Opposite attraction: Making Free Money Online

Tableau's goal is that anyone who cares about data should be able to work with it. But often there has already been a lot of work done on the data from so-called "Data Journalists" - who have been adopting Tableau's software with glee. There is a term for this type of reporting: Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR). CAR has been around for a while, but Tableau makes the process faster and saves journalists from doing custom programming. According to Tableau's Ellie Fields, "fast authoring has been a big driver of uptake" among data journalists.

Tableau has a range of products, including the premium Tableau Digital (used by the aforementioned media companies) to the free Tableau Public (aimed at bloggers). The free version has size restrictions and the data has to be shared to the cloud for anyone to use. The premium versions allow you to keep your data private if needed. There's also a corporate product called Tableau Server, which sits inside the firewall.

So far Tableau claims to have published 10,000 visualizations.

When you think pretty data on the Web these days, the iPad is usually front of mind. Tableau is currently developing an iPad app, which is expected to be released this month for corporates. A public version of the iPad app will be released in future, but no timeframe has been given yet. The iPad app will allow for touch screen scrolling through of data, pinch down, and more.

Mobile is a big area for data visualizations, Ellie Fields told me. "People are making decisions when out and about, not at their desks."

I asked whether there will be a destination site for data visualizations, where consumers can come to browse different visualizations. However that is not on the company's roadmap, Fields replied. "We are not trying to drive traffic from publishers."

Tableau is one of the most visible (pun intended) companies on the Web, graphically packaging up and analyzing the ever increasing amount of data on the Internet. That trend will continue to ramp up, so keep your eyes peeled for more and more data visualizations in your online media experience.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb partnered with Tableau last year for a graphing contest.

OpenFeint has hired a game development leader to help its customers focus on making free-to-play mobile games.

The move reflects the growing importance of free-to-play, the business model where users play for free and can purchase virtual goods with real money.

Burlingame, Calif.-based OpenFeint has hired Ethan Fassett, a former Playdom executive with expertise in free-to-play Facebook games. Fassett will lead the development of next-generation social networking features with distribution channels for free-to-play developers.

OpenFeint, which was purchased in April for $104 million by Japan’s Gree, makes tools that developers can use to make their games more social. The company’s tools are used by 6,000 games on Android and the iPhone, with a total of 90 million players for those games.

Fassett will be senior vice president for product at OpenFeint. He will help develop new communications and player acquisition features for OpenFeint’s platform.

“We’re very excited to bring on Ethan, whose expertise in free-to-play games and social communities will drive product strategy and shape the evolution of the network,” said Jason Citron, CEO of OpenFeint. “Ethan truly understands social games, the social networks they need to be successful, and the tools game developers need to properly engage and monetize their players.”

The move is similar to one by Flurry, the mobile analytics and recommendation firm, which recently hired game developer Jason Valadares to lead its efforts with developers. Fassett worked on games such as Market Street at Playdom. He also worked at Gaia Online.

We’ll be exploring the most disruptive game technologies and business models at our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference, on July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. It will focus on the disruptive trends in the mobile games market. GamesBeat is co-located with our MobileBeat 2011conference this year. To register, click on this link. Sponsors can message us at sponsors@venturebeat.com. Our sponsors include Qualcomm, Flurry, Greystripe, Nexage, Tapjoy, Fun Mobility, TriNet, Zong, Sibblingz, Open Feint, Spil Games and WildTangent.

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Opposite attraction

Monday, 1 August 2011

Making Free Money Online

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