Why Marissa Mayer Bought A 17-Year-Old's Startup For $30 Million

By Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider:
Back in March, Yahoo bought a startup called Summly for $30 million.

Before Yahoo shut it down, Summly was a news aggregation app for smartphones.

The deal got a lot of attention because Summly's CEO is 17-year-old Nick D'Aloisio.

We found the deal strange from the get-go.

Three big reasons:

• D'Aloisio is still going to high school in London, thousands of miles away from Yahoo's California headquarters. He is not moving.
• Summly didn't have a lot of users or any revenues.
• According to Summly's own Web site, the technology behind the app was "built" by an organization called "SRI International," not by the startup's employees. 

Then, today we learned that the Summly team also did not build the Summly app — a company called Somo did. Somo is "the U.K.’s largest independent mobile marketing agency."

In conclusion: Buying Summly, Yahoo bought a startup with an app that …

… not many people used

… made no money

… employed no technical geniuses or design mavens.

So why, exactly, did Yahoo buy Summly?

We finally have an answer!

Acquiring Summly seems to have been an almost incidental side effect of a deal Yahoo made with SRI for a piece of "summarization technology."

A source tells us that Yahoo has "agreements in place" with SRI for "knowledge transfer," and the acquisition of IP, code, and technology.

Until Yahoo bought it, SRI International held equity in Summly.

SRI once held equity in another startup that was acquired by a big Silicon Valley company.

That was Siri, which was funded by SRI International's venture arm, and was later acquired by Apple.

And indeed, inside Yahoo, Summly is called "Yahoo's Siri."

A source close to Yahoo says that CEO Marissa Mayer believes summarization technology is "going to be huge for Yahoo" as it builds "personalized news feeds" into mobile versions of its "core experiences," including Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Sports.

Yahoo believes summarization technology will be especially important because phones have much smaller screens than the desktop computers where Yahoo products are mostly used now.

The job of implementing this technology at Yahoo will not be given to anyone from Summly, including its young CEO. 

That task now belongs to Yahoo's mobile organization, run by Adam Cahan.

According to reports, D'Aloisio is required to stay at Yahoo for another 17 months.

In reporting all this, the last thing we want to do is take any credit away from Nick D'Aloisio. 

Though Summly's own Web site once said: "SRI International, with the help of the Summly team, built the summarization technology behind Summly," we are told that D'Aloisio "invented" the product's original technology.

In a statement provided to us by a Yahoo spokesperson, an SRI spokesperson says: "Basically, Nick developed the original code for Summly."

"After the original product was built, SRI supported development of the technology and provided artificial intelligence expertise in machine learning and natural language processing."

Further, D'Aloisio deserves credit for outsourcing technology development and app development to the right firms, and coalescing their work into a product that made him millions.

Plenty of brilliant entrepreneurs before him rode a similar skill for curation to the top of the industry.

How to Manage the Social Media Overload

By Jasmine Sandler at ClickZ: 

I started to write this column about Twitter and the media and then started thinking, wait - aren't people more interested right now in the 99 new Twitter tools and apps? And then my mind went to the fact that in a conversation this week, a client came to me stressed over all the LinkedIn changes, so I was going to write about that. So, what do I have for you? Something I think we all can relate to at this point. There is some serious social media overload. So, how do you manage it and make it work for you? In this column, I will share five key ways to manage your social media marketing so you can sleep at night and see social media working for you.

1. Have a social media channel plan that makes sense. As I wrote in a previous ClickZ column on the five ways to create your social media marketing plan, it is crucial for any organization to have a social media plan in place. Your plan must tie back to company goals and those goals should tell you a little bit about where you need to spend your time. For example, if your goal is to drive brand awareness around a new tech product, you might lean toward Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. Trying to get people to buy your new consumer product? Perhaps a strong Facebook campaign makes sense. Looking to generate five new qualified business professional leads a month? LinkedIn Premium subscription in using InMail, OpenLink, and advanced search and save features can certainly help.
2. Have a content plan that is reasonable. The key to engagement in social is delivering content that is shareable and engaging. This can range from posts, comments, articles, infographics, videos, data sheets, etc. (you get the point). If you have a small team, you cannot expect to push out new original content every day. You might be able to do one blog post a week, one email newsletter a month, etc. If you are small and are selling one product or service, then your content plan can be easily managed. If you are a larger organization, your content plan can be thematic or driven by product set, but it must be reasonable in terms of who it is and how it is being managed. Without a content plan in place, you will find yourself and your team wasting precious time mismanaging social media.
3. Have the right social media resources. This is the absolute key to your social media success or failure. Social media, as many say, is now a sophisticated marketing tool and must be treated as such. The right people must be in place to manage it effectively (toward your brand goals). This means making sure you have an appropriate approval system in place with the brand manager at the top. Also, that you have an experienced team managing the setup, content distribution, community management, and social outreach. And that you have someone on your team who can write and is a subject matter expert. And finally, that you have someone on board who understands social analytics and can adjust social levers upon review of social results to drive up performance.
4. Don't jump to every social media change - stick to your plan. With changes in social networks happening every second, it is all too easy to get thrown off track and get unfocused on your social media goals. Like any marketing initiative, following a well-thought-out and developed plan and adjusting for changes in the marketplace, competitive environment, and audience behaviors is best practices. Just because a new app or new opportunity to advertise on a social network happens, does not mean you necessarily need to engage immediately. Any changes to your social media marketing program should be tested and reviewed for driving positive results. One of the pieces of advice we provide, for example, is to set aside a small portion of resources (time and money) each quarter to test any new social initiatives. In this way, you will have scale ability built into your social programs to account for environmental changes; but will also stay the course on your developed social media plan.
5. Have a social customer service process. Social media networks are the perfect breeding ground for reputation damage. Make sure that you are a step ahead of the game by managing your social media sentiment. With regular monitoring of your audiences' positive or negative mentions of your brand and by getting regular alerts on these with simple tools like Social Mention or Google Alerts or more sophisticated tools like Viralheat or HootSuite, you will more easily be able to manage how your brand is perceived in social. This insight will also aid in determining where you best serve your audience and with what content. With hard data on your target behavior and interest around your brand in social, you can deliver better customer service, faster, beating out your competition.

I hope these five steps will help you and your organization to manage your social media overload. With a clear mind and focused marketing goals, you have the best chance for success in this crazy world of social media. The topic of social media is absolutely huge. These steps are simply intended to give you some peace of mind as you navigate these waters. I welcome any comments and feedback and as always, I look forward to following up in my next ClickZ social media article.

No Time to Waste: 6 Mobile Musts

By Anna Bager at ClickZ:

It is finally crystal clear that mobile is here to stay. And, in keeping, we see a world in which consumers will be using mobile to executive the majority of their daily activities, if they aren't already. However, even with all of the buzz surrounding mobile, most sellers and buyers seem somewhat unclear about how they can make money from it.

What I think is the first priority - no matter who you are - is dipping your toe in. You can't wait for the mobile ecosystem to simplify itself. Too many agencies and marketers are taking that stance. While we can work together to improve the workflow, the number of devices and platforms will continue to evolve and proliferate. The longer you wait, the more complicated things will get. The time to take action is now.

In that vein, I thought I'd offer up a few suggestions and tips on how to launch a successful mobile campaign, focusing on what a marketer needs to think about when it comes to mobile.

1. Avoid buzzwords in your request for proposal (RFP). When drafting up an RFP don't use every buzzword in the industry. It won't make you sound smarter and it makes it more confusing for your media provider to fulfill. It fogs up your true intent, and you need to be specific at all times. Do you have Foursquare and Yelp feeds dynamically updating in your rich media creative? Great, say that instead of the fact that you will be "leveraging social media to enhance your creative relevance." It is important for media providers to be clear that you want to target your campaign to the right properties and audience to meet your campaign needs.
2. Hyper-local isn't always the best strategy. Hyper-local is probably one of the most used words when it comes to talking about mobile. It is true that users are walking around with a device in their pocket at all times, often providing you with their precise location. But, keep in mind that while a large portion of your audience has that device with them, they may not be opting in to allowing their precise location to be passed along to all their apps. Even if they are opted in, are you missing scale and reach? How many users are in that three-mile radius from your store and using their smartphone during your one-week promotional campaign? Going with a bigger local target and undertaking creative optimization may be a better option to meet your campaign goals.
3. Don't get caught up in all the fragmentation. It is true that there are a lot of differences that emerge dependent upon operating system, device model, app developer to app developer, etc. However, the mobile industry has been advancing rapidly to meet these challenges to create a robust marketing channel. With so many mobile-focused companies out there mastering the fragmented marketplace, many have found ways to handle different sized screens and use MRAID to improve the right media experiences. Publishers know their apps and how they behave on different devices, so it is important to work with them and give them enough quality assurance (QA) time before the launch of a campaign.
4. Don't expect the world from a test campaign. Right now, many advertisers are testing the mobile waters. They aren't clear on how the mobile channel will enhance their overall goals. As a result, they are running small test campaigns to try different strategies all at once. That won't work. Use test campaigns to test out specific goals and learn about your audience.
5. Be clear about your goal. What is the real objective of your campaign? Are you driving people to a store? Getting them to sign up for something? Or are you seeking brand awareness? Being clear about what your goal is will help publishers and other media providers fulfill your IO and produce a campaign that is successful across the board, instead of just meeting impression goals.
6. Mobilize your website. This is where a great number of users will first see your site. Therefore, your mobile presence is where initial perceptions and opinions will be formed and, if played correctly, it is also where a lot of business will be made. If you don't have a site optimized for mobile, your customers may look elsewhere.

This Thursday, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and its Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence will again host the annual IAB Mobile Marketplace conference and I foresee this event breaking new ground and offering up keen insights that are needed to drive mobile forward for consumers, agencies, marketers, and technology vendors alike. Throughout the day, we will bring industry leaders together to tackle mobile from all angles - and also challenge the mobile definition, as we know it.

This event is one of many things that the IAB is doing to try and answer the issues I've noted above. And, where a meaningful guideline or answer does not exist, we will try to find or develop a solution.

#INFOGRAPHIC: 14 Ways to Boost Your Facebook Sharing and Visibility

When it comes to social media the engagement of the search engine has behind the success and have the tricky process to maximize the engagement. There are fourteen different methods are available that will help to boost up the website visibility of your post on the social media as well as consider the overall virality on Facebook application for building the strong relationship between the followers.

Published by inboudvisibility

Facebook: 14 Ways to Boost Your Facebook Sharing and Visibility infographic by inboudvisibility.

#INFOGRAPHIC: The Road to Success Using Social Media

Find out how and why companies all around the world are using social media to market their businesses. From marketing to the recruitment process, social media is becoming an integral part of any business who wants to succeed. We've compiled some statistics and useful bits of information that provide compelling reasons to adopt social media in any business.

The Road to Success Using Social Media infographic