There is a revolution in being able to hold something as fluid, advanced and convenient as the iPad while comfortably leaning back in your chair versus hunching over to use a laptop.  The iPad represents a new computing space.  A space that has been created by our rapidly progressing content consumption trajectory coupled with the inadequacy and discomfort of using the iPhone or laptop in all circumstances.  This dynamic has created the need for a device that will keep us connected, consuming, working and playing in more as well as new capacities.  If you don’t have that need yet, you will eventually, because your busy lives will drag it into being sooner or later.

Here are five reasons why the iPad will penetrate and create a new computing space.

Better Vehicle For Multi-Media Content Consumption

The portability, ease and beautiful display of the iPad make conducive for better consumption of multi-media content in casual settings. Nothing else comes close.  You can’t do it with the iPhone and you won’t (or don’t want to) do it with the laptop.

Practical, Functional, Intelligent Portability

Its unique sense of portability will penetrate key spaces, such as doctors offices, restaurants, the workplace, your home, etc — because it works, its cool and you can carry it with just one hand.  Imagine a waiter taking your order at a neat new restaurant.  That kind of penetration.

Better Than the Kindle

For the digital book reading market, it simply annihilates any other product — by miles.

Innovative Apps

The applications will soon arrive and they will leverage the fact that the iPad is mobile yet large enough to offer serious computing– a brand new dynamic.  New and existing tasks will migrate from laptop and iPhone computing to the iPad.  Imagine leaning back in your couch and flipping through a digital magazine or a new picture album.  The iPad offers a better experience for those simple acts.

Its Cool

There is something magical about holding and manipulating the Internet and various kinds of content in your hand in the way the iPad offers.  The hardware is practically non existent — feeling as if you are interacting with the application and content directly.  No mouse, no keyboard, no monitor, no wires, nothing.  Pretty cool.

On a macro level the iPad is not meant to replace the laptop or the iPhone. It is made for a new space. The casual, travel, leisure space where you can’t consume content via the iPhone and you won’t bother with a clunky laptop. The first generation has a lot of growth to do such as 3g (soon to arrive), a camera (coming), flash video (solution coming) and other features that will be added in over time. However, when the price drops and the features are there it will simply make sense to get one.

On a micro level, if you’ve formed your opinion without having held or used one — Go and hold one first.

I’m excited to announce that about 3AM PST this morning Reply.com successfully filed for its much anticipated 2010 IPO.

SAN RAMON, CA – February 22, 2010 – Reply! Inc. today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock.

Jefferies & Company, Inc. and Piper Jaffray & Co. will act as joint book-running managers for the offering with Needham & Company, LLC and ThinkEquity LLC acting as co-managers. The shares of common stock to be sold in this offering are proposed to be sold by Reply! and certain of Reply!’s stockholders.  The number of shares to be sold in the proposed offering and the offering price have not yet been determined.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities, in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. A written preliminary prospectus related to the offering may be obtained, when available, from the prospectus department of:

• Jefferies & Company, Inc., Equity Syndicate Middle Office, Attn: Stephen M. Ficara, 520 Madison Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10022 (telephone: 212-284-3418/email: sficara@jefferies.com); or
• Piper Jaffray & Co., Prospectus Department, 800 Nicollet Mall, Suite 800, Minneapolis, MN, 55402 (telephone: 800-747-3924/email: prospectus@pjc.com).

About Reply! Inc.

Reply.com operates a proprietary auction marketplace that enables advertisers to acquire locally-targeted and category-specific customer prospects on a cost-per-Enhanced Click™ or cost-per-lead basis. By eliminating the need for advertisers to develop and maintain complex, expensive online marketing infrastructures and teams of experts to source online consumer traffic from many different channels, Reply.com simplifies online locally-targeted marketing for businesses of all sizes.

Coverage :

TechCrunch - Reply.com Files For $60 Million IPO

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on Tuesday has left the island nation in complete and utter devastation with death tolls rising to a predicted 100,000.  One of the worst disasters ever seen.

Haiti needs help from everyone and the Red Cross backed by the US State Department have launched a simple viral text message based fundraising initiative to allow everybody to deliver some help to Haiti.  Simply text “Haiti” to 90999 from your phone to donate $10 to the relief effort underway.  The initiative has already raised over $1,000,000 from individuals but is still massively under equipped against the stagering harm.

Your $10 donation is a true testament to the human spirit and will go a long way in providing food, water and shelter to innocent men, women and children displaced by this catastrophe.

The Web has evolved.  It used to be a place where people came to just search for simple information.  Now it’s a place where people come to also share information.  Information today that is multi-media and more complex.  Information today that is real-time and social – recommended by people who know, and people you know.  I refer to this new place as “The Living Web” and recently our team at LeapFish debuted the web’s new search engine made to navigate this new living web.  You can find the press release here :  LeapFish Unveils Real-Time Social Search Engine that Captures the Living Web

VIDEO: LeapFish - Living the Web

Although there are many ways to search and share information, the current experience is fragmented, ineffective, and ultimately inefficient.  On the search side, there are a growing number of disconnected sites for traditional search, niche interests, audio, video, imagery and more.  On the sharing side, there is a universe of segregated social networks, blogs, real-time content, multi-media portals and more.  This growing disconnection and segregation is the challenge that LeapFish has embraced.  By providing a single, connected, multi-media experience for both searching and sharing traditional and real-time content, the new web will be easier to find and easier to share.  Take a look at this video that sums up the challenge that the web and consumers face today.

VIDEO: LeapFish - How it Works

LeapFish benefits everyone online.  Existing portals and services will benefit from a new found search integration that offers them more user engagement and stage time.  Consumers will benefit with access to more of the information the new web has to offer, that was previously tucked away in pages 5, 6, etc of traditional engines.   But most of all, it benefits you the consumer, those living the web by searching and sharing the freshest, most relevant and most interesting content available anywhere.  Take a look at this video to learn more about how the new web is being brought in to one place with LeapFish.

You’ve evolved, the web has evolved, and LeapFish believes its time the search experience evolves too.

Here are four ways LeapFish has helped evolve search :

Real-Time Search Engine : A fresh multi-media real-time search engine capturing results from all containers of real-time content (e.g., Twitter,YouTube, Twitpic, Flickr).

Searching and Sharing : Easy and convenient sharing features empower users to merge traditional content into the social and real-time Web as they search and find content anywhere online (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Digg).

Variety of the Web : Delivering rich multi-media content from the deep and wide new Web via integration of leading authorities in website aggregation, videos, images, news, blogs, tweets and much more on every search query (e.g., YouTube, CNN, Twitter).

Personal Internet Dashboard :  Technically advanced customizable personal homepage allowing consumers to build their own dashboard to the Internet by adding multiple news feeds, blogs, applications, tools and more (e.g., Facebook Application, Twitter Application, Mashable Feed)

If you don’t understand why the Real Time Web is huge, you will soon.

Thanks to micro-blogging sites like Twitter, a constant stream of human-posted content has infiltrated the Web. This growing infiltration has created a bottoms up approach to content creation that via the progressive support of rapidly developing applications has and will continue to empower every individual to co-create what is deemed as “important” on the Web. The Real Time Web serves as both the database that informs us of what is happening right “Now” and the human touch to the content that will compete with the traditional algorithms for what is deemed as “valuable” content to us all.

Its challenges lie in the filtration and mass integration of both the content and the act of sharing to the Real Time Web. There remain major aspects of the Web that have not yet integrated “searching” and “sharing” of the Real Time Web, including traditional search. But as filtration and integration progress the Web will take the form of a living breathing database.

Here are 5 reasons why Real Time Search will help the Real Time movement change the Web and your experience forever.

1. The “Now” Factor

We saw it with Michael Jackson’s passing. We saw it with the Iran Protests and we see it more and more everyday – the Real Time web provides us with what is happening right “Now” and with vivid detail from around the globe. “We” is driving the “Now” factor.

2. We Become Co-Creators

The Real-Time web offers us the ability to become co-creators in not only content but also in what is deemed important. Why? Because we decide what is worth sharing, discussing and having opinions on. This behavior serves as a natural selection of valuable content. Certainly the current web allows for creation of content, but what is deemed as important/valuable is mostly left up to a few individuals, organizations and a bunch of robots. The Real-Time web, once fully integrated, will change that.

3. Humans vs Machines

Have you ever clicked on blue links that lead you to a piece of content dating back to a year ago? Search results lose relevancy each day due to the amount of new content hitting the internet. Spiders, web crawlers and engines decide what content is relevant via algorithms and those results can be manipulated via intelligently structured content (SEO). Real-time search enables users to receive information via conversations and people instead of machines. Take a look at your web results today. Would you rather receive cold content determined by algorithms or what the crowd and people value as good and bad?

4. Facebook Factor

With over 300 million users creating and wrapping themselves around content, once Facebook opens up its search API to the web what do you think will happen? Better yet do you think there is value in being able to search a database of 300 million users’ opinions and experiences? Searching Facebook may be the factor that tips the overall experience of the web into one that is very different than today. Facebook may be the tipping point to where bottoms up (sharing & contributing) will go head to head with tops down (crawling & optimizing).

5. A New Breed of Search Engines

If there existed a search engine that was capable of aggregating and rendering results based on what was shared, peoples opinions and conversations, would you be interested in that search engine? If you knew that there were 6 conversations that provided a fantastic account of a design firm you were considering would that be more valuable to you than the top 3 links on your current search engine results? Would you have more value for SEO based search results or human conversation driven results? How about both? Real-Time search, once developed, will render a new breed of search engines that will capture this new value the New Web has to offer.

At the moment, Real Time Search is only in its infancy, as is the Real Time web. Twitter and the like are simply representations of a big movement that will continue to occur with the creation of more similar services, more adoption of those services and more integration of those services.

What is clear is that our daily use of the Real Time Web’s driving platforms — Twitter, Facebook and the like — is unprecedented. The Internet is no longer simply just a disconnected 3^rd party container of tops down aggregation, “We” is now part of its determination. And, search as we know it will soon change to accommodate, thereby delivering a completely different experience of the Web.

]]> http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/10/23/real-time-search-we-will-change-the-web/feed/ 24 http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/09/04/replycom-marketplace-growt/ http://www.benbehrouzi.org/2009/09/04/replycom-marketplace-growt/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:01:42 +0000 Ben Behrouzi http://www.benbehrouzi.org/?p=507

Reply.com lifts Beta off its locally-targeted online marketing platform as it posts enhanced features and significant profits.  In the face of a struggling economy, Reply.com has posted over 50 percent revenue growth in the Automotive and Real Estate categories and significant profits over the last several quarters.

Reply! Homepage

Since its founding in 2001, Reply! has been a leader in pioneering locally targeted online marketing, including lead generation, in Real Estate, Automotive, Lending and Home Improvement, driving multi-million annual revenues and profits.  Its Enhanced Click(TM) and Per-Lead Marketplace combined with its state of the art technology infrastructure have led to rapid category deployment, precision live auction bidding and significant recent growth.

Reply.com eliminates the need for complex and expensive online marketing infrastructures and empowers businesses with the ability to purchase category specific Clicks and Leads from their local area as easy as purchasing raw clicks from Google.

To learn more about the Reply! Marketplace and setup an account for your business, visit www.reply.com

A few weeks ago I was honored to accept recognition as a Top 40 Under 40 Entreprenuer by Silicon Valley Business Journal.  Although I’m not yet near my forties, it was great to receive the recognition and participate in a celebration of innovation with so many other CEOs from the valley.

It was truly a privilege to meet and greet with 2009’s class of innovators including Marissa Mayer of Google, Michael Madison of Cocoon Ventures and many others.  The honorees spanned across an array of industries and arenas including venture capital, social networking, finance and more in public, private and nonprofit sectors.

The celebration was a lot of fun.  Here is a video of the event and some of the honorees.

40 Under 40 Awards – Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Over many years and with many trials and tribulations in both business and in my personal life, I have been convinced that in this world there are 2 types of people; those that build and those that destroy. Those that build embody the positive spirits of creativity, love and creating value. While, those that destroy embody the weaknesses of hatred, ego and laziness. The differences are that one group produces, is generous and thinks in terms of “we”. While the other group clings, criticizes and destroys in order to feed the basest of human qualities and advance the “self” at the cost of producers.

Unfortunately all sorts of prices are paid by those that produce, in business, in personal and in health. But in my opinion the worst price that could ever be paid would be to allow for those that destroy to change a producer into a destroyer. I recently received a simple email that speaks to this and I thought I’d share. Produce anyway.

“People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.”

The May 2009 Flip Mino Random Giveaway is now officially complete and the winner has been selected!  

A big thank you to all the contestants and participants!  Thank you for all the great tweets, follows and fun comments.  So who’s the lucky winner?

@808Kimo

You Are The Lucky Winner of A Flip Mino!

Send James Giffard a Congratulations Tweet!  Congratulations James, you are the Flip Mino HD Winner!  

Once again, a big thank you to all the participants and friends!