Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.
Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount). → Read More
EasyWeb Innovations, hereafter referred to as ‘EasyWeb’ or, alternatively, ‘some obscure patent troll looking to score coin by suing companies that actually innovate, rather than building and selling something’, has recently filed patent infringement lawsuits against social networking giants Facebook and Twitter. The suits claim EasyWeb holds five patents, with titles such as “Message Publishing System for Publishing Messages from Identified, Authorized Senders”.
Of note is the plaintiff’s lawyer, John Demarais, who is quite famous in patent litigation circles (he went from defending some of the biggest tech firms from patent trolls to working exclusively with and for patent trolls to attack them). → Read More
Twitter CEO and former improv comedian Dick Costolo gave an almost hour long talk at the opening dinner of Web 2.0 Summit this week, peppered with his own unique brand of humor and insight. → Read More
As the final question of the Web 2.0 Summit Dick Costolo speaker dinner, O’Reilly writer Alex Howard asked about when Twitter users will be able to access their Twitter histories, “I’ve got 49,119 tweets and 1/4 as many DMs, if Google has a Data Liberation Front, and 30% of your team is former Googlers, shouldn’t you guys be working on something similar?”
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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has just dropped some numbers at a dinner here at Web 2.0 Summit. Costolo revealed that the company has gone from 100 million tweets per day to 1/4 billion tweets per day — a billion tweets every 4-5 days, he said.
Updating. → Read More
A tipster informs us that UberMedia, the company behind social networking apps like Echofon and UberSocial / Twidroyd, has unintentionally pushed its new iPhone application onto the App Store (iTunes link). This is plausible, because the Chime.in website isn’t accessible yet at the time of writing, although the support pages appear to be live already.
So is Chime.in the oft-rumored challenger to Twitter, which UberMedia has had run-ins with in the past? UberMedia has always denied that it had plans to launch a competing social network, so it’s a question worth asking. And the answer is no, not really. → Read More
Eye-C is a new mobile application for iPhone and Android that lets you “play” Twitter hashtags on your phone, TV, PC or set-top box. The service looks for any media associated with a particular hashtag, then creates a playlist of sorts (a “taglist”) which allows you to watch the videos, listen to the music or view the photos associated with a particular hashtag. For example, a search for #occupywallst brings up a playlist of photos and videos of the protests alongside associated news reports. → Read More
Apparently testing out social media-enabled voter awareness app Votizen, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has just sent out a litany of tweets to people he follows, endorsing SF candidate Ed Lee for Mayor; “Will you endorse @EdLeeforMayor for Mayor on @Votizen https://www.votizen.com/m/93t6at/,” like that times 30.
While Twitter representative Sean Garrett tweeted that Biz “press[ing] the wrong button” as responsible for the spam, I haven’t been able to replicate the effect on Votizen, which appears to be super buggy this morning. Wherever that darned button is, I can’t find it. → Read More
The Nook Color is getting its first dedicated Twitter application today, an app called Tweek built by the boutique software consultancy DIG based in Tampa. To be clear, this isn’t the first app on the Nook Color to support Twitter. There’s already Seesmic, for example, which provides access to Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and more. Celebrity Tweets, meanwhile, aggregates the musings from over 300 celebs.
However, Tweek is the first dedicated Twitter app designed just for the Nook Color. It does Twitter, just Twitter and nothing but Twitter. → Read More
In early September, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey posted a note to developers asking for feedback on how the network could better serve them. From the post: We want to know what additional materials you need from us to help you build products, boost distribution and expand your reach. It looks like Twitter has taken this feedback into account, and has rolled out a number of new features for developers based on their responses.
One of the main developer requests was a centralized issue tracker. Twitter has now launched a dedicated Issue Tracker, hosted on its new developer portal, which will replace the existing Google Code Tracker. → Read More
Twitter’s Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain took the stage at IAB’s Mixx Conference today and revealed a few milestones for the communications platform, specifically in the advertising area. Bain said that Twitter now has 1,600 advertisers using the platform to reach consumers, and currently has an 80 percent retention rate with advertisers. Back in July Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said that the number of advertisers on Twitter had gone up by 600 percent, since last year when it was in the hundreds.
Back in March, Twitter partnered with Paramount Pictures to launch the trailer for new film SUPER 8 on Twitter. Bain also said today that Twitter helped Super 8 sell 1 million sneak peek tickets, and opening weekend box office exceeded projections by more than 50 percent. Another example of advertising success on Twitter, was with fashion line Burberry, who launched a fashion show on Twitter and saw 14 percent higher engagement, and saw a 10X lift in brand mentions. → Read More
As Twitter CEO Dick Costolo told the media a few weeks ago, advertising is a key strategy for the company. “Our advertising method is the only one we need to be a big business,” he said at the time. And Twitter has rolled out a number of new products including Promoted Tweets. But according to a new eMarketer report, Twitter’s ad revenue is expected to be lower this year, and will grow significantly over the next few years once the platform’s self-serve ad product rolls out. eMarketer estimates global ad revenues at Twitter will grow 210% to $139.5 million in 2011, up from just $45 million in 2010, in the company’s first full year of selling advertising.
For background, eMarketer forms its estimates for advertising spending on Twitter through an analysis of estimates of consumer usage, marketer usage, ad pricing, and impressions on Twitter, as well as revenue estimates from research firms and other sources.
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While giveaways and “follow us and win!” contests aren’t always worth calling out, this promotion from @NASA is too great to pass up. They’re planning on inviting 150 of their followers to watch the Curiosity Mars Rover launch. Yes, the actual launch, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. → Read More
It’s hard out there for an tech investor! You’re now competing with flashy Hollywood folk like Ashton Kutcher, who have unparalleled opportunities, like getting to show off their investment affiliations on their latest character’s laptop, you know that tech startup founder character they play on what is only the most watched sitcom in America.
It was the antics of Mr.Kutcher himself that inspired @MrDisclosure, a Twitter bot that attempts to get investors to disclose that they’ve invested in that company they’ve been tweeting about incessantly. After a Kutcher-edited issue of DETAILS magazine met with criticism when Kutcher failed to reveal his stake in some of the companies he featured, @MrDisclosure creator Andy Cheung set up the account, wanting to bring awareness to the issue of investor conflict. → Read More
“What’s happening?” The text entry box on the Twitter homepage innocently asks us constantly, compelling us to type in a <140 character window into what we’re doing RIGHT NOW. For the most part, if you’re an active Twitter user, you partake voluntarily, contributing to a real-time hum of over 200 million updates daily.
On the receiving end of these updates are people who’ve chosen to subscribe to your one way broadcasting of your constant status. Like it or not, they’ve opted in to what you ate for breakfast, read this morning, or think about the financial crisis in Europe. → Read More
The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — talked Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, Twitter, and, oh what was that oh yes, Google+. In a post-Arrington unpaid blogger world, it seems likely the new alignments suggested by the Facebook announcements will quickly migrate across the social spectrum.
Soon we may see Spotify play the role of ABC to iCloud’s Disney, which in fact is already the case. In turn, smaller producers such as turntable.fm will take the role of satellite producers in much the same way Dick Wolf and the CSI producers orbit NBC and CBS respectively. Where Facebook, Twitter, and G+ stand is TBD.
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We’re just about a year away from the next Presidential election. That means one thing: campaign ads. A shit ton of them. Everywhere.
And that includes Twitter.
Yes, the old: “This message has been approved by….” is coming to Twitter starting today. Mitt Romney’s campaign is the first to buy one. While they are still technically a part of the Promoted Products suite, Twitter is rolling out small UI changes to distinguish political ads from regular ones, they say. And yes, the FEC disclaimers will be a included in the hover overlay. → Read More
Those of us who live in a world overpopulated with smart phones often forget that feature phones currently dominate the global cell phone market. In a nod towards its users that aren’t on iPhones or Androids or any other phone that basically functions as a mini computer, Twitter is now allowing its users to send photos va text message.
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In 2006, Google acquired the exclusive rights to a search algorithm called Orion. They outbid Yahoo and Microsoft on the deal, which was the PhD work of a 26-year-old University of New South Wales student named Ori Allon. Allon went on to work for Google, integrating his system into their main search algorithm, where it still plays a key role. Allon left in 2010 to found a new startup, Julpan. It didn’t take long for someone to scoop him up again.
Twitter has just announced that they’ve acquired Julpan for an undisclosed sum. The startup focuses on analyzing social information that is shared on social services like Twitter, so this is a natural fit. This will enable Twitter to come up with ways to surface relevant content to users as more and more of it keeps flowing into the system. Twitter has recently stated that this is a key area of focus. → Read More
It’s usually a company’s social media reps that get caught tweeting things they shouldn’t be, but ex-Microsoftie Joe Marini was a bit higher up on the food chain than that. Formerly the principal program manager of the Windows Phone web team, Marini has resigned his post at Microsoft after tweeting his first impressions of a forthcoming Nokia-made Windows Phone. → Read More
