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Can Sears Help OpenID Go Mainstream?

Its one thing when Internet companies like Facebook adopt OpenID, its another when a giant retailer like Sears Holdings Corporation embraces it. Sears has just announced that it will enable over 1 million monthly MySears and MyKmart visitors to use their Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or other accounts to log into the community websites, enabling them to write product reviews and share information about products and services without the need to create a separate account.

Customers will also get access to special offers and coupons in return for their participation in the community.

For the integration, Sears teamed up with Viewpoints Network, a social technology and media company that recently integrated JanRains RPX solution into their online community and identification platform.

The question is: is Sears - despite its claims of driving innovation in online retailing, which seems a bit over the top - merely a late adopter looking to try something new or is this a sign of OpenID maturing to a point where it can finally reach that tipping point where it really starts taking off with a mainstream audience?

In my recent interview with OpenID evangelist Chris Messina, he expressed the hope that integrations outside the technology industry - such as the U.S. government - would at some point occur more often, but he also acknowledged that the initiative struggles with branding and getting the word out there.

Its integrations like these that could really help OpenID gain more traction, but the main question will always be if OpenID is just a solution looking for a problem, or if theres a genuine need for a decentralized, universal login standard.

Despite the flood of criticism from technology pundits, the jurys still out on that.

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Authorize.Net Goes Down

As a lot of e-commerce businesses and Twitter users are noticing, the entire Authorize.Net infrastructure crashed a few hours ago. For anyone who makes a purchase online, this is huge; Authorize.Net is the largest service for accepting credit cards and e-checks through the web. This means that millions of web-based transactions and purchases have come to a halt.

Luckily, Authorize.Net understands the usefulness of social media in situations like these. They set up a new Twitter account, @AuthorizeNet, earlier today to keep users informed about the recovery of one of the webs most important payment systems. So what took Authorize.Net down anyway? And when will it be 100% back?

Twitter and the status of Authorize.Net

According to AuthorizeNet, the cause of the outage was a fire at their datacenter in Seattle. This impacted not only their website and transaction platforms, but even their backup center. Couple this with the fact that today starts the 4th of July holiday weekend, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Luckily, it seems that transaction processing has returned, although global processing is still down:

This is the most important aspect of the outage without the payment system, merchants couldnt accept credit card payments, which could result in millions of dollars lost among all of its vendors. The website is still down, meaning that accounts cant be accessed. Luckily, the company had the foresight to use Twitter to keep merchants and users informed. We will update this post with any new developments on the situation.

Update: From the Authorize.Net Twitter account:

#authorizenet Full transaction processing has now been restored with Concord EFS.

The website seems to be loading now too, albeit very slowly.

Reviews: Twitter

Tags: authorize.net, payment

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YouTube Increases File Size Limit To 2GB, Now Allows Direct HD Embeds And Links

While not every tweak to YouTubes system deserves a post, this one is pretty significant, though very straightforward as well. First, the 1GB file limit for YouTube videos has been doubled to 2GB; this is a boon to many users who have been uploading high definition content more than a few minutes long. Ten minutes of 1080p footage can easily exceed a gig, especially if youve been editing it and werent careful about re-encoding. A 2GB limit should soothe that particular pain.

Next, the update now allows for direct linking to HD streams, as well as easy embedding of same. While it wasnt impossible before now to get an HD video by default on your page, or to link right to one, it required a little work. But now YouTube has apparently decided that they are ready for the bandwidth shock as thousands and thousands of users default to HD instead of SD increasing the average amount of bits being sent by a huge amount.

Linking to HD is unfortunately not integrated with the UI yet. You have to add &hd=1 to the end of your link thusly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDiC26-iAs8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDiC26-iAs8&hd=1

With HD link, without HD link.

And heres a sample HD embed. Its not really worth it this size; HQ looks fine and loads faster.

What will the next improvements be? Upload speed is solid, compatibility is good, it goes without saying that theyve got enough users. More social aspects? More integration with Google Apps? Personally, Im hoping for a live video broadcast service like Qik that would make liveblogging things about a thousand percent easier, and I know itd be Android-compatible. Only Google knows.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Twitters Popular Facebook App Has Been Broken Or Exploited For Days.

Twitter has long had an official Facebook application that allows users to update their Facebook status with tweets. Its quite useful for those of us who dont want to have to spend all day updating multiple services with the same messages. The app has over 250,000 monthly active users. But if youre not already one of them, I have bad news: Youre not allowed to use it.

For the past several days, anyone who has tried to install the app has been greeted with the following message:

Error while loading page from session test
There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of session test are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

A few days? Try a week now. And it seems that despite the issue being logged neither side seems to care much about fixing it. And what the hell is session test?

Well, it turns out Session Test is actually another Facebook application created by someone called Bob McTest a Facebook profile with two friends and a crazy picture (below right). Session Test has 45,373 monthly active users and 182 fans, despite awful reviews (because as far as I know, all it does is block this Twitter app). Humorously, when you try to install Session Test, you get the same Session Test error message.

At first, I assumed this was some kind of test application Facebook created to log errors, but it says clearly on the page, This application was not developed by Facebook. So why is a second app popping up when you try to install the Twitter app? It may be some kind of exploit. When we contacted Facebook about it, they said they would look into it.

On the Sessions Test page youll find some rather humorous reviews and discussions from users who are pissed off about not being able to install the Twitter app. The Reviews area for example features messages like, Steady errors for weeks now Way to go update: another week, still nothing. and errors!!!!!!!!!! f@ck!!!! But you wont find any kind of response from either side there.

And the Discussions area is even better. One thread called I hate you features a bunch of annoyed would-be Twitter/Facebook users. Another thread called TWITTER features more of the same. Finally, someone made a thread just to point out other apps created to workaround the problem, but really, its pretty ridiculous that neither side has even responded to any of this.

One user links to a Get Satisfaction thread also talking about the issue. But again, no response from anyone on either side. I know Facebook and Twitter may not be on the best terms right now following Twitters rejection of Facebooks offer to buy the startup late last year. And the subsequent moves Facebook has taken to become more Twitter-like. But its the users of both services who are getting angry here.

After I reached out to both sides about the issue, both said they would look into it. Facebook doesnt seem to think its a problem on their end as VP of Communication and Public Policy Elliot Schrage told us, this is a question more appropriately posed to Twitter they built the app! But it seems pretty clear that one app is exploiting another one, which would seem to be at least partially Facebooks problem. Meanwhile, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone tells us that hes looking into it.

It seems hard to believe that neither side would even be aware of the issue, but then again, given that the two seem to be competing more and more, an app that allows you to use one of the services rather than the other is probably not at the top of the priority list for either side.

And the app still works for the users who had it installed before this issue arose. But if you try to change your username or password, you will get the error message as well.

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Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Firefox 3.5 Hits Five Million Downloads in 24 Hours. Respectable, But Not A Record.

In the first 24 hours since its release yesterday, Firefox 3.5 has been downloaded more than 5 million times. (It took only a few hours to pass a million). That is certainly respectable, but doesnt quite measure up to the mania that Firefox 3.0 set off last summer, when it achieved a world record 8.3 million downloads in a single day. Maybe well have to wait for Firefox 4.0 to beat that record. But Firefox 3.5 might still beat the 11 million downloads Safari 4 got over its first three days of availability.

Whos.among.us has some live usage stats from about 800,000 Internet surfers it is tracking. According to its data, it estimates that Firefox 3.5 already has gained about a 2.4 percent browser market share. Overall, it puts all versions of Firefox at 29 percent. That suggests close to 10 percent of Firefox users have already upgraded. It also puts Safaris market share at only 2.5 percent, which seems low. (Other stats put it closer to 8 percent).

Looking at our own Google Analytics for TechCrunch, 28 percent of Firefox visitors are already on 3.5, but our readers are big Firefox fansnearly half of all visitors use some version of Firefox, which is a much higher percentage than for most sites.

Ive been playing around with the 3.5 release candidate for about a week. It is much zippier than 3.0, and Im already addicted to the plus-sign feature on the tab bar which makes it easier to add tabs. And I love where its going with open video standards. It is also a bit crashy when I have too many tabs open, but thats getting better. Some add-ons dont yet work, but nothing crucial. Overall, its a much better product.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Top 10 Online Retail Categories by Order Size - May 2009

Worldwide, Russians Spend Most Time On Social Networks (comScore)

comScore has aggregated some data based on its World Metrix audience measurement service and put together a study on social networking worldwide. Surprisingly, it appears that the Russians are more engaged with social networking than the rest of the planet (or the biggest slackers at the office, depends on how you look at it). The study found visitors in Russia to spend 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month on average, at the same time - once again - confirming Vkontakte.ru's leadership in terms of popularity with 14+ million monthly visitors.To put that level of 'engagement' in perspective: the average world-wide is 3.7 hours and 525 pages per visitor. Among the 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Brazil ranked closest to Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The United States is ranked number 9, with 4.2 hours and 477 pages per visitor per month.

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New iPhone OS Restricts Transfer of Virtual Goods

Apple pushed the iPhone 3.0 OS update live yesterday, finally enabling in-app transactions for iPhone developers. What is less widely known about the iPhone 3.0 firmware is that the addition of in-app transactions has merited changes to the iTunes terms and conditions statement. The statement must be accepted before the update can proceed. The changes reveal new details regarding the way virtual goods will work in iPhone apps.

Users will not be able to transfer virtual goods consumed in the course of gameplay between devices, re-download them, or replace them after the initial download. The example of a consumable virtual good offered in the new statement is virtual ammunition. One might assume it would also apply to virtual currency, but remember that Apple currently will not allow iPhone developers to sell virtual currency in their games.

One of the other tweaks to the new terms and conditions statement might explain why. Once a virtual good is downloaded by a user to his or her iPhone, it is considered a purchased product. If purchased in a third party app, Apple treats it as a third party product. If the iPhone is damaged or destroyed before the virtual good is consumed, the user may be able to have it replaced along with other purchased products.

It seems virtual goods on iPhone are going to enjoy a curious legal status. They will be protected data, but will not be freely transferrable in the way of music purchased through iTunes. That users cannot attempt to replace or redownload the data unless their iPhone is damaged may be troubling in cases where downloads are disrupted or other errors occur. It will be worth keeping an eye on future iPhone and iTunes updates to see if (and how) Apple's rules regarding virtual goods change.

Facebook Launches A Live Stream Box, Partners With Ustream

Today, Facebook is launching a new Live Stream Box feature which allows for Facebook Pages to offer their own live video and chat area. And Ustream will be the first to take advantage of it with Ustream on Facebook, a new service to provide live video support to select Facebook users.

This functionality is an extension of what Ustream and Facebook did with some Jonas Brothers concerts last month events which drew huge numbers. How huge? This huge, according to Ustream:

1.5 million unique posts were made via Facebook Live Feed
23K average posts per minute
More than 100K users joined the webcast after seeing their friends comment on Facebook
974K total unique viewers watched the one hour webcast
Ustream reports the Jonas Brothers webcast on Facebook surpassed the largest live video event they have hosted for any music artist

So clearly, theres a big demand for certain live events via Facebook, and Ustream is jumping on it, as Facebooks preferred partner.

Apparently, how this will work is that on Facebook Pages there will now be a way to add a Live tab, which will house things such as the Ustream on Facebook feature. Previously, beyond the Jonas Brothers, Facebook has tested this with CNN and the NBA All-Star game. Heres what Facebook has to say:

Today, Facebook is launching the Facebook Live Stream Box as a feature that any website owner or developer can use to enable Facebook users to connect, share, and post updates in real-time as they witness an event online. Websites can run the Live Stream Box next to live streaming videos of concerts, speeches, sporting events, webcasts, TV shows, presentations, or webinars. Sites can also run the Live Stream Box in multi-player games, or with any other experience where many people are visiting a website at the same time.

But Ustreams funtionality is not for everyone yet, due to what will undoubtedly be high demand, were told. Any artist or person who thinks they could benefit from the Ustream functionality, can apply to have the feature turned on here. With it, youll get not only the live player, but a customizable banner that can link to places like iTunes or Amazon (obviously important for artists).

Right now, there are two versions of the player: A free ad-supported version, and a white-label version. The free version is the one with limited sign-ups allowed right now, so click that link above quickly if you think you need the feature. The white-label version comes with a one-time development fee of $15,000. But you also get an ongoing subscription to Ustreams white-label platform, Watershed.

Find out more information here. Eventually, Ustream hopes to port this Facebook experience over to its main site as well using Facebook Connect, were told.

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Facebook Click Fraud 101

Our posts earlier this week about the alarming amount of click fraud at Facebook left more than a few unanswered questions. The problem is real and was confirmed by Facebook. But what wasnt clear is exactly how or why it was happening. Now, after weve interviewed a number of advertisers and fraudsters, we know exactly how and why they are doing it.

First the why. Click fraud is serious business on the big search engine advertising networks because the bad guys can make serious money. Sign up for an Adsense account and put those ads on parked domain names or wherever. Then all you have to do is start clicking those ads like crazy, using bots or cheap labor. The search engines fight this via obvious and not so obvious means, and an arms race begins. To win you need access to a lot of good IP addresses and not get too greedy. And like inflation and the government, a little click fraud is tolerated by Google and others. It keeps the dollars flowing.

But Facebook is a different story. As of now they dont really have an Adsense equivalent - Some App developers can run Facebook ads for a revenue split, but thats it. Those guys wouldnt be able to get away with click fraud for very long because there are too few of them and its too easy to monitor spikes in performance.

So whats the incentive? Weve spoken to a number of Facebook advertisers who have explained exactly whats happening - advertisers are clicking on competitor ads to drive up their costs and drive down their ROI. As advertisers leave the system in disgust, prices go down and the people left win.

At least thats the theory. But whats really happening is better explained by game theory stuff that we all learned in micro economics courses. The advertisers know theyd all collectively be better off if they didnt engage in click fraud against each other. But anyone that does the right thing is put at a severe disadvantage competitively. So unless and until Facebook can put a stop to this, advertisers argue that they are actually forced to engage in click fraud to have a fighting chance at making any money.

Some of these guys are spending $30,000 a day on ads on Facebook alone (the maximum for self serve advertisers) and put significant capital at risk. Theyre not particularly worried about much more than keeping that capital safe, and earning a living.

And for the most part these are affiliate marketers - middleman arbitragers that dont create or sell products but simply pass leads and orders on to others who monetize users directly. They have to monitor ROI carefully, particularly because they are paying Facebook per click and in turn getting paid for conversions (sales, leads, etc.). Click fraud puts them out of business fast.

Facebook Click Fraud 101:

Heres how advertisers are engaging in click fraud:

First, its hard to even see the ads in the first place. On search engines they are there on the parked domain page, or you see them when you type in a query. But on Facebook ads are hyper targeted to users based on deep demographic data - like single men who live in San Diego and like the Xbox and U2, for example. If you arent a user who fits that description on Facebook, you dont see the ads.

So the bad guys just create thousands of fake Facebook accounts with a wide variety of demographic information. This sounds like a lot of work, but its highly automated. One advertiser told me how he paid $200 to an Indian operation for 2,000 Facebook accounts. Another said the going rate was just $10 per 100 accounts if you supply the unique email accounts. Once the accounts are created, they use software to fill out the varied demographic information, and that software also manages all these accounts.

The fraudster then logs in to Facebook via these accounts and views the ads that are displayed. The right competitive ads come up and Bingo, the software then clicks them. Facebook rules allow an account to click any advertisement up to six times in a 24 hour period, and all those clicks are charged. All you need is a few accounts to view the ads and then click to the max. Facebook even makes it easy to find the ads. They have an Ad Board that shows all ads targeted to that user (mine has 15 ads on it).

Often the fraudsters have their art down to a science and their software clicks ads so fast and moves on to the next one that it doesnt even hang around long enough for the underlying URL to resolve. Facebook still sees (and charges for) the click, but the advertisers server never registers a page view. Thats what bugs advertisers the most. In our original post we quoted one advertiser who at least wanted to see the traffic from the spam bots: If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars.

The people we spoke with say theyve been doing this since last year, and have had almost no account profiles shut down. Just 2 of my 2,000 accounts were closed said one source.

How Facebook Is Fighting This:

Weve spoken to Facebook a number of times this week to understand how they are fighting click fraud. We also wanted to wait on this story until Facebook felt comfortable that we werent going to make the situation worse by mapping out how fraud is done.

Facebook says the fraud is now under control. One way they monitor fraud is to view conversions off ad clicks - some ads ink to other Facebook pages where surveys and offers are completed, and Facebook can monitor if a click results in a conversion. Conversion rates have stabilized since the changes they made last Sunday, Facebook tells us, meaning fraud has decreased.

Facebook has told us a few ways that they are combating the fraud. Theyve asked us not to publish all of those methods because fraudsters may have an easier time bypassing the defenses. But weve checked with experts who agree that the protections Facebook has put in place make sense.

One thing Facebook is willing to talk about on record is that they are heavily monitoring click rates on ads and flagging accounts that are statistically out of bounds for human review. It doesnt sound like they intend to close known fraudster accounts down, though. Just keeping an eye on them and reversing any ad clicks may in fact be a smarter way of combating them and gathering more data. I agree.

Advertisers whove been affected will have credits applied to their accounts automatically, Facebook says. And they can also contact Facebook directly with concerns.

Some advertisers are saying click fraud rates havent declined this week at all, but others are saying they see a significant decline in fraud over the last few days. Were working with one group whove set up test ads to monitor fraud on Facebook as well. As of tonight they are still seeing discrepancies in the number of clicks Facebook says they sent and what their server logs show. So clearly the problem has not been fixed entirely, and it probably never will be. Its an arms race, but at least Facebook is admitting to the problem, and actively fighting it.

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Target vs. Wal-Mart: Online Conversion Battle Heats Up

For several months, retailers have been reporting declining in-store sales but increasing online sales. So what does the all important e-commerce space look like for two of the largest retailers?

Last month, Wal-Mart attracted more visitors than Target to its website and 47% of Wal-Mart visitors looked at a product compared to 31% of Target visitors. However, among shoppers who viewed a product, Target had a higher shopping cart interaction rate and conversion rate.

Despite the slight lead in conversions, more Target customers abandon their carts than Wal-Mart shoppers. 47% of shoppers who begin checking out at Target do not complete their purchases, where as 35% of shoppers at Wal-Mart abandon their carts.
In general, Target leads in purchase rate and Wal-Mart boasts a smaller shopping cart abandonment rate. But how do more loyal consumers shop online?

Retailer credit card holders represent some of the most loyal, and valuable, customers. Among shoppers who accessed their credit card accounts, conversion rate for Wal-Mart shoppers edges ahead of Target to a 14% rate compared to Targets 13%. Wal-Mart shopping cart abandonment does not change much, averaging 33% of shoppers. Targets abandonment rate, however, drops 18% from 47% to 38%, narrowing the gap between it and Wal-Marts rate. Its no surprise that competition is extremely fierce between these two rivals and I expect things to heat up even more as retailers gear up for back-to-school and the holiday season.

Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate - April 2009