You know you shouldn't be using social media websites if...you're wondering how they recorded Titanic and / or telling people to relieve stress by inhaling and then "outhaling". Continue reading to see eighteen more people who shouldn't be using social media.
Fandalism, a social network for musicians, is adding a new feature that should undercut the market for “aggregators” like CD Baby and Tunecore (which allow independent artists to sell their music on iTunes and other digital stores).
To do that, founder Philip Kaplan (who also founded the FuckedCompany blog and ad network AdBrite, as well as co-founding social shopping startup Blippy) is offering a free song upload to iTunes, and unlimited uploads to iTunes, Spotify, and Google Play for $19.99 per year. That’s significantly cheaper than most other services, he said — for example, Tunecore charges $29.99 per album per year, while CD Baby charges $49 per album and takes a cut of earnings.
Those fees don’t seem like an enormous amount of money, but Kaplan said it’s still a risk for the musician, and one that they shouldn’t be taking. Fundamentally, he argued that the aggregation business is “a commodity.” He doesn’t see it as a serious moneymaker for Fandalism, but instead as a way to attract new members for social network (you need to be a member to participate in the music distribution program), which he described as “my true business.” Plus, he said he likes the idea of “causing trouble” for an existing industry. In fact, the main reason he’s charging anything at all is just to convince musicians that it isn’t a scam.
So how is the business side of Fandalism going? Well, aside from the distribution feature, Kaplan isn’t actually making money yet. Instead, he’s focused on building “a database of every musician on the planet.”
When he showed me the site last year, he was already off to a good start, with 330,000 members around the world. Now he said that number is up to 550,000, and those members are pretty active, uploading 1,000 videos per day, providing 20,000 “props” (the Fandalism version of a “like”) and 3,500 comments. It’s becoming a real-world community too — a few months ago, Kaplan organized a meet-up in New York’s Washington Square Park and 400 people showed up, as you can see in the video below.
At some point, Fandalism will probably become a large enough that it will be valuable to advertisers like instrument manufacturers: “I’m not sure what that point is, but we’re not there yet,” Kaplan said.
He plans to start allowing uploads in the next day or so. In the meantime, musicians can sign up for the wait list here.
Philip Kaplan (@pud) is a programmer and entrepreneur in San Francisco, CA. He is the founder of Fandalism (social network for musicians), TinyLetter (email service provider, acquired by MailChimp), Blippy (venture-backed social commerce company), and AdBrite (a large Internet ad network). He also developed several iPhone apps, including the best selling “Punch Your Friends.” In 2010, Philip was entrepreneur-in-residence at Charles River Ventures. Philip founded and sold several other businesses including F-ckedcompany.com and PK Interactive,...
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In this episode of "What could possibly go wrong?!", allow us to introduce you to DCM Dealer. Billed as an "online trading platform," this here project was whipped up by the same London-based investment outfit (DCM Capital) that went belly-up after losing some $40 million in assets in just one month during the summer of 2011. Granted, that was a pretty tough time in the market, and it did manage to squeeze out a 1.9 percent gain in the period it was open, but it's still worth keeping in mind. Now, the firm is hoping to catch a second wind with a tool that mines Twitter, Facebook, and the whole of social media in order to pick up clues about the public's view on a stock. Reportedly, it'll spit out real-time ratings from 0 (negative) to 100 (positive), giving investors yet another "leading indicator" on what to invest in flip for a quick buck.
Founder Paul Hawtin confesses: "This is not some kind of holy grail of buy-sell signals that's guaranteed to make you money. This is an additional layer of market information...markets are driven by greed and fear, so if you can understand fear and quantify it in real-time, you could use that to protect yourself." We'll leave it to the 99 percent to comment on the idea below.
when.eng("eng.perm.init")TV viewers increasingly are using their mobile phones while watching TV, mostly ignoring commercials while doing so. As a result, a number of startups are emerging to try to get viewers’ attention during those times, instead of letting them play games or do email during ad breaks. To meet this demand for interactive experiences between the phone and TV, social TV startup Kwarter has raised $4 million from Deutsche Telekom venture arm T-Venture, as well as Kinetic Ventures, to help grow its platform and expand the number of partners it works with.
There are no shortage of social TV apps out there: Startups like Zeebox and GetGlue and Viggle are trying to change the way that viewers communicate with each other while watching TV, or at least to tap in on changing user behavior that is already occurring thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices and tablets in the living room.
To date, that’s mostly meant rolling out consumer-facing apps that use check-ins or built-in chat and messaging clients to lock users into discussing TV on their devices. But San Francisco-based Kwarter has a different approach to unlocking the second screen: Rather than try to build a B2C second-screen app on its own, it’s partnering with broadcasters and brands to enable them to reach their viewers and customers more directly.
That’s becoming ever-more important as those brands and broadcasters are seeing their main audience become distracted by email, Twitter, Angry Birds, and all the other things that users do on their mobile phones instead of watching commercials. It’s all about keeping viewers engaged, even if that means keeping them engaged on some sort of branded mobile app.
Kwarter’s value prop is in providing a platform that partners can use to quickly roll up and integrate with their existing broadcasts or advertising campaigns. Initial rollouts have been focused on sports, with user polls and in-app games, as well as built-in messaging. Users can accrue points across different apps, and then can cash them in for real-world rewards.
Partners include broadcasters like Turner Broadcasting, which leveraged Kwarter’s technology for its Social Dugout app, launched to coincide with the MLB playoffs last year. They also include brand marketers like Bud Light and InBev, which used Kwarter’s platform for its Bud Light Sports Fan app. As the official beer of the NFL, the Bud Light app launched to lure beer drinkers and football fans to take part in second-screen activities, but it will also be used during other sports that Bud Light sponsors.
Kwarter’s new funding brings total money raised to $5 million, including $1 million in convertible notes. The company was founded in 2011 and has nine employees. It expects to more than double that, ending 2013 with more than 20, as it goes after promising new deals with other brands and broadcasters.
Kwarter builds fun, social, and rewarding mobile experiences to engage viewers and celebrate TV’s most powerful moments.
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Social gifting startup Wrapp is today announcing that it has grown its user base to 1 million within 14 months – proof that people really do enjoy freebies, it seems. The company, which allows users to send both free and paid digital gifts and gift cards to friends, also had a busy holiday season, hitting 1 million gifts sent per week during the period. And it saw 100,000 gift redemptions per week by the end of December.
In total, there were 7.4 million gifts given to date, the company tells TechCrunch.
For what it’s worth, Wrapp’s 1 million users, over half of which are U.S.-based, isn’t the same as downloads, but rather means active users who have both downloaded the app and who have sent at least one gift through its service. Most users send more, and the average Wrapp user – the highly coveted female, age 20-35 – sends around five gifts per month.
In its announcement, the company compares its rise to 1 million users by positioning its climb against other well-known startups, which is interesting. Pinterest reached 1 million after 20 months, Twitter and Gilt Groupe after 24 months, and Kickstarter and Airbnb took 30 months, the company says. But these aren’t really apples-and-oranges comparisons, because Wrapp is about gifting layered on top of social, while Pinterest and Twitter are mainly about social. Meanwhile, Gilt is for shopping, Kickstarter is for fundraising, and Airbnb is for travel.
It would be more fair, perhaps, to compare Wrapp with other “gifting” startups, but its biggest competitor in the U.S. would have probably been Karma, which was acquired by Facebook just a month after Wrapp entered the U.S. market. (Wrapp was founded in Sweden, actually). Meanwhile, other competitors like San Francisco-based Giftly or Sincerely’s Sesame are a little bit too new on the scene to make for a worthwhile comparison, and semi-competitor Gyft is focused on physical (i.e plastic) gift cards, not “social gifting.”
And then, of course, there’s what became of Karma: Facebook Gifts, which has a potential market of some 170+ million (though likely only a fraction of that switched on). Plus, outside of iTunes digital gift cards, Facebook is mainly about shipping physical gifts, not virtual ones, like in Wrapp.
The problem here is that the other gifting startups aren’t sharing their user numbers publicly at this point, so these comparisons are hard to come by. (We’ve asked Distimo and App Annie for some numbers, but the companies haven’t yet come through. Will update if they do.)
So why is Wrapp so popular? I suppose that can be summed up in this App Store review: “it’s so easy and most importantly not a scam,” writes an unknown user. When you’re talking about a service that basically offers you free money, and allows you to send free trials, subscriptions, and gift card dollars to friends, you can see why people would be wary.
I mean, really, free money usually sounds like a scam.
But it’s not.
It’s the retailers themselves who are providing the funds for these cards, and they’re doing so because it allows them to target specific demographics of users, very narrowly, thanks to the Facebook data. The brands see it as a way to reach the customers they want, or as a way to get them to try new products. Seventy-five percent of Wrapp’s users are women, with an average age of 32 to 33. Not only is that a highly sought-after demographic (especially among apparel brands), Wrapp COO Aaron Forth tells me that when Wrapp’s gift cards are redeemed, the total value of the transaction is between four to six times above the free component.
He says that the majority of Wrapp users are taking advantage of the free/sponsored gifts. These, unlike plastic gift cards, do expire within 30 days. The paid gift cards – those where you add value on top of the free card – are good forever, though.
The company’s biggest value is in increasing foot traffic to its brick-and-mortar retailer partners like Gap, H&M, Old Navy, Office Depot and others. It also works with online sites like Fab, Hulu, Zappos and others, but the bigger vision is about providing e-commerce-like targeting tools to the offline retailer.
During the holidays, Wrapp scored a deal with U.S. gift card distributor Blackhawk, which will see its 400-some brands made available in Wrapp’s app, which the company hopes will later convert into direct relationships once the retailers see the traction.
This would address users’ main app store complaint about the service: “I wish there more stores.“
Wrapp has now raised $10.5 million in venture funding from Greylock Partners, Atomico (the VC firm formed by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström and others), Creandum and others.
Wrapp is a social gifting service for celebrating friends’ occasions with free and paid gifts from attractive brands. Wrapp allows friends to contribute to gifts, and makes it fun and easy to give, receive and redeem using mobile devices and the web. Founded in the first half of 2011 by a group of serial entrepreneurs, Wrapp is based in Stockholm and Silicon Valley.
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Social advertising startup Moontoast just announced that it has raised $5 million in Series B funding.
CEO Blair Heavey told me that the company currently works with about 50 clients. It’s not an enormous list, but one that includes names like Universal, Lexus, Nike, Ford, Lady Antebellum, Time, and Simon & Schuster. Advertisers use Moontoast to create custom, interactive ads for social media — the ad types listed on the Moontoast site include a “social store,” surveys, sweepstakes, and a unit to offer free MP3s in exchange for email addresses.
Co-founder and CTO Marcus Whitney told me that the ads usually incorporate some form of rich media, but they aren’t just traditional ads repackaged for Facebook or Twitter.
“In the social advertising world, the actual creative is conversational,” Whitney said. “It’s much more marketing than standard, old world advertising. Our units are meant to really bring the conversation to life.”
The round was led by The Martin Companies and brings Moontoast’s total funding to around $14 million. Heavey said the funding should allow the startup to reach profitability.
In addition to announcing its Series B, Moontoast is also updating its platform today with what Whitney said is a new version of its analytics service incorporating data from the Facebook Ads API. He said the company plans to continue improving the analytics side of the platform throughout the year.
Moontoast was founded in Nashville, and even though half the team is now in Boston, Whitney said you can still see the Nashville influence in some ways — for example, in the fact that many of its initial clients were musicians.
Moontoast, a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, offers a brand new and innovative method of Facebook marketing and advertising, Social Rich Media. Moontoast’s Social Rich Media Ad Platform empowers brands with the ability to inject Facebook Page Posts (ads and sponsored stories) with more visual, auditory, and interactive functionality than ever before, making sure that brands get the most value out of their posts as well as their media spend. These Social Rich Media posts appear in the most engaging...
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Pulse has clearly been working hard at polishing off those iOS and Android applications, but it doesn't look as if the reading service is slowing down its maintenance efforts anytime soon. Via blog post, Pulse announced today that it's now letting users browse through their favorite social feeds within the app, with account support added for Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, Instagram and, of course, Facebook -- much like Flipboard's been doing for a while now. To go along with that, though, the application's photo and video viewers have both been on the receiving end of a minor makeover, which should make for a much better canvas when looking at those pics or vids posted on some of the aforementioned social networks. Never a bad time to be more social, right?
when.eng("eng.perm.init")Aaron Sittig, the first designer at Facebook Inc. and a close friend of Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, is leaving the company — again.
A Facebook spokesman confirmed Mr. Sittig’s departure on Wednesday: “Aaron was a valuable member of Facebook’s team and we wish him the best of luck.”
Mr. Sittig didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear what he’s leaving Facebook to do.
Mr. Sittig, who led the creation of the now ubiquitous “like” button and introduced friend photo tags, is leaving just two years after rejoining the company as “design strategy lead.” According to one person with knowledge of the matter, Mr. Sittig had become deeply involved in Facebook’s mobile projects over the past year.
Mr. Sittig was one of the earliest employees at Facebook, recruited in 2005 by Sean Parker, the former Facebook president, to help with the fledgling site’s design. Mr. Sittig briefly left the company in 2010, at a time when many early Facebook employees were leaving to build new startups or pursue other opportunities. He returned in February 2011.
In a sign of how close Messrs. Sittig and Zuckerberg have been, the Facebook CEO attended Mr. Sittig’s 2011 wedding.
His departure comes as Facebook ramps up its efforts on mobile. Despite its size, the company’s plans to dominate smartphones is threatened by younger startups, such as Whatsapp, and larger rivals, including Apple and Google, which have the advantage of owning their own operating systems.
Shares of Facebook rose more than 5% to close at $30.59, rising above $30 for the first time in roughly six months.
