Early this year, Amazon made a bold move: it took advantage of the open nature of Android to launch an Android Appstore — one that serves as a direct rival to Google’s official Android Market, which comes installed on many Android devices.
Thus far, Amazon’s early traction hasn’t been particularly strong, primarily because the Appstore is such a pain to install: you need to dive into your phone’s Settings menu, enable a scary-sounding option allowing the installation of ‘non-Market’ applications, and then manually download Amazon’s store yourself. Most Android users aren’t going to take the time to do this, even though Amazon is doing its best to offer plenty of incentives like free and discounted top-tier applications.
But things are starting to change, thanks to the Kindle Fire. → Read More
After a disastrous Q3 2011, Netflix stands to replace some of the 800,000 subscribers it lost. It’s savior? The Facebook news feed. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a revised bill to change the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 to allow people to opt in to having their movie rental activity shared. This Act had delayed the Netflix Facebook app‘s launch in the US. Now the Facebook news feed is beginning to show “Josh Constine watched The Walking Dead on Netflix” stories that point back to the Netflix site. After being enticed by something a friend has watched, Facebook users might sign up and pay on Netflix.com so they can watch too. → Read More
Callin’ Oates. Heard of it? If not, you’ve gotta get yourself some more meme-hungry friends. Built (partly as a gag) to satisfy a Twilio employee’s new-hire requirements, it’s an on-demand Hall & Oates hotline that has managed to pull mentions everywhere from Time to NPR . Call the number, pick a song, hear Hall & Oates music.
600,000 calls later, the developer behind the project is releasing the service’s code and a quick tutorial on how to put it all together yourself. Think of the possibilities! Bob Dialin’! Rung D.M.C! The Rolling Tones!
[Update 12/29/2011 5:20pm: Facebook tells me it has now made the Messenger for Windows download link publicly available in its Help Center. Users can also learn details about the client there. Still no sign of a Mac version, though.] The client includes notifications and the Ticker which link back to Facebook.com, and therefore could drive engagement with the website. Messenger could also pull market share away from other desktop chat clients like AOL Instant Messenger and Windows Live Messenger. → Read More
comScore has just released its latest numbers regarding the mobile landscape here in the U.S., finding that Samsung is still the top OEM with a 25.6 percent marketshare, up just .3 percentage points from the three month period ending in August.
Meanwhile, Apple’s price drop on the iPhone 4 along with the introduction of the iPhone 4S has taken its share of the market from 9.8 percent to 11.2 percent.
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Most third party web measurement firms have provided a steady drumbeat of positive growth news for Facebook over the years, as the company has gained tens of millions of users in the US and around the world. But now the social network appears to be reaching market saturation among internet users in some of its early key markets, with one firm showing nearly 75% of all US internet users on the site.
Instead of raw user growth, the numbers to watch going forward will be around engagement. → Read More
We’re all familiar with the pain of having to share photos with people. I’m not talking about the staff party album on Facebook, I’m talking about moments that matter – the family holidays, the weddings, big days like those. And this remains an ongoing issue. We can share Dropbox folders all we like. Everything still has to be downloaded and the interface does not suit viewing, especially on tablets. We can ask friends and family to sign up to a private Flickr group, but that’s still another hurdle. Lots of photo and file sharing services are rubbish and many people remain afraid of Facebook’s now quite public nature. Now, a new startup out of Berlin has come up with something it calls the ‘Dropbox for photos’ where you can privately exchange photos in a group: 7moments. → Read More
Just in time for the aptly named “Dump Go Daddy” day, our favorite PR pinata GoDaddy just emailed a number of press, with a fresh statement from new CEO Warren Adelman.
From the email …
The statement is from our newly appointed CEO, who makes it clear, we don’t just ‘not support SOPA,’ Go Daddy OPPOSES SOPA.
I loved talking to the skankiest prostitutes at three in the morning with a camera crew around me, fires burning in the street, sad, abused people clinging to scraps of life for their pleasures, bailed out prisoners and the drug dealers waiting for them to be released, homeless addicts with nowhere to go and they only weren’t freaks if you saw them at three in the morning .
In short, I loved my job. Entrepreneurship ruined it. → Read More
Members of the Occupy movement are building a “Facebook for protesters” called The Global Square, Wired reported yesterday. Less than a traditional social network, it’s an international collaboration network. While a valiant effort, I see 3 big problems with the project’s concept that will limit its success and impact. → Read More
Say what you will about YouTube’s affinity for cats or their audience’s collective inability to write insightful comments, but there’s one thing that YouTube really just doesn’t get enough credit for: saving the music video. As MTV losts its original love in favor of Nick Cannon Presents: Whacky Garbage Nonsense and re-runs of America’s Next Quickly Forgotten Reality Show Person, music videos went without a proper home for nearly a decade. Then came YouTube.
The only bad part about watching music videos on YouTube? Everything else on YouTube. The soul-crushing comments; the gawdy artist backgrounds; the endless recommendations. That’s where Tubalr comes in. It’s YouTube’s glorious music video collection, minus all of that darn YouTube. → Read More
There are a lot of naysayers out there when it comes to the Windows Phone platform, but as Robin pointed out a couple of days ago many haven’t really given the OS a fighting chance. Some of it has to do with the fact that people often equate cost with quality, and most Windows phones are (at the moment) rather inexpensive.
But Redmond apparently has plans to get some higher-end devices on the market next year.
According to WinSupersite’s Paul Thurrott (who has yet to formally reveal his sources, but promises the news is legit), Microsoft and its partners will release at least three new LTE-capable Windows phones in the first half of 2012. → Read More
Gazelle Lab, the brand-new Tampa Bay-based TechStars Network member which just held its first Demo Day in November, is expanding its operations. The accelerator has just announced the opening of second location in Orlando, Florida, where it will be working with local academic institution Rollins College.
The Orlando team will be led by founder Richard Licursi, CEO of Florida’s Spectrum Bridge, Inc. You may remember hearing about that company as being the first to win the FCC’s approval to manage a database in the newly-opened “white space” spectrum. Licursi will be responsible for leading the fundraising for the Orlando crew, along with three other founders and support from the original St. Petersburg team. → Read More
While 2011 is almost over, the year has only really just begun in terms of determining its historical significance. 2011 wasn’t, of course, just another year. Like 1989, 1968, 1917 and 1848, 2011 was a revolutionary year, one that – from Cairo to Athens to Tunis to Wall Street to Moscow – may have changed the world forever. And to mark the historic nature of 2011, Time magazine just made The Protestor its person of the year.
According to Kurt Andersen, who wrote Time‘s cover story for its Protestor edition, rebellion was the “defining political trope of 2011″ – thereby making it a “great year in world history”. And, as Andersen told me over Skype, this “contagion” wouldn’t have happened without social networks like Facebook and Twitter which, he insists, were “key” to the 2011 revolutions. The Internet, Andersen thus explained, has emerged as the alternative to the free press in countries like Egypt, Russia and Tunisia; without it, he insists, there would have been no revolutions anywhere in 2011.
Video ahead. → Read More
Yesterday Droid-Life obtained a leaked internal document from Verizon that had a surprisingly annoying little tidbit within: “Beginning 1/15/12, there is a $2 ‘convenience fee’ for making a credit or debit card bill payment online or via call-in channels.”
Sometimes leaks are faked or forged, and I hoped against hope that this particular leak was a load of malarkey. But alas, Phonescoop has apparently received confirmation via email that Verizon will in fact impose this “convenience fee” starting January 15.
Happy New Year, everyone. → Read More
According to the end-of-season benchmarks from Compuware’s web performance division, Apple.com was among the top three best-performing retail websites during the 2011 holiday season. Meanwhile, Amazon made the list for the top m-commerce sites.
The sites were ranked from November 21st through Christmas Day using Compuware’s Gomez Performance Index which compares how U.S. retailers’ sites perform in comparison with typical non-peak periods. → Read More
Rather than looking back (which I’m sure we will), I thought it would be nice to look forward to 2012 and beyond and note some of the gadgets that will change the world in the next few years. I’ve included mobile, gaming, and computing gadgets but I think 2012 will also be the year of Windows Phone, 3D printing, and fitness technology that actually makes a difference.
I’m not expecting much in the way of massive change this next year, just more of the same, but better. Here are our picks for the best of 2012.
→ Read More
According to new data from Benedict Evans for Enders Analysis, the number of monthly active users of Facebook’s mobile apps recently passed the 300 million mark. This is primarily due to heavy use of the iOS and Android apps, but it also takes into account apps that run on BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone, iPad and feature phones.
That number equates to roughly 40% of Facebook’s currently disclosed 800 million active users. → Read More
If you even so much as whisper your Klout score within specific circles, you’re likely to be met with a piercing stinkeye. Based in San Francisco with a small pot of funding, there’s something about Klout’s mission — to rank online influence — that ironically draws the ire of many influential people.
Despite the sentiments, Klout continues to roll with the punches because our online identities are fragmented across different services. These different sites rank their own users, of course, but typically only factor inputs tied down within their own gardens. The main forces, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, certainly weight their own users’ activity for various reasons, but Klout has built one single, unified score based on its own independent algorithm across these services. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang – Esteban Kolsky, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor – are recording live at 8am PT.
Recording is concluded.
→ Read More
