The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘social-networking’

Pelago knows that just about every location-based app in the world is seeking coverage right now just prior to SXSW where they will all battle Highlander-style. So they approached me with a pretty smart pitch: curing the “social rut.” What they mean by that is these days, despite the prevalence of social networks, people are actually less social than ever because they’re being roped into playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars for hours on end. Sitting in their rooms. Alone.

While that may be a part of social networking (a rather large, hugely profitably part), it’s not really social. That’s why location-based networks excite me: they have the potential to bridge social networking with actual social activity. And that’s exactly how Pelago is positioning the latest version of its location-based app, Whrrl 3.

The core idea behind the new iPhone app (which launched in the store today) is that people inspire others to do things. So when you see a friend is out doing something fun, you may want to join them. Or it may entice you to go out and do something else, and hope others see it on Whrrl and join in. It’s the grouping of people with similar interests into “Societies” that is a key to Whrrl 3. For example, a basic society is that each venue in the application has its own set of “regulars.” If you visit the place enough times, you unlock the badge making you a regular, and giving you access to member-level activities, such as recommendations and specials nearby.

One of these societies, launching alongside the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas this week is the Austin Underground which “will provide members with at-your-fingertips access to the hottest parties, events, and other fun things to do at the conference,” according to Whrrl. Over 50 merchants in Austin are participating to provide exclusive offers, apparently. To unlock the membership, you have to check-in at some of the following places: Four Seasons Hotel Austin, Outback Steakhouse, Cool River Cafe, Chuggin’ Monkey, J Black’s, Red Fez and Third Base, and others.

Other key features of Whrrl 3 include Recommendations — you create these (with photos, if you choose), to let others in your social graph (or your society) know fun things to do in an area. Ideas, are recommendations served up to you from societies you’re a part of, your friends, or Whrrl’s algorithms. Fun Facts are shown each time you check-in to a venue, with information about it. And of course, there is a point system (Influence Points) that turn the whole thing into one big game. What’s interesting about Whrrl’s game is that you can get point by inspiring others to do things with the app. Points also allow you to level up in your societies for more special deals.

All of this is an extension of the “footstreams” idea that Whrrl launched last December. That’s where they also first introduced the society idea as well. The key to both of those is about real people doing real things in the real world.  That, in turn, shows what you’re interested in, and allows Whrrl to clump you into these groups with out like-minded people.

So that all sounds great, but will anyone use the app? After all, adoption has been a problem in the past and this isn’t the first time Whrrl is pivoting its product. In fact, they actually did exactly a year ago with Whrrl 2 just before SXSW.

Their main problem is convincing people to use Whrrl instead of the current location-based darlings, Foursquare and Gowalla. That’s going to be difficult because those networks are quickly building up social graphs and once those are established, users are less likely to leave. So Whrrl needs something to differentiate itself, and while their pitch to me is good, it’s an entirely different matter convincing users. And the things that would seem to help differentiate networks like Whrrl actually hurt them sometimes. For example, since location-based services are still new to so many people, it’s best to keep things as simple as possible. But Whrrl is piling on features that, while maybe cool, are likely to confuse new users.

Still, if Whrrl is able to secure some solid deals around Austin to get people using the app and checking-in, that could certainly get people using it. Of course, Foursquare and Gowalla have their own deals too. Then the problem becomes one I’ve had this past week while testing out all these location apps: fatigue. I can’t possibly check-in with each of these apps each time I move from place to place. The people I’m with have started rolling their eyes at me while I take my 10 minutes to check-in to all the different apps.

I’m not saying there can be only one. But one would sure be nice.

Find Whrrl 3 in the App Store here.

Micropayments startups PlaySpan is racking up the partnerships. The startup has signed deals with hi5, THQ and Nickelodeon, and today, with Adobe. PlaySpan the payments platform for Adobe’s developer service, codenamed Shibuya. PlaySpan powers micro-payments across over 1,000 video games and virtual worlds and has virtual goods storefronts on Facebook, MySpace, within games and on its standalone site.

In private beta, Shibuya allows Adobe developers to monetize their Adobe AIR applications through a try-and-buy mechanism, and allows developers to upload and sell their applications on the Adobe AIR Marketplace. To enable micro-payments via PlaySpan, developers can add a few lines of provisioning code, set the price and trial period, and then publish the application with the payments technology. Developers will also receive reports, analytics, and automatic settlements on a monthly basis.

The Adobe Air Marketplace allows consumers to try paid applications on for free. If they like the application they can purchase it using a credit card, PayPal, an Ultimate Game Card or over 85 other global payment methods provided by PlaySpan.

The micropayments startup has been securing key partnerships, and a deal with Adobe only validates its place as a player in the micropayments space. In December, PlaySpan revealed some telling numbers about the strength of the virtual goods space, reporting that over $30 million was spent on virtual gifts over the holiday season. Last year, PlaySpan acquired micro-transaction app developer Spare Change, which powered micropayments across 700 social networking apps on Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo.

Troubled social networking giant MySpace has lost another key executive with the recent departure of John Faith, until recently General Manager and Vice President of MySpace Mobile. His resignation hasn’t been announced yet (nor has his LinkedIn profile been updated), but we’ve confirmed hallway rumors that he jumped ship at the end of January 2010 both with the man in question and the company he used to work for.

Faith has moved to Austin, Texas – just in time for SXSW – where he has joined local startup WhaleShark Media as SVP of Engineering.

That company’s still in stealth mode, but was founded by former Bankrate COO Cotter Cunningham, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on that one.

It’s worth noting that another key member of the MySpace Mobile team, Ulf Waschbusch, also left the company in July 2009 – he recently landed at gaming startup Garena.

I asked MySpace who was running all things mobile now that both employees walked away from the company, and they informed me that stepping in for Faith is Nat Brown. In case you’re not familiar with that name, Brown was once one of Microsoft’s foremost technical minds – he created and evangelized the ActiveX/COM object model in the early nineties and went on to play a crucial role in the creation of XML, DHTML, and the first Xbox.

Brown went on to do a brief stint as CTO at CAC Media before serving the same role at online music startup iLike, which was acquired by MySpace in August 2009.

MySpace says Brown will henceforth be taking charge of the Mobile division, and that we can expect a lot from that particular unit in the “very, very near future”.

We’ll see.

Alas, personalized news streaming service / social network aggregator Streamy hasn’t been able to find a buyer willing to pay what the two founders were hoping to get for the assets, so the startup is shutting its awesome Web app down – for now.

In a short notice posted online, Streamy says it plans to “hold” the service and “reinvent it when the time is right”. In the meantime, however, both co-founders of the fledgling company have been forced to go out and look for a slightly steadier job. One has landed at social gaming juggernaut Zynga, the other at social networking juggernaut Facebook.

CEO Don Mosites, for one, is heading to Zynga to work on a “new, special project”. He won’t tell me what it is, but he promises it will be “big”. To be continued, I suppose.

The other co-founder of Streamy, Jonathan Gray, will be joining David Recordon (previously with Six Apart) and Monica Keller (previously with MySpace) and become part of the social networking giant’s open source division.

From what I can gather, Gray will be helping Facebook promote the adoption of projects like HipHop, Cassandra, Tornado, Thrift, and others. He’ll also continue working with HBase, which was the Hadoop-driven data back-end for Streamy.

It’s no secret TechCrunch, like all media outlets has a love hate relationship with the PR industry. Take the guy who just rang me. “Hi, my name is Rob, I want to tell you about a news story.” OH REALLY? How about you say where you are from first? But moving on…

You’ll recall the video we posted on the weekend about another tedious annoyance: The Embargo. The satirical video featured was in fact created by TechCrunch Europe Contributing Editor Steve O’Hear, (@sohear) who has form in this filmaking business, having directed a real documentary, In Search Of The Valley.

Steve is building up a nice line in these movies recreating conversations between PR professionals and bloggers/journalists. We just hope he doesn’t get snapped up by Hollywood or we’ll have to place a want ad.

Here’s Embargoes II.

Kamyple , maker of a user feedback analytics platform, is finally confirming a round of financing it closed in 2009. I had a chance to sit down with Kampyle CEO Ariel Finkelstein who officially confirmed that Carmel Ventures led the company’s $1M Series A round, closed back in January 2009. He also shared with me that the company has begun beta testing a new feedback product for downloadable applications.

Last year was a pivotal one in the life of Kampyle, which complemented its round of financing with a blow-out year across all KPI’s. Customer growth rate surged 600%, up 25,000 for a total of 35,000 (although Finkelstein did not share how many of these are paying customers).

On average, 19 users saw a Kampyle feedback button every second, ultimately converting to a total of 8M feedbacks processed. Interestingly, 57% of users who provided feedback included their real email address, thereby expressing their desire for a follow-up by the website owners or software providers that implemented the feedback form.

Kampyle is enhancing its current feedback products, one for websites, the other for software install/uninstall, with ‘Kampyle for Applications’. Currently being beta-tested, the new product is designed to solicit user feedback regarding people’s actual usage of the applications.

With this third product, and integrations with SalesForce, Omniture, NedStat and Google Analytics, Kampyle believes it’s able to provide the holistic, end-to-end view software developers require to effectively understand their user flow—from the initial user visit to their website, through the installation phase, to the user’s actual usage and possible uninstall.

Kamyple is extending a special 20% discount on all its premium packages to the first 50 TechCrunch readers that use the following coupon code: ‘techcrunch’.

Yesterday, in a session on ‘Mobile Communications 2.0′ at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook’s VP of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion Chamath Palihapitiya shared the social networking giant’s current mobile strategy and its plans for the future.

It was in this session that the company for the first time talked about its latest product, Facebook Zero, which is essentially a stripped down, text-only version of the mobile website for the social networking service. The product aims to give mobile carriers a way to offer a basic Facebook experience to their subscribers free of charge and later convert those users into premium data service customers.

We recorded the entire 16-minute session and uploaded it to our YouTube account – these are the highlights of the presentation:

- Facebook believes 2010 will be a watershed year for mobile
- The service is now actively used by more than 400 million people
- They want to make Facebook even more ubiquitous and reach billions of users
- 100 million users (25% of total number of users) actively uses Facebook’s mobile products at least once a month
- 200 million people have interacted with Facebook on mobile at least once

- Over the next 5 to 10 years, Facebook aims to invest heavily in expanding mobile experiences for their users; they expect a lot more growth in this area
- Facebook now works together with some 200 mobile operators – and they are striving to convince more about the added value of such partnerships
- Mobile users demonstrate twice as much engagement than Web users (2x the pageviews, interactions, consumptions and productions)
- They use the above as an argument to convince operators services like Facebook can help drive more sales for more capable phones and heavier data plans
- Facebook is traditionally strong in English-speaking countries, but that’s not all – for example, every single user in Indonesia apparently uses Facebook’s mobile products

- There are 3 key themes to Facebook’s mobile strategy:
* MOBILE WEBSITE: two versions, one for regular phones and one for touch-screen enabled phones – these have now been translated into 70+ languages, covering about 98% of the world population.
* SMS: interactions through Facebook using shortcodes – so far there are deals with 80 operators in 32 countries
* DEVICES: applications or ‘integrated experiences’, which means Facebook intends to hook its service deeper into the core OS handsets run on

- New developments:
* VODAFONE UK TRIAL: the carrier offered Facebook mobile free of charge for a week, which not only caused an expected usage spike, but also resulted in an increase of 20% of people who kept using and paying for heavier data plans after the trial
* FACEBOOK ZERO: stripped down, text-only version of Facebook’s mobile website – carriers can offer this free of charge for as long as they like, and attempt to transition users to a charged model at a later stage more effectively

- Facebook aims to turn FB Connect into a ‘foundational element’ of the web, whether accessed on mobile phones or not.
- In the future, Facebook Connect should become more of a core integration both on an OEM, app and OS level (naming iPhone, RIM, Windows Mobile and Android as examples)
- Facebook intends to play a more important role in the app developers ecosystem
- The company stressed that their goal is to keep pushing the envelope for users, operators, device manufacturers and developers.

Social gaming behemoth Zynga is going international. The company is opening an office in India, in the hopes of capitalizing on the rapidly growing market. Zynga says that India has 81 million internet users, and is projected to become the third biggest online market by 2013 (behind the United States and China).

The new development house won’t be building games that are specific for the Indian market, nor will they be modifying existing games. Instead, it sounds like they’ll be building new games that Zynga will deploy worldwide (the company is also hoping a local presence will increase popularity of existing hits like FarmVille). The company plans to hire around 100 people for the new office by the end of the year.

Zynga, which recently raised another $180 million in funding, already has offices in San Francisco, LA, and Baltimore. Below is a mockup of what the new Zynga office will look like:

In November 2009, when Microsoft announced the release of the public beta of Microsoft Office 2010, the company also introduced an entirely new add-on for its Outlook product that we haven’t heard a peep about since.

That’s about to change soon.

The product, dubbed Outlook Social Connector, essentially aims to make Outlook more social by integrating streams from Windows Live and third-party networks directly into the widely used communication app and its familiar interface, among other features that will enhance the functionality of Outlook and other Microsoft products like SharePoint.

For more information about how Social Connector, check our previous post and/or watch this video from Channel 9.

Microsoft and its initial launch partner, LinkedIn, didn’t share many details about the product at the time of the initial announcement but stated that it would be made available ‘early 2010′. Since then, it’s been very quiet about the product.

A public beta version of Outlook Social Connector will be available next week, sources now tell us, and we also hear Microsoft will be announcing a number of additional partners that have been brought on board alongside LinkedIn. These partners include social network juggernauts such as Facebook and MySpace, which are of course far less business-oriented than products and services like Outlook and LinkedIn.

While a lot of people will appreciate the ability to see status updates from and interact with friends from multiple social networking services straight from their Outlook application, I have a feeling their managers and their employers’ IT departments will be far less enthusiastic about Social Connector.

Zynga, the heavily-funded social gaming company, today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Serious Business, fellow creators of social games on Facebook. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it appears to be more of a strategic purchase to bring in more experienced game development talent.

Serious Business had raised $4 million in venture capital from Lightspeed Venture Partners back in April 2008. Its most popular games for Facebook include Friends For Sale and Rock Legends.

As part of the agreement, Serious Business employees will join Zynga at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Serious Business was founded by Alex Le, former software engineer at Powerset and Yellowpages.com, and Siqi Chen, also formerly with Powerset (which was acquired by Microsoft for $100 million in August of 2008.

Zynga says it currently has over 235 million monthly active users playing its games. These include FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Café World, FishVille and PetVille, which are available on a wide range of social networking services on mobile devices.