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Contentful, Out Today In Beta, Wants To Be The CMS For The Next Generation Of Screens
Contentful, a startup out of Berlin, is today releasing a beta of a platform that it hopes will be the future of how companies manage their content in a multi-screened world, where nearly any physical object has a shot at being a piece of “hardware.” It is also announcing a seed round of an undisclosed amount from Balderton and Zendesk backer Point Nine Ventures to help further that vision.
A lot of us in the publishing world have pondered over the last several years about the most efficient and flexible way of creating content that can be easily edited and redistributed. Initially that challenge applied to new printing systems; then to print and web; then print and web and mobile phones; and most recently to print and web and phones and tablets.
But Contentful is not aiming to be another contender in that business. “We don’t want to replace WordPress or other CMS’s which publish content on the Web,” CEO Sascha Konietzke tells me. “Instead, we’re providing a solution to publish to all the new platforms and devices, and specifically applications, which require new ways to deliver content.”
That is to say: Contentful is taking that concept for an ever-expanding set of mediums/screens and applying it to any piece of digital information. That includes allowing content to be delivered over iOS, Android, interactive HTML5 and JavaScript, in a “presentation-independent format” that will work on all the different screens that we know now — from phones to Google Glass, smartwatches and cars — to those that we haven’t even seen yet.
And like those publishing CMS systems that concern us journalist types, Contentful had a precedent: Thriveventures, the company behind Contentful, had originally developed a product called StorageRoom, which helped take content from digital files and make it something repurposable in mobile apps — a service that picked up some 1,000 customers.
StorageRoom is not taking new signups and current customers on that platform are getting migrated to Contentful, Konietzke tells me, as mobile apps become just merely one type of screen among the many that consumers will use today and in the future.
Contentful falls into that same category of services out there that help enterprises take advantage of all the advances in the world of tech, without necessarily needing to be engineers to do so. (In one of the more recent developments in that area, Intuit bought Elastic Intelligence to provide its SME customers with a platform to help them easily translate their cloud-based data into applications without the need for extra developers.)
On the Contentful platform as it stands today, Konietzke notes, “We provide the interface for editors to manage the content, and powerful APIs and SDKs for developers to load the content into their apps on any platform. It’s then completely up to the developers to use their tools and templating frameworks of choice to create the actual presentation layer. Especially agencies love this, as they can create really compelling experiences and are not restricted by any existing template system.” But he adds that this is evolving to become more self-service. “Currently we’re already talking with mobile app generators, so that we also have ways for our customers to manage content and to create applications without an external or in-house developer.”
Apart from the cost and convenience factors, Contentful also points to one possible solution for another pain point in the modern world of connected devices: fragmentation. If one platform can be used to seamlessly and automatically translate data into any number of endpoints, that could make questions of tailoring apps for different specs a moot point — a Rosetta Stone for data, as it were.
Roberto Bonanzinga, the partner at Balderton Capital that led the VC’s investment in Contentful, seems to also bank on that idea. “A revolution in content is happening right now; how it is managed and consumed is changing forever,” he notes in a statement. “Contentful embraces this transformation and I am excited to be working with Sascha and his exceptional team to become the engine behind the future of content.”
Contentful today is also announcing an advisory board of of big names that could point also to how it may be adopted and used longer term. The board includes Alexander Bruehl, former partner at Atlas Capital; Francesco Cesarini, Founder & Technical Director at Erlang Solutions; Daniel Heaf, Chief Digital Officer at BBC Worldwide; Karen McGrane, CEO of Bond Art + Science; Todd Tran, Head of Advertising EMEA & APAC at Rovio; and Michael Wolfe, serial entrepreneur and former EIR at Benchmark.
Light-Bot Teaches Computer Science With A Cute Little Robot And Some Symbol-Based Programming
Light-Bot has been around for a few years – it began as a Flash game in 2008 – but this never version has been rebuilt for iOS and Android and offers an easy way for kids to learn concepts like loops, if-then statements, and the like without typing or coding.
The creator, Daniel Yaroslavski, has been building games for seven years and is an undergrad at the University of Waterloo. He built the game with a $4,000 award from his school.
Previous versions of Light Bot have been played 7 million times and the apps are getting five star ratings on iTunes and the Play store. “Teachers in the US, Russia and more use the original light-bot games in their classrooms to introduce programming concepts as well,” said Yaroslavski.
“Other players in the programming education space provide softwares which use code and words to teach programming. This instead is a video game and in its nature more engaging and less obviously teaches computer science; masking concepts as game mechanics and focusing on programming logic rather than direct coding,” said Yaroslavski. The game began as a sort of Q-Bert-like game that let you send a little robot up and down a series of blocks. Later, Yaroslavski added more educational aspects including the need to use programming concepts to solve puzzles.
“It’s the perfect way to let kids experience programming without sitting them in front of a wall of text,” said Yaroslavski.
There are plenty of other games that aim to teach programming, life skills, and the like. However, Yaroslavski’s is unique because it’s made by a student and already has a solid following in the Flash gaming world. It’s a fun little way to get your learn on, to be sure, and it’s quite a bit like the original kids language, LOGO.
India Passes Japan To Become Third Largest Global Smartphone Market, After China & U.S.
India pushed past Japan to become the third largest global smartphone market in Q1, according to a new report by Strategy Analytics. The analyst notes it’s the first time ever that India has moved up into third place. The top two worldwide markets for smartphones remain China and the U.S.
Smartphone makers including Apple, Samsung and local Indian mobile maker Micromax (an Android OEM), are driving higher volumes in the country thanks to improved distribution networks, according to the analyst.
Strategy Analytics said India is growing four times faster than the global average,with 163% year on year growth across India in Q1, compared to worldwide smartphone volumes expanding 39%. It noted that India’s market is rising quicker than China (86% YoY), Japan (24% YoY), the US (19% YoY) — and “almost all other major countries”.
The rise of India as a smartphone powerhouse is not surprising — given its huge population, including a growing, wealthier middle class, and rising interest in owning consumer electronics — coupled with parallel smartphone saturation in developed markets such as Japan and Europe. Saturation in those mature markets means companies like Apple and Samsung have been shifting more attention to emerging markets to try to ensure they maintain their own growth.
Figures put out by analyst IDC yesterday suggest the mature Western European smartphone market shrank more than expected in Q1, with total shipments dropping 4.2% year on year to 43.6 million units. This European slowdown is having the biggest impact on Apple’s marketshare, with IDC noting that iOS continues to lose ground in the region, declining to 20% in Q1, down from 25% in the year ago quarter.
Although it’s losing share in Europe, Apple has been gaining in India. Back in March IDC noted Cupertino had jumped to second place for revenue share in India, taking a 15.6% share in Q4 last year, after getting smaller local retailers distributing its iPhones. Apple has also been offering amortized payment plans to help spread the upfront cost of buying its devices — to widen access to what remain premium priced products vs the Android-powered competition.
Although Samsung and Apple are among the “key brands” driving growth in India, Strategy Analytics said it’s domestic players rather than foreign firms which are growing fastest. It name checks Micromax, Karbonn and Spice (all Android OEMs) as three examples of homegrown mobile makers with a growth rate of between 200% and 500% on an annual basis.
The local market also has what it describes as an “extra long tail of Indian microvendors” — such as Lemon Mobile — that it says is surging at 1000%+ YoY. “They are almost all using Android software, which captured 89% share of the entire market in the quarter,” the analyst added.
Inadco Raises $11M As It Brings Its Lead Generation-Focused Ads To Search And Social
Advertising startup Inadco is announcing that it has raised $11 million in Series B funding.
The company has developed an advertising product called Form Ads, which are basically cost-per-lead ads that allow consumers to provide their basic information to an advertiser without having to leave the website or app that they’re visiting. When the company emerged from stealth two years ago, it was focused on display advertising. Founder and CEO James Walker told me that it has added search ads as well, with social coming soon.
Walker also noted that the ads now work across desktop and mobile, as you can see in the screenshot below.
Inadaco previously raised a $5 million Series A, as well as angel funding. The new round was led by US Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor Redpoint Ventures. USVP’s Paul Matteucci has joined Inadco’s board of directors.
“Digital advertising offers marketers lots of opportunities to generate demand, but very few solutions exist for marketers to capture that demand,” Matteucci said in the funding press release. “We invested in Inadco because their platform helps marketers identify consumers with intent and create native ad units that enable two-way communication and real-time data collection in a way that we’ve never seen before.”
You may have noticed the word “native” in that quote. Inadco launched before that became a big buzzword in the ad industry, but it now describes all of its ad formats as native — Walker said that’s because they’re always “integrated into the core user experience,” adding, “What’s cool about Inadco’s Form Ads is we take it a step further by enabling the consumer to complete their desired task without leaving the website or app they are visiting.”
The company is now working with “several hundred large, national advertisers,” Walker said, including ADP, Volkswagen, and 21st Century Auto Insurance.
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