Because I am going to be an awesome Mom, I will totally keep my ears open to the best possible options for my kids, because I’ve totally set my sights on that, focusing on family instead of career and all. Obviously.

Until hell freezes over then, I will be buying my more reproduction-friendly friends subscriptions to Wittlebee (rhymes with “little bee”),  a Science-backed ”get random stuff sent to you”  startup run by my old friend and former Myspace marketing exec Sean Percival.

Wittlebee is like a Birchbox for kids clothes, where parents can get recurring/one-time shipments of children’s clothing for $39.99 a month – 8 items in total from brands like American Apparel and Cottonseed.

And yes, you can pick gender, age style and color preferences in the on-boarding process.

Percival tells me that the appeal of Wittlebee — in the same space as Tredup – is essentially the money saved by new parents, as the startup essentially packs about $80 of clothing in to each $40 box of clothing sent.

“Kids go through clothes fast and in today’s modern world it’s especially hard to keep up,” says Percival, “By auto shipping a few items each month, with sizes that grow along with your child, you can always stay one step ahead.”

A new father himself (that’s a picture of his daughter Charlotte below), he is sensitive to the needs of time-strapped parents, “The shopping experience with young kids can also be very challenging. With Wittlebee we save parents time, money and reduce those ‘mall meltdown’ moments.”

Knowing he wanted to do his own thing post Myspace, Percival tried out a few startup concepts before he settled on the Wittlebee model, operating the business out of an old server room at the Science offices until it grew enough to warrant a bigger office space.

Percival was sure he wanted to do a subscription e-commerce play — and his decision payed off — at about 100 subscribers Wittlebee moved out of the server room and the company is now at about 500 ($20K in revenue) in a month’s time.

“The business and much of what I do what inspired by [his wife] Laurie,” says Percival, “After getting a bit disenchanted by social media and online marketing I could only focus on solving problems for the most important people out there, moms.”

His future plans include testing out additional verticals and expanding to other age groups and kid-friendly items like books. “In most cases I’m trying to disrupt the existing and well established channels of retail so I’ve gotten a few funny looks along the way,” he says, “However clothing brands and some industry insiders have been genuinely excited about the model.”

Apple took the top spot from Google for the highest corporate reputation score, according to the 2012 Harris Poll Reputation Quotient, a survey which measures corporate reputation for brands and companies in the U.S. The poll asks the general public to measure the reputations of the 60 most visible companies in the country. As reported last year, Google was top of the list in 2011′s rankings, followed by Apple and Amazon.

Harris says that Apple took the highest RQ score (85.62 this year, the highest RQ score ever achieved by any company in the 13 years of the RQ study) to secure the top spot in the ranking, with Google and the Coca-Cola Company taking the second and third spots, respectively. Amazon also saw a jump in reputation score, moving up from eighth to fourth place with Kraft Foods ranking fifth.

In terms of year-over-year change, only Toyota, General Motors, BP, and Apple saw significant improvement in their RQ scores while one-quarter of companies saw drastic declines. Among those with the most significant declines, five were financial institutions, including Berkshire Hathaway. HP also saw a major decline and IBM and Intel, who both made the list last year, were absent this year.

RQ actually measures six different factors in reputation that influence consumer behavior. Apple is top-ranked in four of the six dimensions of reputation, says Harris. These factors and the high scorers include Social Responsibility (Whole Foods); Emotional Appeal (Amazon.com), Financial Performance (Apple), Products & Services (Apple), Vision & Leadership (Apple) and Workplace Environment (Apple).

Other interesting results from the survey include purchase and recommendation behavior from consumers. For example, in the future, Americans would “definitely” purchase products & services from Amazon.com (71%), Kraft Foods (70%), and the Coca-Cola Company (64%). Americans would “definitely” invest in stock from Amazon.com (34%), Microsoft (23%), and the Coca-Cola Company (23%).

Bullhorn, which develops a recruitment software and applicant tracking system, is releasing a new Social Recruiting Activity Report, which examines the usage of social media in executive and job recruiting. Bullhorn found that LinkedIn leads among the frequency of usage by recruiters and their effectiveness for sourcing candidates, followed by Twitter, with Facebook coming in third.

It’s important to note that this study examines activity by recruiters as opposed to actual job hunters. Despite the rise of Facebook as a source for job seeking and professional networking, Bullhorn’s data shows that recruiters’ LinkedIn networks still drive more views than their Twitter and Facebook networks combined. Recruiters who post jobs on social networks are likely to receive more applications from LinkedIn, with the social network driving almost nine times more applications than Facebook and three times more than Twitter.

One interesting data point from the report—a Twitter follower is almost three times more likely to apply to a job than a LinkedIn connection, and more than eight times more likely to apply than a Facebook follower, indicating that Twitter might be a highly underutilized social recruiting channel. And Twitter followings drive almost twice as many job views per job as their Facebook fan bases.

According to the report, 48 percent of recruiters use LinkedIn exclusively. These recruiters have an average of 661 connections, and don’t leverage the other two networks for social recruiting. From there, recruiters use Twitter more than Facebook. Despite the fact that recruiters have fewer connections on Twitter (37 followers on average), 19 percent are connected to both LinkedIn and Twitter, while only 10 percent are connected to both LinkedIn and Facebook (245 friends on average).

In terms of adoption, LinkedIn continues to grow at the fastest pace. The average recruiter adds 18.5 LinkedIn connections each week, compared to 3.3 Twitter followers, 1.4 Facebook friends. LinkedIn drives more views per job than Twitter and Facebook, generating three times the amount of views of Twitter and six times the amount of Facebook.

Pops, maker of an application that adds another dimension to the mobile notifications people receive on their Android smartphones, has raised $1.5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, who were early investors in companies like Skype, Rdio, OpenX, Kupivip.ru, Nimbuzz and Wix.

Pops basically enables mobile users to customize smartphone alerts, including new email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and whatnot in a more creative way than you’re used to.

Pops’ technology essentially captures incoming notifications and personalizes them according to a user’s needs and wishes, including animations or video clips that wrap the alerts in question.

Not something for power users who receive such mobile notifications every other minute or worse, or rely on instant delivery of alerts for their professions or whatever, but it’s nice to know you can at least customize those typically bland phone notifications.

The startup behind the application plans to monetize the service by offering premium content. Since we last wrote about Pops, the app has garnered close to 500,000 downloads.

I was debating with myself whether this should be a post or not, and then decided I should just ask out loud on Twitter if it was a good idea or not.

Because three people immediately told me that it was (two of those people were smart, attractive women, I might add), and because TechCrunch founder and former fearless leader Michael Arrington has a long history of identifying porn clones, you are now reading this (NSFW!):

Snatchly is a ‘Pinterest for porn’. There’s really not much more to say about the site, except that it’s far from the only raunchy Pinterest clone among Pinterest clones (looking at you, Pornterest).

Is there now a single reason left for men to use Pinterest altogether?

Dubbed a virtual ‘pornboard’ (chuckle), Snatchly lets you “save and share all the porn you love from anywhere on the Web”, including stuff from some of the most popular porn sites around. If you’re so inclined, you can install a ‘snatch it’ (chuckle) browser bookmarklet to grab images and videos.

Obligatory screenshot (did my best to make it SFW, unless your boss loathes cute puppies):

StopTheHacker, an aptly named provider of SaaS-based website security services, has secured $1.1 million in first-round funding from public and private investors, including Runa Capital and former Bluecoat chief executive Brian NeSmith.

StopTheHacker’s technology, which relies on machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, basically helps website owners prevent, detect and recover from online malware attacks and other hacker shenanigans with a software-as-a-service offering.

The company says its AI engine is based on four years of research at the University of California, Riverside, which was originally funded by the National Science Foundation (also see team). The engine, StopTheHacker says, boasts self-adapting capabilities, constantly monitoring new strains of malware to build a profile of emerging threats.

StopTheHacker is based in San Francisco.

Marin Software, a company that helps advertisers manage large online ad campaigns, has raised $30 million in a new round of funding.

Founded in 2006, Marin initially offered tools to manage search advertising campaigns, but it has expanded into display, mobile, and social media, and the company now bills itself as “the world’s leading online advertising management platform.” Marin says it doubled its customer base in the last year and now works with more than 1,500 advertisers and advertising agencies, who use the company’s services to manage $3.5 billion in annualized ad spending.

The new round was led by Asian investment firm Temasek, with funding from SAP Ventures (which, like Temasek, is a new investor in Marin), Benchmark Capital, Crosslink Capital, DAG Ventures, and Triangle Peak Partners. Founder and CEO Chris Lien said the money will be spent on building the sales and customer support teams, and on product development. He also said this will probably be Marin’s last round of private funding (it has raised a total of $80 million): “At some point in the future, Marin expects to be a public company.”

When asked what 2012 will hold for the advertising industry at large, Lien suggested that the shifts underway in 2011 (and before) will continue.

“In 2012, we expect to see ongoing migration of advertising dollars from offline media into online media as advertisers seek to have their marketing dollars follow audiences,” he said. “2012 will see continued growth of all forms of online media highlighted by the growth of search, display, social, and mobile.”

Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets:

Tesla Unveils The Model X, An Electric CUV With Futuristic Gullwing-like Doors

Microsoft Explains Windows On ARM, The Latest Addition To The OS Family

Lytro Teardown Shows Potential Wireless Capability, Smallish Sensor

Ignite Takes $5 Million Series C To Build World Of Warcraft For Car Racing

Brinno Peephole Viewer Is A Viewer For Peepholes

Viber, the smartphone app that lets people call and text other users free of charge, has recently surpassed 50 million registered users.

Yes, but how many of them are active users, you ask, critically?

Well, the Israeli startup behind the apps won’t say, but provides some fairly impressive usage stats to back up the fact that people aren’t just signing up never to fire up its applications ever again.

Users are currently making over a billion minutes worth of calls every month, Viber claims, and sending nearly a billion text messages in the same timespan. You know a company is onto something when they start measuring certain KPIs in billions and not millions.

Viber says its iPhone and Android apps are being used by people in 193 countries, who collectively make about 150 million calls on a monthly basis. Over 20 million photo messages are exchanged per month, too.

You’ll note that this means that Viber users are only making 3 calls per month, on average, which suggests that not all 50 million users are as active – or maybe free texting is the killer feature here.

The impressive thing about these milestones is that Viber has done it in just over year after its initial debut, and is still showing remarkable growth with over 200,000 new signs-ups per day. And that they’ve achieved this feat whilst challenging the likes of Skype, Vonage, Jajah, Rebtel, Nimbuzz, fring, eBuddy, Truphone and others in the mobile communication and VoIP space.

Sometimes it really does seem like we live in the Wild West of the digital age, the rules of the Internet get made up as we go along.

Due to the newness, it seems like there’s a scandal per week in tech startup land, and, because of social media, the default way of dealing with it for startups has become the grand public apology — tweetable on Twitter!

I’ve always been a big fan of the “forgiveness not permission” philosophy (just ask Mike) but there’s something that doesn’t sit right about how automated the atonement process has become for young companies.

Do something bad > Get caught > Bad press > Apologize > All is right with the world. Maybe you even pick up some new users along the way ?…

When startups get into the mindset that any press is good press, how far are we from orchestrated PR strategery like, “Quick, lets start storing our users’ address books so we can get some attention!” And then handle the crisis well, of course.

After all, “the crisis” is almost entirely dictated by the machinations (and laziness) of the press. The Airbnb “trashed house” story was around for about a month before a rogue Arrington post turned it into a PR nightmare. And a ton of apps have been subtly uploading your contacts for a while now, Path just happened to be the most prominent one “caught.”

As investor Chris Dixon brings up, ““If you download a lot of apps, your contact list is on 50 servers right now.” It’s true. While they were reluctant to name names, everyone I’ve spoken to in the industry agrees that this uploading thing is a widespread phenomenon, basically any app that asks a user to “Find their friends” or notifies users when their friends are on the service is suspect.

(Btw. If anyone wants to send me a complete list of apps that upload iOS Address Books, unencrypted, to servers, please do here.)

In the meantime get ready for a lot more startups dramatically and publicly apologizing for their sundry infractions — It’s become such a phenomenon that we’ve created the form letter below (inspired by this and this) to make it easier on them.

Image/ Half Chinese 

Form via/ @Percival

Two weeks ago at the Crunchies, Dan’l Lewin, Microsoft’s top executive in Silicon Valley, came up to me and handed me a Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. It was out of the box, fully charged, and ready to go—alive in my hand. It’s a beautiful phone. Thin, solid, bevelled, and bright. Later that evening, I pulled it from my pocket and I’ve been playing with it ever since. This is not the first Windows phone I’ve seen, but it is the first one that’s made a lasting impression.

The Lumia 800 is the flagship Windows phone. It’s not available yet in the U.S., although an unlocked version is rumored to be coming on Valentine’s Day (for the absurd sum of $899, which includes a bundle of other gear). This is a standalone $500 phone unlocked, which means it could go for $200 or less with a contract. Its cousins the Lumia 710 and 900 are priced at $50 and $99, respectively, in the U.S. John Biggs and I talked about the 710 last month on Fly or Die, and that one is okay too. But the 800 is potentially an iconic phone.

When you hold one in your hand, it’s clear that the smartphone wars are far from over. It is too easy to dismiss Windows Phone 7 as being too little, too late. (That was our first reaction too). No, it’s clear that Windows Phone has more than a fighting chance. Microsoft will make sure that the economics are much more attractive to the carriers than the iPhone’s so that they push Windows Phone. If consumers bite, Windows Phone could emerge as a very strong smartphone platform.

The biggest drawback right now is the apps. There are 50,000 of them, but they are mostly hit or miss. They will get better over time. It’s still early. The few games I’ve played are solid enough, but the social apps need some work. They are too bare bones and stripped down, but I’ll give them this: they don’t look or act like iPhone apps. Windows Phone apps have their own look and feel, with a common theme being swiping sideways to get to a different tab or screen.

I am not quite ready to give up my iPhone 4S, but, as I argue in this episode of Fly or Die, if I had to choose between a top of the line Android and the Lumia 800, it would be a toss up. The 800 does not feel cheap. It is a sleek device that shows off Windows Phone 7 in the best light possible. A lot of care was put into getting many of the details right in Windows Phone 7—little things like the animated transitions when you launch an app or open up a new window. It’s a device that makes you want to swipe just because it is a pleasurable experience. (Be sure to read Robin’s and MG’s takes on Windows Phone also).

Last month, Google began showing the new versions of Google TV at CES, giving the press a taste of what was in store. One particular panel discussing Google TV’s new capabilities led Rupert Murdoch to take to Twitter, bemoaning the pirating ways of the search behemoth. Forbes has the backstory here. Google TV posted on its Facebook page yesterday, saying that it has some big announcements in store for Monday.

Today, it announced that it is upgrading the YouTube experience on Google TV with a new, revamped app. The YouTube app for Google TV is available for download on the Android Marketplace. The initial drive behind Google TV was to create a user experience that seamlessly blends web video with the boob tube, to change the way consumers interact with TV, but the first Google TV fell flat. Matt Burns reviewed the version, saying that, while it’s getting closer, it still has a long, long way to go.

In its announcement today, Google is promising some “big improvements” to its new YouTube app, among them that navigation is smoother and faster, along with some much-needed additions to its UX, like the new “Discover” feature, which basically just brings YouTube channel categories to Google TV, enhancing their browse-ability within the app. They’ve also brought its new channel pages, enabling users to navigate playlists and videos and subscribe to favorites.

Google says that users can also now view related videos from the same user by pressing the up and down arrows on their remote controls, or to find the “Info screen” to leave a thumbs up, add to your playlists, or to leave a comment.

The new app looks good, and this certainly stands to improve the YouTube experience on Google TV, though it’s certainly not the “big announcement” that many were hoping for. We’ll be keeping our ears out in the event that there’s more Google TV news in store for Monday.

Uber, the fast-growing on-demand car service that lets you request a ride at any time using SMS or the company’s iPhone and Android apps, has seen its fair share of struggles in providing a disruptive alternative to cab services. Uber has continued rolling on in spite of it, raising $32 million in December from Menlo Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and Goldman Sachs — among others. The startup has also continued pushing forward with its national (and international) service, recently launching or soft-launching in Chicago, Washington D.C., and Paris.

Now, it seems that Uber is ready to begin adding more cities to its existing services in Boston, New York, Paris, San Francisco, and Seattle, soft-launching (or entering its super secret “testing phase”) in the City of Angels just in time for the Grammys. Yes, according to Uber’s blog, the time has come to begin testing its car service in Los Angeles waters. Oh, and just in case you missed it, Uber just this week also began its testing/research phase in its first Canadian city, Toronto.

As to its soft LA launch, Uber said that its very first riders were “Papa Don and Mama Bonnie Kalanick,” the mother and father of Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick, who beat out well-known actor of stage and screen (and apparent avid surfer), Edward Norton. Norton had to settle for LA’s “Rider 1″ title. Of course, Uber soft-launches often come with “celebrities” or notables in tow, as Ben Mulroney was Canada’s “rider zero.” Smart marketing, to be sure.

The company also added that users are now able to request cars in Los Angeles (it is officially “on the ground”), but the service will remain in “Secret Phase,” (sorry guys) with limited availability until the service’s official launch, which is upcoming.

When it comes to a city of LA’s size, diversity, and there are bound to be obstacles, so Uber is “analyzing what we find and making adjustments until we get LA right,” according to its blog. That also came with a warning to early LA adopters: “Adventurous Riders Only”.

We’ll be updating as we learn more. Below is Uber’s pic of “Rider 1″:

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.

In that sense, the Y Combinator alum is looking to replace — or at least become a complement to — paywalls with simple, CAPTCHA-like messages that have the potential to be less annoying revenue generators. For example, DoubleRecall might offer its service on a news article, which would contain a CAPTCHA-like recall mechanism that would prompt readers to pick out a couple of words from the text and enter them into a textbox.

The idea is to create experiences that are quick enough for users to navigate that they lower the barrier and obnoxiousness level and are targeted and clickable enough for brands to actually make money and potentially avoid using a paywall altogether.

As to the effectiveness of this model, DoubleRecall says that the campaigns it ran over the course of Q4 2011 showed an 82 percent engagement rate, versus one to three percent for paywalls, an average CTR of 3.6 percent, and an elevenfold increase in brand awareness, versus using banner ads. The startup closed the year with $300K in revenues, which isn’t too shabby for having been up and running for four months at the end of the year.

These results have been intriguing enough that investors are buying into DoubleRecall’s strategy, as the startup has announced that it has raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Like the other startup’s in YC’s summer batch, DoubleRecall was offered $170K from Yuri Milner and SV Angel’s Start Fund, as well as Y Combinator. Since then, Digital Garage, Itochu Ventures, Mentor Equity and TEEC Angel have all joined in to bring the round to $1.6 million.

Sure, this model is great, in that it’s got the potential for publishers to monetize through an alternative approach, and readers don’t have to wrestle with paywalls, but with this slight description, readers may be inclined to see this as a me-too idea very reminiscent of the same strategy that has seen Solve Media attract buzz and venture capital.

DoubleRecall COO Julien Coustaury tells me that the main similarity between Solve and DoubleRecall is that, at some point, a reader has to retype words from text into a textbox. Solve’s “TYPE-IN” platform replaces those fuzzy CAPTCHA words and numbers with a brand message or logo, with an input box. Essentially, they’re using input boxes for advertising. DoubleRecall, on the other hand, doesn’t want to advertise on the input box, but instead wants to serve some non-branded text readers have to recall, and use that to unlock content.

In most cases, this would come in the form of pay walls. Sure, publishers, content producers need to make money, but readers generally shudder at pay walls, especially if they’re not loyal customers of the brand in question. Those who read the Wall Street Journal everyday don’t mind paying a bit more for some of their content, while casual readers may seethe at finding a pay wall, when they were looking for a specific article that couldn’t be reached other than by paying.

Thus, DoubleRecall works with publishers and sites to maintain this wall, but replace it with another gateway. They get the user clicks, show the content they want to show, and then get to give readers access to the content anyway. It can be a win-win, although there’s still a lot more testing to be done.

DoubleRecall is opening headquarters in NYC this month, as it works to expand its reach internationally (the team is originally Slovenian, and gained a bit of European traction in the earl-going), launching in Japan later this month. So far, the startup has signed on 40 publishers and 50 brands in total, and will look to use its new infusion of capital to fuel this international expansion and ramp up hiring.

The company also has a social component to let brands share the best from their social media streams, as well as real-time monitoring and report making to enable them to instantly adapt to feedback.

For more, check out DoubleRecall at home here.

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing.

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.

Okay, so it’s on the rise, we get that, but let’s take a look at some of the players that are helping to take this trend to the next level. Three companies in particular are currently creating some buzz in the space: Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball.

Badgeville started by making a big splash center stage at Disrupt in the fall of 2009. The company took home the Audience Choice Award at Disrupt, has since gone on a tear and is poised to have a great 2012. (Check out Rip’s original post on Badgeville’s prospects here.)

Badgeville Co-founder and CEO Kris Duggan pulls no punches when it comes to one of the most visible and early adopters of gamification, the check-in king: Foursquare. The CEO says that Foursquare was early in its attempts at gamification, but that its incentivization models remain fundamentally flawed.

Duggan points to the “Mayorship” system within Foursquare: “You have literally hundreds of people and only one mutually-exclusive point of recognition, the Mayor. What happens to the other hundreds of people? Not only are they not engaged, but you don’t take into consideration different types of users.” Duggan believes you need to engage not only the heavy user, but medium and light users as well. Rather than a one-size-fits-all methodology, you can appeal to each user type and incent them accordingly.

From a marketer’s perspective this is a huge hole in the way Foursquare approaches gamification for
brands. The ability for brands to own their engagement strategy is key for them to grow their model. A vanilla badge strategy will only allow them to go so far and without real control of the experience and rewards it won’t be a rich experience.

Keith Smith, CEO of Big Door, has seen large adoption of their gamification platform. And, in particular, the CEO recognizes a big opportunity selling to marketers: “Marketers today spend more money on acquiring users than working to retain those users and providing them with a reason to come back to a site”. By focusing on retention, marketers could get more value from their marketing dollars.

Big Door has been able to secure marquee customers including Dell. Dell took gamification beyond their website and used it for a live event to create multiple ways to engage attendees through Journeys, which were part of the conference tracks during the event. Each Journey was customized to a specific conference track. QR codes were located throughout the event and attendees were encouraged to scan codes and were rewarded with achievements for every scanned QR code and every journey they completed.

Big Door has even produced a very simple and easy to use widget that I implemented on my blog.
After the implementation I started seeing increased interaction on my site. For those looking to try out gamification out on their site, it is a great bet.

Molly Kittle, VP of Digital Strategy for Bunchball, notes that until recently, one of the biggest challenges for gamifiers has been in educating potential clients about the difference between gamification and social games. Molly sees a shift from education to adoption of gamification strategy in the future.

“I agree that some gamification does come off badly, and slapping some badges on a site isn’t professional or powerful, and we don’t want our customers to do that” she says. The quick-fix isn’t sustainable for most brands. Molly thinks there will be a huge change of perception across industries, catalyzed by a growing number of enterprises embracing gamification to solve real business challenges. Hey, there’s even gamify.com, with one of the best domain acquisitions for the market.

Travel companies, too, are getting in on gamification, with Trippy, Gogobot, and more offering gaming elements to their user experience. But, again, for startups and companies to be successful in this approach, gamification has to go beyond badges.

There are some common threads to the trends that Badgeville, Bigdoor and Bunchball see in the
gamification space:

1. The space has quickly evolved from place where they are educating the customer about gamification to earlier customer understanding in their offering
2. Frictionless installs are a necessity. They all recognize that if it is difficult to implement, then clients will not want to implement it.
3. A world beyond badges: Badges will increasingly become less and less important, and the rise of true virtual currencies will become more prominent to offer users more than vanity accomplishments in the form of badges.

So what does the future hold for Gamification?

It is clear that it is unveiling a far larger market opportunity — the concept of what Duggan calls “behavior lifecycle management.” Some of the elements of gamification will further permeate into other applications. In the interest of driving increased user interaction, expect to see some form of game dynamics coming to a business application near you. Over this past year, gamification has shed its acne and awkward voice to come of age.

Excerpt image from MrDaley.com

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.

Editor’s Note: This post is written by guest author Andreas Bernstrom, a former Goldman Sachs alum who has worked at TradeDoubler, was COO of Taptu, and in 2009 joined Rebtel as CEO. You can follow him on Twitter @AndreasCB here.

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.

Car service trumps a taxi. So just Uber it.

If you live in a big city or plan to leave the keys at home this Valentine’s Day (more champagne, please!), hopping in a cab is probably the way to go. Unfortunately, landing a vacant taxicab on a night that high-heels come out in the masses is no small feat. Fear not. The hottest transportation app to hit the market this year is an uber sweet (no pun intended) way to skip the cab lines and ride in style.

As Uber’s tagline reveals, the service exists as “everyone’s private driver,” and guarantees fast, on-demand service.

Users in one of Uber’s eight operating cities — Boston, Chicago, New York City, Paris, Seattle, Toronto and Washington, D.C.—can use their iPhone or Android device to order on-demand luxury transporation from anywhere at anytime.

The cost per minute varies depending on the city, but after an initial base fare ($7.00 in New York and $8.00 in San Francisco), Uber is only a tad pricier than the average taxi. But the convenience of having a sleek town car at your fingertips is well worth a little extra cash. Bonus: the tip is included! (Read more TechCrunch coverage of Uber here.)

Another suggestion for those without a lot extra money to spend? If you want to rent a really nice car, say a sexy looking Tesla, but don’t have the dolla bills, check out Getaround. The TechCrunch Disrupt winner will hook you up with a hot ride for cheap, on the Web or on your smartphone.

No reservations? OpenTable has a spot for you.

Those of you who are already users of this revolutionary make-my-life easy tool probably already have a reservation booked for 7:30 p.m. at your favorite corner table. Those of you who aren’t: Please proceed immediately to your nearest open table app.

OpenTable is now available on any smartphone device. No irritated hosts to wrestle with. No waiting on hold for 20 minutes, only to discover the next available reservation is three months from now. The OpenTable app provides a quick, easy and free solution to V-Day dinner woes. And as you’re probably just realizing now that you forgot to make a reservation, it’s a handy tool for a last-minute crisis.

You can run a search on the OpenTable web site or the mobile app for a specific type of restaurant and location, and the app will return a list of viable options and times the restaurant has a table available. Have a special request or message for the host? Punch it into the “notes” box, and the restaurant staff will immediately see any notes for your reservation.

If you register with OpenTable, you’ll also have access to Dining Reward points, which can be redeemed at any of the company’s 20,000 affiliated restaurants. Just make sure you show up for dinner, though. After four “no shows,” OpenTable deactivates your account.

Long-distance relationships at local prices.

If your special someone is across country lines this Valentine’s Day, you’ll probably wake up to a foray of digital hearts showering your screen. But e-cards are so 2001 and new technology has emerged that makes keeping in touch a truly simple, affordable and personal experience.

Video-calling applications, like Skype and Facetime, are the next best thing to seeing someone in the flesh, and apps like Viber and my own company, Rebtel, provide cheap or free solutions for keeping in touch on the go or when video chat isn’t convenient.

Rebtel and Viber can be downloaded on any iPhone or Android device, and allow you to make international phone calls using your friendly neighborhood WiFi network or 3G connection. That way, your phone carrier can’t rob you in international charges, and you still get to talk to whomever from wherever for free (or next to nothing).

The best part of these services is that they’re free or very affordable. And despite pressure from retailers to blow cash on expensive gifts for Valentine’s Day, the simple truth is that there’s still no replacement for a clear connection to the sound of your partner’s voice.

No time for presents? Social gifting apps could be your answer.

It’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind, only to wake up on Valentine’s Day with no plans, no gifts and a potential romance disaster waiting in the wings. If you find yourself in this situation don’t worry … things just got a lot easier.

Apps like Giftiki let users send money in the form of gift cards that your Valentine can use at a number of sweet brands. And you can tailor the gift with personal messages and even let some of their friends join in on the fun.

If you’re looking for a more personal touch, you may find what you’re looking for in Thoughtful, which takes a ‘personal assistant’ approach with recommendations for gifts that are based on information you enter or that already exists on Facebook.

Want a reminder for that dinner date? No problem. How about a push notification when that perfect gift is available? Yes, please! This app, which is now in limited Beta, can make those tough Valentine’s day decisions a thing of the past, and guarantee that you’ll never fall short on gift ideas again.

Social gifting may not be for everyone, but it can be great for gifting friends and family, too. Remember, your Valentine may not be the only one in need of some February lovin’.

At a loss for words? Lovestagram says a thousand…

We all know that roses are red and violets are blue, but does anyone really look forward to another Valentine’s Day Hallmark card?

If you think your girlfriend will find cliché gifts like flowers, cards and chocolates a bit on the boring side, why not break from the traditional with a Lovestagram?

The girlfriend of Instagram co-founder, Mike Krieger, has launched a romantic version of the hugely popular photo app just in time for Valentine’s Day. By simply logging on to your Instagram account and punching in the username of your partner, Lovestagram will locate every image you’ve captured together and compile the photos into a Valentine’s Day-themed slide show.

Add a personalized note and a couple “xo’s” and voilà— an instant, unique and a perfect way to share the love.

Sending your Valentine a “Cheers” couldn’t hurt either.

You might not always find that perfect gift, but with these apps in hand, you’re bound to come up roses this Valentine’s Day.

Image excerpt from iPhoneToolBox.com

Editor’s Note: Reggie Bradford is the Founder and CEO of Vitrue, a provider of social marketing SaaS solutions. Follow Reggie on Twitter at @ReggieBradford and Vitrue @Vitrue.

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.

The social content curation service has captured the attention of millions with a unique platform
that allows users to express interests and ideas through visually appealing images on virtual
bulletin boards. The Pinterest frenzy provides marketers with an opportunity to leverage its
compelling visual nature and weave it into a cohesive social experience within a brand’s Facebook
community.

Vitrue has been following Pinterest closely as part of our normal vigilant assessment of the
social space. Currently, Pinterest doesn’t have an API for third parties to build brand marketing
management for the platform, but with some creativity and existing social media management
tools, brands can leverage Pinterest right now and share in the increasing excitement.

Here are five ways brands can leverage Pinterest now:

1. Add Pinterest Content to Your Existing Facebook Presence.

Images are more effective than text at encouraging engagement, and an effective technology platform will allow you to surface visually appealing content on one or more Facebook Tabs. This content can be presented as a simple pinboard, as part of a game, or even in the News Feed. But as you pursue this, don’t forget that over 40% of Facebook’s traffic comes from mobile devices. Make sure your platform can effectively surface tabs on mobile devices. Vitrue’s platform does this today, and we expect other platforms will follow.

2. Optimize Your Web Properties to Draw People to Your Pinterest Content.

You can always put a “Follow Me on Pinterest” button on your website. But remember, a user’s choice to “Follow” may not be brand-specific, but rather board-specific. This gives you an opportunity to segment your followers in ways relevant to your business. Lowe’s does a nice job of this and has seasonal boards (the Big Game, Valentine’s Day), themed boards (Craft Ideas, Unique Pet Projects), and boards that tie to specific merchandise areas (Lighting, Bedrooms, Bathrooms). You’ve likely already had to start thinking about segmentation using Facebook Open Graph Objects. Pinterest Boards offer many of the same segmentation opportunities. A well-designed strategy will have you adding “Follow Me” buttons in places appropriate to the segment.

3. Tell Your Existing Social Audiences About What’s Happening on Pinterest.

Social networks mean different things to different people, and the chances are good you’ve already invested considerable effort in growing your fan/follower bases on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Make sure that you periodically post Pinterest content to those streams, and in a visually appealing way. Animated photo slideshows and other visuals can be used to surface Pinterest content right into fan News Feeds, for instance. The resulting acquisition of Pinterest followers and the deeper engagement with fans across multiple properties can pay great dividends.

4. Make Your Pins Work Harder For You.

This means using a URL shortening and redirection strategy, preferably one that aggregates your Pinterest analytics (views, Repins, etc.) in a central location. This will allow the metrics to be combined with, and compared to, those from your othersocial properties. You also need to combat the link rot that can occur when the source image feeding your Pin is removed from its website. With content as visually driven as Pinterest’s, broken links stand out like a sore thumb. Lastly, the pinned images themselves can be set to click through to a variety of sites. Imagine a Pin of a product that, once clicked, takes you to a flash sale where the product is sold at a discount after a minimum purchase threshold is met. All of this is possible now!

5. Arm Your Staff and Agency Partners With Tools to Help Them Pin Great Content.

Content is king, and anything that makes it easier for your teams to identify and curate great content represents a competitive advantage. The Pinterest “Pin It” button works quite well for consumers. Unfortunately it wasn’t designed for marketers and is therefore missing some features that would let you include analytics tracking as a simple part of the “Pin It” process. This won’t last long, as tools to fill this gap are already under development.

Pinterest is still in its infancy, and time will tell if it continues its rapid growth or plateaus. But it certainly exhibits the potential to provide visually engaging experiences for consumers that marketers can weave into their social communities. Brands can start simple, then evaluate for effectiveness along the way. Being able to experiment with new and innovative platforms is part of the fun and excitement of social. And brands should start experimenting today.

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.

One of the first major hires in the industry was the addition of PR honcho Margit Wennmachers, co-founder of one of the largest technology and media PR firms OutCast Communications, to Andreessen Horowitz as a partner. At the time, Marc Andreessen told AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher that Wennmachers’ brand building and PR experience would be a valuable asset to the firm and its portfolio. Mind you, Andreessen Horowitz wisely realized only a year after launching the firm that building a VC powerhouse would be more than just writing checks, but also a consultancy of sorts.

David Krane, Google’s former Director of Global Communications and Public Affairs, and one the company’s first PR reps back when it was just a startup, wears two hats at Google Ventures, where he is now a partner. He invests in startups but also helps Google Ventures portfolio companies with PR strategy as well.

in April 2010, Sand Hill VC Kleiner Perkins nabbed former head of communications for Hulu (and previous PR/marketing employee at Amazon and Microsoft) Christina Lee to head marketing and PR for the firm. Last fall, PR guru Kiersten Hollars (formerly of Outcast, Yahoo, Digg, and AOL) joined Wennmachers’ team at Andreessen Horowitz, focusing on scaling the marketing and PR efforts for the then 80 companies in the firm’s portfolio. And most recently we saw Google senior manager in PR Andrew Kovacs jump to Sequoia to help the firm’s marketing partner, Mark Dempster with PR and communications duties for the firm’s companies in the U.S. and Israel.

Clearly some of the brightest and most well-regarded talent in the technology PR industry are no longer just at agencies or in-house. As Emily Mendell, VP of communications for the National Venture Capital Association, tells me, the VC market is extremely competitive for deal flow. “There are a lot of firms chasing for deals in the hottest, early stage startups, and PR representation and communications strategy is just another service these firms can offer while at the negotiating table,” she says.

And technology PR is not an easy task—to do the job well, it requires a technical understanding of the product and the ability to digest and relay this information in a communicable way. Startups realize that having this on-hand at their investment firm is an asset to them, Mendell explains.

And many of the pr execs mentioned above are solely focused on helping portfolio companies as opposed to doing in-house communications for the firms themselves. Lee tells me that part of the trend of more VC firms bringing on PR talent is a reflection of how the role of communications is changing in the tech industry in general.

“Now smart entrepreneurs understand the value in being transparent with consumers, and the role of communications has risen to a strategic level,” she says. “PR is expected to play a big part in building brands and more and more startups are thinking about PR and branding at an earlier stage.”

Kleiner, specifically, is taking a holistic approach to company building, and part of this is providing communications and PR help to startups and companies, she explains.

Of course, there are a range of different ways which VC PR reps can help entrepreneurs and companies from simple tasks such as introductions to technology journalists to actually spearheading PR efforts for a product launch, to coaching companies on branding and messaging strategy to drafting press releases.

Another industry source tells me that while some firms are bringing on PR talent for the use of portfolio companies, others are trying to use PR to boost their own images, and promote their VCs to the press.

One factor that I believe is pushing the trend of building reps and even mini-agencies in-house is the rise in seed stage investing by these VC firms and the competitive market at this level. There are no shortage of VCs and angels that are willing to write checks at the seed level nowadays. Many firms can’t just get deal flow based on reputation alone. But the VC firms ability to be a ‘full-service’ agency can be a factor entrepreneurs consider when sitting down at the table. This is especially important for early-stage companies, who may not have the kind of money to hire a top-tier PR firm to handle PR, says one industry insider.

As mentioned above, part of this full-service package also includes recruiting, which is a trend that has been happening for some time now. Kleiner Perkins partner Juliet de Baubigny has been helping portfolio companies with human capital and recruiting for the past ten years. Greylock recently created a dedicated talent team to help its portfolio companies recruit effectively. Firms like Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia are also aggressively working to help startups network and recruit talent.

Interestingly, this ‘full service’ model has been offered by incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars and 500 Startups though both in-house talent as well as through mentorship. While it’s a stretch to call the VC firms mentioned above incubators, it’s certainly interesting to see the overall functionality of these large firms evolve with the current state of investing.

As firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and others create these full-service VC funds that not only dole out cash but come with in-house PR agencies, marketing resource and talent recruiter, there’s no doubt that this trend will filter down to smaller firms and funds.

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.

Reading the account in the New York Times about this newly discovered email from former News of the World editor Colin Myler to James Murdoch, which dates back to 2008, you get a sense it wasn’t meant to be found.

Mr. Myler’s electronic copy had been lost “in a hardware failure” on March 18, 2010,” while Mr. Murdoch’s electronic copy had been deleted on Jan. 15, 2011 during an “e-mail stabilization and modernization program.”

Big corporations routinely delete old e-mails. Between April 2010 and July 2011, News International discussed e-mail deletion with HCL Technologies, which manages its e-mail system, on nine occasions, according to a letter HCL wrote to Parliament last summer.

Most of the reasons were mundane. But in January 2011, HCL said, News International asked whether HCL was capable of helping “truncate” — meaning delete — “a particular database” in the e-mail system. The question came shortly after disclosures in a civil suit brought by the actress Sienna Miller raised fears that material about widespread phone hacking at The News of the World might become public.

Companies know that incriminating evidence always exists in emails because emails document the conversations and decision-making that goes on in all organizations. But they need a justification other than “We don’t want to get caught.” So that’s how you get corporate doublespeak like “e-mail stabilization and modernization” programs, with its vague suggestion that there is a technical reason to delete old emails, as if a company’s entire email system might crash under the weight of old emails stored on a server.

Let’s just be clear here. By putting in place policies to routinely delete old email archives, companies are protecting themselves from future incrimination. And News Corp isn’t the only company that does this, by any means. It’s a preventative measure. But it only works if they destroy any incriminating emails before they are caught. Once an investigation starts and the prospect of subpoenas arise, destroying emails is no longer a legal option. In this case, that may come back to bite News Corp.