The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘text-or-photos’

Even though Google’s Buzz has drawn criticism for privacy issues, and has been deemed an overall frustrating experience, Google is not giving up on Buzz altogether. Google just adjusted its settings for Buzz, and today, the search giant is integrating Buzz into its latest version of Gmail For Mobile.

So now, you’ll see Buzz as a tab in your inbox on your phone when you access the mobile version of Gmail within your browser just like you do in the desktop version of Gmail, complete with the little Google Buzz icon. Buzz in the mobile version of Gmail will include all the basic functions such as liking the post or commenting.

Since the communication tool’s launch, you could access Buzz via Buzz.Google.com on your mobile phone. And if your inbox integration was set to a specific setting, your @replies and comments would be sent to your Gmail inbox. The new integration just allows you to play with Buzz from within the mobile version of Gmail.

A few weeks ago, Google launched an Android widget for Buzz that would allows users to post text or photos to the service without having to launch any app on the device.

Can gamers be treated like shoppers—get sliced, segmented, and targeted? A year-old startup with offices in New York City and San Francisco called Turiya Media is building a business around applying data mining techniques to social, massive-multiplayer, and mobile games to help game developers figure out which players are the most valuable. As more free-to-play games become the norm and selling virtual goods becomes the way to make money, game companies are relying more and more on a small fraction of players (typically 1 to 3 percent) paying to level up or for that shiny new virtual sword. Finding that 1 to 3 percent of players or getting more to pay for virtual goods can have a big impact on game revenues.

“Every interaction with the customer is a chance for the game company to make or lose money, or gain or lose customers,” explains Turiya founder and CEO Chethan Ramachandran. His background is in using predictive algorithms to identify online fraud for information security companies. WIth Turiya, his team is applying similar techniques to predict player behavior based on what they’ve done in the past and their style of play. Each player is segmented into one or more of 15 different groups, including collectors, explorers, social gamers, competitive players. Depending on the game, different kinds of players might be more likely to purchase virtual goods, and thus be more valuable.

Turiya’s game analytics also tries to predict the lifetime value and revenue curve for each player. If the player is likely to stick around a long time, it is probably not a good idea to bombard them with offers to buy virtual goods every five minutes. If they are only likely to play a few times, then that might be the best way to maximize that player’s revenue potential. Turiya looks at everything each player does in each game, tries to understand what motivates them, and who are the big spenders.

One of the techniques Turiya uses is basic product recommendations based on what similar players bought. But there is a difference between the data ecommerce sites like Amazon look at and what Turiya studies. “The problem with ecommerce is that it is hard to figure out behavior,” says Ramachandran. “They look at shopping behavior. We look at how people act.” Well, at how their game characters act.

The more that online games rely on selling virtual goods, the more demand there will be for Turiya’s game analytics. Game developers can also use the data to for game creation and adaptive games that change features based on the player. They could also use the data to try out A/B testing of different features on different types of players to learn what works the best. It could also give rise to more virtual product placement within games. Brands could sponsor virtual items and target them to particular types of players. Imagine an Energizer battery a player could place in a laser gun to make it last longer or a pair of Levi’s jeans to dress up a character. Energizer would probably be better off targeting competitive players, whereas Levi’s might want to target social players.

Turiya was founded in March, 2009, and raised a $1 million seed round last December from FirstMark Capital, Metamorphic Ventures, Accelerator Ventires, and TriplePoint Capital. The company is still in private beta, but it won the best startup prize at last month’s Game Developers Conference. It plans to come out of private beta in the second quarter.

Despite criticism, and an overall frustrating experience, Google is definitely not ready to give up on Buzz. The latest indication comes today by way of a new Android widget that makes it easier than ever to post updates to the service.

The new Google Buzz widget for Android allows you to post text or photos to the service without having to launch any app on the device. And, if you choose, you can easily tag your location to your buzz, as well as determine if it should be public or private. This widgets extends the already solid support the Android platform is offering the young service. For example, Buzz is built into Google Maps on Android, as well.

This new widget looks very slick — easily one of the best widgets for Android yet. And it furthers my opinion that Buzz should have been launched as a location-based service first. Of course, this simple functionality wouldn’t be possible on the iPhone, which doesn’t allow for widgets (and who knows if they’d even accept a Buzz native app at this point — or if Google would even create one for them).

Google talked about Buzz quite a bit this past week during a panel at SXSW. They apparently are thinking about letting users pre-test new features now.

This new widget works on Android 1.6 and later. To find it, search for “Google Buzz Widget” in the Android Market.

SV Angel, the angel fund founded by super-angel Ron Conway, is losing one of its general partners to a portfolio company. Brian Pokorny is now the CEO of fast-growing Silicon Valley-based Dailybooth.

Dailybooth, the runner up in the “best social app” and winner of the “time sink” categories at this year’s Crunchies Awards, is “your life in pictures.” Some 6 million monthly visitors share pictures and status updates with eachother. “It’s a community for self expression,” says Pokorny.

A typical interaction: a users posts a photo, taken with their webcam, showing what they’re eating, what they’re feeling, or perhaps with friends in the background. Other user then respond via text or photos. Some strings go on for hundreds of responses. Here’s an example.

The company, originally incubated by Y Combinator, has raised just under $1 million from notable investosr such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Betaworks, Kevin Rose, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, Gary Vaynerchuk and Aydin Senkut.

Founders Jon Wheatley and Ryan Amos will remain in their current roles at Dailybooth.

Pokorny has worked with Conway on his various investments since 2006, and has racked up quite an angel portfolio of his own. He owns stakes in Twitter, Square, Milo, Blippy, Bump, Tweetdeck, OMGPOP and others.

He’s staying close to SV Angel, too. In addition to his new role as CEO of Dailybooth, Pokorny will remain as a Strategic Partner with SV Angel where he will continue to provide key insights into sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities in social media and other sectors.

“I’m excited to have Brian join one of our hottest portfolio startups and lead it to the next level,” said Ron Conway via email. “He will remain part of the core team at SV Angel as a strategic partner, and I look forward to working with him in this new role.”

SV Angel has also been in the new recently – they are reportedly closing a new $10 million fund, the first time the fund will take outside investors to participate in their startup investments.