Twitter releases first transparency report, 5k tweets deleted this year over copyright row

For the very first time , Twitter has issued a transparency report card that throws light on how frequent it’s been asked by government officials to delete tweets and hand over user information — and how frequently the social media site has complied to the removal requests.

Its inaugural Transparency Report, based on activities during the first half of this year, details government requests for user data, authorities’ efforts to have tweets removed and copyright takedown notices. The report suggests official’s are taking a more active interest in Twitter users’ activity.

Twitter’s legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel , “We’ve received more government requests in the first half of 2012 than total number of requests in 2011.”

Complaints concerning copyright infringement on Twitter have been on top. Between Jan. 1 and June 30 of this year, Twitter received 3,378 requests to remove copyrighted material, and complied 38 percent of the time. In total, 5,874 users or accounts were affected, and 5,275 tweets were deleted.

Twitter received 849 requests for user information from 23 countries and complied with 63 percent of those in full or in part. Nearly 80 percent of all requests for user information came from U.S. authorities, or 679 in total, affecting 948 accounts. By comparison, between July and December 2011, the most recent period for which data are available, Google fielded more than 18,257 user data requests from more than two dozen countries.

Indian government has stayed silent regarding tweets copyrights (as opposed to Google products : Google Transparency Report Shows Indian Government’s Ever Growing Desire To ‘Control’ The Web).

The Twitter transparency report will be released twice a year and was “inspired” by Google’s transparency report, said Kessel, who added the disclosure marks an effort to “hold governments accountable” and demonstrate for users how frequently Twitter complies with authorities’ requests.

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Meituan: $66 Million in Sales in June, Profitable by Year’s End

Many people are massively skeptical of Chinese group buy sites – both the sustainability of the industry as a whole, and the veracity of the claims made by individual daily deals companies. To allay those fears, the market leader Meituan seems to have decided to make available monthly sales stats, despite it being a private company that doesn’t need to make these public. The latest figures for the month of June reveal an ascendent 422 million RMB ($66.39 million) in sales, up from 360 million RMB (US$56.54) in orders in May.

In addition to all that, Meituan’s VP, Wang Huiwen, has said that the site expects to become profitable by the end of the year. That’s quite a claim in such a fragmented market where gross profit margins are so low. Meituan’s margins are, the company claims, between 8 and 10 percent.

Here are Meituan’s monthly (unaudited) sales figures for the whole of this year so far:

[Source: Techweb - article in Chinese]

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Floh – the offline networking platform that can potentially disrupt the dating business

What’s the big deal in dating business? You can always start a site that matches people based on their interest, preference, has filters like religion etc and you are all set to clock millions of pageviews (if not matchmaking).

Actually not. Bangalore based Floh is taking a totally different route and is not positioned as a dating site. Floh is a platform to bring single people together at awesome events with the objective of meeting like minded people.

The invite-only network (currently Bangalore only) enables members to have real, in person interactions at events and is heavily targeted towards urban, educated and independent singles. Most of such networking happens over events organized by Floh – ranging from dance workshops to personal grooming sessions, vintage car experience etc, with an underlying principle that meeting people who enjoy similar activities helps in creating a better connection.

“Truth be told, Floh isn’t for everyone. Every person who requests membership is called by a founder of the company before gaining access to the network. The reason we’re selective is that we’d like to ensure that the DNA in the membership pool remains at a high level and that our members feel very comfortable at our events. Our members are professionals, entrepreneurs, doctors and lawyers who are well educated and gainfully employed. They love new experiences and have an open mind. We screen each and every person who evinces an interest in Floh before getting them into the network.”

The 1-year old company started off with 18 members a year ago and now has several hundred active members and a waitlist of over two thousand people (is a premium service that starts with membership fee of Rs. 7,500 for 3 months).

Floh: More women than men?

The most interesting part about Floh is that it has more women than men members and the company attributes this to the safety measure that they undertake as part of the member screening process.

A more subtle reason is despite Indian society evolving at light-speed, singles in the city actually don’t have too many options to meet other singles in person and in a safe and comfortable environment. Walk into a bar in any Indian city and you’ll see what I mean. A lot of our women members tell us that Floh is like a breath of fresh air. It’s exactly what they’ve been looking for – a curated set of members meeting in person at highly interactive, exclusive and fun events.

Another interesting data point that founder, Siddharth Mangharam shared with me is that 30% of memberships are driven by moms!

That is, a very non-traditional model that relies on curation of members and uses interest/activities as a starting point for connection/networking.

Is Floh a lifestyle business for the founder, Siddharth Mangharam who earlier was founder of Peek, the email-only device which was pitched an cheaper Blackberry alternative? Actually not. Why would an offline-networking business hire a product manager?

Here is a QnA with Floh cofounder, Siddharth Mangharam

Pi: What business are you in? Dating?
Floh is in the business of connecting urban, educated and independent singles in the real world. Currently Floh organizes high quality events where our members meet and interact in person. For example, we’ve had vintage and classic car experiences, personal grooming sessions with fashion guru Prasad Bidapa, cookouts with India’s best chefs, dance workshops and outdoor activities where our members get to meet and interact in a natural way. Membership is curated and each person is screened before gaining access to the network. Our repertoire includes over 50 events that we’ve executed in the first year of operations. While we’re all set to expand our product offerings across different formats, we will always be anchored in providing real life experiences rather than only virtual, online offerings. We’re changing the way singles in urban India are meeting and connecting.

Pi: What has been the success ratio? Do members look at Floh as a dating site and leave when they get hooked?

We’re a platform for singles to meet and connect. We’re not a conventional dating or matrimonial site which are very Web 1.0. Our focus is most definitely on getting singles to find a partner of their choice, but rather than stress on caste and religion, our approach is to get our members to meet and interact in person. Our strong belief is that people need to meet in person to determine if there’s a chemistry between them. Otherwise they end up having a relationship with their computers.

We’ve had folks get married after meeting at Floh and others are in meaningful relationships. Members leave the service after they lose their single status.

Pi: Why hire a product guy? What are the product attributes you guys are building ?

One of the most critical hires we made recently was a product lead. Our inspiration is derived from startup veteran, Steve Blank and the customer development process. We have successfully built a minimum viable product (MVP). Our vision is to build a platform for singles to connect across a variety of offerings from Floh. Our approach is to run several pilots and experiments and measuring results against hypotheses. To do this systematically and quickly requires a deep product development mind set.

Pi: You started as offline business and you are now going online. What would the online version be like?

The offline business reflects the fundamental reality of the problem we’re solving: there’s simply no place for urban singles to meet and interact with like-minded folks in India. Now that we’re providing a solution that squarely addresses this problem, we’ll use the web to scale. We have an online-offline hybrid offering that will get our members to engage with each other. For example, after meeting someone at a Floh experience, a member can go online to learn more about them, view photos from the events, request a coffee date or get an alert when there’s an event that their Floh friends are attending. And then meet them again in real life based on the information that they obtained online.

Pi: Who is your customer ? You mentioned moms driving 30% of membership!

Our primary customers are urban, educated singles in the age group of 25-40. That said, very often their families are also looking out for a potential partner for them. We didn’t expect that parents would end up paying the Floh membership fee on behalf of their children, but empirically we noticed that about a third of our revenues are from parents. This led us to a very deep insight: In the usually contentious debate between generations on the subject of relationships, Floh is in a unique spot where both our members as well as their parents are in strong agreement that Floh is the way to go! All of our communication is targeted to the core members, since they are able to make decisions on their own, but we appreciate the fact that many of them confer with their parents on relationship matters. It’s a win-win for all.

Pi: Please share a few behavioral insights that you have observed w.r.t Indian context.

One of the key insights has been the fact that we’ve got more women members than male members. This is primarily due to our obsession with keeping Floh safe for our members.

Related  to the above insight is that men value safety too. In a purely online model, a man has no clue weather the woman he’s communicating with is a real person or a scam artist. We’ve heard repeatedly from our members that they really value the fact that everybody, including women, is screened before gaining access to the network at Floh.

And the most surprising and encouraging insight has been the changing mind set of the parents – who are supporting a non-traditional route like Floh to get their children to find a partner.

–

What’s interesting about Floh is that they started off by first understanding the user offline, and the startup is now building a platform for them.

If you are single and ready to mingle, do give Floh a spin and share your comment/feedback.

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Qihoo 360 Launches New “Battleship” Phone with Haier

Today, internet security company Qihoo 360 and electronics maker Haier announced the joint launch of a new dual-core smartphone the companies claim is China’s fastest smartphone under 3000 RMB ($476). The Battleship will cost 1888 RMB ($299) for the first 10,000 buyers (after that it goes up 1999 RMB, about $317), and is reportedly water-, dust-, and scrape-proof thanks to its second-generation Gorilla Glass touchscreen. Note: waterproof here just means it’s spill resistant; you can’t take it scuba diving or anything like that.

Speaking of the screen, it’s 4.5 inches and displays in 720p, which should be a treat for fans of HD content. It also features a small front-facing camera for video chatting and an 8MP camera on the back for photo and video (the phone supports 1080p video). Being a 360-branded phone, it’s no surprise the makers are also touting its software safety, and it features all sorts of bells and whistles from anti-virus protection to anti-theft solutions and identity protection options. But users will also be happy to hear it’s running the shiny new(ish) Android 4.0, still a relative rarity for domestically-made smartphones.

All in all it sounds like quite a capable device, and that’s thanks in no small part to Qihoo users. According to the company, many of the features and even the “Battleship” name of the phone are based on user suggestions.

Qihoo has been having a rough time in the press over the past couple days, and this launch most definitely matters. Just yesterday I wrote about how CEO Zhou Hongyi is involved in yet another online squabble, and the Chinese press is reporting that Qihoo helped design China’s Great Firewall (GFW). But neither of these stories is nearly as damning as the Anonymous Analytics report published last night that claims Qihoo has been fraudulently over-representing its web traffic. Qihoo has denied that it is falsifying internet traffic data, and CEO Zhou Hongyi said on his weibo the GFW reports are also false. But the company’s stock still fell more than seven percentage points yesterday, and I suspect many at the company are hoping today’s Battleship launch may help the company make up some of that lost ground.

A quick glance at discussion of Qihoo on Sina Weibo shows that there’s a lot of discussion about the fraud charges, but some users are excited about the new phone as well. We’ve yet to see how it performs in the field, but if it lives up to its specs, it should be a strong competitor in China’s escalating cheap smartphone wars.

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Interview with MySmartPrice team on Funding and the Road Ahead

Launched in 2010, MySmartPrice started as a book comparison engine and later evolved into a full-fledged price comparison service. The Hyderabad based startup raised INR 2 Crores from Helion Venture partners around 6 months back* and boasts of over 2.5 million visitors per month.

Here is an interview with MySmartPrice founding team

Pi: MSP is foraying into domains beyond price comparison (deals/coupons). What’s the model here?

Sitakanta Ray:  We continue to be focused on Price comparison only. When a person comes to a price comparison site, he expects to find the best price for that item. Fortunately or unfortunately right now in India, most of the best price seems to be available after applying a coupon. That is why we are trying to access the complexity of maintaining data about discount coupons. Once we are more confident, we will try to integrate it into the main product page. 

Once our product matures and we have enough intelligence built in, the popular products page will contain most of the deals. We are posting deals manually to understand what is it that clicks with the consumers. Once we get the understanding, we will build the intelligence into the product itself.

Pi: Affiliate model – does this scale? What’s the next big thing for MSP (I am sure that’s beyond affiliate model)?

Sitakanta Ray: Atleast in near future, it has to be the affiliate model. It has scaled up to an extent in other geographies, and we see no reason why it won’t scale in India. Right now we are focused on maturing the product so that it can provide enough value to users while making enough money to pay our bills. We will look at optimizing the revenue base after that only.

Pi: What has been the traffic growth in the recent times (esp post Junglee launch)?

Sitakanta Ray: Right now we get a little over 2.5 M users a month. Fortunately Junglee has not impacted our growth much and we have grown by almost 100% since February, when Junglee entered India.

Junglee’s main focus is product discovery spread over a huge inventory/ product categories, while our focus has mainly been price discovery for a selected high demand product categories, though over long term we also need to enable product discovery

Pi: Future plans? Any online-offline model in making?

Sitakanta ray:

• Immediate future: Adding more stores and products. Improving product discovery. 
• Medium Term future: Adding more product categories like baby products and fashion
• Long term (beyond December 2012): Online – Offline model sounds sexy, but we really want to focus in getting the Online model correct. we believe that online retail will see phenomenal growth in years to come and we should be ready for it.
• Offline has its own operational challenges and we being a technology company would like to focus on our core competency and get it correct.
• Beyond couple of years if we believe that we can solve the online-offline model via technology, then why not.

–

As ecommerce grows in India, there is a big opportunity in aggregation/comparison model and while we have seen a lot of price comparison service, very few of these entrepreneurs are patient enough to build a long-term business.

Recommended Read: Guest article by MySmartPrice founders : Learnings From 4 Months After Starting Up [You Will Be Amazed By What You Can Do]

Recommended Analysis by MySmartPrice: The Great Indian e-Commerce Bazaar [Total Recap]

*: The funding news was first published here, though important to know that the funding was raised 6 months back.

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19-year-old Filipino gave up scholarship to be an entrepreneur

Jolo Balbin is the founder of Commute.ph, a website that crowdsources travel directions. We first met him at Startup Weekend Manila. This article is an edited version of the original on his blog.

Source: Facebook

I graduated last year. Then I worked as an intern in a company in our school. They provided me with a scholarship for my graduate studies in which I pursued immediately after my university education. They also provided me an allowance that is greater than most entry level jobs, no tax.

I quit after six months. No allowance, no scholarship.

I was almost at the end of my graduate studies. I was working my thesis proposal. Luckily, my father funded my enrollment for me.

So why did I quit? Simple. I think I’m wasting my time. It’s not what I like to do.

What I like is startups. Creating one. Founding one. Yeah, my last goal before ending my last teenage year is to be an entrepreneur.

After I quit, I immediately took action. I joined Startup Weekend Manila. I pitched an idea, and eventually met people. I gathered connections, feedback, and advice. We also formed a team there and executed on the idea that I pitched. It was KomyuTips back then. But the mentors said that it’s not a good name. We then changed it to Commute.ph.

Yes, I’m one of the co-founders of Commute.ph. I think I achieved my goal. I’m a 19-year-old startup founder.

People may say that I’m too young, or that I don’t have any experience. Yes, they are right. But that’s why I started early. If something goes wrong, I can just start again with knowledge that I learned from the previous stint. With my youth, I can iterate more than those people who started later than me.

I also really don’t need to earn money yet. I can still live at home, eat there, work there. I also don’t have a family yet to support.

Guyi Shen, the founder of LobangClub, told me that there is no right time to start a company. When you start young, you don’t have anyone to support, but you lack experience. When you start old, you have experience, but you also have a family to support.

You pick the path that you prefer. For me, I use my age to my advantage.

Being a teen founder sounds amazing to anybody’s ears. I think there’s a big difference when you start as a teen than in your early 20’s. I think it’s more inspiring. I also think that I can use my age for marketing. Every company advertises their unique feature. For Commute.ph, one of its unique feature is that it was co-founded by a teenager. I think that wows people.

In just a few days, I will leave teenhood. I will be 20. I just wish an article will be written about Commute.ph. Even though, there is one thing for sure. I successfully achieved my goal.

I’m a 19-year-old founder.

So why did I chose to start young?

I just want to.

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Mig33 Dreams Big in Indonesia and Beyond, Moves onto Blackberry and Android [INTERVIEW]

(Image from: IFT/STANLIE)

Mig33 is perhaps the largest mobile social network on feature-phones. The company is very ambitious as it now looks to expand its market reach not only to become the king of feature-phones, but also onto Blackberry OS and Android.

We recently chatted with Kiki Rizki (pictured right), the Indonesia country manager and head of global PR for mig33, via email. She talks about the current number of mig33 users – up from when we talked to mig33 founder Steven Goh onstage at our recent Jakarta event – and its plans and strategies to grow the user-base in Indonesia.

How many users are there in mig33 right now? And how many of there are from Indonesia?

Indonesia, being the biggest country for mig33, now has 34 million users from a total of 65 million users globally. We are spread across 200+ countries in the world and are mostly accessed via feature-phones as well as BlackBerry, Android, and also via web and WAP.

What are the favorite activities for Indonesians using mig33?

In mig33, users can engage themselves in many activities like chat, games, sending virtual gifts, miniblogging, and more. However, if you ask about the one most popular activity in Indonesia and beyond, it still remains our chat as you can easily talk with any friends in the world, find new friends, and engage them in cool games and more.

The Euro 2012 cup has just wrapped up; is that the kind of thing that your users talk about as well, not just about games?

mig33 has nearly 4 million chatrooms which users create and administer. You might not only find one or two rooms that will be talking about Euro 2012 in mig33, but do expect to find groups that talk and even guess the score of tonight’s game.

What are some strategies used by mig33 to grow its user-base in Indonesia?

We believe in good distribution and user empowerment. In Indonesia, we partner with major telcos such as Telkomsel, XL, and Indosat. We are also partnering with major handset brands such as Nokia, BlackBerry, Samsung, Sony (Ericsson), HTMobile, Lexus, and other leading local brands to expand mig33 distribution in Indonesia. And in addition to that, we believe in our users. We empower them to be our best evangelists to introduce mig33 to people around them.

Do you have any upcoming plans to share?

We are planning big for Indonesia and beyond. We have just recently launched our new platform on RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Google’s Android to answer to the growing market needs. Also, do look out for our exciting news soon on our product and marketing roadmap.

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