If there is a father of social media in Silicon Valley, it may be Reid Hoffman, the Stanford and Oxford educated entrepreneur best known for co-founding LinkedIn in December 2002. Hoffman, currently the executive chairman of LinkedIn and a partner in the venture firm of Greylock Partners, saw the future before almost anyone else.
Grasping the Internet’s shift from a platform for data to one for people, Hoffman not only started the very first contemporary social media business back in 1997 – a dating service called SocialNet, but also was an angel investor in Friendster, Facebook and Zynga as well as the former CEO of LinkedIn, the 78 million member strong business social network which is currently adding a million new members every 10 days. Indeed, back in 2003 the Hoffman – in partnership with his friend Mark Pincus, the founder of Zynga – paid $700,000 in an auction for an intellectual patent on social networking, thereby making him, in a sense, the owner of the idea of social media itself. → Read More
Last April, adventure travel marketplace EkoVenture, relaunched as Zozi, with a focus on a local activities instead of exotic travel. Shifting the focus to promoting deals on local activities such as kayaking in San Francisco Bay, cocktail classes in Atlanta, or floating down the Delaware river in an innertube is aimed at reaching a broader class of consumers.
The company just closed a $3 million series A investment. ZIG Capital, Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, LaunchCapital, and individual angels including Larry Bock and Dave Dolby. → Read More
Google Reader has been my go-to RSS reader since October 7, 2005. How do I know? A new update to the service today tells me that and a few other interesting tidbits about my reading habits.
Technically, the big news of this update to Reader is a new fullscreen mode. I guess it’s nice to have in certain circumstances (just hit “f” to activate it). But to me that’s a little ho-hum. Much more interesting to me are a few of these new statistics they’re dishing out. → Read More
Wanna get some good lulz around the office? Convert your parent’s old typewriter into a USB keyboard. That and the ol’ stapler in a Jell-O mold prank. → Read More
Fashism, a fashion site where you can get instant feedback on your outfits has taken the next logical step to the iPhone and just hit the app store. The Fashism iPhone app extends the concept behind the site, which involves getting collective advice on your fashion decisions in realtime. Says founder Brooke Moreland on the motivation behind the site, “I was shopping with my husband and wanted some feedback before I made the decision, I’m kind of indecisive about clothes and I know other people are too.”
Sort of like a Daily Booth for fashion, Fashism launched in September 2009 (during NY Fashion Week) and is competing in the same space with the considerably less glossy Gotryiton. And Fashism has built a solid community around outfits, with over 80k unique visits a month and over 15 k users with accounts. According to CEO Moreland what’s been really popular lately is “Is this appropriate for?” “Should I buy this dress?” “They’re not always nice, but they’re constructive,” she says. → Read More
The Droid X’s vaunted HDMI out seems to be of extremely limited utility at the moment, as a Motorola developer has said that it is only ever active within the Gallery application on the phone — essentially limiting it to media recorded on the phone, or media you’ve managed to slip in there. Wait, what about using a Netflix or YouTube app? And what if you want to watch a .MOV or .AVI off your SD card? While it’s not exactly a crippling issue, it is bothersome in phone the tagline for which is “Droid does.” Not as bad as that refresh rate cap issue on the EVO, though. That would have really bugged me. Of course, you’ll likely be able to get around it once a safe and reliable workaround or root method is distributed (contrary to early reports), but it still sucks for the end user who doesn’t want to have to worry about this kind of thing. → Read More
Hope you have some extra cash. Xbox Live is getting slightly more expensive starting November 1st in the US, Canada, and Mexico. The single month charge is increasing to $9.99 from $7.99, three months will cost $24.99 from $19.99 with the yearly plan increasing to $59.99 from $49.99. Why? Microsoft isn’t saying but we have some ideas. → Read More
Not much to see here besides cases for the unannounced and unreleased iPod nano — or shuffle. → Read More
A few days ago, we noted that Diaspora was three weeks away from unveiling their open-source Facebook alternative. But a small update today clarifies one important point. On September 15, Diaspora will release the open source code for the project. But it won’t be until October that the first consumer-facing alpha is available.
This isn’t a major hiccup, it’s just an update to make sure people aren’t expecting to be able to use Diaspora on September 15. Instead, at that time, developers will have a chance to tinker around with what the team has come up with in these past several weeks — with the $200,000 they raised from 6,500 people through Kickstarter back in June. → Read More
Ready to kill your lunch break? Head over to the brand new NASA section on Flickr Commons where you’ll find 180 historic photographs. These pics range from pre-NASA days, to Goddard’s works, to NASA prototypes, and enough liftoff pics to fill a History Channel special. The best part you’ve probably never seen most of these as they’re right from NASA’s collection and thankfully each pic has a detailed description and a bunch of relivant info. Man I love the Internet. The one above is The Langely Aerodrome, “‘The Langley Aerodrome, brainchild of a group led by Samuel Langley. Shortly after this photo was taken, the December 8, 1903, manned tests of the Aerodrome ended abruptly in failure, as it fell into the Potomac River’. Photograph published in Winds of Change, 75th Anniversary NASA publication, page 6.” → Read More
I see a decision engine linked to an innovative ecommerce strategy. But at least one person in the office simply described it as “fabulous.” Either way, Send The Trend, a site that sells women’s accessories, launched moments ago and is worth taking a look at. In a nutshell, the site takes you through a very short survey of what kind of accessories you may want, and it then recommends five different accessories for you (bracelets, rings, scarves, etc.). You can then buy any of the items for $30.
“We simplify the discovery process of finding the season’s best accessories & serve you five customized options based on your style survey,” says the company. The survey takes all of 45 seconds. You are asked things like your favorite brands/retail stores (are you JCrew or H&M?), favorite celebrity look (Reese Witherspoon or Sarah Jessica Parker?), office v. casual, etc. And then you’re presented with the goods.
I selected a nice set of Lily Pink Earrings, which I think work perfectly with my jeans/tshirt office uniform. Want to avoid all that? You can, just use the search feature to find what you want. Everything is $30. → Read More
Twitter has just announced that it’s opening the Site Streams feature of its API up to developers. This is big news, as it allows mobile push services and web apps like Brizzly and Seesmic Web to immediately display new tweets, mentions and other data as soon as they come in, rather than having to deal with Twitter’s REST API rate limits. As MG put it, these streams are crack for real-time web junkies.
According to the Site Streams dev site, developers won’t be able to fully abandon the REST API yet, as Site Streams will be prone to disruption as Twitter works out the kinks. The feature will also only be limited to “a total of 100,000 simultaneous users during the beta period unless prior arrangements are made”, though it’s hard to think of any sites that large who don’t already have a relationship with Twitter. → Read More
In its quest to build the most powerful gaming platform on the web, Google has made another purchase today: game developer SocialDeck. Inside Social Games first reported the story. According to The Canadian Press, Google has confirmed the purchase.
With the massive number of gaming developers and publishers in the market, why did Google choose SocialDeck? It could be because of the startup’s mobile offerings. SocialDeck was founded in 2008 with the vision of enabling “anywhere, anytime, anyone” gaming. The company has launched several titles for the iPhone, Facebook, and BlackBerry using its social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks. → Read More
Good news for Samsung; their new Galaxy phone has hit 1 million sold after just 45 days of being on the market. That’s a pretty impressive number for a phone that doesn’t come from Apple. Electronista reports that Samsung considers the phone to an instant success, and expects the Galaxy to continue to sell quickly. The 1 million number was a combined total between AT&T and T-Mobile, but doesn’t include any sales from Sprint, as their version won’t hit the market on the 31st. → Read More
Reasonably torn about this next story. There’s an honors class at the University of Florida this semester called “21st Century Skills in Starcraft.” Basically, you play the game for a bunch of weeks, and somewhere along the way you pick up “valuable 21st Century Skills through a hands-on approach.” Sure you do. → Read More
If you’ve ever tried to find a great intern or a great internship, it turns out to be a lot more work than it should be. Internships are an afterthought for most job boards, but increasingly companies are looking to try out their next hires before giving them a full salaried position. Urban Interns joins a growing list of internship-focused sites, allowing companies and interns to find each other.
The site launched in February, 2009, but now the two women founders, Cari Sommer and Lauren Porat, are taking their first angel round of $250,000. The site covers 9 markets, including New York City, Boston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, with more cities and features coming soon. There are currently about 10,000 active users on the site, counting both employers and job seekers. Urban Interns also caters to companies with part-time jobs and freelance positions. → Read More
Clearwire launched their Rover – pay as you go internet service today, offering unlimited usage for $5 a day, $20 a week, or $50 for a month of 4G service. The Rover service is accessed via one of two ways, either from the Rover Solo; a single system dongle, or the Rover Puck which allows connectivity with up to eight devices at a time. The Rover Solo dongle sells for $99, and the Puck will cost you $149. Connectivity is provided via Clearwire’s previously existing 4G network (in most areas) but it’s still compatible with their 3G network as well. Download speeds will range from 3 to 6 mbps, with a maximum burst speed of 10mbps in the Puck device. You can pick up either device from Best Buy, your local Clearwire store, or online at the Rover website. Click through the jump to see the press release. → Read More
Lucasfilm, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas’ film production company, recently filed a $5 million trademark-infringement lawsuit against Jedi Mind, a company that markets itself as allowing people to control computers with their brain waves (yes, really).
The feud between the two companies began in May 2009, when Lucasfilm sent Jedi Mind a cease-and-desist letter requesting that the startup change its name and stop referencing the “Jedi Mind trick” when describing its products such as Master Mind and Jedi Mouse. → Read More
You might say the company’s just a tad late to the party, but Miniclip has finally seen the light and is expanding its casual gaming empire by entering the world of mobile games.
With a self-declared user base of more than 57 million casual gamers worldwide and a library of more than 600 online games, it’s a wonder really that the London-based company hasn’t made the move sooner.
After all, Apple’s App Store for one now offers roughly 250,000 apps, many of which are of course casual games and have been available for years. → Read More
