LinkedIn reported fourth-quarter earnings that beat the street and showed strong growth in members, unique visits and page views from its users. But one key metric that stood out is how many users are signing on from their smartphones and tablets, as mobile usage is the fastest-growing part of its business.

Mobile now accounts for 15 percent of all visits to LinkedIn, CEO Jeff Weiner told investors and analysts on the fourth-quarter earnings call. That’s up from 9 percent of traffic that mobile accounted for about halfway through 2011. Growth is coming in part from improved mobile applications and just more customer adoption from those products.

One thing that isn’t growing tremendously in mobile is revenue, however. That could change in the future, as the company looks to add monetization through advertising on mobile devices. “We were very focused on getting the product right and the user experience right,” Weiner said. “Now that that’s in place, we’re going to start to run some tests with ads within the mobile environment.”

Of course, LinkedIn isn’t the only social network that has yet to monetize its mobile apps. Facebook, for instance, has much higher engagement on its mobile apps, with about half of its unique visitors coming from mobile device. It too, doesn’t place ads on those apps yet, something that Facebook highlighted as one of its risk factors in its recent S-1 filing.

The good news for LinkedIn is that to date, mobile isn’t cannibalizing engagement on the company’s website, which it does place ads against. In fact, LinkedIn is seeing an increase in the connection density it gets from mobile users and the number of connections on the network.

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The stock price of Facebook-based game publisher Zynga soared up near 18 percent today after it was revealed that Facebook gets 12 percent of its total revenue from Zynga. Read more…

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Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is a big fan of Spotify. In fact, at the D:Dive Into Media conference, the music mogul touted the music streaming service as a complementary service on top of other sales channels.

In what is likely his final interview before leaving Warner Music, Bronfman defended Spotify’s ability to drive more value for artists and labels. “Everywhere we look, Spotify is incrementally positive,” Bronfman said. Later in the discussion he noted that the streaming music startup is “a real and growing revenue stream.”

That said, Bronfman noted that part of the success comes from a deal that Warner Music helped to negotiate that passed on more value to labels and artists. “They have Warner Music to thank for a much better economic deal. We insisted on a much stronger deal and refused to sign unless we got that deal,” he said.

In addition to adding additional incremental revenue to the music industry, Bronfman said that Spotify’s model also provides longer-lasting value than some of the other offerings on the market, because consumers access music for longer periods of time than during the usual sales cycle.

“It’s important to note that [Spotify] has a much longer shelf life than downloads,” he said. “In Spotify, a song can live in the streaming world for a long time.”

Bronfman was not as keen on other platforms for distributing music. For instance, unlike all the other major labels, Warner Music doesn’t participate in streaming video service Vevo. “We have a fundamentally different strategy,” Bronfman said. “Vevo aggregates artist content and accrues that value to something called Vevo… We aggregate our content and accrue that value to our artists.”

As for Google Music, which Warner Music also doesn’t participate in, Bronfman said, “Google has to decide if it wants to have a content platform and if it wants to have a platform that’s competitive with other content platforms.”

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Strong business demand and holiday sales drive record revenue and EPS.
Microsoft PressPass, Information for Journalists – Press Releases

Hulu made $ 420 million in revenue in 2011, CEO Jason Kilar announced on the company’s blog on Thursday afternoon. Hulu now also has more than 1.5 million Hulu Plus subscribers, and Kilar reiterated his projection that Hulu Plus will be responsible for more than half of the company’s revenue later this year.

Some other metrics shared by Kilar include:

• Hulu grew its content catalog 40 percent in 2011, compared to 2010.
• The content on Hulu Plus even grew by 105 percent.
• Hulu Plus is now available on an aggregate install base of 200 million devices, including game consoles, mobile phones, tablets and connected TVs as well as media streamers.
• Hulu has had more than 1000 brand advertisers since its launch.
• Hulu will invest around $ 500 million in content in 2012.

Kilar also took a shot against Netflix without mentioning the service by name by suggesting that rights holders fare better when signing up with his company than with Netflix:

Our dual revenue stream Hulu Plus business model enables us to compensate content owners much more than anyone else in the online subscription market on a per subscriber basis. At scale, our model allows us to profitably pay content owners approximately 50 percent more in content licensing fees per subscriber when compared to other similarly priced online subscription services.

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Comedian Louis CK’s $ 5 web video of a recent comedy concert has now generated $ 1 million in its first 10 days and he will be giving a large portion of that money to charity. Read more…

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Android, as we wrote recently, still trails iOS as a money maker for app developers, with Flurry saying that developers make 24 cents on an Android app compared to $ 1 for the same software on iOS. Now, app analytics firm Distimo is saying that the revenue advantage for iOS is even bigger, with the iPhone App Store generating about four times as much revenue for the top 200 apps compared to the top 200 apps in Android Market.

Even with the rise of freemium business models — which rely on getting people to download a free app and monetizing through in-app purchase and upgrades — Apple still holds a big advantage. Distimo said in its year end report that 65 percent of the top 200 apps in Android Market are freemium while the same applies to only half of the top apps in the iPhone App Store. The revenue gap is less pronounced in tablet apps with the iPad App Store generating twice as much as the Android Market.

The persistence of this app revenue gap is an issue for developers and one that prevents many from making Android their primary development platform. At this rate, it’s hard to see how Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s prediction of Android becoming the primary platform for developers in six months coming true.

But there are monetization options available that are helping close the gap for some Android developers. One of the new alternatives is a start-up called StartApp, which launched in September and said it’s on a roll, paying out $ 200,000 to developers who install its SDK. StartApp bundles in its own search portal with apps from developer customers so users get a search icon on their home page, which StartUp uses to generate revenues. StartApp pays out developers $ 10-$ 50 for every 1,000 downloads or shares in the ongoing search revenue. The company said it’s now installed on 450 apps, which have generated 10 million downloads, and it’s helping some developers get a 10x bump in revenues.

“We are thrilled by the results we have seen thus far, with developers rapidly adopting our solution driving incredible growth in the download and distribution of our search solution,” said Gil Dudkiewicz, StartApp’s CEO. “We have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from our partners, many of whom have seen dramatic increases in the revenue they are receiving from their apps. This has led to a zero churn rate in the number of developers using our solution.”

StartApp's payout to developers

This is both a questionable and clever tactic, making consumers download another app that does an end run around Google. It’s reminiscent of old PC tool bar add ons that some software companies used. And it plays on the fact that people do a lot of searches from their smartphone. It’s unclear how users are enjoying this option though StartApp requires clear disclosure for its app partners, so users see a disclaimer and know that another search option has been added to their home screen.

But it’s a sign that as long as Android continues to struggle as a money making machine relative to iOS, it’s going to get targeted by monetization companies looking to help developers earn more cash. Tapjoy’s incentivized download model was banned by Apple for apparently gaming the App Store rankings but it’s doing well on Android and that’s been a help for developers. Developers will eventually look at starting on Android as the platform ultimately outpaces iOS in app downloads, which should be the case if current trends hold up. But until Google closes the app revenue gap, it’s going to force developers to look at whatever monetization options they can, including solutions that may not be completely enjoyable for users or can cut into Google’s own mobile search revenue.

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New research finds that on average, for every $ 1.00 generated by an iOS app the same app on Android will generate $ 0.24, and that developers start new projects in iOS over Android at a 3:1 ratio. Read more…

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Marketo, a SaaS startup focusing on revenue performance management, has raised a $ 50 million round with Battery Ventures leading the way. Although it’s not a household name, Marketo has been on a roll, totaling $ 107 million in VC investment since it launched in 2006, and now earning upward of $ 40 million a year in revenue.

Cloaked under the nebulous “revenue performance management” robe, what Marketo actually does, as explained to me by Co-Founder and CEO Phil Fernandez in August, is help customers nurture their sales leads, target marketing efforts and analyze revenue streams. About half of Marketo’s draw is in operational products (e.g., tools for automating email and marketing events, or for identifying leads), he said, and the other half is analytics. On the analytics front, Marketo helps customers figure out score prospective leads and also track the success of marketing campaigns.

One of the secrets to Marketo’s success is partnering with cloud-based companies across the SaaS ecosystem so that customers have a seamless experience in using its services. Salesforce.com is a natural fit, and Fernandez said about 80 percent of Marketo customers integrate with the CRM leader. Elsewhere, Marketo has partnerships with Google for analytics and apps, WebEx for meetings, ExactTarget for email automation, Radian6 for social-media monitoring and a variety of other providers that help customers deliver on what Marketo tells them.

Existing investors Institutional Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Mayfield Fund and Storm Ventures all participated in this round, as well.

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Formspring, the social Q&A site, has built up a big following in the two years since it launched. The website sees more than 30 million unique visitors each month, and now there are 27 million registered users who frequent Formspring to ask and answer questions with their friends, and a collection of celebrities who interact with fans on the site.

Even with all that traction, Formspring has taken its time when it comes to making money. The company has tasked its 30-person staff with developing new features and lining up celebrity users rather than on populating the site with advertisements. But now the company’s revenue strategy is starting to take shape with a new initiative called “Formspring Interests.”

All about Interests

Starting Tuesday, Formspring will start letting users add up to six interests to their profiles such as music, fashion and beauty, gaming, sports, and celebrity gossip. In addition, Formspring has inked partnerships with eight major media firms — MTV, Hearst, AOL Huffington Post, and Funny or Die, to name a few — that will be able to create relevant questions for users who have expressed interest in a related topic.

No money is associated with the media partnerships yet, Formspring’s COO Ro Choy said in a recent interview. But the interest information will allow Formspring to eventually show users more specifically targeted ads once the company starts running advertisements. According to Choy, it’s been a deliberately slow road to monetization because of the hyper-competitive Internet landscape:

“We have a really clear shot at becoming a major player as a social media network, and to get there you have to be amazing, because you’re competing with some of the very best companies on the web. You can’t mishandle the user experience — we’ve been making sure the user is having fun, enjoying the experience, and having an authentic communication with friends.”

A big step toward real revenue

Formspring Interests, however, is the company’s first major step toward real revenue generation. Choy said:

“At the end of the day we are a business, and the future of the company and monetization is very much related to the Interests launch. In the future, brand advertisers will have more opportunities to make relevant ads. It could be a sponsored question situation, or it could be an ad on the side of the page.”

The Interests launch is also indicative of Formspring attracting a broader and more mature audience. The site’s main user base is young people between the ages of 13 and 24, and Interests is aimed at the higher end of that spectrum. The way Choy explained it, teenagers’ lives are centered around their friends, and Formspring addresses that by letting those users talk directly to each other. But when people are 17 and older, they start to identify more with outside interests. Addressing that demographic more strongly is a logical next step for Formspring, and it will be interesting to watch how users and companies take to the site’s evolution.

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