Back in August, Y Combinator held its summer session demo day, introducing the world to 60 new companies in one of its strongest batches to date. One of these companies, DoubleRecall launched as a platform that enables companies to roll out digital campaigns that actually succeed in prompting users “to read an ad,” rather than scoff and click elsewhere. → Read More
Over the last year, you may have noticed that a once-niche trend not only crept into the mainstream, but is starting to really make a big splash. Gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in the industry and is probably in the process of taking over a website or user experience near you.
For the uninitiated, gamification, said simply, is the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences. Over the last year, even large companies and enterprises are starting to get in on the game, with Gartner saying that all CIOs should have gamification on their radar, and M2 research predicting that the gamification market will reach 2.8 billion in direct spending by 2016. → Read More
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While startups across the world are doing their best to disrupt mobile networks with clever voice call apps, like Viber, there remains the basic issues of actual voice and data access which still requires some chipping away at. It’s a particular issue in places like Europe where you can drive for only a couple of hours and cross two or even three borders and see your mobile roaming bill spin up or down like a yo-yo. For the past few years we’ve seen players like Truphone and Maxroam attempt to gnaw away at the telcos, but now Maxroam is going one further, launching a virtual network operator of its own. → Read More
It’s that time of the year again and if you haven’t started thinking about what to get that special someone in your life, better start thinking fast, or Cupid’s arrow might just speed right past you.
Luckily, we live in a world where our smartphones have become pragmatic problem solvers. Need the perfect gift? There’s an app for that. Can’t get a restaurant reservation? There’s an app for that. Girlfriend being a royal V-Day diva and it’s only 9 a.m.? There’s an app for that. (Well, not really, but it’s only a matter of time).
Here are five unique ways that mobile apps will not only ensure you get through “le jour d’amour” with flying colors, but will provide you with time and cash-saving tricks that you can use any day of the year. → Read More
Pinterest is hot. White hot. The 2011 Crunchie award winner for Best New Startup has been on a roll lately, hitting almost 12 million monthly unique visitors and crossing the 10 million milestone faster than any previous independent site, according to comScore. And a new report from Shareaholic indicates Pinterest is already generating more referral traffic to websites than YouTube, Reddit, Google+, and LinkedIn combined. → Read More
More than ever before, venture capitalists are digging in. To stay competitive and top-of-mind, VC’s are no longer loaning their advice and their capital, but actual “core” services that portfolio companies need. This shift isn’t necessarily new. For example, top VC firms like Kleiner Perkins and Greylock play a hands-on role in helping recruit talent. Recently, we’ve seen firms roll up their sleeves for another core competency: public relations.
More often, I’ll be pitched on a story on a startup by the in-house PR rep for an investment firm that has invested in the said startup. Traditionally, either the startup or an outside PR agency tends to do the outreach when it comes to launches, trend pieces, financings or other news items. And the rise in pitches from the VC firms themselves (as opposed to the startups) got me thinking about the evolution of the role of the VC, specifically in the context of PR. But in the past year or so, we’ve seen a rise in the addition of top PR and communications talent to these firms, specifically to help work with portfolio companies on PR strategy.
The News Corp. phone-hacking scandal continues to spiral out of control, sweeping up more and more of the companies employees and executives. In the UK, 8 people were arrested, including five News Corp journalists, in the broadening scandal, which may embroil deputy COO James Murdoch—Rupert’s son and heir-apparent. A paper copy of a deleted email found in a crate ties James Murdoch directly to the events under investigation, which involved the routine and illegal hacking of phone voicemails on behalf of a News Corp publication.
This email evidence would never have been found if it wasn’t printed out because News Corp, like many corporations, regularly deletes archived emails. It is standard practice, but the technical reasons given for deleting emails are usually not the real reason they are eliminated. The only real reason to destroy old emails is to avoid liability and future lawsuits. → Read More
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Y Combinator and Start Fund-backed startup SendHub, which offers a simple SMS solution for businesses, is killing it…and it never “officially” launched. Instead, the company soft-launched a couple of months ago with zero fanfare, and already has several hundred customers, 40% of which are active monthly users, sending some 30,000 SMS text messages per month.
Although generating revenue through its premium services for businesses, SendHub is also making teachers’ lives easier, by providing them with free tools to communicate with students and parents via SMS. → Read More
NewME Accelerator, the incubator launched last year to support minority entrepreneurs, just announced its latest group of startups.
In her blog post about the new class (NewME’s second), founder and CEO Angel Benton also offers also talks about the success rate of the first group of NewME alums — 60 percent of them have raised money, adding up to a little more than $500,000 in total funding. For the current class, Benton says NewME received more than 300 applications. → Read More
Congratulations Facebook! You have made history and changed the world. So, here are some thoughts from one of your biggest fans. Like the rest of the planet, I love Facebook and use it every day. So, there may never be a better time than now, when things are going really well, to add a dose of humility and perspective to the Facebook conversation.
Remember the movie Gladiator? Commodus, the bad son, murdered his aging father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius, preventing him from passing the empire down to his adopted good son, Maximus. Thus, instead of carrying on a centuries old tradition of merit-based succession, power passed to an unworthy blood relative and corruption followed. → Read More
Mobile strategy is about more than just phones. Mobile platforms and engagement strategies in our digitally enabled world need to support all marketing initiatives, both offline and online, and be truly multi-channel. Mobile maturity is one area, however, where brands and agencies are playing catch-up with consumer demand.
A siloed approach to mobile has been commonplace over the past couple of years. Many agencies have supplemented traditional creative with mobile ads that lack a larger strategy, subbing out app development that offers no real value and failing to thoughtfully consider the best platforms and devices for mobile campaigns. → Read More
Airy Labs, an educational gaming startup backed by Google Ventures and others, has eliminated the vast majority of its 20-person staff, leaving only a skeleton crew to keep the company going.
That’s what I’ve been told by former employees, and when you bring up the “team” page of the Airy Labs website, you now get a 404 error message. (There’s still a link from the jobs page.) When I contacted founder and CEO Andrew Hsu, he acknowledged that there have been cuts, saying, “We’re a young company and we tried some early experiments… some worked and some didn’t, so now we’re focusing a smaller team on the areas that worked.” → Read More
Many revolutions have been televised, but the publishing revolution has already become digitized, and now, mobilized.
There’s no doubt that the second half of 2011 was a difficult period for newspaper and magazine publishers. An Audit Bureau of Circulations report revealed that single-copy sales of consumer magazines dropped by nearly 10 percent in a year, while the five magazines with the highest newsstand sales all reported sharp declines as well. Most importantly, the fall in sales has hit revenues, making it more important than ever for publishing businesses to rapidly modernize their trade. → Read More
OMG. Pinterest now has over 10.4 million registered users, 9 million monthly Facebook-connected users, and 2 million daily Facebook users, according to Inside Network’s AppData tracking service. With gorgeous photography, and links to shopping sites, Pinterest is becoming an obsession for flocks of women. And they’re not afraid to show it, I mean, Like it. AppData and Facebook’s advertising tool show that over 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. → Read More
It’s February, which means Toy Fair in New York City. Every year, Mind Candy CEO Michael Acton Smith comes to town to peddle his little monsters. Those would be Moshi Monsters, one of the largest social game sites for kids 6 to 11, with 10 million monthly visitors. It’s huge in the UK, and this year Smith is going to make a major push into the U.S.
And it’s not just online. Moshi Monsters are finding their way into all sorts of kids merchandise, including collectible toy figurines (more than 20 million sold in the UK alone last year), plush dolls, games, the No. 1 kids magazine in the UK, mobile apps, and even temporary tattoos. → Read More
I can think of few subjects less interesting than Facebook’s forthcoming IPO. There, I said it.
I honestly don’t get what the big deal is. So a few thousand people will finally liquidize their locked-up wealth, and the hoi polloi will at last be able to buy Facebook shares. Stop the presses! (It won’t meaningfully affect their ability to buy other companies; they already have $4 billion in cash on hand, and I seriously doubt they have any multibillion dollar acquisitions in mind.)
I guess if you measure innovation by keeping financial score, this seems exciting, but if you measure by, you know, actual innovation, this is a total nonevent.
However. All the IPO furore has introduced one interesting data point: Mark Zuckerberg’s S-1 letter, which includes the unexpectedly striking–daring, even–paragraphs
We hope to change how people relate to their governments and social institutions.
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — took a leisurely stroll on a late winter Friday afternoon. The subjects: Path and the Address Book, SuperBowl dynamics, and 21st Century Fox, aka the new television/social media hybrid model.
It may seem like all stories are self-referential in this time of trending to zero barrier to entry, but as with many realtime transitions, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees until you get enough altitude. With 98 million simulsharing social media out of 119 million in realtime, the uber address book that’s being built will absorb all the big players including Facebook and Twitter. → Read More
I was once backstage at a news show. Six people were on a box in the screen screaming at each other about the economy. The producer was laughing. He leaned over to me and said, “the whole idea of this is to fill the time between one commercial segment and the next.”
Every day they want to scare me. Greece is going to suddenly disappear. Or have some sort of debt “contagion” that will spread across the Atlantic. Everyone is a “contagion” expert. Just like we were all experts on “Avian Flu”. Whatever happened to that one? Did anyone die of Avian flu? → Read More
Before we chat out the Droid 4 there’s a bit of other news we need to address right quick. As you’ll surely notice, we’re doing smartphone reviews a little differently now. That said, this video and my basic hands-on impressions are just the first in a three-part series reviewing the phone. Stay tuned for what comes next!
Alright then, back to business…
The Motorola Droid 4 has spent exactly 24 hours on shelves, and from the time I’ve spent with the phone I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it’s doing quite well there. → Read More
Patience is one of the seven virtues, the lesser-known cousins of the seven sins. And indeed, “patience is a virtue” – or so goes the saying. But another saying states that “fortune favors the bold.” So which one is it?
It’s not that patience isn’t valued; it’s that no one else is actually all that patient. Whether you are growing a business or chasing a girl or trying to lose weight or auditioning on American Idol, no one will sit around and wait for results.
They will be impatient. This doesn’t mean you should be impatient, it just means that in the words of George Jackson: “Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it’s cowardice.” → Read More
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