March 28, 2024

Daybees Aspires to Be the Google of Event Search Sites

That is the proposition behind a new Web site called Daybees, which went live in Britain last month and plans to expand to the United States and other countries soon.

Daybees bills itself as “the world’s largest events search engine,” with a database of more than 1.5 million happenings of all kinds, whether Bon Jovi concerts or bake sales.

Daybees is one of the growing number of so-called vertical search engines, which aim to carve out a niche for themselves in the lucrative online search business, an area dominated by Google and coveted by other Internet giants like Microsoft and Facebook.

In areas like online shopping, travel or real estate, vertical search sites are well established. But Daybees maintains it is the first site, at least in the English-speaking world, to offer such a comprehensive listing of entertainment options without being tied into any commercial arrangements with the organizers.

While 1.5 million might sound like a lot of events, Daybees lets people fine-tune their searches for things to do by keyword, by location or by time and date. And Daybees argues that its results are more focused than those turned up by Google.

“I love Google,” said Gary Morris, the founder and chief executive of Daybees. “I use it umpteen times a day. But if I want to find an event that’s taking place at a certain time on a certain day, 2,000 feet from my front door or wherever, it’s impossible.”

“I was relying a lot on concierges and locals for information,” he added. “And what I found was that people’s knowledge of local events was not very good.”

While companies like Ticketmaster operate online listings, these tend to be limited to events with which the companies have commercial arrangements. Daybees says it is independent, and gets no commissions — at least not yet — though it does offer links to Web sites that sell tickets.

Independence comes at a price. So far Daybees, set up with an investment of about $1 million from Mr. Morris and Andrew Molasky, a partner and director, earns no revenue.

Not only does it not accept commissions, it also has eschewed advertising. Mr. Morris, a Briton with a background in the television business, and Mr. Molasky said advertising was a possibility, along with partnerships with ticket-selling firms, but added that they wanted to establish the site first.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t have a profit motive,” said Mr. Molasky, a Las Vegas real estate developer with a background in the entertainment business. “Our approach is, if you build it, it will come.”

That approach has fed the imaginations of countless start-up founders — and dashed the dreams of almost as many.

Vertical search is a hot area, with more and more ventures seeking to cash in on people’s desire to tailor search engines to specific needs.

The growth of vertical search has been driven by the spread of mobile Internet use, which has increased demand for customized, localized information, rather than the more extensive lists of results turned up by general search engines like Google or Microsoft’s Bing.

But Google has not stood still, fine-tuning its search engine and rolling out an ever-growing number of vertical offerings of its own, like online shopping and videos. Often, these are linked to other Google services like maps.

Analysts say that in Europe, where Google is especially strong, with more than 90 percent of the search market, compared with about three-quarters in the United States, it is particularly difficult for vertical search engines to establish themselves.

Indeed, the European Commission, in its antitrust investigation of Google, is looking into whether Google favors its own services in its search results, to the detriment of would-be rivals.

“Their ability to build scale or users has to be quicker than Google’s ability to innovate and incorporate such features,” said Chris Whitelaw, chief operating officer of the British arm of iProspect, a digital marketing agency. “I think Daybees probably has a window of opportunity, but they need to use it, otherwise Google will pinch their lunch.”

For many start-ups, including vertical search firms, getting on the radar screen of Google, Facebook or another Internet giant is exactly the point. That way, even if revenue proves difficult to generate, there is always the possibility of another way to cash in — a takeover.

“For some of these companies, the business model seems to be, How can we best annoy Facebook?” said Andreas Pouros, chief operating officer of Greenlight, a search advertising agency in London.

Mr. Morris and Mr. Molasky say their focus for now is on building the business. They developed the algorithms that drive the search engine in-house, with a small team of engineers.

The site lists some American events, and Daybees plans to have an American-focused site within six months, Mr. Molasky said. The name Daybees, he said, comes from the fact that “we are all busy bees, and it’s about filling your day.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/technology/08iht-search08.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Hacking in the Netherlands Took Aim at Internet Giants

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Attackers who hacked into a Dutch Web security firm have issued hundreds of fraudulent security certificates for intelligence agency Web sites, including the C.I.A., as well as for Internet giants like Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the Dutch government said on Monday.

Experts say they suspect the hacker — or hackers — operated with the cooperation of the Iranian government, perhaps in attempts to spy on dissidents.

The latest versions of browsers including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox are now rejecting certificates issued by the firm that was hacked, DigiNotar.

But in a statement on Monday, the Dutch Justice Ministry published a list of the fraudulent certificates that greatly expands the scope of the July hacking attack that DigiNotar acknowledged only last week. The list also includes certificates that were sent to sites operated by Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Skype, AOL, the Tor Project, WordPress, and by intelligence agencies like Israel’s Mossad and Britain’s MI6.

DigiNotar is one of many companies that sell the security certificates widely used to authenticate Web sites and guarantee that communications between a user’s browser and a site are secure.

In theory, a fraudulent certificate can be used to trick a user into visiting a fake version of a Web site, or used to monitor communications with the real sites without users noticing.

But in order to pass off a fake certificate, a hacker must be able to steer his target’s Internet traffic through a server that he controls. That is something only an Internet service provider, or a government that commands one, can easily do.

Technology experts cite a number of reasons to believe the attack is connected to Iran. Notably, several of the certificates contain nationalist slogans in Farsi, the language spoken by most Iranians.

“This, in combination with messages the hacker left behind on DigiNotar’s Web site, definitely suggests that Iran was involved,” said Ot van Daalen, director of Bits of Freedom, an online civil liberties group.

So far, only a handful of users in Iran is known to have been affected.

The attack on DigiNotar closely resembles one in March of the United States security firm Comodo Inc., which was also attributed to an Iranian.

Although no users in the Netherlands are known to have been victimized directly, the breach has caused a major headache for the Dutch government, which relied on DigiNotar to authenticate most of its Web sites.

In a news conference on Saturday, the Dutch justice minister, Piet Hein Donner, said the safety of Web sites — including the country’s social security agency, police and tax authorities — could no longer be guaranteed.

He advised users who wanted to be certain of secure communication with the government to use pen and paper.

The Dutch government took over management of DigiNotar, a subsidiary of Vasco Inc., which is based in Chicago, but kept the Web sites operating as it scrambled to find replacement security providers.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=88e348d07ffeb9988962d0e105c1c4cf

A Start-Up Matures, Working With AmEx

Then Facebook and Google borrowed the concept — and even the term check in. Analysts and users alike wondered if those Internet giants would squash Foursquare like a bug.

Thus far, it seems, Foursquare is holding its ground. The company said this week that it had hit 10 million registered users, though it would not say how many of those are active.

And on Thursday, Foursquare plans to introduce its largest partnership to date: a national deal with American Express to offer discounts to cardholders when they check in on their cellphone at certain shops and restaurants.

Foursquare users are accustomed to receiving awards in the form of coupons and digital merit badges. But more substantial deals like those being offered to American Express cardholders may bring Foursquare and other location-based services further into the mainstream.

These services have been slower to catch on among people who do not live in dense urban areas like Manhattan, where encounters with friends are often just a cab ride away.

In May, the Pew Research Center found that only 4 percent of American adults use such services to share their location. Companies like Foursquare are turning to deals as a way to make their offerings more appealing to those who may not want to meet up after work for a drink but would be interested in getting a deep discount on sneakers.

“In 2010, it was all about the check in,” said Noah Elkin, a mobile industry analyst with eMarketer, an advertising and marketing firm. “Now, it’s about checking out.”

Although Foursquare will not be receiving any revenue from the American Express deal, it says the promotion will help legitimize the company’s approach and will help attract other, more lucrative partnerships.

To start, American Express will offer deals at Sports Authority and the clothing retailer HM, along with a few restaurants in New York, like Union Square Cafe and the barbecue joint Blue Smoke. For example, shoppers who spend $75 at HM will receive a $10 credit to their American Express accounts. Those who spend $50 at Sports Authority will get a $20 reward.

Edward P. Gilligan, vice chairman of American Express, said the national rollout came after a test run in March at the South by Southwest music and technology conference. On average, those in the program spent 20 percent more than American Express cardholders who did not have access to the special deals, Mr. Gilligan said.

“We’ve always done marketing with merchants to make offers to our card members, like send offers through direct mail, put information about sales on the Internet,” he said. “But those response rates tend to be low.”

The test version of the Foursquare tie-up brought a “higher response rate than anything else we’re doing,” Mr. Gilligan said.

American Express also hopes that by pairing with a start-up that appeals to the hip and technologically skilled, it can appeal to a younger crowd.

“We don’t tend to skew under 35,” said Mr. Gilligan. “We hope this will help us stay relevant to younger customers.”

He said the company elected to team up with Foursquare instead of Google or Facebook because Foursquare already has a widely accepted loyalty system that rewards heavy users.

American Express may work with other companies in the future, Mr. Gilligan said, although he said he was confident that Foursquare would be the company’s focus for awhile. “The whole point is for us to find our customers where they are already active,” he said.

Dennis Crowley, the chief executive and one of the founders of Foursquare, attributed its continued momentum to its singular focus on location. “When people think about Facebook, they think about it as a place to send their friends messages or post updates, not necessarily as a place to check in,” he said. “We’re associated with one thing, location, and that really helps.”

He also said that the American Express partnership was a sign that Foursquare, which now has roughly $21 million from investors and more than 60 employees, was maturing. “We started out offering coupons for Tasti D-Lite and other smaller deals, and now we’re introducing deals to the millions that use American Express,” he said.

Foursquare is growing faster than similar start-ups. Gowalla, another check-in service based in Austin, Tex., has about one million users, while Loopt, a rival mobile location service, has more than five million.

Google says its Latitude service has 10 million users who were active in the last 30 days, though that includes people who used it on PCs.

Malorie Lucich, a spokeswoman at Facebook, declined to say how its location-based service, called Places, was faring. In the past, the company has said that more than 250 million people were using its mobile application, though it has not offered specifics about the location service.

Analysts say the ability of such services to offer shoppers customized deals will become more valuable as the daily deal and coupon market becomes ever more cluttered.

“If you look at LivingSocial and Groupon, they put out a lot of offers, but they are random,” said Madeline K. Aufseeser, a senior analyst at the Aite Group, a research and advisory firm focused on the financial services industry. “You might be a man and constantly getting offers from beauty services you don’t want.”

Partnerships like the American Express one, she said, will appeal to merchants because the pitches are aimed at those who will actually use them. In addition, businesses that work with Foursquare and American Express will be able to abandon paper coupons or even the need to scan their phone’s screen at a terminal. The rewards will be tallied behind the scenes with each swipe and tap.

“There’s a whole new industry evolving around delivering more sophisticated, geographic-based offers,” she said. “It’s only going to get a lot more powerful.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=76dee6eb302570a516dce779df46cebe