The Ethos Challenge

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Earlier today the iTunes Facebook Fan page rolled out a nifty new feature: you can now create custom iTunes gift cards and send them directly to a friend through Facebook or via Email. This is pretty nice in and of itself, but also interesting is the fact that the application was built by GroupCard, a startup that lets friends and coworkers jointly create a greeting card. GroupCard was a winner of fbFund in winter 2008 and later took part in the fbFund REV incubator program.

Using the iTunes Gifts Facebook app is pretty straightforward: you pick from one of six different templates, which include designs for the holidays, birthdays, and a few with those ubiquitous colorful iPod colorful dancers. Then you choose how much you’d like to gift (options run from $5 to $50) and the names of your Facebook friends or Email addresses as recipients. Finally you can customize the card with your own personal message. Once you’re done, you can choose to send it immediately, or specify a day on which it should be sent (which makes it great for holiday/birthday shopping).

This appears to be one of the only ways to purchase a digital iTunes giftcard — the Apple site itself only offers physical versions, and sites like Gifts.com and Giftcards.com don’t have them either. Aside from this Facebook app, the only place we’re seeing the option is from within the iTunes desktop app itself.
GroupCard built the application, but they aren’t actually listed on it. That’s because the processor of the gift cards is the Gift Card Mall (part of Blackhawk Network, which specializes in pre-paid cards). Apple, Blackhawk, and GroupCard worked in tandem to launch the new feature.

It’s also worth nothing that GroupCard is one of Facebook’s preferred apps to test out new features with — earlier this year it was the first to test Facebook payments. It’s possible that GroupCard may eventually be able to allow users to purchase iTunes songs using Facebook credits, which would obviously be a big deal. GroupCard CEO John Anderson says that there aren’t any immediate plans to do this and he can’t comment beyond that. But he says that GroupCard is looking forward to working with other brands in the future.

Anderson also says that the service is getting 250k monthly uniques, and has grown 300% YTD.

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Saul Hansell, technology reporter and editor for The New York Times has joined AOL as the first employees of Seed, AOL’s new content management platform. Hansell has also posted the news on his blog. The full release is below:

Seed.com assigns, buys and distributes work for all of AOL’s properties. Hansell will take on the role as Programming Director of the site and will be responsible for leveraging Seed across all of AOL’s platforms. Hansell was the founding editor of Bits, The New York Times’ technology blogs, and most recently was covering the telecommunications beat. As reported by the WSJ and PaidContent, Seed fully automates content for AOL’s media sites. Its purpose is to organize and coordinate content from AOL’s 3,000 freelancers. Seed will determine how much freelancers get paid and will also include technology that will edit content for grammar, spelling, and plagiarism.

AOL has hired another prominent journalist to join AOL’s full time editorial staff.

Saul Hansell, formerly of The New York Times, will be join us as Programming Director of AOL’s Seed.com., AOL’s first employee for the recently announced content management platform, expected to launch this month. Saul will be reporting to Mike Rich, senior vice president of AOL entertainment, and will be responsible for leveraging Seed across all of AOL’s platforms.

Saul joined The New York Times in 1992 and most recently was covering the telecommunications beat, including wired and wireless communication of voice, data and video, including companies involved in telephone, Internet backbone, cable TV, Internet video, cellphone handsets, and other devices connected to networks, as well as communications policy and privacy. Launched in 2007, he was the founding editor of Bits, a blog on nytimes.com covering a wide range of technology topics with particular interest in Internet media, digital marketing, consumer electronics and the evolving business models for music and video.

Bits was named best blog among larger publications in the 2007 Best in Business awards by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His September 1989 story on computerized trading, “The Wild, Wired World of Electronic Exchanges,’‘ won the Overseas Press Club’s Morton Frank award for best magazine business reporting from abroad. He has also received awards from the Deadline Club of New York and the American Society of Business Press Editors. Saul received his Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies/Economics from Columbia College in 1984.

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Dan Abram’s recently launched media gossip and analysis site Mediaite, has steadily gained traction as a media news blog and today is announcing expansion to other news verticals, including technology, fashion and sports. Abrams wrote in a post that Mediaite’s sites are on track to see over one million unique visitors in December, was listed on Technorati’s top 40 blogs, and expects to turn a profit next year. That’s not so shabby growth considering the implosion the news industry over the past year.

Geekosystem will serve as a tech and “geek” news and analysis site, with coverage of gadget, video games, comics books and science fiction. According to Abrams, the site will “merge the content aggregation of popular “Internet Culture” destinations with the editorial voice of the post-Web 2.0 generation of geek luminaries.” Not how much this will differ from analysis on other tech news sites.

Styleite will be a fashion and beauty site focused towards gathering user-generated content, and will integrate e-commerce (woich we know is a trend that other fashion and beauty sites, like Lucky Magazine, are beginning to follow). Styleite will include news and analysis of a broad spectrum of trends from couture to street-style.

Mediaite will also launch a sports-focused version of its Power Grid, which currently ranks and indexes media players based on news, analysis and events. SportsGrid will combine multiple financial, statistical, and media metrics to determine who are the biggest forces in sports, both on and off the field. Abrams says that both Styleite and Geekosystem will both feature industry-specific version of the Power Grid . It’s unclear who Abrams will be poaching for to contribute to thes sites, but he did indicate that “lead figures” for these sites will be drawn from the Mediaite family.

Mediaite’s expansion comes as no surprise. When I interviewed Abrams a few months ago, he indicated that he was was looking to build a Mediaite mini-empire by expanding to other verticals in the near future. Abrams told me that while breaking news is important, his site was focused on providing analysis to all news. Abrams was also bullish on the significance of video on Mediaite and launched a partnership with Magnify.net to power UGC video and in-house content.

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Later tonight, Vevo, the “Hulu for music videos,” being launched by YouTube and several of the record labels, is set to go live. But there’s already some Vevo content appearing on YouTube itself right now.

As you can see on this page, YouTube has an account fo EminemVEVO. It appears this is a way to cross promote for the new service. Not only is the video branded with the Vevo logo (which we’ve seen previously), but the page its on features links to visit Vevo (which currently points to the Vevo Blog), as well as the artists’ areas on the site. There are many of these YouTube/Vevo pages popping up, here’s Toby Keith’s, for example.

Vevo inked a deal with EMI the other day to make Warner the last remaining major label holdout for the project. Warner does have an agreement with YouTube to host its music videos there, but the other labels have all agreed to eventually move their content from YouTube over to Vevo (though oddly, they’ll still be hosted by YouTube, which they’ll get paid for). These videos will still be served up for free, but will be supported by advertising in a way that’s expected to be similar to the Hulu model (which itself could change next year).

Already, users on YouTube are seeing these heavy Vevo promotions and getting annoyed.

[thanks Ron]

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Shopping for picky loved ones is difficult enough. Factor in your commitment to eco-sensitive products, and a holiday shopping mission can become as daunting as an unaided ascent up El Cap. Fortunately, we at Sierra can give you a guide, if not the actual gear.

FOR THE BUDDING ENVIRONMENTALIST
To teach your kids the value of rainforest products, stuff their stockings with Glee Gum's make-your-own-chewing-gum kit, an irresistible mess of sugar, syrup, flavoring, and chicle gum base from Central America's sapodilla trees. It comes with a pamphlet telling the story of Eduardo, a Guatemalan chiclero who "has found a good way of earning money without chopping down any trees." $13

FOR THE ETHICAL NESTER
Rablabs' stunning agate coasters (available at Gracious Home), large enough for an oversize mug, are "mined" out of the shallow, volcanic dirt in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul region. The entire manufacturing process consists only of slicing and polishing. Set of four $65

FOR THE TECH-GEEK TREKKER
Voltaic solar backpacks and messenger bags, made mostly of recycled plastic bottles, can convert a day's worth of sunlight into a full charge for a laptop, cell phone, or MP3 player. The totes come with a battery pack, adapters, and space-age style. Starting at $199

FOR THE GREEN FASHIONISTA
Get her a well-fitting T-shirt from Gramicci (starting at $19). Some are organic, some hemp, some recycled, some reversible, some printed with eco-positive messages like "Live green." Pair the shirt with a so-simple-it's-cool bracelet from Wear Your Music, handmade of recycled silver commingled with guitar strings strummed by famous rockers like Ben Lee ($50), Jack Johnson ($150), Joan Jett ($200), or Eric Clapton ($500). Profits are donated to artist-selected charities.

FOR THE WORKAHOLIC
SimpleTech by Hitachi makes the greenest external hard drive we've seen. The 500-gigabyte [re]drive has a shell of bamboo and recyclable aluminum, comes in minimal packaging, and can use 90 percent less energy than a typical external drive. It's also fast and PC- and Mac-compatible. $100

FOR THE URBAN EXPLORER

If your budget's unlimited, pick out a set of wheels from My Dutch Bike, which start at $1,399. They're imported from Amsterdam and can be fitted to carry kids or packages in ubercool, emission-free style. Or consider a bike from Electra. They start around a more reasonable $300 and mix a vintage American look with German and, yes, Dutch influences.

--Avital Binshtock

Ah the Internet, I knew you would come up with a solution. No sooner do I write a post about how Google has disabled Chrome Extensions for Mac even though they will work in the latest builds of Chromium (the open-source browser which Chrome is based on), does someone come up with a solution. Matt Mastracci, the founder of DotSpots and a blogger at Grack.com, has created a simple bookmark that turns on the “Install” button for any Chrome extension.

Previously, the extension install button was grayed-out if you were on a Mac, but dragging this bookmarklet to your toolbar in Chromium and clicking it when you’re on an extension landing page will turn the gray box bright blue. From there, you can click to install any extension, and you’re all set. I’ve just installed a handful of them; all seem to be working just fine despite Google’s reluctance to enable the feature for Mac.

You should note that since Google isn’t officially supporting extensions in Chrome for Mac yet, you should use this at your own risk. But I’ve been using them for a while in various Chromium builds, and haven’t noticed any major issues. Google promises that official extension support will be coming to the dev versions of Chrome for Mac soon.

Update: And as Googler Aaron Boodman notes in our comments on the previous post, “FWIW, we will be re-enabling Chromium support in the gallery soon. That was done not on purpose.”

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Startup SendGrid has raised $750,000 in Series A funding led by Highway 12 Ventures, with SoftTech VC, FF Angel LLC, TechStars-founders David Cohen and other angel investors participating. Incubated by TechStars, SendGrid attempts to solve the problems faced by companies when sending transactional outbound email (emails delivered by software applications such as sign up confirmations, shipping alerts, friend requests, and notifications). SendGrid’s outbound email servers promise to improve the delivery rates and solve scalability problems.

SendGrid also delivers CAN-SPAM compliance, link tracking, open rate reporting, and more. Besides deliverability and scalability, SendGrid offers companies analytics, so they can track email clicks, opens, unsubscribes, spam reports, and bounces without writing a single line of code. The company already has100 paying customers and has delivered over 100 million emails on their behalf. SendGrid will use the funds to to expand its development, marketing and sales efforts.

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With Christmas looming, the post-holiday spike of app sales is just weeks away. As new iPhone owners find their way into the App Store for the first time, they’ll be looking for the best of the best to throw their money at – and Apple’s ready to cash in.

Earlier today Apple released “iTunes Rewind 2009″, a list of the top selling and most loved applications of the year.

Read the rest of this post at MobileCrunch >>

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We heard strong reports for online traffic Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but today, comScore added definitive spending numbers that indicate that holiday shopping online is picking up this year. For the holiday season-to-date, nearly $16 billion has been spent online, which is a 3 percent increase versus the same period last year. The most recent week ending December 6 reached $4.6 billion in holiday spending, which surpassed any individual spending week in 2008 but was still below two individual weeks in 2007. comScore reports that $887 million was spent on Cyber Monday, but decreased steadily as the week continued.

In an interesting twist to the usual online spending reports, comScore dug a little deeper with respondents on the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. According a survey taken last week, 28 percent of shoppers surveyed said that social media has influenced their purchases. Consumer-generated product reviews, like those seen on both retail sites and standalone review sites was the most common form of social media that had influenced holiday purchases (13 percent of respondents), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Seven percent of respondents said they took advantage of deals and offers advertised on Facebook Fan pages while while 6 percent said they were influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product. This is a really compelling factoid for any online site that uses Facebook Connect to allow users to update status with deals and purchases from their site. Five percent of respondents said they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals, while 3 percent said that a friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior.

The trend of social media influence on shopping is truly fascinating and one that will surely grow. Review sites like Retrevo are incorporating Twitter into their platform and retailers like BestBuy, Dell and others are taking advantage of social media to promote their deals and products. Today, Dell reported that it rung up $6.5 million in sales thanks to Twitter promotions. Obviously, social networks can be a boon to retailers.

Of course, comScore’s numbers still have room for two to three more weeks of online holiday shopping spending, so the $16 billion is sure to rise.

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