Fandrop, a new content sharing site started by a group of growth hackers, is debuting today to help you find out what’s trending across the web. The site surfaces things like tweets and Facebook posts, YouTube videos, images from sites like imgur, articles, web pages, and more. In some ways, it’s similar to other social networks and social sharing sites, in that you can friend and follow other… → Read More
Social TV and the second screen experience is quickly catching on among viewers, but the space as a whole is still nascent. While many are eager for a better social TV experience, as there’s plenty of upside for fans, advertisers and broadcasters alike, collectively we’ve all been waiting for one of these players to hit critical mass.
When Viggle announced in November that it would be merging… → Read More
For over two years, Pulse has been providing its over 20 million users with an easy way to read content from blogs and social networks. While other services like Flipboard and Zite used social updates and complicated algorithms to present users with a personalized view of the world, the Pulse team eschewed these ideas and stuck with a more traditional model of presenting you unfiltered feeds. Now… → Read More
RebelMouse, a content aggregation and curation site that lets users set up a profile and pull in content from their social networking accounts, as well as other sources, has hired some key former employees from CNNMoney and VaynerMedia. Since launching to the public last June, RebelMouse has had 240K sites created and is hitting 1.5 million unique monthly visitors to its landing pages. The company… → Read More
Branch launched out of closed beta only last week, but the engineering team is hard at work pushing out new feature updates. Today, the company announced that logged-in users will now see recommendations when they visit the homepage, from people you know. Your conversations will likewise be displayed to your contacts. → Read More
Today at Facebook’s press event, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced its latest product, called Graph Search. Two of the members of the Graph Search team, Lars Rasmussen and Tom Stocky, were very high up at Google. Facebook is calling it a “Dream Team.” Zuckerberg made it very clear that this is not web search, but completely different: What’s more interesting than… → Read More
It happens to the best of entrepreneurs: That service, app, or site that you set up finds an audience that totally blows your mind. You thought that a certain set of people would flock to your app like crazy, and you’re surprised by those who actually use it. If you have this “problem,” it’s important to recognize that it’s not a problem at all. → Read More
Advertising is something that we’ve all grown accustomed to in today’s society. For companies that provide free services, it’s an important part of keeping those services free for everyone to use. But are ads even working on us anymore? That’s up for debate and discussion, and those are decisions everyone can make for themselves. One of the biggest companies ever facing the… → Read More
Yesterday was a surprisingly interesting news day, given how close we are to celebrating the holidays. Facebook struck while the iron was hot and released a brand new standalone iOS app called “Poke”, leveraging a feature that has been around since the early days of the product, as well as a shot across the bow of Snapchat, who it reportedly attempted to acquire. At first glance… → Read More
A few days ago, Bing rolled out its redesigned social sidebar for the desktop and the company just announced that it is now also bringing this new design to its search results pages on the iPad. The new social sidebar – one of the marquee features of Microsoft’s search engine – now makes social search results from Facebook, Twitter, Klout and Foursquare on Bing significantly easier to read. As is… → Read More
Evertale, a Copenhagen-based startup originally focused on creating an automatic log of your life, including everything from phone calls to checkins to photos taken, is pivoting. Or more accurately, it’s today launching a product born out of Evertale’s best feature – shared photo albums. The new app, called Wink, joins the now fairly crowded space involving social photo albums built on the… → Read More
Today, a company simply called Mine is launching its online and mobile directory of people and purchases, backed by $600,000 in funding from Michael Dearing’s Harrison Metal. Using an email importer functionality as well as manual entry, Mine allows users to selectively share their online and offline purchases with their friends on the network, and those friends can then click through on the… → Read More
Startup founders are apparently still holding out hope for the social recommendations space, and today, yet another app has launched with its own take on mobile opinion sharing. After three months in private beta, Knotch has officially opened its doors to the public. → Read More
Civo is a beautiful new social discovery app that breaks users out of their social or geographic networks without forcing them to leave their comfort zones. It went live last week and is available for free in the iOS App Store (an Android version is in the works).
Founder Wei Shu, former director of corporate development at Renren (often referred to as “the Facebook of China”), describes the… → Read More
Hot-or-not is a site that most of us who have used the web are familiar with. Sit down at your desk, look at pictures and profiles of a bunch of people, and respond to them with an easy voting interaction. That type of service has been popular over the years, but with the surge of mobile coming fast and furious the past few years, there are opportunities to take it to the next level.
Today, I… → Read More
For companies that want to use social data from services like Twitter, Gnip is one of the “resellers” if you will. The company has been a trusted partner of Twitter, WordPress, Disqus, and most recently, Tumblr, positioning itself as the go-to marketplace for social data to be used for marketing, analytics and sentiment analysis.
Today, Gnip announced a new partner program called “Plugged In To… → Read More
For the men and women that serve our country, coming back from that life isn’t easy. I don’t have experience with it, but do know many veterans who are going through that.
Today, Google launched a new initiative called VetNet, to help people connect and re-enter the working life. The company is putting its social backend, Google+, to work on this project. → Read More
At The Pool, a Los Angeles-based social discovery network that aims to be the anti-Facebook (and anti-Twitter for that matter), today announced it has emerged from beta and is in the process of closing a $1 million seed financing round led by Clearstone Venture Partners. Also participating in the investment are a bevy of Los Angeles-based angels, including Buck Jordan of Canyon Creek Capital and… → Read More
Yesterday, I sat down with the folks who bring games to life on Facebook. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, there are a lot of people who like to hang out on the social network and play turn-based games. Sure, it can get annoying, with all of the notifications and requests, but Facebook is apparently trying to do something more than annoy you. Actually, it’s quite the opposite.
Recently, Facebook CEO Mark… → Read More
Foodily, a startup that began as a recipe search site before arriving on iPhone in late 2011, is today rolling out a major revamp of its user interface that puts even more emphasis on social interactions. The company is calling the combination of new features the “Food With Friends” experience, and it’s something that’s clearly been inspired in other trends in the social networking space… → Read More
Palo Alto-based HoneyBook is launching its online wedding albums service into private beta today, offering a way for couples to organize and share all the digital media related to their wedding, including photos, videos, music, and other content. However, the product is only available to professional photographers for now, who will then share the completed albums with their clients. → Read More
You may remember Evergram as the company whose co-founder, Duncan Seay, pitched the media in a wedding dress in the Startup Alley at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt SF. The dress may have brought him attention, but the gimmick wasn’t necessary – Evergram can stand on its own as a startup worth noting. The first product from the service was a way for wedding guests, friends, and family to leave… → Read More
An interesting team is getting back together for something new, and it’s worth noting. The founders of CoTweet, a company which was acquired by ExactTarget, is joining forces for a new startup called Seesaw. This time, Aaron Gotwalt is listed as CEO, and Jesse Engle will be heading business development. It’s a swap from the first time around with CoTweet. The pair are joined once again by Kyle… → Read More
Since Google’s social layer, Google+, is making its way into all of the company’s products, its Shopping venture isn’t being left out. Today, the company announced two new features for Google Shopping to help you find the best reviews for items as you’re making your holiday decisions. Which TV? Which gadget? Well, why not read reviews from people you might be connected to. Makes sense to me. → Read More
EverySignal, a social search startup incubated at Science, is launching a new service that alerts you to the important events from your friends and colleagues. Now, I know what you’re thinking: wait, don’t we have Facebook for that? But EverySignal isn’t trying to replicate Facebook’s functionality – rather, it’s about building value on top of Facebook’s data stream, as well as the data streams… → Read More
Powervoice, the social media marketing company founded by former IBM consultant Ryan Landau and his ex-Googler brother Andrew, has pivoted. Hard. And the founders have left the company. Originally, the service was operating as a place where users were paid to share brands’ messages on social networks, in a manner similar to Adly but open to all – not just celebrities and other influentials. → Read More
Glympse, the location-sharing app which first debuted back in 2009, is still hanging in there. The app arrived at a time when its competitors were the original, location-based social networks such as Loopt and Brightkite, now long gone. But Glympse survived – and today, it’s getting a revamp. The company, which has slowly grown its install base to 3 million users, is updating its mobile apps on… → Read More
Instagram is huge because it’s a network made of people who are passionate about taking pictures of things that they see and then dropping a cool filter on them to enhance their vision. It caught on immediately with everyone from geeks to Starbucks baristas. Since then, many companies have tried to duplicate the magic that Instagram used to sell itself to Facebook, but have failed.
Today, an… → Read More
Plenty of startups still believe there’s room in the social recommendations space, and now, another new contender heads into battle. Chicago-based Mouthee is today officially debuting its website and iOS application, which allow users to quickly share reviews of local restaurants and hotels, as well as movies, music and books. → Read More
PunchTab, a social loyalty and rewards platform now backed by $5.25 million in venture funding, is expanding its platform to mobile. Until now, the company had focused on allowing businesses and agencies to run campaigns across the social web – something that made it stand out from similar platforms, which often only target Facebook and Twitter. PunchTab, meanwhile, supports Google+, Pinterest… → Read More
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