TechCrunch
Study Finds 3D Printing Could Save The Average Home Up To $2,000 A Year
While I don’t have to remind you about the value of studies – many company-funded studies are best dropped directly in the trash after publication – this one about 3D printing does have some merit. Produced by the authors at Michigan Institute of Technology, it posits that at a home 3D printer can provide a return on investment of 200 to 40 percent and can save the average home up to $2,000 in avoided purchase costs.
Here’s the money shot:
Now obviously this is at once conservative and a bit of wishful thinking. While I, personally, have built a few hundred dollars worth of parts for various customers using MakeXYZ, I’ve yet to print more than a few dozen dollars worth of hardware for around the home including a new knob for our drier (upward estimate of $20), some hose clamps ($5), and a chess set for my son ($5). I don’t believe my Makerbot has paid for itself – yet – but there’s still next year.
The real ramifications of 3D printing, however, have little to do with cost savings. The authors note in their conclusion:
The potential implications of these results are i)expected rapid growth of distributed manufacturing using open-source 3-D printing, ii) large-scale adoption and shiftsto life-cycle thinking in consumption, iii) growth oflocalized cottage industries, and iv) a revitalization of hands-on engineering based education.
Their assessment is that 3D printers like the RepRap and other cheap, open source devices will change the way we manufacture, allowing little guys like me to help others make cool stuff. For example, the drone in the picture above has legs that I printed for a MakeXYZ user named Anthony. These legs, if purchased at a hobby shop, would probably cost far more than the $40 or so I charged him simply because of their scarcity and demand. It is this exchange – my time and plastic for a few of his dollars – that is at the heart of this equation and the fact that he was able to design and print his own hardware on my machine is amazing to me.
We will soon have home 3D printers. It’s inevitable. How much they save us, however, is still in question. What isn’t in question is how much they’ll change our relationship to manufacturing in the long run. That is the truly exciting aspect of this study.
Chirpify, A Service That Lets You Shop By Replying “Buy” On Social Media, Raises $6M Series A
Chirpify, a startup aiming to simplify online commerce by bringing it to the platforms where people congregate, like Twitter, and more recently, Facebook, and Instagram, has raised $6 million in Series A funding. Previous investor Voyager Capital contributed $2 million to the round, while the remaining came from new investors Saturn Venture Partners, Provenance Ventures, as well as angels Idan Ravin (who has connections with NBA stars), Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, David Cohen (former Interscope Geffen A&M Vice Chairman), and others.
The company had closed on the $2 million in Series A from Voyager this April, so this is an extension of that earlier raise. To date, Chirpify has raised $7.3 million.
As you may have guessed by the line-up of angels, the company went after strategic investors it believes can help it reach the markets it wants to target, including sports, music and media. Specifically, the plan is to introduce a means to use Chirpify’s technology for live events and TV-based conversions over the next few months.
It’s still the early stages for this business, which, though it has investor interest, still has a competitive landscape to overcome and needs to prove user adoption. There are several other “in stream” payment solutions on the market today, including Soldsie, which is currently focused on Facebook, as well as more direct competitors like Ribbon and Gumroad. In other words, it no longer matters who invented this concept of replying “buy” to make a purchase on social media channels – it only matters now who can execute it best, and can expand its footprint the most quickly.
In Chirpify’s case, the company touts that it’s adding over 300 new users per day, and has a 4 percent conversion rate. It has worked with clients including Adidas, MasterCard, the Portland Trailblazers, Taco Bell, Green Day and Snoop Dogg.
Like the others in its space, the startup generates revenue through a percentage of the transaction (5 percent) plus a pre-transaction fee ($0.30). For comparison, Ribbon is 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, and Gumroad is 5 percent plus 25 cents. Chirpify lowers its rate to 2.9 percent for enterprise customers, however, who can also set up branded web stores, utilize promo codes, run giveaways, integrate the service with their e-commerce site, receive upgraded support, and more.
In addition to enabling mobile commerce, Chirpify’s technology also works for fundraising efforts and collecting donations through social media.
To use the service, a company or organization tweets or posts their call to action (e.g. to purchase this item, reply “buy” or “gimmie”) and provides a link. The first time a customer signs up with Chirpify, they have to enter in their payment information including their PayPal info, credit card or debit card details. But afterwards, they can begin to transact just by responding to a social media post with the keyword trigger specified.
The larger goal here – and with the forthcoming live event and TV efforts – is to expand e-commerce to new areas where, typically, people did not regularly transact or shop using their computers or phones. Of course, in terms of targeting mobile users, Chirpify will also go up against the ubiquitous short code (you know, text “keyword” to “####”) – a process that is easier for first-time customers, but fails to establish an account which can later be used elsewhere across the web.
At the end of the day, Chirpify and others in market, have an interesting idea in that shopping is no longer something that takes place only on destination websites or seller marketplaces – and that merchants need to figure out how to move into social media since that’s where today’s users spend a majority of their time, especially on mobile.
But sometimes these startups also feel like they would work better for end users if they were a part of something bigger – like a PayPal or Google Wallet, for example. Then, not only would the larger companies be onboarding new users who are just starting to shop via their first computers (their phones) for the first time, they could then also establish accounts for those users which would work on the wider web including outside of social media, as well as within native apps, and even at point-of-sale in the real world.
Facebook Shares Open At $38.22, Finally Return To IPO Price After A Year Of Turmoil
Facebook shares (NASDAQ:FB) finally broke the psychological glass ceiling of $38 a share, Facebook’s IPO price. Currently trading at $38.22 a share, the stock is slightly up 1.52 percent compared to yesterday’s closing price — it opened at $37.98 but raised above $38 in seconds. It has been a tumultuous year for the stock, but investors now seem to be satisfied with Facebook’s solid growth and its revenue on mobile.
Today marks the end of Facebook’s hesitant steps to become a mature public company. At first, CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t communicate a lot and the company was mostly focused on building a better product. While it was something important to do to bring more users on board, it wasn’t enough to convince investors about long-term revenue. Building a public company demands a lot of communication efforts.
Many were concerned that Facebook wouldn’t be able to become a mobile-first company, but Zuckerberg insisted that it was his primary concern at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012. It drove the stock up that day.
But more importantly, the company managed to bring more revenue and shift to mobile at the same time. It reported impressive Q2 earnings, with mobile ad revenue now representing 41 percent of the total ad revenue.
Facebook’s IPO price was $38 a share when the company started trading in May 2012. But in August 2012, the stock fell to its lowest price for now, $19.69, as the initial lockup expiration of 271 million shares kicked in. Early investors Accel Partners, Meritech Capital Partners and Greylock Partners all cashed in. Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft and Kleiner Perkins chose to stay on board.
Zuckerberg had to tell investors that he wouldn’t cash in on his shares to reassure investors that the stock wouldn’t drop below those levels.
Yet, other lockup expirations were more favorable for the company. On October 24, shares popped more than 22 percent in the wake of good earnings. But the first employee lockup expiration led to a smaller 5 percent hit, followed by a few days of downturn for Facebook shares.
On November 14, the biggest lockup expiration occurred and shares popped more than 10 percent, marking the end of the hectic days of Facebook stock price.
But since then, shares have been trading slightly above $30 or slightly below $30. Shares have been up only very recently, after its earnings call and great mobile numbers. Shares could still rise above $40 in the coming days or stabilize at this level, but the current trend is encouraging.
Developing…
(Image credit: Emmanuel Huybrechts)
Google To Supply Free Wi-Fi Hotspots For All 7,000 U.S. Starbucks Locations
Google has just announced via a blog post that it will be offering free, faster Wi-Fi hotspots at all U.S. company-operated Starbucks locations, which will get up and running sometime within the next 18 months. Google says that its speeds should beat the existing hotspots at the coffee shops by at least 10x, and in Google Fiber cities like Kansas, that should jump to a 100-fold boost.
The first Starbucks Wi-Fi hotspots will start rolling out in August, so there’s not long to wait. The way to tell if your location is switched over will be looking for a “Google Starbuck” network SSID name from your device. Google has already rolled out free Wi-Fi access in the Mountain View community surrounding its HQ, and has partnered with Boingo in the past to offer free access at a variety of locations. Recently, it also offered San Francisco a considerable sum to set up free access in public spaces, with a rollout planned for completion in April, 2014 pending approvals.
Google replaces AT&T as the supplier of Wi-Fi at U.S. Starbucks company-owned stores, so it’ll be interesting to see what the result of this new deal has on that company and that partnership.
Microsoft Office Arrives On Android Smartphones For Office 365 Subscribers
Microsoft released the long-awaited iPhone version of its Office productivity suite recently, and now it’s showing that it’s not picky about platforms with the Android version, out now. Office for Android is smartphone-only, just like how Office for iPhone doesn’t come with an iPad version, and it’s also limited to Office 365 subscribers, but if you satisfy both those conditions, you can get making those PowerPoints, Word docs and Excel spreadsheets now.
The app itself is free, as was the iOS version, but Office 365 subscriptions are a must-have for anyone who actually wants to start being productive with said app. Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity suite, and costs either $99 per year or $10 per month depending on your commitment term for home users, with different business pricing available.
There is little difference here between the iOS and Android versions of the app, and all indications are that Microsoft is doing its best to make the experience as cohesive as possible across platforms. The lack of a tablet-optimized version is somewhat disappointing, but also not surprising: Microsoft pushes the Office aspect of its Windows 8 OS and Surface devices hard, positioning that as a key productive differentiator between its devices and those on competing platforms.
The mobile apps appear to be essentially Microsoft offering up table stakes for a modern mobile productivity app, and a way to add incentive to its cloud subscription packages. As more productivity suite work goes cloud-based, and more users go mobile, MS can’t pretend that ignoring Android and IOS is a viable business strategy any longer, and these apps are proof.
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