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Posts Tagged ‘differentiating’

Last week, we wrote about MyTown, an iPhone application created by Booyah already had 500,000 users. That was significant because the app, which is a location-based game, was already well ahead of rivals Foursquare and Gowalla in terms of users — and it gained all those in just one month. Today, brings an entirely new version of the app to the App Store, MyTown 2.0.

With this new release, MyTown is further differentiating itself from the Foursquares and Gowallas of the world. While those are about check-ins that revolve around social aspects, MyTown is much more of a straight-up game. In fact, the best way to think about it may be Monopoly for the real world.

While the core idea is still to check-in to venues you happen to be at, the driving force behind doing that is to be able to “buy” those properties rather than tell your friends where you are. For example, if you check-in at a cafe, you can buy it, and then others who check-in there will pay you rent. The goal is to accumulate as many properties and as much money as possible. And version 2.0 makes all of that much more involved as the amount of gameplay has been raised from 5 or 6 hours all the way up to about 75 hours, Booyah CEO Keith Lee tells us.

Also with the 2.0 release, the entire look and feel of the app has been updated. On your main screen, you now get an ever-evolving view of all the properties you’ve collected. You also will see better stats for venues (how many people have checked-in, etc). And the number of building upgrades you can do has been taken from 5 to 10. You can also see what venues are trending, as well as their popularity rating based on elements such as number of check-ins.

But most significantly, MyTown now has an in-app purchase element. This allows users to buy power-ups within the game that will make it easier for them to play. For example, one power-up allows you to automatically collect rent from your buildings. This is a key part of the game, but without this power-up, it has to be done manually, which is time consuming. You can also buy more property slots to allow you to expand your venue empire, among other things. Prices range from $0.99 all the way up to $9.99 for these in-app purchases.

Lee sees this as being a way for MyTown to good amount of money — certainly more than what in-game ads will bring in. He, along with some of his co-founders, come from a gaming background where they worked at places like Blizzard working on World of Warcraft, among other titles. That world has a robust virtual good ecosystem around it, and Lee expects that iPhone games will see the same.

There is also a virtual store built-in to MyTown 2.0. Here, users will be able to spend the virtual (fake) currency they collect in the game to buy various collectables. Lee recognizes that only a small percentage (something like 5%) of users will be willing to pay actual money for goods, so this virtual store is an important part of the game as well.

Something else that MyTown is doing that is more closely aligned with Foursquare and Gowalla is real-world promotions. When you check-in to a venue or near one, you’ll be alerted if a special deal is nearby. For example, MyTown already has a deal in place with Quiznos for certain rotating specials. While these deals aren’t making MyTown any money yet (just as they’re not yet for Foursquare or Gowalla), Lee says that they’re continuing to sign up companies interested in this, and expect to turn on the money-making switch for this soon.

This heavy focus on the gaming aspect of location is certainly an interesting thing to watch, especially if virtual goods take off. Gowalla also places an emphasis on virtual goods, but is much less of a straight-up game than MyTown. Foursquare, meanwhile, is much more of a game you play for the social element with your friends (though you could certainly argue that badges are a virtual good).

Find MyTown 2.0 in the App Store here, as a free download.

Seesmic, the Twitter and Facebook desktop client developed by Loic Le Meur, is launching its much talked about browser-based Twitter client today at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. We first heard about the plans for the browser client at the TechFellow awards in June, but its been in stealth mode for the past few months.

We got a chance to test it out and it’s pretty cool. It reminds me of a Gmail interface for Twitter. Currently, the browser client only includes support for Twitter but Le Meur says that Facebook integration will be coming soon. The client is pretty basic, simple to use and similar in some ways to the desktop client.

You can open up your timeline in a column, your mentions in another column and your direct messages in another column. You can also use the mouse to roll over a Twitter handle and will be given the option to see the user’s profile, message the user or unfollow the user. My favorite part of this interface is using the timeline in the single column mode, which makes it seem like a simple, easy to use email application. The other compelling part of the browser client is the layout of the direct messages, which makes it simple to have and see a conversation with someone.

As we reported in June, Seesmic is also launching the fourth version of its desktop client today, which will include the ability to view Seesmic in single column mode or multi-column mode, with ability to change detach and change the size of columns. You will also be able to save space on the client by collapsing and expanding the sidebar with the click of a button and will still be shown minimized buttons with shortcuts to toggle between accounts, userlists and searches. Seesmic has also updated its internal code to improve performance and now allows you to modify the timeline limits in set in Seesmic Desktop to help control performance. These limits define the maximum number of messages kept in each of your timelines from your friends; replies, private and sent; and searches.

One of the differentiating factors between Seesmic and main rivals Tweetdeck and Tweetie is that Seemsic pulls in status updates from Facebook and allows users to update their Facebook status from the desktop client itself. Le Meur tells is that Facebook status updates are becoming as common as Twitter updates from Seesmic, especially since the client enables two-way communication.

What’s missing from today’s rollout is the Seesmic iPhone app, which Le Meur says is still in the works and will be released in the near future.

Seesmic Desktop, which faces competition from popular client and rival Tweetdeck and a plethora of others, officially launched in April. Le Meur tells us that Seesmic is getting about 10,000 downloads a day. PeopleBrowsr, another social network aggregator (and presenter at the Real-Time CrunchUp), recently made the opposite switch, adding a desktop Adobe Air client to its browser product.

As TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters recently wrote, the social network aggregator market is almost fully saturated and new players are throwing their hats in the ring every day. So it makes sense that Seesmic would want to not only build up its offering with useful features, but also try to conquer all the mediums—web, desktop and mobile. Check desktop and web, now onto mobile!

Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington is an investor in Seesmic. I am not.

Here’s the video of Le Meur’s demo of the new version of Seesmic Desktop and the browser-based client:

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Causes, the popular Facebook and MySpace application that allows users to donate money and build communities around various benevolent initiatives, has just released the latest stats on its fundraising efforts. The organization has now raised a total of $10 million in just over two years, a huge jump from the $2.5 million it had raised over its first twelve months. Even more encouraging is that Causes raised half of that in the last six months, which means donations are picking up quickly.

Causes co-founder Joe Green writes on the site’s blog that the community currently stands at 70 million users, who are supporting 270,000 different causes and 53,000 nonprofits. Monetary donations have come from a total of 192,000 different users, with an impressive average donation size of $25.

Causes also highlights a few of the site’s best performers: Birthday Wish, which allows users to ask their friends to donate to a Cause of their choice in honor of their birthday, has raised a total of $1.4 million.

Causes also details a few examples showing just how far $10 million can go:

Clean drinking water for 50,000 people for 20 years
1 million bed nets to stop the spread of malaria
Safe, private shelter for 10,000 refugee families of five
First-time internet access for 100,000 low-income households
50,000 baskets of baby chickens for families in Cameroon

For more, be sure to check out the Causes blog.

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