Fall DEMO’09: Social Media, B2B, and Chris Shipley’s Victory Dance

by Annette Giambroni

Earlier this week, we launched Z-Commerce for Media at Fall DEMO’09 in San Diego. We were really excited to see this event growing in size despite the economy. As always, there was a real palpable energy and buzz about the place and we were honored to be asked back, following our launch at DEMO in the Spring.

We’re busy following up on connections made, press coverage, and internal de-briefs – but before we move on to the next big thing, we’d like to share our observations and thoughts with you.

First of all, we were thrilled to see such a strong focus on business models and whether or not the presenters could turn a great idea into a viable business. I guess it’s a sign of the times, but following the tweets, it was obvious that people were more interested in how presenters would monetize their offering than in seeing cool technology.

Some of our favorite presenters included Webroot, Liaise (a super friendly bunch of Aussies who won the Enterprise People’s Choice Award and $500k in IDG advertising), LeapFILE (great group of people who offer a secure file transfer service), Rumbafish, Pinyadda, and TwirlTV just to name a few. Not surprisingly, there was a heavy focus on social media and crowdsourcing, but we were a little shocked that Zuora was one of few enterprise, B2B apps.

Despite the heavy focus on consumer technologies, quite a few of the Lifetime Achievement Awards went to B2B vendors such as Marc Benioff, Founder and Chairman of salesforce.com and an early Zuora investor; as well WebEx, Adobe Systems, and Google. With our own founders coming from salesforce.com and WebEx, we certainly hope to follow in their footsteps!

Finally, we were sad to see Chris Shipley hand over the reins to Matt Marshall, but getting to watch her victory dance was well worth the hefty show price tag.

Zuora Launches First Online Commerce Platform for Publishers at DEMO09

by K. V. Rao

Today, we’re in San Diego at DEMO09, where established vendors and start-ups alike come to launch their wares to a panel of journalists, VCs, technologists, and thought leaders. We’re here to launch our latest offering, Z-Commerce for Media. Why Media, why now, you ask?

The publishing industry has struggled with the transition to the online world. While technology vendors successfully made the transition to SaaS and subscriptions, publishers opted for ad-supported and classified revenue models, giving away their content for free. As print circulation numbers continue to fall, and advertising and classified revenues drop, the media industry is struggling to stay afloat. We’ve recently seen household names like Readers’ Digest file for bankruptcy and the San Jose Mercury News print a ‘frank talk’ with readers about their financial woes, which begs the question, could the San Francisco Chronicle or the Boston Globe be next?

We at Zuora can’t imagine a world without a thriving free press. We believe that professional journalism is the cornerstone of democracy, so it’s time to do something to save this critical industry.

In order to survive, publishers must find new and better ways to monetize their online content. Rupert Murdoch and Barry Diller have already challenged their organizations to move away from free content. But what is the right business model? Is it monthly all-or-nothing access like the Wall Street Journal or a metered approach like the Financial Times? Is it pre-paid accounts and micropayments? Or something more nuanced like targeted premium packages for specific interests? The truth is, no one knows what pricing model will work best, so publishers need to start experimenting with bundles and packages quickly.

But media companies are going to need a flexible platform to create the right bundles for the right subscribers. As other subscription businesses have learned, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t maximize revenue, and over time they’ll need to package content to attract different market segments. But where is the platform to enable them to launch and test new products, manage invoicing, and collect recurring revenue? A lot of vendors, including Google, are talking about plans to offer products to help the media industry, but it will take time for them to actually build something. In an interesting side note, just last week Google’s CEO criticized News Corp’s plan to charge for content on all of their sites, saying that “there are enough free sources” of general news.

That’s where Z-Commerce for Media comes in. Zuora built the de-facto subscription platform for the SaaS and cloud computing industry that’s already being used by over 100 companies; and we think that this same technology can be applied to media. Z-Commerce for MediaTM is the first online commerce platform for publishers to (a) price, package, and publish content bundles online, (b) to register and manage new and repeat subscribers and their entitlements, (c) and to streamline the entire billing and payment operations processes.

What’s more – we’re already working with online publisher GigaOM and Reed Business Information, Europe’s biggest online and offline publisher – to manage their subscription billing and payment operations.

I’m excited that Zuora has chosen the media industry for our first industry solution, and look forward to helping publishers successfully make the transition to the subscription economy.

Want more information? Read the full Z-Commerce for Media press release and watch Zuora’s live presentation at DEMO09 at 11:30am PT tomorrow.

We’ll be blogging and tweeting from the show floor, so stay tuned!

Facebook Developers Make Money Through Subscriptions Thanks to Zuora’s Cloud Commerce Platform

by Erik Haus

Zuora’s Launch at DEMO 2009 was a huge success! First and foremost, we launched our latest product,

a really simple solution for Facebook developers looking for a better way to make money. Advertising and one-time purchases aren’t ideal for certain applications, but until now it was too difficult to offer subscription-based applications. But Z-Commerce for Facebook gives developers the tools they need to do just that –

• A subscription console,
• Plug-and-play commerce widgets,
• Access control API,
• User self-service subscription management.

Developers can now transform their applications into subscription based services with only a few lines of code.

Second, DEMO provided us with a great environment to spread the word out about Z-Commerce for Facebook. And judging by the great response we’ve had so far in the press, it seems that we’re doing something right.

Last, and most importantly, we were able to reach Facebook developers themselves. In addition to launching our product, we have also announced our "Subscribe, Don’t Advertise" contest. We are seeking innovative developers who want to turn their existing applications into subscription services with Z-Commerce for Facebook. We’ll select five winners, with each winning a free year of Z-Commerce for Facebook. The universe of possibilities of what you can do with Facebook applications just exploded.

I think Charles Cooper from CNET summed it up best, noting that Z-Commerce for Facebook makes Facebook a cloud computing platform ripe for innovation. If you’re a developer with a great idea for Facebook and need a better way to monetize, enter our contest!

What I learned from DEMO 09

by Annette Giambroni

Here are the top three things I learned at DEMO 09:

1) Twitter is truly viral - I was able to promote Zuora's Z-Commerce for Facebook – a subscription commerce engine for Facebook - in minutes with little effort. I was amazed at how members of the press who are hard to tackle for an interview will gladly follow my postings on Twitter. Be sure to follow Zuora news at http://twitter.com/Annette_G.

2) Zuora's Z-Commerce for Facebook is not like anything else at DEMO. Most of the demonstrators had really cool products like GagaPost's Blogging product or Gwabbit's email management system...but as cool as the products are, I had a hard time understanding how these companies are going to make any money? Sounds like a job for Zuora's flagship recurring billing product Z-Billing.

3) Tien really knows how to incite hallway conversations at DEMO. Everyone was asking..."Who would use Z-Commerce for Facebook? Are there any Facebook applications worth paying for?” But then they started to catch on...It's sort of the chicken and the egg scenario -- Zuora is providing the chicken, and betting that it will hatch the egg. I think Tien said it best in an interview with ReadWriteWeb where he gives some great examples of apps we here at Zuora would pay for.

Check it out and let us know what you would pay for on Facebook, if only someone had the courage to build it...we want to hear from you!

Monetize Facebook Apps with Z-Commerce for Facebook: Subscribe, Don’t Advertise

by Tien Tzuo

This week, we’re in Palm Springs at the DEMO 2009 event to launch our latest product, Z-Commerce for Facebook and our first developer contest, ‘Subscribe, Don’t Advertise.’ What’s it all about? First, some context:

Today, there are over 660,000 Facebook developers who collectively have built over 52,000 applications, and are adding 140 new applications every day. As impressive as these numbers are – the fact remains that, with a few exceptions, Facebook developers are not making any money.

Today, Facebook developers rely primarily on advertising to generate cash – and we all know that ads just don’t work. Think about it – do you click on ads in Gmail?....I didn’t think so.

But, what if Facebook developers had another choice? What if it was easy for them to sell their applications as monthly fees, quarterly fees, or even, crazy as it sounds, based on how much the application is used. This idea really got us thinking (and you know how we feel about subscriptions).

At Zuora, we imagine a world where every Facebook user pays some developer one dollar, per month, for some application that they found valuable. That’s 2 billion dollars a year that Facebook developers could be making.

That’s the world that is now possible, with our new Z-Commerce for Facebook. We’re so excited about this concept that we’ve also launched our first developer contest named ‘Subscribe, Don’t Advertise.’ We’re looking for five Facebook developers to be the very first to build a subscription-based application with Z-Commerce for Facebook.

All developers are encouraged to apply. Selected developers will receive free access to Z-Commerce for Facebook for one year.

More information about the product and the contest is available here: http://developer.zuora.com/facebook.

You can watch our presentation live at 9.30am on February March 2nd.

And, we’ll be posting videos and pictures from our on-stage presentation at DEMO 2009. Stay tuned!

The Business Cloud: Powered by the Z-Commerce Platform

by Tien Tzuo

We're starting off 2009 with a bang.

Today, we are launching our fourth and – in my opinion – our most important product to date: the Z-Commerce Platform. Following up on our Z-Billing, Z-Payments and Z-Force offerings, the Z-Commerce Platform is the very first development environment dedicated to helping developers monetize their cloud-based services.

Why did we do this now?

The 'Cloud Wars' are upon us – Microsoft, salesforce.com, Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, you name it – these companies are duking it out for ownership of the cloud. In the same way that Java, .NET, PHP and other languages fought for the hearts and minds of developers ten years ago, in 2009, we're going to see developers identify with major cloud platforms such as Force.com, AppEngine, AWS or Azure.

However, as exciting as this vision is, it's missing one big thing: how will these developers monetize all these services they build for the cloud? How will they get paid? Without a commerce component to fuel its growth, cloud computing cannot fulfill its true potential.

What developers need is a Business Cloud -- any easy way to add commerce capabilities such as subscription billing and recurring payments to the services they are building, and they need it in the same way that they use services from Amazon, or Google, or Force.com.

That's where the Z-Commerce Platform comes in.

The Z-Commerce Platform is the first example of the Business Cloud -- a set of cloud-based services dedicated to giving developers the tools they need to monetize the services they are building on cloud platforms.

You can learn more about the Z-Commerce Platform and get involved in the Z-Developer Network.

2009 is indeed shaping up to be the Year of the Cloud, and we are ready…