(twitter.com/keep)

Somehow this passed us by: AdKeeper, the startup from About.com's Scott Kurnit attempting to create a "like" button for online ads, announced a pivot a few weeks ago. In a Nov. 21 blog post titled, "Another View of AdKeeper," Mr. Kurnit explained that the site will be relaunching at Keep.com with "a unique offering that serves the AdKeeper mission in new and exciting ways," but did not explain the specifics.

The original idea, which earned Mr. Kurnit $43 million from investors including Spark Capital,
First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, The New York Times and betaworks, was to create a network across the internet that would place a "keep" button on ads and allow users to store those ads for later. The company reportedly had a $100 million valuation. "The fact is, 90 percent of people have torn an ad from a magazine," Mr. Kurnit wrote in an op-ed at All Things Digital.

We imagined users might want to keep coupons or funny videos or other kinds of content-like ads, like this Thanksgiving recipe from GE, but we weren't very confident in the idea. (The opening line of our first post ever on AdKeeper: "You know when you see an ad on the Internet somewhere, and it's just so awesome that you wish you could save it and look at it later? No? Uh oh.")

Although advertisers (including some of Betabeat's!) loved the concept at first and AdKeeper insisted users were keeping lots of ads, the reviews started coming back mixed. “I don’t necessarily see the benefit," Adam Shlachter, digital head of global media agency MEC, told Digiday. "I haven’t seen any evidence that there’s demand for this type of functionality or that it’s really adding anything for advertisers.”

And while more than 10,000 people like AdKeeper on Facebook, the app only has 200 monthly users.

Perhaps that's why AdKeeper is switching things up. The new product at Keep.com is apparently in stealth, but the tagline is "Follow brands. Save money. Have fun." The Facebook account links to discounts from a seemingly random assortment of brands from Rue La La to Shoe Buy. "It won't be long before the curtains open and you can start saving time and money on your favorite brands," says the introductory email. "If you want your friends to do the same, please invite them to sign up. After all, it's more fun to shop together."

Mr. Kurnit did not immediately respond to an email request for an interview.

"Since launching AdKeeper earlier this year we’ve researched, displayed, used, digested, reviewed, sorted, organized and shared thousands of ads," he wrote. "We realized that ads are just the tip of the iceberg. Much like marketers put ads at the top of the purchase funnel, consumers agree that ads are truly just the start of a lasting relationship with the brands in their lives."

It sounds like Keep.com will be a more tailored approach to the kind of brand-following that happens on social media. Considering the startup teamed up with Safecount just a week before the pivot announcement in order to provide better processing for tagged ads, it sounds like the "keeping ads" idea will stick around in some form. But "bigger than Twitter"? It's looking like not.

UPDATE: Scott Kurnit responded by email to say it's not a pivot: "Not a new direction. An extension. Very happy with AdKeeping. AdKeeper is working well. Somehow Digiday chose to quote 4 people we have never met with who know nothing about our business. Worst 'journalism' I've ever seen. Bizarre."

Keepers: Mr. Michaelson, left; Mr. Kurnit.

Let's just trademark all the four-letter words, shall we? At the end of September, New York-based AdKeeper sent a cease and desist letter to New York-based KeepIdeas, which owns a website called KeepRecipes. AdKeeper serves up a tiny blue-and-white 'k' on online ads so that users can file the advertisement away in the cloud in a little digital Keeper, while KeepRecipes serves up a little orange-and-black 'k' on recipes online so that cooks can save them for later. "Plainly, your company has chosen a name confusingly similar to the AdKeeper Marks in order to take advantage of the brand equity that AdKeeper has developed for virtually similar services," AdKeeper says in its reads the cease and desist letter.

AdKeeper is worried about brand confusion. "Specifically, the stylized K that Keepldeas uses is virtually identical to AdKeeper's stylized K and offers the same exact functionality--clicking on it allows consumers to retain items from the web. Keepldeas' actions are intended to and will undoubtedly cause consumer confusion about an affiliation or connection between Keepldeas' business and AdKeeper."

So. Who was first to the 'k'?

"A website owned by KeepRecipes, KartMe.com, used a button with a 'k' on it for clipping items around the web well before AdKeeper launched," KeepIdeas CEO Phil Michaelson, a graduate of the DreamIt accelerator program, wrote in an email. "We actually sought [AdKeeper founder] Scott Kurnit's advice on KartMe.com well before AdKeeper launched. KartMe.com was being overwhelmingly used for recipes (over 15,000 saved), so we decided to spin out a new website called KeepRecipes."

A little mucking around on archive.org shows that KartMe employed an orange uppercase 'K' overlaid on a green uppercase 'M,' in a button that allowed users to 'Kart this for later' at least as early as May 2010, which was before AdKeeper launched its stylized 'k' and catchphrase, "keep this for later."

Keeps, Karts, ads and ideas--how many were going to the U.S.P.T.O.? AdKeeper has applications pending on its 'k,' but it appears that the trademark office has requested additional paperwork. The applications were filed a year ago, which means the process is taking on the longer side of average.

But AdKeeper still hopes to leverage its pending applications to pressure KeepIdeas into dropping the mark:

AdKeeper hereby demands that Keepldeas confirms to us that it will immediately:

1) cease and desist from using the Infringing Names;
2) cease and desist from using any name that infringes our rights, including all names that contain the term 'keep' or otherwise are confusingly similar to AdKeeper Marks; and
3) cease use of the infringing domain name, KeepRecipes.com, and agree not to register any other domain name that includes the term Keep.

Mr. Michaelson maintains the brands are distinct and there is no risk of consumer confusion. "We did market research on names in 2010.  Not a single consumer in our market research mistook KeepRecipes for AdKeeper," he said. "Our market research showed 0 overlap between the website names--not even loose associations. After people use KeepRecipes, the service has been compared to Instapaper, Delicious, and Evernote, but never AdKeeper."

Furthermore, KeepRecipes, AdKeeper and KartMe aren't the only ones with a similar idea, he said. "If AdKeeper wants to to reserve a trademark of a button with 'k' on it, or even the 'keep' word, they should be wary of products around before theirs, such as Kaboodle.com, now owned by Hearst, which is the most successful company to to use a button with a K on it for keeping products and more from around the web since 2005; ikeepbookmarks.com, which has been collecting links since 1999; [and] savenkeep.com has been collecting webpages since 2009."

Perhaps Mr. Kurnit would let this one slide, for old times' sake?

Apparently not. "We spoke this evening," Mr. Michaelson told Betabeat in an email Monday night. "Scott will not rescind the threat of legal action."

He continued, "I'm a bit worried that AdKeeper may get a broad trademark or patent for a 'keep' button with a 'k' on it as predecessors like Savenkeep, ikeepbookmarks, Kaboodle, KartMe and Kirtsy may have never had access to $40+M or seen it as a priority to to apply for formal copyright and patent protection.

"Funnily, I just noticed that bit.ly owns keep.me."

Mr. Kurnit declined to comment.

4th ave and 14th St., Union Square.

AdKeeper, the very well-funded New York startup from About.com's Scott Kurnit, aims to better the banner ad. The idea is that people will clip ads like coupons, save ads like YouTube videos to watch later, and so on, thus generating "engagement" and perhaps "ROI" and also creating jobs for the creatives from firms like Wieden + Kennedy who can be set loose to make keepable ads. But today we saw something that made us question whether we had AdKeeper all wrong: a poster ad in Union Square. For AdKeeper. With a QR code. So you can ... keep it. What?

Is the startup simply advertising for its online product, so people know what to do when they see that little "k"? Or does this mean that AdKeeper is expanding to real-life ads, which people might save--tracking "engagement" and "ROI" on that billboard by number of people who navigate to the site through the QR code.

"Making your internet better one button at a time," the ad says. It is partially covered up by a poster featuring a raccoon.

Any guesses as to how many people "kept" AdKeeper's ad? We know of at least one!

Full-time entrepreneur, part-time factchecker.

In in its Sunday issue, the New York Post put its own spin on data showing that New York City's tech start-ups racked up $1.7 billion in funding this past year. Using numbers from CB Insights, the paper identified nine "NYC tech giants" based on the amount of funding those start-ups had accrued. But at least one tech scene native was restless over the way the results were reported.

On her Tumblr, MessageParty co-founder Amanda Peyton, who works out of the Makery's co-working space in Williamsburg, pointed out some of the "half-truths or straight-up errors" in the piece. Her issue wasn't the numbers, but rather the way the paper described what the companies do. After acknowledging that the tech reporting isn't exactly in the Post's wheelhouse, Ms. Peyton added, "But surely someone there should know that Foursquare isn’t an e-commerce company."

Here are some of the points of contention Ms. Peyton circled in red:

“FourSquare Location E-Com” — Foursquare is misspelled and is not an e-commerce company. They have little revenue except for maybe the fact that they sell Foursquare shirts on their website, though that’s hardly a defining characteristic of the company.

“AppNexus Web Services” — web services?  What does this even mean?  That they do shit on the internets?  Yes, I suppose that’s fitting, but if you need to summarize the company in three words maybe “advertising” somewhere in there would help. “Real-time ad platform” is clearly too advanced.

”Squarespace Web Developement”  -- Web development implies a dev shop — a group of people who make website for other people.  Squarespace is not this.  Squarespace makes *software* that helps individuals make websites on their own. Big difference - one is scalable, the other is not.

“Adkeeper Web Ad Development”  Adkeeper does not make ads. “Ad Development” implies that they are somehow involved in the process of making advertisements for the web, which they in no way are.  They make software that allows consumers to save advertisements, which is tangentially related to “Ad Development," kinda.

If Ms. Peyton ever gets bored with building her own company, we bet old media's fact-checking departments will gladly snatch such an eye for detail.

The study finds:

61 percent say, "Online banner ads take me away from my current website, or from what I am doing."
58 percent say online banner ads are not that relevant to them.
57 percent are wary of opening something they'll wish they hadn't.
57 percent are afraid of receiving spam from advertisers.
55 percent are worried about getting a virus.
54 percent don't trust most online banner ads they see.
46 percent worry that pop-ups will take over their screen.
43 percent say online banner ads don't seem interesting or engaging.
31 percent only want to click ads when they're in the mood or interested in looking at them.
31 percent are worried that their Internet behavior will be tracked.

Only the two points in bold would seem to support AdKeeper's premise--that users will engage more with ads they can bookmark and view later. The "keep" button AdKeeper is pushing is unlikely to persuade users who find ads irrelevant, spammy, dangerous or boring,  or are worried about having their activity tracked.

AdKeeper's 'Keep' button makes sense for coupons and meme-y ads.

This week in New York start-ups:

ADSTRUC WANTS YOU. The company that made it onto Betabeat's list of 10 Disruptive New York Start-Ups for giving outdoor billboard advertising the Adsense treatment is looking for a front-end dev.

TUMBLR DOWN. That is all.

FOURSQUARE STOPPING UP THE CRACKS. Foursquare went all https:// today, a process that started more than seven months ago. The more secure protocol will safeguard users against simple hacks like Firesheep, a Firefox plugin released in the fall that made it easy even for non-hackers to steal passwords submitted over an unencrypted connection. To be fair to Tumblr, Betabeat did notice that Foursquare's servers were down earlier today as well.

ROCK THE SKIRBALL. Also tonight! At New York Tech Meetup! Brand new managing director Jessica Lawrence will speak and more press than usual will be there. Companies presenting include Ex.Fm (awesome!), Readability (awesome!), IMUP4 (meh), MessageParty (meh UPDATE: MessageParty will be presenting a total pivot), and some ones we've never heard of: Runens, RezScore, Ask Local, BrainScape, MeeGenius, Corkboard.me.

FACTS. Startup Bus company The Lemonade Stand is also presenting at tonight's New York Tech Meetup for the NY Hacker Hack of the Month portion of the event. Jonathon Gottfried will demo. He is 20 years old.

UPSTARTS. The first official meeting of the Silicon Alley Job Fair, formed after the New York Startup Job Fair semi-publicly snubbed some 60 companies will come to order tonight, and 95 people have registered to attend. The meeting is at 160 Varick Street, 12th Floor at 5:30 p.m. Deadline to register is 4 p.m.

THE KEEPER. AdKeeper CEO Scott Kurnit says he's secured about 20 percent of the all the available internet advertising inventory, including ads from Pepsi, which committed 100 percent of its ads starting in May, MediaPost reports. "In the first five weeks since public release on February 14th, AdKeeper’s technology has run on more than thirty thousand unique websites, an unprecedented response to a new advertising technology," a release said. Some, like Betabeat's Ben Popper, are extremely skeptical of the idea of building a business on a "read it later" button for advertisements, but this reporter thinks it's like so crazy it just might work! Especially when you consider that PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET ARE CRAZY. It'll mean advertisers will have to make more entertaining ads, but why can't all the internet's mememakers on /b/, Reddit and so on go work in the advertising industry? Reddit has a "Reddit This" button on their ads.

Thanks for tuning in, guys! This has been your Wednesday afternoon Betabeat New York Tech News Start-Up Rundown, brought to you by iced dirty chai.

The idea is that people usually ignore online ads because they're focused on doing other things. Our online behavior is often goal-oriented, so advertisements become an undesirable distraction from reading the news, shopping or playing Farmville.

Kurnit's new startup, AdKeeper, is building a way for advertisers to include a "keep" button on their ads so users can save the ads somewhere and browse them later.

AdKeeper just raised $35 million in its second round of funding and will launch with a full slate of advertisers, including Allstate, Ally Bank, AT&T, Best Buy, CBS, Ford, Gap, General Mills, JetBlue, Macy's, McDonald's, Pepsi, Sears and Warner Bros, VentureBeat reported today.

The new funding was led by Oak Investment Partners with previous investors DCM, True Ventures, Spark Capital, and First Round Capital also contributing.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

You know when you see an ad on the Internet somewhere, and it's just so awesome that you wish you could save it and look at it later?

No?

Uh oh.

New York startup AdKeeper has raised $8 million from investors including True Ventures, DCM and Spark Capital to create a "Keep" button and a "Keeper" folder for online ads, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Web surfers don't want to engage with ads if they're occupied with something else—looking up directions, playing Farmville—says AdKeeper founder Scott Kurnit, who founded the company that became About.com in 1996. So he created a way for people to save ads to read and interact with later.

AdKeeper is similar to a lot of apps already popular for non-commercial content—like a corporate version of the soon-to-be-dead social bookmarking service Delicious, or the save-to-read-later service Instapaper. Users keep ads they like and share them via Twitter and Facebook.

But does anyone actually want to do this? A lot of big names are betting yes. John Borthwick of NYC's Betaworks, which invested in AdKeeper, called it "long overdue."

Most online ads are just as boring as the ones you find in the real world. But for companies like Old Spice (or their agencies) that can pull off viral ads, AdKeeper could be a sensation.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries