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The SDK and the success of the App Store have combined to create an emerging professional category, that of iPhone application developer.

According to oDesk, a technology outsourcer billing itself as the “leading marketplace and global IT platform for outsourcing technology jobs to certified, freelance, Apple iPhone developers”, demand has risen for iPhone-related positions from 30 to upwards of 140 jobs per month over the past six months.

While the numbers are drawn from internal oDesk records only, such a steep increase is unlikely to be an isolated phenomenon. Nor is oDesk’s sample pool a limited one, since they have representation in over 100 countries worldwide, including major markets like the U.S. and China.

Though some of the growth followed immediately after the announcement of the iPhone SDK availability, the most significant growth came after last July, when the App Store officially opened for business. No doubt the impressive download numbers that continue to come out of Cupertino are beginning to catch the attention of the wait-and-see corporate crowd.

via Demand for iPhone Developers Up 500% – TheAppleBlog .

It is extremely difficult to put accurate financial values on blogs. Almost all of them are private companies.  Some do raise VC money and those sums can be used as guidelines if and when they are disclosed. Like many content businesses, the only worthwhile value is what an acquirer will pay.  At least two blogs from last year’s 24/7 Wall St. list were sold—Ars Technica and PaidContent., both very near the valuations we gave them. This year’s list does not include blogs which are part of larger companies because the traffic of these properties is almost never broken out. Blogs which are used as fronts for other businesses have also been excluded. Blogs that do not have revenue are also excluded.  For instance, “The Daily Beast”, a large news commentary site, does not take advertising or sell products. In theory, it has little if any economic value at all.

Because of the depressed economy, 24/7 Wall St. has brought down the multiples that it assigned to blog revenue and operating profits, when there are any, by about 50% from last year. Large public companies have been writing down the value of media and content assets over the last several quarters and private content site values have certainly suffered from the same drop in value. The prices being paid for online media and is almost certainly dropping sharply. Perhaps most importantly, shares of most of the large media companies are off by a half to two-thirds from their 52-week highs.

To determine value, 24/7 Wall St. looked at unique visitor and pageviews information from several public sources including Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, and comScore. These services are often criticized for estimating website traffic too low and we have taken that into account to the extent possible. We also looked at audience measurements provided by the blogs themselves when it seemed credible. Our estimated CPMs for ads are based on the current display and text ad environment, the quality of ads at each blog, and the number of ads that it runs on the average pages. The CPM value assigned to each blog is based on all of the ads it runs on its typical pages. To determine margins, 24/7 looked at headcount when available, and estimated costs of operating and maintaining websites. More complex content platforms where assigned higher monthly costs. Current audience growth rates were taken into account.  A site which has traffic doubling year-over-year was given a higher multiple than one which is losing traffic.  Because not all blogs make money, multiples of revenue and operating income were used to assess value.

Large blogs with big “moats” got higher multiple that smaller ones. Recreating Huffington Post or TechCrunch would be extremely difficult, especially in a recession. Blogs with one founder who does most of the writing were given lower multiple because the presence of that single person is essential to the company’s value. Finally, blogs which have been operating for a long time or have recently received funding received higher valuations because they are more likely to survive.

via The Twenty Five Most Valuable Blogs – 247 Wall Street.

Adobes survey of almost 500 retailers, media companies, agencies and manufacturers around the globe found that challenging economic times are driving e-commerce firms to increase their online investment. Why? Because of the increased pressure on marketers for campaign accountability and measurability. The survey found that increased clicks/usage and conversion rates remain the top metrics used for measuring campaign effectiveness.

Over 90% of respondents to the survey cited intent to develop the rich media and social networking aspects of their websites this year. All of the top features fell into social media or rich media categories.

A third said they plan to add blogs, 31% plan to add user reviews/ratings and 29% plan to implement 360-degree spin for product imagery. Catalogs and circulars, podcasts/live video, product comparisons and videos were all highlighted by over a quarter of respondents as popular areas of investment.

“It was kind of a mix between social features, with blogs and user ratings coming up high in plans for the next 12 months for all these respondents, and more of the sort of rich media type of functionality, with video,” said Sheila Dahlgren, director of marketing for Adobe Scene7 products.

via Adobe: Social and rich media popular areas of investment in 2009 – E-commerce – BizReport.

Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Ning, and more discusses the Internet, media and more.

Last night, well-known Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen appeared on the “Charlie Rose” television interview show, talking about the digital sector and unveiling the news that he is creating a new venture fund.

I had heard rumblings about Andreessen’s funding efforts earlier this week, with sources I talked to nicknaming it “Project A.”

Actually, Andreessen said the new firm is called Andreessen Horowitz (zzzz), because he is doing it with longtime investing partner Ben Horowitz.

“For the first time in my life, I am crossing over into the dark side,” said Andreessen.

Although he gave few specific details about the fund, Andreessen essentially said he was simply putting a structure around his own active angel investing, which has included start-ups like Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn and many more.

His new effort will focus on early-stage investments, he said, noting that “our claim to fame is, we’ve actually, you know, by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, we’ve done it, we’ve been on that side of the table for a long time; we know what it’s like.”

Adding that he and Horowitz had made 36 investments over the last three years of up to $200,000, Andreessen said his new firm will make up to $1 million bets on start-ups.

Of course, for most of the interview, Rose zeroed in on hot topics like Facebook, the social-networking site on whose board Andreessen serves.

The voluble tech star did his job, talking about how Facebook could turn on the spigot and make all sorts of money anytime it wants and about the recent controversy around its Terms of Service kerfuffle.

He also talked about the Andreessen-backed Ning social network service, the Apple (AAPL) iPhone, Twitter, why the New York Times irks him, Google (GOOG), the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle e-book reader and gaming.

via Marc Andreessen Crosses Over to the “Dark Side” With New Venture Fund (Here’s the Video) | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD.

How to build an iPhone app described from start to finish.

In the spirit of Guy Kawasaki’s Truemors experiment, we challenged ourselves to create a social networking iPhone app – from concept to development to distribution – in 30 days. This includes coding the servers, clients, spatial implementation (PhotoKast is an LBS app), etc. This document is a combination of what we have learned over the last four years in mobile development, and how that was applied to the making of PhotoKast. It is not a How-To guide on coding; it addresses the other parts of development, with an emphasis on design and planning.

via Building PhotoKast: Creating an iPhone app in one month – Home & Garden, How-To Guides & DIY, and software.

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The New York Times is becoming a Social Network!

Releasing the TimesPeople API now available is a big step for us. Back when we first came up with TimesPeople, we were trying to answer the question, “How can we give back to the Social Web?” We realized that we could only represent the user in the context of NYTimes.com. The first step was aggregating a user’s public actions and making it possible to share those activities with other TimesPeople users. This didn’t really “give back” to the social Web, but now the API is available — and that means your TimesPeople data can be syndicated and used all over the Web.

via Announcing the TimesPeople API – Open Blog – NYTimes.com.

Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later

By Stephen Baker and Heather Green

Editors note: When we published “Blogs Will Change Your Business” in May, 2005, Twittering was an activity dominated by small birds. Truth is, we didnt see MySpace coming. Facebook was still an Ivy League sensation. Despite the onrush of technology, however, thousands of visitors are still downloading the original cover story.

So we decided to update it. Over the past month, weve been calling many of the original sources and asking the Blogspotting community to help revise the 2005 report. Weve placed fixes and updates into more than 20 notes; to view them, click on the blue icons. If you see more details to fix, please leave comments. The role of blogs in business is clearly an ongoing story.

via Social Media Will Change Your Business – BusinessWeek.

The backlash against Facebooks updated privacy policies is about to expand. The Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC is preparing to file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over the social networks updated licenses, PC World has learned.

“We think that Facebook should go back to its original terms of service,” says EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.

EPIC expects to have its complaint submitted to the FTC by the end of Tuesday.

Wide-Reaching Reaction

The wave of reaction, of course, is hardly limited to official organizations. More than 38,000 Facebook users have joined a user group protesting the change, and countless blogs and news sites have written extensively about their concerns. The issue comes down to a couple of alterations within the companys terms of use that, it would seem, give Facebook eternal ownership of your personal content–even if you decide to delete your account.

The changes were actually made in early February but not widely noticed until Sunday, when The Consumerists Chris Walters stumbled upon the subtly shifted language. The section in question explains how Facebook has an “irrevocable, perpetual” license to use your “name, likeness, and image” in essentially any way, including within promotions or external advertising.

That clause, Walters noted, wasnt new. What had changed was that a sentence at the end of the paragraph was now mysteriously missing. The deleted line stated that the license would “automatically expire” if you removed your content. With that line omitted, Facebooks license to use your content is simply “perpetual” and “irrevocable,” even decades after you delete your stuff.

via Facebook Privacy Change Sparks Federal Complaint – PC World.

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In the realm of e-commerce, one of the top marketing tools a company has is a Google ranking. The difference between a page 1 or page 2 search engine ranking can be the difference of tens of thousands of dollars of revenue for a company.

Because of this, companies are allocating more budget space than ever toward search engine optimization SEO, the strategy and process of improving the volume of traffic to a website by improving the search rankings of various search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask and MSN.

via SEO: Essential to Survival – Entrepreneur.com- msnbc.com.

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This list of the Top 100 US Consumer Magazines should help prioritize and target your online PR activities. As you can see, there quite a spread between how publications are doing online and offline. Online data comes from Compete.com for the website that corresponds to the print magazine.