LAUNCH Blog

LAUNCH Blog

Tagged with: MD

Wahooly Uses Klout to Add 400+ Influencers Daily Who Earn Equity in Startups

In a recent partnership with Klout, influential users with a score of at least 45 -- 20K spots open for the perk -- get expedited access to Wahooly where they can provide feedback to startups in exchange for becoming a shareholder in the company.

Starting January, Wahooly will present its users with 200 startups that they can choose to support by using their influence as an investment.

"For our model to work, it's critical that our users have a high measure of influence," Wahooly co-founder Dana Severson tells LAUNCH via email. "Our partnership with Klout is allowing us to access the 90th percentile of online influencers (the social equivalent of accredited investors). This is key for the startups that we'll be working with. Additionally, those with high influence are...

Bezos Gone Wild! Amazon Selling Every Non-iPhone Smartphone for One Penny

Through next Monday, Amazon is selling all non-iPhones for one penny with a new two-year contract.

Smartphones on sale for $0.01 include the Motorola Droid Razr, which Verizon sells for $299 with a two-year contract, the Samsung Galaxy S II, Epic 4G Touch, which Spring sells for $199 with a two-year contract, and the BlackBerry Torch 4G, which AT&T sells for $99 with a two-year contract.

Amazon seems to be going directly after Apple to try to sell more smartphones this holiday season by offering them at unbeatable prices. Bezos had a similar strategy with the Kindle Fire, which sells for $199 -- compared to $499 for the iPad 2 -- and analysts expect will hit 5M in sales in Q4.

The number of activated Android smartphones and devices worldwide has doubled in six months, from 100M to 200M, Google revealed during the launch of Google Music last week. Google reported during its earnings call in July that it activates 550K Android handsets every day.

The adoption of Android phones has far outpaced that of the iPhone [ see Mary Meeker slide ]. Gartner reported last week that Android's share of the smartphone market has...

Google+ Lets You Chat with People in Your Circles, Borrows Strategies from Facebook and Twitter

Google+ just added a new mutual circle chat feature to let you interact with people in your circles who have also added you to their circles.

The Google+ mutual circles chat is similar to Twitter's direct messaging service, which lets you privately message anyone who is a mutual follower. It is also quite similar to Facebook Chat, which lets mutual friends engage in a group chat.

Earlier this month, Google copied Facebook badges essentially pixel for pixel with its launch of Google+ badges for websites. Granted, Facebook has copied...

Google+ Brings NBA to Fans: Sponsors LeBron, Wade, Melo and Paul

As a sponsor of the NBA "Homecoming Tour" starring LeBron James, Chris Paul, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony, Google+ will stream each game of the exhibition tour live.

"Fans can watch all four games on Google+," The Google+ Homecoming Tour page states. "...and may even get the chance to Hangout with one of their favorite players on Google+."

Between Dec. 1 and Dec. 10, NBA fans on Google+ can watch the four basketball stars lead a four-game tour to each of their respective hometowns: Akron, New Orleans, Chicago and New York. Ticket sale proceeds will go to each player's charitable foundation.

"It'll be very neat," Wade told The Associated Press. "First of all, this is...

Google Music Tour Lets You Build Electronic Song and Keep It

The Google Music tour offers an incredibly interactive experience where you build a song while learning more about what Google Music has to offer.

On the site's landing page, you can mouse over each colored line to hear a different note. Moving your mouse quickly across the lines reminds us of playing up and down a piano scale.

While you cannot create your own original song, you can build "Zero Gravity," an electronic song by Teddybears.

"Pick a feature below to start the tour and build an exclusive song that's yours to keep," the landing page states.

Each feature -- discover, shop, listen, organize and share -- is...

Google Rolling Out Face Recognition for Google+ Photos

[UPDATE: A Google spokesperson says that it is more so facial detection, rather than facial recognition. ]

Google+ now has face recognition software in its photo uploader to make tagging "quicker and easier," Google+ Photos engineer Nathan Davis writes on G+.

"Whenever you create an album we now show you all the faces found in that album in one place," Nathan writes. "All you have to do is group the photos of each person’s face together and tag them...

Ron Conway Hints that Twitter Will Soon Sell Tickets for Music Concerts

[ SV Angel investor Ron Conway. Image courtesy of Kevin Krejci via creative commons license. ]

Twitter might soon become a one-stop shop for artist promotion, fan engagement and concert ticket sales.

Yesterday at the Billboard FutureSound conference, long-time Twitter investor Ron Conway hinted that ticket-buying would be coming to Twitter soon.

Conway called Twitter a "greenfield" waiting to be colonized by music tech companies facilitating live ticket sales, tour information and merchandise sales. He also told the story of what happened when he and MC Hammer visited Twitter several years ago. Hammer described how artists could build their audience, advertise concerts and also sell tickets through Twitter.

LAUNCH has contacted Conway and Twitter and will update this story if we receive a response.

If Twitter starts selling tickets, does that mean we'll start seeing ticket offers right in our stream or will Twitter add an additional tab for music? We wonder if Twitter would create its own payment platform or if they would make a deal with ticket distributors such as Ticketmaster, Tickets.com and Groovetickets.

Conway also discussed how startups should let major labels take 2% equity stakes in exchange for licensing their content. That way, labels and startups will share the same interests.

"Success breeds success...," Conway said at the conference in regards to Google's recent entry into the digital music business. "There's a lot of optimism that...

Amazon Blocking Spotify and Google Music on Kindle Fire

Before the recent launch of Amazon's Kindle Fire, many speculated that the 7-inch tablet could be an iPad killer. But the Kindle Fire clearly targets a different class of individuals: those who mostly consume Amazon content / shop on Amazon and don't care about having access to a diverse app library.

While the Amazon app store has some high-profile apps like Netflix, Pandora and Facebook and games like Angry Birds, it lacks a native email client, Spotify, Tweetdeck and Google's suite of apps (Maps, Gmail, etc.).

Obviously, those missing apps might matter more to certain people, but it's important to know that the Kindle Fire does not offer the full suite of apps available in the Android Marketplace.

Google Music, which launched on Wednesday, can stream up to 20K songs and integrates with Google+. The Google Music app is available on all Android devices with OS 2.2+, but since Amazon customized the Gingerbread version of Android, the app is not compatible with the Kindle Fire.

Kindle Fire users can still access Google Music in the Silk browser, but Spotify users...

How to Get Firefox Aurora on Kindle Fire

If you're looking to use Firefox on the Kindle Fire, where it is rather difficult to access third-party web browser apps, it is possible to install Firefox 9 Aurora from the Mozilla Wiki.

Since the Kindle Fire doesn't let you download web browser apps from the Android marketplace, even after you have enabled third-party application downloads, open up the Silk browser and go to the Mozilla Wiki site. Scroll down to "Download Aurora" to install Firefox 9.

If you try to download the app for from the Firefox site and Android Market, you'll see a notification stating, "Could not find that app in the Amazon Appstore for Android at this time."

Aurora, which Firefox first announced in April, is a release channel designed to...

RAVN Creates the Coolest Beta Wall Ever

RAVN, an activities search and booking engine that lets people discover and schedule activities, classes and tours online, has an awesome splash screen for its beta invitations.

"Beta invites are boring, so we made this little game called RAVN Hunt," the site states. Every day, the top 10 players get instant access to RAVN Beta.

To receive a beta invite, you must enter your email and play the game to kill ravens, which is based on Nintendo's Duck Hunt game.

"Our landing page was pretty traditional beforehand, but after the game, user conversion went up [300%] as people became more engaged, and kept playing for the invite code," RAVN co-founder Dennis Liu writes on Hacker News.

Some users have found ways to hack the game and inflate their scores, Catalyst Studios develo kyledr writes on Hacker News.

"Honestly we didn't try at all to make it difficult to hack," RAVN co-founder Steven Ou writes on HN. "Figured that no matter what we did...

Why Is Amazon Blocking Competitive Browsers on Kindle Fire?

Amazon seems to be blocking competitive browsers like Skyfire, Opera, Firefox and Dolphin on Kindle Fire. Amazon suggests the Android apps when you search for them, but when you click on the apps, they are nowhere to be found in the store for download.

Amazon essentially teases you with the apps, but makes it nearly impossible to access them, which we think is incredibly sleazy.

The native browser on the Kindle Fire, Silk, is powered by Amazon Web Services. Amazon introduced the browser back in September and touted it as: "Extending the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud."

Dolphin, on the other hand, lets you search using gestures and offers webzine-based browsing. In October, the company added Dolphin Connect to enable storage of add-ons and preferences on the cloud.

Online, Amazon advertises that Dolphin is available for your Android device but not compatible with the Kindle. To try to get around this, we went to settings to enable third-party downloads. See screen shots below for directions on how to do this.

LAUNCH has contacted Amazon and will update this story if we receive a response.

We then proceeded to Amazon.com to install the app from the website. After "purchasing" the free browser, the Amazon page stated, "Open the Amazon Appstore for Android on your device to download and install your app."

Still, the app was nowhere to be found. The trick seems to be...

Google Music Takes on Spotify and iTunes Match

Google Music, which just launched today, lets users add and stream up to 20K songs for free, share music with friends through tight integration with Google+, and offers users a collection of 13M tracks through the Android Market.

Apple recently released iTunes Match, its cloud-based streaming and matching service for up to 25K songs. The service costs $24.95 per year to sync music across iDevices. While the Google Music store is free to use, you can buy additional tracks in the Android Market for anywhere from $0.99 to $1.29 per song.

To upload songs from iTunes, Windows Media Player or music from folders on your computer to your Google Music library, you must first download the Music Manager.

Google Music lets users listen from the web, Android 2.2+ phones or tablets, as well as through its mobile app for Android. For users without Android devices, they can use Google's HTML5 Web app on a mobile browser. Additionally, if a user shares a song on Google+ with you, you can listen to it using the Google+ mobile app.

[ See screen shots and video after the jump. ]

Is the Internet Awake? Visualization Shows Optimal Times to Reach a Large Audience

In an effort to give people a general sense of when the the world is awake, designer Bard Edlund created "Is the Internet Awake" to show approximately what time of day it is in the top 25 countries, based on number of broadband Internet users.

Bård says that many marketers and social media experts are taking note of his project and finding it useful, but that the infographic simply confirms what people already vaguely know.

"I think somehow this way of visualizing it is just crystallizing the knowledge for some people," Bård Edlund tells LAUNCH via email. "I do want to emphasize, as I do on my site, that the graphic is not taking into account whether people are actually actively online. It's really just about whether people are likely awake or asleep -- so it's certainly not something to base your whole social strategy on. But I hope it's an interesting "quick check" for people who just want an 'approximate world clock,' as I call it."

While the clock gives you a probability of when people will be awake based on their broadband connection, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're reading tweets, blog posts or engaging with other marketing campaigns.

"Visually, I wanted to limit the number of countries included," Bård says. "I thought an interesting selection would be...

Chill Integrates with Hulu to Let You Watch TV with Friends

Chill just integrated with Hulu to offer viewers scheduled times to watch full television episodes with friends, and now features a revamped user interface.

"There's a reason why TV works the way it works," Chill Director of Growth Andrew Skotzko tells LAUNCH. "We're extending that idea online and the idea is that people have always had friends over to their house to watch television, go to bars to watch sports games together and that's really the direction we're building this out into. An interactive social viewing hub for premium content on the web."

Chill has access to all of Hulu's library, but currently only offers showings for 18 television episodes, including Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, 90210 and Glee.

"The shows that dominate the collective psyche is what we're choosing to highlight at the moment," Andrew says.

You can watch the latest episode with friends at different times throughout the day. For example...

Team Coco Launches "Judgmental Animals" on Google+

Does Google+ have a team doing celebrity development? These launches seem so coordinated and professional that we have to think that someone is reaching out to Adam Sandler, Will.I.Am and Snoop Dogg, and getting them engaged in the platform.

In Team Coco's first week on Google+, they will feature judgmental animals, which is similar to a segment on Conan O' Brien's video blog.

"Animals with judgmental expressions," Conan says in a video post on Google+. "This is my way of proving that the Internet is not a huge waste of time."

Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported how Google seems to be approaching celebrities for Google+ promotions and endorsements...

Microsoft Uses Klout to Give Influencers Free Phones

Microsoft has tapped Klout to help promote the Windows Phone 7.5 by offering a free phone as a perk to users influential about Microsoft and technology.

Microsoft has recently ramped up its marketing efforts to promote Windows Phone 7.5, also known as Mango. Two recent campaigns included placing a six-story high Windows phone in Midtown Manhattan that featured "live" Live tiles and its Cafe Mango truck, which Microsoft drives to AT&T stores serving mango-inspired street food to get people excited for the software.

In addition to a Windows phone, the perk offers...

ThinkUp 1.0 Liberates and Analyzes Your Social Media Data

[ The White House on ThinkUp. ]

ThinkUp, the self-hosted web application that archives and analyzes your social media life, just launched out of beta today with version 1.0.

Designed to meet the needs of those with more than 1K followers, ThinkUp lets users store social media conversations at a permalink on their site, visualize social media activity, put conversations on a map using Google Maps API to geo-encode posts, search and export data, and sort people by activity and popularity.

Current users include the White House, The New York Times and celebrities like Steve Martin.

"The conversations you have online are worth capturing, keeping, and referring back to over time," ThinkUp founder Gina Trapani writes on her Smarterware blog. "In fact, the things you share and the conversations you have about them gain weight, perspective, and importance over time, not just the moment you post them. Think about the time you announced you were getting married, or posted a photo of your newborn, or launched a project that changed your life on a social network and the conversations that ensued. That's content you want to keep."

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Look Out Yelp: Foursquare Brings Discovery Tools and Recommendations to the Web

Foursquare just revamped its website, which now offers list discovery to help you find things you might be interested in doing, and features a map on the home page that lets users see nearby friends, trending places and more.

The addition of new discovery features is yet another direct challenge to Yelp. In August, Foursquare added lists, which is similar to Yelp's to-do list feature on its website. On the other hand, Yelp added check-ins in January 2010 to put the company in the same playing field as Foursquare and Gowalla.

"As foursquare has evolved, the focus has turned from simply ‘checking in’ to sharing our experiences and expertise, unlocking rewards and deals, and exploring the world around us," the Foursquare blog states. "And, though we spend a lot of time improving the app for your phone, we know that sometimes the best place to do those things is when you’re visiting the website from your computer."

Foursquare now also offers recommendations given the time of day. For example...

Google Verbatim Shows Why Search Used to Suck

Google is rolling out a Verbatim search tool that gives users a more deliberate way of telling Google what to search for by taking its algorithm out of the equation.

Using the Verbatim tool, Google won't make normal improvements such as automatic spelling corrections, personalization of search by using information from sites previously visited, including synonyms of your search terms in the results, making some terms optional and more.

For instance, normal search automatically corrects "Mu'ammar al-Qadaffi" to "Muammar al-Qaddafi," matches "pictures" to "photos," makes certain words optional and more. In the case of "Mu'ammar al-Qadaffi," placing quotes around the search term don't make a difference in the search results.

[ See screen shots after the jump. ]

Facebook Loses Nym War Against Author Salman Rushdie

In the latest nym war, Facebook changed award-winning novelist Salman Rushdie's name to his birth name -- which he has never used -- prompting him to express himself in the Twitterverse to make Facebook respond. And it worked.

"Have been trying to get somebody at Facebook to respond," Salman tweeted yesterday. "No luck. Am now hoping that ridicule by the Twitterverse will achieve what I can't."

Rushdie explained that Facebook initially deactivated his account because they didn't believe that was his true identity. Rushdie then had to send Facebook a photo of his passport page to which Facebook then insisted he use his first name, Ahmed.

"They have reactivated my FB page as 'Ahmed Rushdie,' in spite of the world knowing me as Salman," Salman tweeted. "Morons. @MarkZuckerbergF? Are you listening?"