Tagged with: KK
Angels are addicted to AngelList, which, like any great startup, continues to roll out features that make finding, following, connecting with and investing in cool startups easier.
One that caught our eye -- the "best match" for an investor. As AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant tells LAUNCH via email, "It's just showing you
[ The "front page" of Stitcher's new iPad app -- see what's in the headlines and what's hot as well as new podcasts. ]
Stitcher, which provides on-demand podcast streaming to desktops and mobile devices, has overhauled the look of its iphone and and iPad apps, changing the dominant color from royal blue to dark gray, replacing the logo's rounded lowercase letters with blocky all-caps, and making images accompanying podcasts larger.
Overall the apps feel cleaner, and the changes give Stitcher a more serious, rather than playful, feel. [ The new logo hasn't made it to the Stitcher website just yet though. ]
Chuck Harris, Stitcher senior designer, wrote on the company blog that, "The logo had to have a narrative that told the Stitcher story...
To make Klout a useful destination, Klout is allowing more people to see its over 10K topic pages that show the top 10 influencers in that topic and the content influencers on each topic are discussing, LAUNCH has learned. Klout announced its plan for topic pages in mid-August [ see our story. ]
Klout users who opted into the topic page "perk" last month can preview the pages right now. Tweeting about today's launch can help you get access faster.
"This is a big step for us in turning Klout into more of a utility around search and discover instead of pure vanity of checking your score," CEO Joe Fernandez tells LAUNCH by email. "This is a really early version of where we plan to take this but it speaks to our belief that every person who creates content has influence. Our goal is just to...
WHAT: Small businesses get discounts at over 60 vendors based on the number of purchases they make and those of their group -- friends on Facebook or an association/program partnering with Rewardli -- up to the max a retailer is willing to give. Group members do not need to buy the same thing at the same time to get the deal, and deals are always "on." Businesses make a purchase through the vendor's regular ecommerce site and receive their discounts as cash back in their PayPal accounts once a month.
Members can be part of more than one group. Those in a private group (e.g., alumni association, frequent flyer program) can get discounts not available to everyone on Rewardli.
Hardware discounts range from 1% to 3% and some web-based services are...
We love the Chill concept of watching videos together and are thrilled the team recently raised $1.5M from Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, Atlas Venture and investor Paul Kedrosky.
Our experience watching the TechCrunch Disrupt event in a special Chill room -- which is nicely branded and pretty full -- has an intimate feel, but Chill doesn't offer much functionality beyond what you can get in Ustream, Justin or YouTube Live. Frankly, we prefer watching...
Focused on group sharing since late 2010, three-year-old social blogging platform Posterous has now launched Posterous Spaces, a group-sharing platform across web and mobile devices that simplifies private sharing with different groups in your life. Also launching today is a new iPhone app that gives mobile users the same sharing abilities as the website (new Android app in the works).
Those with multiple "spaces" can manage them on a dashboard and auto-post updates to over 26 social services. Users can call follow different spaces and create a permanent archive of posts so they don't get lost in a stream. To help the less tech-savvy, Posterous optimizes content before embedding it in a space.
Google+ has made private and segmented sharing easier already, and Facebook recently launched more straightforward private sharing options [ see our story ].
But as Posterous founder and CEO Sachin Agarwal tells LAUNCH, "It's unclear if normal people have figured out...
If filtering your Google+ stream by circles isn't enough for you, check out a new Chrome extension that lets you filter posts in and out of your stream by keywords.
After you download the extension, you'll get a tab where you can input your keywords. The top box is for words you want to exclude, the bottom for words to include [ see above ].
Click the "add" button next to either box and a pop-up box will appear. Enter keywords like "technology" or "cats" (with our without hashtags) and separate them with commas.
WHAT: Break down an experience -- something you've done or want to see others do -- or a topic into actionable steps so that other people can learn from and do the same thing. Writing the experience is intended to be as simple as posting updates to Facebook and Twitter (though Mightybell offers a detailed guide).
Like other social networks, people can follow an experience. Followers check off each step as they go, at which point they are prompted to share their achievement on Facebook or Twitter and indicate how they felt about that step. They can publicly comment on advice and share their own, as well as see the progress of their fellow followers. Experience "creators" can see metrics on their followers such as conversion rates.
Experiences can be anything, including travel planning, career guides, recipes and rules for success. Available as iPhone app.
LAUNCHER: Gina Bianchini, CEO, co-founded Ning in 2005 and was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Andreessen Horowitz just prior to founding Mightybell last fall.
WHY: A big goal is easier to take on when it's a series of small steps. Other types of online content, including how-to videos, don't always break things down or explain how smaller steps lead to the end goal. People like to share their expertise. Lots of ways to have online conversations but no great way to translate those conversations into better experiences in real life.
WHEN/WHERE: Limited beta Sept. 8, 2011 / Palo Alto. Company founded October 2010.
BACKSTORY: Gina didn't have an "aha" moment. Rather, the idea for Mightybell unfolded much like...
[ Groupon CEO Andrew Mason in 2009. ]
Groupon has cancelled its IPO road show and is reassessing the timing of its public offering on a week-to-week basis according to a Wall Street Journal report. This means social gaming site Zynga, which filed in early July, could go public first. CNBC reported Zynga's IPO would likely be in October rather than September.
WHAT: Universities provide GroupCharger with their database so that GroupCharger can crawl social networks, public data and third-party APIs for information about the dataset, including the top social media influencers and alumni likely to donate. GroupCharger can also tag individuals based on information in their public profiles (e.g., a person who says on his LinkedIn profile that he's a partner at a VC firm would be tagged "investor").
Universities have three ways to use the new data: matchmaking for jobs, personalized introductions and segmented targeting. Alumni association staff access a dashboard that shows them activity among alumni and recommendations for individuals. They can also send emails via GroupCharger's app or their own email system.
Coming in the 2.0 version: pushing content through social media (in addition to email) and allowing alumni to share content directly back to the university without creating a new profile.
LAUNCHERS: Kirtus Dixon, CEO, has started four companies (two failures). James Weddle, president. Satish Kodukula, CTO.
WHY: Universities want alumni to feel more connected so they give more money. State universities have had their budgets cut and need to find money elsewhere. Students and grads want to connect with alumni in specific fields and professions. Many groups have "lost" members they'd like to find and keep in touch with for networking and fundraising purposes.
WHEN/WHERE: Sept. 7, 2011 / Austin.
BACKSTORY: Kirtus tells LAUNCH he learned about "maintaining the right balance of speed, learning and focus" from his previous startup experiences. For GroupCharger, they interviewed 250 people across different groups before building their minimum viable product. "We knew early on that...
Barely two-and-a-half years old, Node.js is designed to handle thousands of simultaneous requests in real time. If Twitter were built from scratch today, for example, the backend could be Node.js. This open-source language powers sites including Etsy, Uber and Yammer, and it's very well-suited to building massive multiplayer online games [ see our story on Node.js ].
The second annual Node Knockout, Aug. 27-29, gave developers exactly 48 hours to build a Node-based web app. The competition's 175 judges have until tomorrow, Sept. 6, to pick winners in seven categories -- including overall team and best solo project -- from the 177 entries. The masses pick the "most popular" winner.
The top prize at Node Knockout 2010 went to Swarmation, a multiplayer "pixel formation" game which is still up but hasn't gone anywhere.
The most popular entry from 2010 was...
The story CNN incorporated Google+ Hangouts into wasn't breaking international news -- fan reaction to soccer clubs' transfer deadline -- but it's a big vote of confidence for Google's video-conferencing technology.
The segment for CNN's show "World Sport" included viewpoints from soccer fans, one in Scotland and one in Malaysia. It appears their comments were edited from a Hangout a producer held before the show aired.
The next step, of course, will be Hangouts broadcast live. We'd love to see...
Google+ is piloting a Twitter-style suggested users list that Google VP Bradley Horowitz says includes those who "literally engage" people -- judged by reshares, +1s, comments and Hangouts -- and won't be dominated by the elite once personalized SULs roll out. Although Google+ does not have a list for every interest area just yet, Bradley says this is a "bug" and hints that it will eventually become comprehensive.
On the Google+ SUL: celebrities like Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg and Taylor Swift but also popular travel photographer Trey Ratcliff (nearly 81K followers) and nonprofit expert Beth Kanter (463 followers). Categories include broad topics like...
Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.
WHAT: Lets consumers and businesses compare rates from electricity suppliers and switch to one that's cheaper or greener. Most who use the service save between 7% and 19% on their electric bills.
To reduce consumption, Power2Switch also lets consumers monitor their electricity usage and compare it to others.
Service only available in Illinois right now, but Power2Switch has a contract with a supplier that will bring the company into all 17 U.S. states with deregulated utilities.
LAUNCHERS: Seyi Fabode, who worked in the utilities industry in the U.K., and Phil Nevels, who has biz-dev experience at startups.
WHY: Consumers don't know much about their energy options or their usage. People like saving money. Lead generation is a lucrative business model.
WHEN/WHERE: 2008 / Chicago.
BACKSTORY: Seyi and Phil met at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Seyi started the company in fall 2008, and Phil joined him in 2009.
Seyi's experience in the U.K. utility industry...
The White House plans to launch a tool so U.S. citizens can directly petition the Obama administration to take action on issues they care about -- as long as they have an email address and can get at least 5K signatures. Naturally, the administration wants people to use social media to get support for their petitions.
In a mass email, senior adviser to the president David Plouffe framed "We the People" as an initiative in line with the country's founding documents (the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition government, notes the official website ). To get you really excited, Plouffe writes, "President Obama will even answer a few himself."
Macon Phillips, the White House new media director, noted in a tweet that the system does not have a way to...
