Facebook has confirmed to us this morning that it did indeed acquire the Baltmore-based software firm WhoGlue earlier this month. WhoGlue builds social networking software for membership organizations (like college alumni networks, for example) and apparently had the fortuity to file a patent on something called “Distributed personal relationship information management system and methods” in 2001, three years before Facebook existed. → Read More
SlideShare, the content sharing platform for business documents, videos, and presentations, has grown into a sizable platform. In 2008, SlideShare was but a simple app launched on LinkedIn to allow professionals to share slides and documents with their network. As SlideShare is designed as a sharing platform for the professional community, its collaboration with LinkedIn has made perfect sense from a strategy standpoint — and has helped it grow into the juggernaut it is today. The startup has continued to work with LinkedIn to add deeper integration into its platform, which Leena covered in depth back in June. → Read More
When Cyber Monday rolls around, everyone’s eyes dart to the big boys like Amazon and Newegg for cheap goods, but niche retailers have their own deals too. Case in point: the DIY repair nuts at iFixit have whipped together a nifty bundle for aspiring iPhone modders who would like to see the fruits of Apple’s design savvy instead of an opaque black panel. → Read More
Google has released yet another TV commercial to help demonstrate the features of its new social network, Google+. Like the other marketing efforts, the ad is slick, polished and even sort of funny. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates everything that’s wrong with Google+ in a just minute’s time. In fact, if the video hadn’t been posted to Google’s own YouTube channel, you may have almost wondered if it was a parody put out by Facebook PR.
The ad, published the day prior to Thanksgiving in the U.S., tells the tale of two Google+ users, Kyle and Lisa. In it, Kyle places Lisa into his “Love of My Life” Circle while Lisa puts Kyle in her own unfortunately named “Creepers” Circle. Oh, poor Kyle! Over time, though, it becomes clear that Lisa and Kyle’s relationship changes, as the ad shows Lisa moving Kyle into a variety of other Circles, including “Book Club,” “Guys With Cars” (shallow much, Lisa?), “Ski House,” “Maybes” and finally, “Keepers.” Cue the awwwwww’s, right?
Wrong. → Read More
The European Commission is going after web companies over their failures to explain how their ad targeting systems work. But it’s not hitting the bulls-eye, because it’s confusing targeting with data protection, which are not quite the same issue.
The commission, for all of its good goals, has some explaining left to do. So does its big target, Facebook.
In a sensationalistic article today that claims “Facebook faces a crackdown on selling users’ secrets to advertisers,” The Telegraph reveals that it and the European Commission only sort of understand how Facebook works.
Commission vice president Viviane Reding proclaims that “I call on service providers – especially social media sites – to be more transparent about how they operate,” in a quote provided to the paper. ”Users must know what data is collected and further processed (and) for what purposes.”
That’s a real issue, and something that Facebook could solve on its own. → Read More
When 90% of people discover an event they might want to buy tickets for, they leave the purchase funnel as they try to convince friends to join them. This group decision process is clumsy, and poor retention reduces sales for promoters. Helsinki startup GigsWiz addresses these problems today with the beta launch of Flockafied, a Facebook app that makes it easy to poll friends about buying event tickets. Promoters add a Flockified button to their ticket page which potential customers click to invite friends and track confirmations that they want tickets. Flockified could help sites like Eventbrite, Ticketfly, or even Ticketmaster sell more tickets in exchange for fees.
The first 100 TechCrunch readers to sign up for Flockified with the code TechCrunchFlockified will get early access. → Read More
Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day brought record mobile engagement for PayPal, with 511 percent and a 538 percent increase in global mobile payment volume when compared to Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2010, respectively.
It looks like Cyber Monday is also bringing record sales for the payments giant. The company is reporting that as of 11 a.m. PST, PayPal is already seeing a six-fold increase (514 percent) more mobile payment volume on Cyber Monday 2011 compared to the same time period on Cyber Monday 2010.
→ Read More
Online commerce giant eBay this morning ran a Cyber Monday deal for a white Apple iPad 2 WiFi 16GB, selling the popular tablet for $449 or exactly $50 off the MSRP (+ free shipping). Turns out a lot of people figured that was a great deal.
And they were right, too. After all, Apple only discounted the iPad 2 16GB with $41 on Black Friday, so you would indeed have been better off waiting until today and buying it on eBay … if you could get your hands on it quickly enough. → Read More
Hyperlocal is all the rage these days, and content companies, deal sites, and everyone in between are trying to find better ways to access (and advertise to) local markets. Over the last decade, the majority of media companies have attempted to launch internal or on-site outlets that cover local news, but most have met with middling success.
NearSay, a New York City-based startup that launched six months ago, began by asking a simple question: “Where do we get our neighborhood news?” NearSay’s founders, Trevor Sumner and David Pachter, were startled by the lackluster and confusing responses to that question and, in turn, the dearth of valuable neighborhood outlets for local news. So, for their answer, they started a platform that began as a realtime business newswire to allow local businesses in New York City to publish announcements (on events, deals, etc.) to the NearSay platform. → Read More
To paraphrase Cracker, I suspect what the world needs now is another method to assess the social metrics of various museums around the world like I need a hole in the head, but presumably this information is important to someone out there, so here goes.
Museum-Analytics.org is a site with a simple mission: to calculate the social reach of various museums. The service uses various and sundry sources as well as Twitter and Facebook to find news and information about almost 3000 museums around the world.
For example, you can see trends at the Van Gogh Museum (Motto: “It doesn’t cost an ear and a leg to get in!”) including new Facebook likes, Tweets, comments mentioning the museum, and engaging content created for and about the museum. I could see this as a boon to curators and directors alike and valuable to museum fans who are trying to push these staid organizations into, at the very least, the 20th century. → Read More
The team behind security startup Whisper Systems has been acq-hired by Twitter, they have announced on their company blog this gorgeous Cyber Monday morning.
“We started Whisper Systems with the goal of improving security and privacy for mobile devices. We were attracted to this not only because we saw it as an opportunity to reinvent the security solutions that never really worked in the PC environment to begin with, but also because the stakes are much higher — due to the nature of mobile devices themselves — and we didn’t like the way that things were looking.”
As Whisper Systems consists of just two employees, Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson, this has talent acquisition written all over it. In their year of being in the business, the startup has built a variety of encryption products for Android phones and the web including WhisperCore, a product that encrypts all data on your phone and TextSecure, a product that encrypts text messages. → Read More
Ready for this week’s tale of someone turning down an absurd mountain of money in exchange for their company?
According to a report by the New York Times, Rovio — makers of the Angry Birds series (and the accompanying heap of Angry Birds merchandise so plentiful that they’ve started opening up retail stores) — turned down $2.25 billion this past summer. The would-be buyer? Zynga. → Read More
There are things you need to be afraid of when you’re a new parent. There’s gluten, pull cords, Disney products, and BPA, to be sure, but what about wild robotic strollers that look as if they’ll eat your wee ones in one snap of their plastic jaws?
Luckily, the 4moms Origami stroller won’t close on the little ones and is in fact a automatic stroller with a bit of a twist. Instead of pressing down on some hydraulics, this thing opens and closes with the tap of a button. It is, in short, pretty darn amazing.
→ Read More
LaunchNow.co is a new startup that turns building startups into a game. (Yes, we’re there now.) The idea is that players will pit their companies against each other in order to earn badges, achievements and a “Gamerscore” which is then published to their startup’s profile page. Oh, and here’s the crazy part: LaunchNow is meant to be used with real-life startups, not fake ones. → Read More
Apple Stores are awesome places to shop. All the latest Apple products are on tables, just waiting to be used and abused. The employees are generally very knowledgeable and they tend to let shoppers wander without pestering (they have an app for that). Oh, and the free tech support at the Genius Bar is, well, genius. The techs don’t try to sell unknowing customers surge protectors or gold-plated USB Monster Cables. Apple Stores are without question retail done right. Then there’s Best Buy. As their latest TV spot reminds, they sell Apple products, too. → Read More
AT&T sure isn’t wasting any time on shoring up their LTE lineup: just a few weeks after the HTC Vivid and Samsung GSII Skyrocket hit the scene, AT&T has announced that the LG Nitro HD will hit the streets on December 4 for $249.99.
Better known as the Optimus LTE outside of the United States, the Nitro HD sports a pretty impressive spec sheet. As the name would imply, the Nitro sports a high-definition 4.5-inch AH-IPS running at 720p, and an 8-megapixel camera sits on the Nitro’s rear-end. Under the hood is a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, along with 4GB of internal storage and a pre-installed 16GB microSD card. → Read More
With Angry Birds, Rovio found a way to transform normal, healthy people into raging bird-flinging addicts. This isn’t really that big of a deal — at least not in most cases — unless some shady app developers begin impersonating Rovio and selling fake apps on the Android Market.
Did I mention that some shady app developers have started impersonating Rovio and selling fake apps on the Android Market? → Read More
Early results for Cyber Monday are looking good for retailers. Cyber Monday 2011 online sales are already up 20 percent for this same time period over Cyber Monday 2010, according to IBM’s Coremetrics retailer data.
IBM says that it expects most online shopping to come from laptops and PCs during the day with mobile shopping activity picking up later in the day, when consumers are purchasing from home.
→ Read More
Black Friday is an awful day compared to today. Sure, you might walk away with that one deal you had your eye on, but for the most part it’s a lot of waiting, fighting, and pepper-spraying. To make up for such an excruciating sale experience, retailers have given us Cyber Monday — the light to Black Friday’s darkness.
That said, we’ve decided to round up some of the best sales of the day just in case you chose to forego Black Friday proper (and why wouldn’t you?). → Read More
