is a solution in search of a problem.

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Report: one in four online teens now use Twitter

Eliza Kern — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00:31 +0000

What social networks are teens flocking to these days? That’s the billion dollar question as we see companies like Yahoo snapping up Tumblr in an effort to keep a younger audience. But teens are a tough audience to predict, and trends can change dramatically even in a single year.

About 24 percent of teens who go online were using Twitter at the end of 2012, marking a dramatic increase from the 16 percent who were on Twitter in 2011. The new findings on teen social media use and attitudes toward online privacy come from a new report from the Pew Research Center, “Teens, Social Media and Privacy,” that’s set to release on Tuesday. Here’s how things changed in just a year:

Apart from the raw numbers, Pew conducted focus groups with teens across the country to get feedback on how they use different sites. Here are the five most important trends you should know about teens and social media:

1. Teens are outpacing the grown-ups on Twitter

The rise in Twitter use among teens is particularly interesting since adult adoption hovers around 16 percent, according to the latest Pew report on adult social media use. Numbers among online teens are even stronger for African-Americans, 39 percent of whom are on the service (compared to 23 percent of white teens). Teens have shown a remarkable adoption of the service since 2009, when Pew first asked about the site, when only 9 percent reported using it.

2. Public is the new private on Twitter

The majority of teen Facebook users have their accounts set to private, but not so on Twitter. Some 64 percent of teens have Twitter accounts set to public so anyone can read their tweets, with 24 percent setting their accounts to private. Perhaps of most concern, 12 percent reported they didn’t know whether their tweets were public or private.

3. Teens are tired of Facebook, but they’re still using it

The media has been reporting teens abandoning Facebook for years now, but the Pew report finds that like a lot of adults, teens are frusterated by Facebook but stay on the platform because of the integral social role it still plays. The report explains: They dislike the increasing number of adults on the site, get annoyed when their Facebook friends share inane details, and are drained by the “drama” that they say is portrayed frequently on the site. The stress of needing to manage their reputation on Facebook also contributes to the lack of enthusiasm.” Yet 94 percent of them still use the site.

4. Tumblr numbers still aren’t very high

Yahoo might have liked the younger audience on Tumblr when it decided to acquire the site, but teen use of Tumblr is still pretty low. Only five percent reported using the site in 2012, although that’s up from 2 percent in 2011, a decent jump.

5. The subtweet goes mainstream

You heard it here first: 58 percent of teens are making inside inside jokes or sharing “cloaked messages” on social media.

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Buying Tumblr might make Yahoo cool — but buying Pinterest might have made more sense

Eliza Kern — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:17:58 +0000

If Marissa Mayer is on a mission to teach kids about her company, which was founded before some of them were even born, buying Tumblr isn’t a bad way to do it. But in all the discussion of Yahoo’s new deal, too many people are writing about Yahoo buying a blogging site, comparing Tumblr to WordPress, when in fact Tumblr is more of a photo site for the youngs.

While buying Tumblr isn’t necessarily a bad deal for the two companies, as my colleague Mathew Ingram wrote, there’s another photo site out there that might have been an even better deal: Pinterest.

In many ways, Pinterest is also building a mobile-friendly photo site just like Tumblr, but Pinterest is also in the midst of constructing the underpinnings for a potentially much more lucrative native revenue experience. Pinterest is oriented around commerce and consumers craving particular items. That’s good for business.

No, buying Pinterest wouldn’t help Yahoo discover its inner tween. It’s a well-known fact that Pinterest is populated mainly by adult women — not exactly the demographic Yahoo needs to attract. And no, considering Pinterest’s valuation as of its last funding round, such an acquisition probably wouldn’t have come cheap. Acquiring the company would require a much bigger departure from Yahoo’s current mass-market advertising into the world of e-commerce and affliate links. It could be a harder sell to the company’s investors, and a bigger transition for everyone.

But if Yahoo is looking to shell out the big bucks for a site with viral growth, visuals to compete with Facebook, and a devoted community of users, Pinterest might have been the better choice. According to a Pew report in December, out of all online adults (which is basically anyone with an internet connection), just six percent of those people visited Tumblr on a regular basis, compared with 13 percent on Instagram (which isn’t exactly for sale), and 15 percent on Pinterest — only Twitter comes in at 16 percent ahead of the others and behind behemoth Facebook at 67 percent.

Less than a year out of beta, Pinterest is a dominant force on the web; a place where women of all ages collect photos of things that inspire them or things that they want to remember or create. For many, it’s a digital wish-list. And because of that, Pinterest sends huge amounts of traffic to online retailers. To be the intermediary between the people and the stores is a good place to be — you’re a crucial link that drives the sales, without any of the hassle of shipping or orders or user acquisitions that come with e-commerce.

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann at the company’s new offices in San Francisco.

Pinterest has no business model in place right now — the site is free to join and for brands to integrate with — but that’s just right now, and it likely won’t last. The company just announced yesterday that it is starting to connect photos of items back to the brands who sell them, and it’s not hard to image how this could play out.

Tumblr does have a business model right now based on ads, and it just started rolling them out on mobile users in April. But the company has been reportedly burning through cash and not yet making a lot of revenue, hoping to bring in $100 million this year. But people are usually pretty unhappy about a free product suddenly peppering them with ads — especially if those ads are dropped into a feed that users have created (just ask anyone how they feel about Facebook ads.) CEO David Karp said at our paidContent event just last month that he wants advertising on the site to be native and unobstrusive.

“We focused on higher up in the funnel, the type of advertising that creates intent,” Karp told us in April. “It gives room for the most creative advertisers to create their best work. I think we’ve started to prove it, and see really good examples of it.”

But that’s a hard nut to crack.

Suddenly, the possible Pinterest model of taking a cut on sales and traffic resulting from users creating digital shopping lists looks a lot less disruptive to the core experience, and potentially more lucrative, than trying to solve mobile display ads for the Tumblr feed. Making money off traffic and sales wouldn’t disrupt Pinterest’s core product, and would generally fit in with the company’s existing user experience, just as promoted tweets are fitting with Twitter’s on both desktop and mobile (a profitable venture so far estimated to bring Twitter $528 million in ad revenue this year.)

So no, buying Pinterest wouldn’t make Yahoo all that hip. But buying the site that has potential to become a strong force in modern, social retail? Seems like a good bet — especially since teens might leave you once Mom joins and you become mainstream.

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Why Yahoo acquiring Tumblr for $1 billion makes a certain horrible kind of sense

Mathew Ingram — Sat, 18 May 2013 15:41:27 +0000

According to a blizzard of anonymous news reports, Marissa Mayer is working feverishly to land the biggest fish of her career as CEO of Yahoo: namely, the $1-billion-plus acquisition of New York-based Tumblr, the ultra-hip blog network — the two are reportedly involved in discussions that could come to fruition as early as Sunday. Although Tumblr fans seem horrified by the idea, this one makes a substantial amount of sense for both sides.

Of course, as Om and others have already mentioned, there’s no guarantee this deal will actually be consummated: it could fall apart on valuation, as so many deals do — or Facebook could swoop in with a much higher offer and snatch Tumblr out of Yahoo’s clutches, the same way it did when it stole Instagram away from Twitter last year for close to $1 billion.

Update: According to the Wall Street Journal, the Yahoo board of directors has approved a $1.1-billion all-cash bid to acquire Tumblr.

It makes Yahoo look desperate — because it is

Even if the deal does get done, one of the risks for Mayer and Yahoo is that the company could look desperate by paying more than $1 billion for a site that had revenues of less than $15 million last year (although CEO David Karp has said that figure should hit $100 million this year). That’s an almost bubble-like multiple for a company, and there will likely be plenty of criticism from investors who believe that $1 billion could be better spent elsewhere — in other words, on businesses that would make Yahoo a better return.

But the painful fact is that Yahoo doesn’t just look desperate — in many ways it is desperate. Mayer has made some changes since she took over the ailing former web portal, including the acquisition of Summly and a number of other mobile-focused startups and services, but the company still needs to make some aggressive moves if it is going to jump-start any growth at all. And since Yahoo has about $4 billion in cash on hand, it can arguably afford to make a big bet.

Yahoo buying Tumblr makes sense. Tumblr is only big, cool, newish social platform that Yahoo can afford.—
Henry Blodget (@hblodget) May 17, 2013

For Yahoo, the addition of Tumblr would do a number of things: because of the size and profile of the deal, it would make a major statement about Mayer’s intention to do whatever it takes to revitalize the company, and it would also send a signal to Facebook and Google — and even Apple — that Yahoo is a potential force to be reckoned with when it comes to potential acquisitions. Is doing that worth $1 billion? That’s for Yahoo’s investors and board of directors to decide.

Just as important, it would inject some much-needed life and energy into the somewhat stale lineup of content that the company currently relies on, which caters more to the over-50 set than it does to anyone in the much-desired 18 to 25 demographic. More than any other network, Tumblr is the platform of choice for media-obsessed teens and 20-somethings, who spend massive amounts of time sharing photos and videos and animated GIFs on the site — an engine of potential value that Yahoo desperately needs.

Tumblr gets a massive exit

This doesn’t come without its own risks, of course: As a number of observers have noted, Tumblr’s content contains a large quantity of not only mature or arguably offensive content but outright pornography, which many argue is the source of its massive traffic numbers. How Yahoo (or Facebook for that matter) would deal with this kind of content remains to be seen.

3 q's for Yahoo: 1) Can you convert Tumblr users to Yahoo products? 2) Can you monetize Tumblr PVs? 3) What to do w/ all that Tumblr porn?—
Mark Zohar (@markzohar) May 18, 2013

For Tumblr, meanwhile, being acquired would solve a number of problems — the main one being that the company has gone well beyond the “we’re a startup so we don’t really have to make money” stage, and is facing increasing pressure from the investors who have given CEO David Karp more than $125 million in venture financing, an investment that values the company at about $800 million. Accepting a giant check from Yahoo would take care of that problem in one fell swoop, especially if it was all in cash.

With a major company like Yahoo as a partner, Tumblr could connect its massive audience of users to the firehose of ads and other monetization methods the giant web portal has, and potentially generate much more revenue than it could have by itself. The only lingering question at that point is whether Tumblr fans decide that Yahoo is poisoning the well of social content and community on the site, and decide to flee for greener pastures. In other words, does Yahoo make Tumblr into YouTube — a successful standalone network that can grow and prosper on its own — or does it become MySpace?

The only scenario where a Yahoo-Tumblr combo works is if Yahoo keeps Tumblr separate in the same way Google managed YouTube.—
Mark Birch (@marksbirch) May 18, 2013

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Shutterstock / ollyy and Albert Chau

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Surprise: Yahoo’s mobile push is working better than you think

Barb Darrow — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:29:16 +0000

Don’t look now but it looks like Yahoo’s mobile apps push is bearing fruit, at least according to new data from Onavo.

Case in point: Yahoo Weather, which rolled out recently, already has what Onavo CEO Guy Rosen calls an “unprecedented” 3 percent market share among U.S. iPhone owners. That’s about 1.5 million users total which makes it the 91st most popular iPhone app three weeks after release, according to Onavo Insights data. That’s very good for a new app, Rosen said in an interview.

Other Yahoo mobile apps including Yahoo Messenger and the Yahoo app are also doing well. “In general, what we found is that although Yahoo has been quiet on mobile, when we look at the top apps, we see quite a few up there. They have a decent footprint.”

According to Onavo stats, the Yahoo app is the most popular of the company’s suite and among the most popular in the App Store overall. In the past three months, active usage has risen to 9.02 percent from 6.5 percent (or to 4.5 million active users from 3.2 million active users.) Not too shabby.

How does Onavo get to these numbers? It uses data gleaned from its free iPhone (and now Android) apps including Onavo Extend, which compresses data flowing into and out of your phone; Onavo Counts, which watches how much time you actually spend using a given app; and Onavo Protect, which scans traffic flowing into your phone for malware. Then it aggregates that data (minus the personally identifiable bits) and runs statistics to suss out usage patterns. That data forms the core of reports that the company then sells to app developers.

This data is far more useful to app makers than app store download figures because it shows actual engagement. If your app is the mobile equivalent of shelfware, it’s helpful to know that.

Rosen said “millions” of people use Onavo’s iPhone apps but would not specify further. “We use a panel methodology with our user base as the sample and apply statistical methodologies to make sure it’s valid,” he said in an interview.

The current app stats do not yet factor in Onavo’s Android users, although they will be incorporated in time.

Note: This story was updated at 12:38 p.m. PDT with a new chart on Yahoo app usage growth and additional data on that usage.

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What do good shoes, Google+ and Facebook have in common?

Om Malik — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:52:16 +0000

James Russell, a London based designer, took issue with my post Wednesday about the new Google+ design and how its aesthetic is different from Facebook. He argued that, well, the new Google+ still looks like Facebook and went on to make his case using visuals from both services. Basically, he thinks it is business as usual. I accept his criticism for his reasoning makes sense, but I just don’t agree.

Photo courtesy: Leffot

I don’t know James, but my sense from reading his post is that he approaches design through a visual lens. Unlike him, I am not a designer and so my way of thinking about design is influenced by not mere visual aspects, but also how things are constructed. I don’t just love the shoes because of how they look — though that matters — but I also look at where the leather comes from, how it is stitched together and what kind of craftsmanship has gone into it. From shoe trees to little patterns on the toe to the packaging to the font on the label, all of those little things add up to the design aesthetic.

And that way of thinking about the design aesthetic extends to other things, including website design. Yes, fonts matter, and the layouts matter, but so does the relative relationship to the kind of content, the speed of the web service and even the screen size and how it all correlates to me.

So, using that lens, when I looked at Google+ and its new design, what I saw was that it was less social in the “Facebook sort of a way.” And by that I mean: it’s less about people, likes and shares being the primary action drivers on the page. Instead, I saw a design aesthetic defined by data and machines inferring relationships, the importance of content and the relative weight of all the elements on the page. The new super hashtag is a good example of what I am talking about — it surfaces a lot more information on those specific topics — with very little to do with social relationships.

As I pointed out in my post (and also on my post about Google Maps’ redesign,) we have moved into the world of data-informed applications and design too has to adapt to this reality. So, while there might be elements on the page might overlap on few occasions, the departure in the core philosophies that is reflected in the overall aesthetic is pretty clear to my eye. And as far as I can tell, that aesthetic is all about a philosophy and how it relates to senses.

Google has always been about inferring and serving up information. Facebook is about implicit actions. The new Google+ design is an extension of that thinking. And as Vic Gundotra, Google’s Senior Vice President of Google+ said: “We have put Google in Google+.”

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What Google was thinking when redesigning the new Google+

Om Malik — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:03:29 +0000

When I am feeling kind, I think of Google+ as a social network by dictat — err, Larry Page’s mandate. And when I am in my curmudgeonly mood (which is pretty much every second day), then I think of it as a fly that keeps buzzing your face: you try and swat it, but you fail and it makes your angrier. Yet, I can’t help but admire the newly announced version of Google’s social network. It is a much needed improvement and Google has finally developed an aesthetic that is visually different from Facebook.

Before Google’s senior vice president, Vic Gundotra announced the new Google+ Wednesday at Google’s annual developer conference, Google I/O, I sat down with Fred Gilbert who heads up design for Google+, who explained how the company arrived at this new, improved look; I see it as a hybrid of a stream and Pinterest-style cards that doesn’t look awkward and ungainly.

It is a responsive design and with a click you switch how you want to see your content — as a stream or as these tiles, Gilbert pointed out. A lot of the new design actually takes a lot of cues from the current mobile versions of Google+, which are actually more advanced compared to the desktop version. At first blush this looks like a unification of mobile and desktop, but there are changes that are visible only on Google’s Chrome browser.

Fred Gilbert, lead designer for the new Google+

Gilbert, who has worked for Google for over five years, explained that a lot of the new design has been shaped by how the web has changed. He pointed out that we are sharing more things more often and as a result the social web is getting busier. You can say that again!

“What I saw was a chance to make people and the content they share the star,” Gilbert said. “Everything else just fades into the background.”

Flat design for a busy world

The design of the new Google+ is muted and flat. The colors are actually quite neutral, allowing mostly the content to shine brighter. “Flatter design keeps the distraction away,” Gilbert said. This new philosophy is reflected in this new version of Google+, which is marked by simplicity and fewer distractions. For instance, unless you are ready to engage with a piece of content, the links appear as regular text, without the distraction of the blue link. Both the left and right sidebar and menus disappear, sliding in and out as needed.

Google has come up with a unique twist on the #hashtag concept and is using it as a way to surface contextual information on the new Google+ service. The new design also liberally uses the concept of cards (that first showed up on Google Now). Hover over an item, and on the back side of the card you get more information and related links and action items.

Gilbert explained that when Google started working on the new look, the idea was to take a lot of information and show it in as simple a manner, giving the eye the visual cues to understand the importance of content. Bigger photos, for instance are indicative of their importance. Photos become bigger based on analysis of past relationships to the people and the content and their ensuing interactions, Gilbert explained.

Data, Design, Experience

Underlying these visual cues are a lot of data analytics. This data-informed design is actually a clever approach and the wave of the data-informed design. Gilbert said that usually when companies undertake a redesign of their website, it is based on some kind of data they have collected over a period of time. For Google+, data is informing the design, except at a much faster speed and is hyper-personalized based on who you really are. “Data and design have to be used together to tailor experiences,” said Gilbert.

We’ll take a close look at how data is informing design at our RoadMap event in November in San Francisco. If you sign up here you can get first access to tickets that will go on sale this Summer.

While Google still is a few years away from developing the human quotient of Apple, the new Google+ shows that the company is thinking correctly about its design identity, not forgetting that its core competency is its infrastructure: its ability to crunch large sets of data cheaply and quickly and then deliver them at blazing speed to our browsers.

The biggest challenge for Google is that Google+ doesn’t really feel like a social network like Facebook or Twitter. Instead it is something that was launched because of a degree of fear and a dash of hubris. It was a social network that Larry wanted, not you and I.

However, it has slowly evolved and has found some fanatical users such as photographer Trey Ratcliff, blogger Robert Scoble and our very own Janko Roettgers, who has turned to Google+ to build a community for his Cord Cutters show and podcasts. Google needs accidental visitors such as me to become active participants. I think the new design will help.

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Survey: How apps can solve photo management

suite48 — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:55:09 +0000

A recent survey found that 76 percent of respondents store their digital photos on multiple devices using multiple services.That means ample opportunity exists for companies offering solutions that tackle this “dispersed photo problem.” This report analyzes the aforementioned survey’s results, and also measures 18 different vendors against what respondents value most when it comes to photo-organizing solutions.

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