Shaker won TechCrunch Disrupt SF last year with its 3-D virtual nightclub built on top of Facebook, and June 8th it will finally launch in North America with the help of the music industry’s Live Nation and BandPage.
Until then you can sign up for Shaker, and when you do, you’ll get a classic album cover of Bob Marley, The Clash, or another legend remixed with your Facebook photos and data. The partnerships, promotion, and landing page all point to a big focus on music as a social lubricant for hanging out with people on Shaker.
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Shaker’s certainly been keeping busy ever since they won our Disrupt competition back in September — not only did they win our $50,000 check, the team also closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by Shervin Pishevar of Menlo Ventures not long afterward. Now it looks like Motorola Mobility Ventures is looking to get in on the action as well, as they have recently invested in the Israeli startup.
Neither Shaker nor Motorola would comment on the amount of the investment.
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“‘What?.’ ‘We made it to Disrupt,’ Sarah said calmly. ‘We screamed so hard we woke up the building.’”
After the screaming ended, the Israel-based Shaker team ditched Burning Man plans for TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011 rehearsals in San Francisco, devising a plan that would buy them some time (asking if they could have all 13 founders on stage) and having that plan backfire (we said “Yes.”).
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It’s been a very busy week at TechCrunch with our Disrupt conference and other internal disruptions, so you may have missed some great and revealing interviews. Devin Coldewey wrote a post with the Six Must-Watch On-Stage Videos from Disrupt. But there was a lot of activity going on backstage too. We did more than 60 interviews with entrepreneurs, VC’s, Angels, CEO’s, and a Mayor.
Also, if you find yourself missing or still humming the tunes from Disrupt, you can download the music created for us by Smith & Keats Music in this post.
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Early on Day One of Disrupt SF, Silicon Valley legends Peter Thiel and Max Levchin came out on stage with a grim message of doom: “Innovation in the world today is somewhere between dire straits and dead … outside of computers and the Internet, we’ve had forty years of stagnation.” Meanwhile, Startup Alley boasted a large number of trivial, me-too apps, all too often marketed as “Airbnb for X” or “the gamification of Z” or “the business card … reinvented!” The judges were acutely aware of this: one of them dryly commented, re JiffPad, “It’s nice to see people tackling harder problems than restaurant check-ins.”
Also: VCs there all seemed to agree: if you want to start a company, move to the Valley. I suspect TC Disrupt will be remembered in part as the event where mobile travel apps finally erupted into the mainstream. And, yes, that’s right, Shaker won.
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Three days and 31 startup pitches later, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2011 has been determined. Out of the 29 startups and two audience choice winners, we whittled the list down to seven finalists, which included Bitcasa, Cake Health, Farmigo, Prism Skylabs, Shaker, TalkTo, and Trello. The winner from this group receives the Disrupt Cup and $50,000, taking over possession from Disrupt New York winner Getaround. Without further ado, the runners-up is Prism Skylabs. And the winner is…Shaker! Disclosure: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is an investor in Prism Skylabs and is a pending investor in Shaker.
Israeli startup Shaker essentially aims to turn Facebook into a bar via a social game. As we wrote in our review of the startup, Shaker is a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar, your pictures are placed on an virtual wall, you can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear and you can even buy people drinks.
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We are two days into Disrupt SF, and 31 startups have battled in front of the judges and an audience of thousands to vie for the Disrupt Cup and $50,000. The caliber of the startups across the board was so strong that seven of them are advancing to the final round. After tallying up the judges scores and conferring with the TechCrunch writing staff, Heather Harde and I have selected the following Battlefield companies to present on Wednesday at 3:30 PM PT.
You can watch their first-day demos below. They are (in alphabetical order): → Read More
Facebook is the social network. But it’s still not really all that social. Yes, you chat here and “like” things there. But it’s not the same as going out to a bar with a group of friends. Shaker, a new startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, aims to turn Facebook into that bar.
The easiest way to think about it is as a mixture of Second Life, The Sims, and Turntable.fm all mixed together using your Facebook data and connections. Your Facebook profile becomes a walking avatar. Your pictures are placed on an actual (well, virtual) wall. You can choose what music is playing in the room for everyone to hear. And you interact with other Facebook users as avatars. You can even buy people drinks.
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Looking for an inexpensive MP3 player to use for working out, showing off to tourists, and/or other general merriment? Buy.com has the SanDisk Sansa Shaker for the low, low price of $14.99, which includes free shipping. Being that it’s a SanDisk product, there’s an SD slot that you can use to expand upon the 1GB of storage that comes standard. The Shaker has a built-in speaker, two headphone jacks, and song changing is handled simply by shaking the device. You can also change tracks and regulate the volume by twisting the white bands on the top and bottom of the device. The regular price for the Shaker is around $50, so this deal might not last all that long. SanDisk Sansa Shaker 1GB [Buy.com] via FatWallet → Read More
Don’t want your music-loving 8- to 11-year-old running around with an iPod? SanDisk targets “tweens” with its new Sansa Shake — a kid-friendly player that stores music on Secure Digital memory cards and runs on one triple-A battery. Best of all, it’s pretty darn cheap, at just $39.99, including a 512MB SD card. Older kids may not be impressed by the Shaker’s size and features, but I had a tough time getting it back from two 8-year-olds I lent it to. → Read More
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