The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘social-network’

GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration has unveiled a synchronization tool that allows the group administrators on Yahoo Groups to sync with GROU.PS. So Yahoo Groups admins can incorporate functionality such as, location-based services and chat, into their platforms from GROU.PS.

The new tool doesn’t require the Yahoo Group owners to shut down their existing group. They can still continue using their email list. Instead, a GROU.PS group surrounds their old Yahoo Group list and will add additional functionality such as collaboration, deep customization tools and integration with Facebook. GROU.PS will essentially create a whole new social network tailored particularly to that specific list, and augments its functionality with typical social networking features that can be found on any GROU.PS group.

And GROU.PS has amped up its offering for publishers by launching Elastic Modules, which gives publishers the ability to change the way the data is displayed to their visitors. To date, the highest reach of look and feel customization was at the template level; the
publisher could only change the skin of their site. Now publishers can actually modify the backend of the social network they’ve created.

The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc).

The startup, which has over 40,000 networks on its platform and 2.5 million users, also added ActivityRank Pipelines, a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members’ content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. And the social network is launching a subscription model that will allow moderators to charge subscription fees to members (GROU.PS gets a 50% cut on any fees charges).

GROU.PS raised $1 million in funding, bringing the startup’s total funding up to over $2 million. But while the social network is growing, it is still faces major competition form the leader in the space, Ning, which hit 37 million users with 1.6 million social networks in November.

We haven’t heard all that much from Siri, the venture-backed startup that is working on virtual assistant applications for smartphones.

Still well below most people’s radar, the company raised $24 million in venture capital and recently released its first app for the iPhone after nearly a year of development.

But that doesn’t mean the startup has a lack of ambition: they’ve just hired Gummi Hafsteinsson, who has led several of Google’s most successful mobile product initiatives as Senior Product Manager for the past 5 years, as their new VP of Product. Hafsteinsson originally joined Google’s mobile group in July 2005 and first managed the Google Maps for Mobile product.

More recently, he led development of Google’s voice-powered search app for all the major mobile platforms – iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Symbian. He reported directly to Vic Gundotra, Google’s VP of Engineering.

Prior to joining Google, Gummi founded and ran a company called Dimon Software that produced mobile enterprise connectivity software designed to enable enterprises to access corporate IT systems from any mobile device.

His experience in developing scalable applications for multiple platforms tells us Siri is working on making its virtual personal assistant product cross-platform. Its proposition was compelling enough to bring home the award for most innovative Web service at the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator at SXSW, by the way.

In other news, Siri is now available for iPod touch devices, integrated Twitter into the service last week and is closing in on a quarter million early users.

(Photo by Peter DaSilva for the New York Times)

Mobile social network MocoSpace now has a count of 11 million members, with 500,000 members forming new friendships every day on MocoSpace. The startup’s mobile only social network targets users who have non-smartphones that have simpler interfaces.

MocoSpace, which launched in 2006, makes money with its virtual currency and through advertising and mainly reaches the 18 to 34 age demographic. The site claims to generate 3 billion pages per month, with users mobile users accessing the site over 5 times per day on average. The site is also generating interest from musicians using the site to share their music, with over 200 artists submitting music on MocoSpace every day. Though not nearly as popular as Facebook or MySpace. MocoSpace is now one of the largest mobile-only social networks.

The startup prides itself on its users mainly being non-techies who don’t own an iPhone, Android or BlackBerry device. MocoSpace also claims to have a diverse user base; 1/3 of their user base is Hispanic and 1/3 is African-American. We recently published some surprising stats about the breakup habits of MocoSpace users.

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William Shatner will shill almost anything, and we love him for it. Now he is putting his promotional talents to work for Myouterspace.com, a social network for sci-fi geeks, gamers, animators, writers, and actors. In other words, people who couldn’t get into MySpace.

Actually, the site seems less like a social network than a way to crowdsource sci-fi movie and game projects. Depending on your specialty (animation, acting, writing, music) you register on one of six “planets.” Projects are designated as different “starships,” which recruit talent from the different planets. Shatner promises to monitor the progress of each crew, although it is not clear what that means or how they will be rewarded. If you are not groaning already at the stretched metaphors, Shatner explains how the whole thing works in this video which I nominate for the sorriest special effects anywhere.

Watching the video, in which Shatner is trapped in a dorky spaceship on a barren moon, I can’t help but think that inside he is screaming, “Khaaaaan!!”

For the past several weeks, there have been quite a few whispers around the web about a new service called Burbn. Besides having a great name, the service is apparently in a very hot space right now: location-based services. I say “apparently,” because the service is still very much a stealth project. But it’s not so stealth that they can’t get a seed round of funding.

Burbn has just closed a $500,000 seed round, we’re hearing. According to sources, both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz participated in the round. From what we can tell, right now, Burbn is just a one-man shop: Kevin Systrom, a former Googler. With the funding, you can probably expect that to change soon.

So aside from potentially being the location space, what is Burbn? Well, the current splash page where you can sign up to get for information, tells us a little bit more: “Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.” While that may sound like Google Buzz or a handful of other services, the key to that is “in the real world,” again, this reeks of location.

We’ve also heard that the site currently being tested is a mobile web app that uses HTML5 to work in both iPhone and Android browsers. Monitor their Twitter feed for more.

Late last year, Ustream and qik launched iPhone applications that let you stream videos from the iPhone to the web and allow others to watch them as they’re being recorded. And now there is an iPhone app called TwitCasting Live (iTunes link), which offers the same basic functionality, but is – as the name suggests – much more deeply integrated into Twitter.

The free app is essentially a live streaming app and Twitter client rolled into one. TwitCasting Live splits the iPhone screen in half, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline, update your status, access the web etc. on the bottom half, while recording (broadcasting) video on the top.

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Following his exit from NBC’s The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien was bored. So bored, that he decided to join Twitter. Within a couple weeks, he has already amassed a huge following of over a half million people — especially impressive in the post-suggested user list era. Despite a half million people following him, he was not following anyone back. Until today.

As Conan has just tweeted out, he has decided to follow someone finally. A random person. As he notes, “I’ve decided to follow someone at random. She likes peanut butter and gummy dinosaurs. Sarah Killen, your life is about to change.“

Indeed.

Killen, from Michigan, has exactly 1,300 followers as of the writing of this post (just a few minutes after Conan’s tweet). You can expect that to skyrocket very quickly. As Killen notes, “Having a lame ass day, Russell Bigos is an idiot. And Conan O’Brien is THE SHIT.”

Update: In just a few minutes, Killen has doubled her Twitter followers to now exactly 2,600.

Shout’em today adds a major new feature to its service which could well super-charge it into a whole different place: location. The white label service lets you build a Twitter-like social network, but it now leverages Foursquare’s API and Twitter’s GeoAPI.

The mobile-optimised social networks can be private, location-based and used by any niche group. So far Shout’em has apps for java phones, the iPhone, android. They are now adding a Blackberry app to that roster. All will be leveraging the location feature. In addition Shout’em is throwing in some augmented reality magic into its iPhone app. The Android app is still in progress.

First Google, now Foursquare. Hot on the heels of Google’s first Search television ad (run during the Super Bowl, no less), the location-based social network Foursquare is gearing up to do the same thing tonight.

In a tweet sent from their main Twitter account, the Foursquare team notes a “rumor” that an ad for their service will be running on Bravo tonight alongside the show Sheer Genius from 9 to 10 PM. But it’s not a rumor, we’ve seen the ad (and have embedded it below for your own viewing pleasure). It’s a 20-second spot made by Bravo for Foursquare to highlight their recently announced a partnership that allows the network to point out locations from its shows that let fans who use Foursquare (or their own Guides By Bravo app) go to them in the real world. This is believed to be one of the deals currently earning Foursquare some revenue.

While the company is making some revenue, it’s not yet profitable, and the focus remains on building the product and gaining users. Currently, Foursquare is closing in on 500,000 users, but with a cable television commercial, those numbers could soar.

The service is in the process of revamping its website and several of its mobile applications. A new version of the iPhone app, which launched one year ago at the SXSW conference will hopefully be ready in time for this year’s SXSW, we’re told.

For me, the best part of the Super Bowl is the commercials. And after you see this one, you may have to agree

Excerpt from:
Megan Fox introduces Motorola DEVOUR and looks face-slappingly good