The latest from TechCrunch
- Looks Like Facebook Deals Is Being Unveiled Tonight With Credits And Partners In Tow
- Yammer Finally Works And Makes Work Possible On The iPad
- Google Acquires TalkBin, A Feedback Platform For Businesses That's Only Five Months Old
| Looks Like Facebook Deals Is Being Unveiled Tonight With Credits And Partners In Tow | Top |
| Whoops. Looks like The New York Times has a little embargo breaking situation on their hands. ( Which we love — chaos !) They’ve just put up a story with the URL: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/latest-rival-to-groupon-livingsocial-facebook- embargo-till-midnight / (bolding mine). That page is obviously no longer found, but it was live for a bit. And it is a big one: Facebook’s Groupon/LivingSocial “killer”. Okay, it’s hardly a secret that the service called Facebook Deals was close to launching. In fact, the landing page has been up since March . But the NYT early story has some details. It looks like Facebook will launch the service initially in as a test in five cities: Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco (which were all listed on the landing page ). Not surprisingly, the service will also focus on activities that are best done with friends — things like concerts and events. The deals can spread both via email and via the all-important News Feed. That last bit will be the key if Facebook does hope to contend with Groupon and LivingSocial. They’ll have a huge amount of leverage right off the bat to the tune of 600 million+ potential eyeballs. The other key? Facebook Credits. NYT quotes Facebook’s director of local Emily White as saying that Deals will be the first product that uses Credits for real goods (rather than virtual ones in games). Also mentioned are initial partnerships with OpenTable, PopSugar City, Zozi and others. More to come, I’m sure once the chaos is sorted out. Update : From Facebook’s PR team: You mention that Emily White says Deals will be the first product that uses Credits for real goods (rather than virtual ones in games). You can’t use Credits to directly buy real goods. You can use Credits to buy Deals, and you get a voucher that you can print out and take to the merchant to redeem your deal. But you can’t use Credits to actually buy a real good. Might be confusing to some people. Update 2 : And NYT has put the post back up here . Another embargo bites the dust… CrunchBase Information Facebook Groupon LivingSocial Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Yammer Finally Works And Makes Work Possible On The iPad | Top |
| Our love affair with Yammer is pretty hot and cold. On one hand, they launched at and won TechCrunch50 a few years back. And they seem to be kicking ass on the business distribution front. On the other, the apps they put out there (which we use for TechCrunch day-to-day business) are often very buggy and more or less infuriating day in and day out. iPhone, Android, Web, AIR — they all have issues. But issues are one thing. For the past year or so, I simply have not been able to get Yammer to work on the iPad — at all. It would launch and then crash. I tried this on four different iPads (both the first and second generation). Same result. Today. Finally. They have released a native iPad app. And it works! Version 4 of Yammer’s iOS has just hit the App Store. Previously, the app was optimized for iPhone/iPod touch only (which should still work on the iPad, but again, didn’t), but now it’s a universal binary build (meaning the iPad version is baked in as well). The iPad version works in both landscape and portrait mode and borrows from the excellent Twitter for iPad app in giving you three columns to work with: menu items, your feed, and individual yams. Aside from the ability to actually work on the iPad, the app brings some nice tweaks and refinements across all versions. For one thing, the app seems much faster. There is also now a conversation thread view which looks nice. And they’ve also promised that this build is more stable. Push Notifications, which have been a constant headache for us iPhone users, are also said to be improved. So far, I haven’t seen any proof of that, but we’ll see. The app remains a free download and if you already have the iPhone version, just update your app to get the iPad version as well. You can find it in the App Store here . The new app — which they pre-announced in March — also finally means they can match Salesforce’s competing Chatter app in terms of availability. Now about that AIR app, Yammer… (hint: maybe just buy Gabble ) CrunchBase Information Yammer iPad Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Google Acquires TalkBin, A Feedback Platform For Businesses That's Only Five Months Old | Top |
| It’s been a good day for Y Combinator. Hot on the heels of news that YC portfolio company Wufoo landed a $35 million exit, YC alum TalkBin has just announced that it’s been acquired by Google — less than five months after the company was founded. TalkBin offers a platform that lets customers give immediate feedback to local businesses (users submit their opinions and critiques via mobile applications, and it looks like the businesses can read and respond to them from a web app). TalkBin’s homepage shows screenshots of both Android and iOS applications, but I can’t find them on either marketplace (I’m not sure if the apps were pulled or if they simply haven’t been released yet). The mostly-stealthy Montain View-based company was founded in December 2010 by Qasar Younis, Michael Ma, and Sunny Dhillon. Given how new the service is it seems that Google is after the team, but it also apparently sees potential in the product too — Google will be shutting down TalkBin temporarily, but it plans to reopen the service to new businesses down the line. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Google gave us this statement: "We're thrilled to welcome the TalkBin team to Google. They've built a cool way for customers to engage with local businesses, and we think they'll be a great fit for our mobile and local teams." Here’s the message on TalkBin’s website: We are excited to announce that we’ve been acquired by Google! When we started building TalkBin in 2010, we set out to find a better way for consumers to connect with their local businesses in a more personal way. While we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished, we believe Google’s awesome mobile and local teams combined with their consumer reach will help us make our bigger goals a reality. We appreciate all the support and positive feedback we received from all of our partners and we’re elated to join Google and get started! CrunchBase Information TalkBin Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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