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Source:TechCrunch

Instead of dwelling on whether an economic apocalypse is about to loom upon us, some startups are plugging away at improving their products. Israeli Kampyle is a case-in-point. Today the company is extending its feedback analytics platform from websites to client software—with a specific focus on the installation process, a major pain point for client applications.

Most software client application installations have high abandonment rates. There’s no shortage of reasons for users to abort the installation process, these include: slow/heavy downloads, too many steps, security concerns, lack of information, and too many ads. Speaking to customers, Kampyle learned that the aborts leave companies with many assumptions, but few conclusions. Sure, many companies trigger uninstall feedback forms when the user abruptly ends the installation, but it seems—at least from what Kampyle has learned—companies find it difficult to translate the collected information to actionable items.Source:TechCrunch

Tech stocks continue to get creamed this morning, led by Google, whose stock is now officially a dropping knife (i.e., good luck catching it). Shares are down 5 percent so far today to about $353 (at one point they dipped as low as $350. That’s more than a $50 drop since Friday and the lowest the stock has traded since March, 2006. The question on investor’s minds: How low can it go?

Even though Google is the best positioned Internet (or media) company to weather a slowdown in advertising spending, analysts have started cutting back their earnings estimates for the company. As for overall ad spending, Barclays Capital is trimming its estimates for both overall and Internet ad spending. Total ad spending in the U.S. (including cable and broadcast TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, Yellow Pages, direct mail, Internet, and outdoor) it forecasts will decline 3.6 percent this year to $284 billion and then another 5.5 percent in 2009 to $269 billion. Of that total, Barclays is still estimating that Internet ad spending will grow 17 percent to $24.8 billion in 2008. But that represents a $1.4 billion haircut from its previous 2008 estimate of $26.2 billion. (It expects 2009 Internet ad spending to grow another 14 percent to $28.3 billion).

Although search advertising is most likely to hold up in the coming advertising recession, it’s growth rate is expected to slow down. Nevertheless, display advertising is expected to get the worst of it, which means less growth for Google’s DoubleClick business, but should hurt Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft more. That’s why some analysts are still bullish on Google. In a note today, Barclays Doug Anmuth writes:Source:TechCrunch

It seems that Microsoft’s SLPS, a programming suite for adding licensing and demo functionality to your .NET based software, is closed, adding a whiff of mystery to the down-turn. Could they have taken it out back and shot it?

The service is currently not accepting new orders - at least as of last night - so either there is an upgrade afoot or Microsoft is paring back some of their less popular business units. Companies like Nalperion and CryptKey are obviously ready to step into the vacuum left by Redmond.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.