The latest from TechCrunch
- Startup Battlefield At Disrupt: Day One, Session One
- Happy Toy Machine Allows You To Build Your Own Plush Toys
- BillGuard Will Track Hidden Fees And Billing Errors On Credit Card Bills
- Spenz Wants To Help You Track Spending Habits And Stick To A Budget
- StyleSeat Is An OpenTable For Hair Salons And Spas
- Apple Responds To Lodsys Trolls: "Stop Bothering Our Developers"
- Introducing Omar Hamoui's First Project From Churn Labs: Gnonstop Gnomes
- SneakPeeq Is The Social Shopping Mall Where As You Shop, The Price Drops
- Deja Is Flipboard For Video (And It's Very Slick)
- Skylines Wants To Show You Photos You'll Love, And Help Search For Them Too
- Weotta: Find Something To Do Tonight In Three Clicks Or Less
- Rexly's Social Music Discovery App Is What Ping Should Have Been
- Do@ Bridges The Divide Between Search And Mobile Apps
| Startup Battlefield At Disrupt: Day One, Session One | Top |
| Our first batch of Startup Battlefield presentations is available for you to watch. Click on through for the “Disrupting Search and Discovery” range of companies and let them shock you with their brash disregard for search paradigms. The companies in this group are Do@ , Rexly , Weotta , Skylines , and Deja . Do@ is a search engine that serves up results from your apps instead of from the web, served up in a delicious HTML5-based swipeable interface. Rexly is a social media recommendation engine that automatically ranks recommendations based on trusted relationships, and unlike some others, is cross-platform. Right now, they’re just doing music, but they hope to index movies, books, and anything else you can buy and trade online. Not sure what to do? Put in what sort of outing you have in mind and what mood you’re in, and let Weotta pick a plan for you. Integrates with Facebook so you can easily include friends and let them veto or suggest places. A photo stream that’s based not on people you know, but on topics or events you’re interested in. Pick “wine” and get the latest wine pics, or pick “Disrupt” and get all the pictures from this event. Haven’t you always felt like you could be wasting your time more efficiently – and with a flashier interface? Deja lets you navigate through tons of videos with a slick zooming wall of video, organized by user or topic. That’s it for the first session. Stay tuned for the rest. | |
| Happy Toy Machine Allows You To Build Your Own Plush Toys | Top |
| The TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Alley audience choice winner today is Happy Toy Machine, which allows you to design and create plush toys online. The site allows adults and children to customize their plush toys by colors, size, body parts, shape, type, build and more. When you are satisfied with your design, you can actually have your creation built and sent you. It’s sort of like the Build-A-Bear on steroids. Price ranges from $30 to $50, which is comparable to Build-A-Bear’s prices. The startup says the design element of the site is designed specially so that children can interact with the site and be able to design toys on their own. In the future, the company would like to partner with video games or other entertainment properties to leverage Happy Toy Machine’s platform. CrunchBase Information Happy Toy Machine Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| BillGuard Will Track Hidden Fees And Billing Errors On Credit Card Bills | Top |
| My Mom meticulously scans every credit card, cable or cell phone bill to ensure that no errors have been made or hidden fees have been issued. I, on the other hand, don’t have the time or the patience to do this. And I’m sure along the line, I’ve been overcharged or scammed in some way. BillGuard, a startup launching to the public today at TechCrunch Disrupt , aims to alert users of unwanted charges such as hidden fees, billing errors, scams and fraud on credit card bills. The essentially crowdsources scams by alerting you when a charge on your bill is flagged by anyone else using BillGuard or posting scams on online forums. The startup will also take into account its own analysis (which the company has been working on for the past year) and monitor the web for any complaints about credit card scams. Here’s how it works. You sign up your credit card accounts on BillGuard. The startup’s proprietary algorithm then aggregates, mines, normalizes data from its own reports and from its crowdsourcing engine. BillGuard will then scan your card activity daily, and email you when your attention is required for a suspicious transaction on your monthly bill. While many credit card companies have fraud protection services, it’s up to the consumer to be vigilant about any billing errors or hidden fees on credit card bills. Plus, I can’t remember how many times I’ve signed up for a ‘free service’ only to be be charged when the terms of the service expired (and I’ve conveniently forgotten to cancel my subscription). The same way in which an identity theft service monitors your credit report for fraud, BillGuard tracks your credit card bills so you don’t have to. The site is already in discussions with a number of major banks and identity theft companies to distribute and recommend BillGuard’s service. And the site has caught the attention of a number of well known investors, including Bessemer Venture Partners , Chris Dixon , Ron Conway , IA Ventures , Howard Lindzon and Yaron Galai; raising $3 million in funding. Q: I thought that was awesome. No questions. A: I Agree, a home run. Q: We send you a monthly scan report, whenever we have alerts, we email you. Q: I think you’ll have a huge interest in this from the general population because you are going against the bad guys. Q: What did you to before this. A: I built Pando, we have a team of security experts, data scientists, mathematicians. Q: How far back do you go? A: Last 90 days. CrunchBase Information BillGuard Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Spenz Wants To Help You Track Spending Habits And Stick To A Budget | Top |
| Sticking to a budget can be a challenge no matter how big or small your income is. While Mint.com gives you access into where your money is going, it doesn’t incentivize or motivate you to stick to a budget. Enter Spenz, a startup launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today, is launching a proactive way for a younger generation to track where they spend all of their money and provides incentives and rewards for users to budget. People can input their expenses via mobile and web apps. The idea behind a mobile app is to allow users to input something they’ve spent money on quickly and on the fly. It aims to track both your big purchases and spending (i.e. car payments and rent) and discretionary spending (i.e. coffee at Starbucks, lunch). Spenz will categorize spending into categories like activities, entertainment, food etc. Every input that is entered in Spenz will allow users to unlock rewards and special deals. You can earn tokens from your interactions and savings to cash in on these deals. To make money, Spenz will charge merchants and brand to access user data on where spending is taking place. Don’t worry, all data is anonymous, and partners will have access to aggregated customers' spending data including whether they are capturing the maximum amount of their customers' total spend, in their given category. The Spenz platform will also allow partners to push targeted offers to groups of users based on these insights. Partners will also have access to publish rewards and offers to Spenz users. Essentially Spenz will allow its partners to answer the question: "how much of my customer's monthly spending am I getting compared to my competition". CrunchBase Information Spenz Information provided by CrunchBase CrunchBase Information Spenz Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| StyleSeat Is An OpenTable For Hair Salons And Spas | Top |
| Finding a new hair stylist in a city is a challenging and very important task. For me, I happen to be very particular about how I like my hair cut, styled and highlighted. While Yelp provides a database of reviews for some hair salons and spas, Yelp’s salon pages don’t allow me to book an appointment, see pricing, or access more information about the stylists themselves. Enter StyleSeat, a startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt . Essentially the site aims to be a destination where the beauty and wellness industry can build consumer-facing sites that include all the information and functionality I mentioned above. It’s sort of like an OpenTable for hair salons and spas. For salon and spa owners, StyleSeat offers a platform where they can create a site that includes location of the salon, stylists and their bios, pictures of haircuts and hair styles from stylists, recommendations from customers, and more. The site also allows consumers to book appointments, and StyleSeat will provide salons with daily schedules of customers appointments. Additionally, the platform serves as SaaS for marketing. Salons can share content on Facebook, will be able to access analytics about conversions and traffic, and can send marketing emails to clients and post promotions and deals. For example, StyleSeat can tell a stylist how booked she is, when her lightest days are, and more. All of client’s information is in one place and stylists have mobile access to their schedules from iPhone and Android apps. The startup also plans to launch a rewards program that salons can offer customers. On the consumer side, visitors can not only access all the relavent info on a salon’s stylists (including recommendations, photos and more) but they can search for stylists in their location by cost, type of hair or specialty. For example, if you have curly hair and need a stylist that specializes in cutting thick, curly hair, StyleSeat will be able to show you those salons in your area. Users can also book appointments at salon’s via StyleSeat will receive a text message and email reminder. Founded by Melody McCloskey and Dan Levine, StyleSeat has already caught the eye of a number of well-known angel investors; recently raising $700,000 in funding from Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Travis Kalanick, Dave Morin, Garrett Camp, Alfred Lin, Christoph Janz, Othman Laraki, Steve Lee, Paige Craig, Joe Stump, 500 Startups, and Team Europe Ventures. According to McCloskey, there is a $22 billion market around the beauty industry, which is dominated by word-of-mouth recommendations; yet there are no comprehensive, integrated tools to manage customers relationships, offer online booking, market their services or acquire customers. StyleSeat hopes to fill this gap. Q: How do you plan to scale? A: It’s a niche sales arena, if you can get one partner, it’s helpful. Q: How are you bringing clients leads? A: That’s not part of the model, right now. Q: Is this like OpenTable for the beauty industry? A: It’s similar. Q: I agree with the problem you are solving. I don’t know how to convince myself that you can get there fast. Q: What’s the barrier to entry? A: We’ve specialized the backend for the hair salon and stylist industry. CrunchBase Information StyleSeat Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Apple Responds To Lodsys Trolls: "Stop Bothering Our Developers" | Top |
| Never get into a fight with people who have more expensive lawyers. Lodsys, the patent trolls trying to make people license a dubious feature based on in-app sales, received a letter from Apple’s wolverine-like lawyers asking them to cease and desist asking for developers for money. They write: Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent. I suspect this won’t be the end of the story. However, it is a strong and forceful letter by a traditionally strong and forceful legal team and we can assume that this will convince most developers not to cave when/if they receive a Lodsys letter. Read more… | |
| Introducing Omar Hamoui's First Project From Churn Labs: Gnonstop Gnomes | Top |
| When Omar Hamoui left Google a few months after selling AdMob to the search giant for $750 million , he set up shop with mobile engineer Mike Rowehl as Churn Labs . Today at Disrupt NYC, we get to see the first product churned out by the labs: Gnonstop Gnomes. Gnonstop Gnomes is part social game, part mobile photo app. You take pictures with your iPhone or Android camera and insert an image of a gnome into the picture. The app marks the location of each picture and you can follow where the gnome has been. “Wouldn't it be cool to have a gnome in your pocket,” asks engineer Haider Sabri, “all the while you are getting updates on who your gnome is, where he is and what he is doing? The social part comes in when somebody else with the same app “Lyfts” the gnome from your phone to theirs. They do this by grabbing the gnome from your screen with their camera and making a lifting movement. “What we were thinking,” says Hamoui, “is there a way I can get drag and drop to work between devices. Could I drag and drop through the screen.” Once the gnome is transferred to their phone, they can start taking pictures with it, and you can keep on following its journey as it gets passed along. Gnonstop Gnomes is an open-ended experiment in social mobile gaming. Some people might send their gnome on a mission—to find the Eiffel Tower, for instance—and see if it gets there. Others will just take random pictures of gnomes. The ability to pass along the gnomes could lead to all sorts of interesting social dynamics. At the very least, a new meme is likely to be born. Get ready to start seeing gnomes everywhere. Judges Q&A (notes) Yossi Vardi : I want to become a Gnome Dave Samuel, Freestyle Capital : Lyft loosk like Bump, Is that something you might leverage through an API. Omar : Yes, that is a project we have going right now. Chris Dixon, Hunch : Omar is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the last decade, so if he says gnomes are next . . . Dave Samuel : You are oen of a few key entrepreneurs who have created these little labs. How is that going? Omar : I started late last year. What you are finding is that when somebody is in a situation were they can do whatever they want, they go to the beach or whatever but for us this is what we want to do. It is not the most efficient way to make money. Soraya Darabi, Foodspotting : Why Gnomes? Omar : Honestly, we are in a place where we are going from the proliferation of these smart phones to ubiquity, I am just interested to see if people will do this. Pass digital objects CrunchBase Information Omar Hamoui Mike Rowehl Churn Labs LLC Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| SneakPeeq Is The Social Shopping Mall Where As You Shop, The Price Drops | Top |
| It’s no secret that e-commerce is growing like gangbusters. Last year alone, consumers spent a $142 billion on online retail spending. SneakPeeq, a startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, aims to capitalize on this booming market, but adds a social twist. SneakPeeq gets high end fashion brands to sell in season or upcoming items on the site, and somewhat aims to replicate the experience of shopping for items in a retail store. So similar to the way you flip over a price tag to look at the cost of at item at a store, SneakPeeq doesn’t tell you the price instantly when you visit a product’s landing page. You click a “Peeq” button to find the price, and every time you “Peeq” at the price it goes down, but once somebody buys the item, the offer goes away. You can see what other members are peeqing at the price on the product’s page and see what those members bought from SneakPeeq. You can also get advice from friends and send products to friends as well. It essentially brings an element of gaming mechanics to the online shopping experience. The startup makes money because they buy the merchandise at a discount to wholesale, and keeps margin above this price. SneakPeeq says brands like the offering because the discounted price is never broadly advertised, every shopper sees a different price, and the site provides social advertising. People can share items with their Facebook friends, and can publish these items to their feed. SneakPeeq, which has raised $2.7 million in funding, launched in private beta to friends and family and was able to generate 1 million peeqs in a matter of months. Today, the site is launching to the public with 100 brands selling merchandise on the site, including Lucky Brand Jeans, Nicole Miller and Halston Heritage. Q&A Q: How do you curate products for a customer? A: We grab your friends live data from Facebook and your likes to curate recommendations of products. Q: I dont share my friends’ taste, why would that be a driver to buy? A: For some friends, it is a driver for purchasing. Q: If I buy something for someone else, how does that skew the personalized data? A: It’s a problem for all retail sites, but you can set friends you trust to gather data from. Q: How useful is the product before my friends are on it? A: Use Friends’ Facebook likes to get started. Q: What is the core problem you are trying to solve and how easy is this to achieve? CrunchBase Information sneakpeeq Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Deja Is Flipboard For Video (And It's Very Slick) | Top |
| There's little question that the iPad is one of the best media consumption devices ever. It’s also been a hotbed for innovation around content recommendation, with apps like Flipboard giving you a visual way to browse an array of articles you might be interested in, using Facebook and Twitter as data sources. Today, the iPad is getting another great way to consume content, and this time it’s all about video. Meet Deja, a very nice looking application launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt. The app will go live later today on the iTunes App Store (we’ll add a link as soon as it is). Calling the app slick would be an understatement — it looks very, very cool, with nifty horizontal and vertical tiles used to navigate through the app. And once you find something you’re interested in, there's also full Airplay support, which means you can 'fling' whatever you're watching on the iPad over to a TV connected to an Apple TV. Video content is pulled from a variety of channels: you can browse RSS streams, links that have been culled from the people you follow on Twitter, YouTube channels, Google video, and a select group of Deja users who curate their favorite videos. In short, you probably won’t run out of anything to watch. Once you've started watching a video, you can zoom through various 'worlds' of related content. This isn't really a novel idea (YouTube has been presenting users with related videos forever) but it's another nice touch that looks well executed. In a sense, Deja is looking to do the same thing as YouTube — it wants you to spend more time watching video on your iPad rather than your television. And, like YouTube, it features a ‘lean back’ experience, which means that it will continue playing new content without prompting the user to select the next clip they want to watch. Q&A: Bradley Horowitz: I think the interface is sort of magical. Do you feel the world is ready for an interface like this? A: I think so. We feel the iPad represents a revolution in the way people interact. You’ve created something really beautiful. Avg. American watches 30 hours of video a week on TV. Are you expecting that people are going to brand their own channels? A: We’re totally self-initiated for now, but will work with content providers the way Flipboard is. CrunchBase Information Deja.io Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Skylines Wants To Show You Photos You'll Love, And Help Search For Them Too | Top |
| There has been a flurry of photo sharing apps released over the last year, with notables including Instagram, Picplz, and Path. These apps tend to focus on the photos that have been shared by your friends and people you know online — which aren't always snapshots of things you're actually interested in. But what would happen if you had a service that took the opposite approach, allowing you to see photos of things you are interested in, even if they weren't necessarily captured by people you know? Enter Skylin.es , a new startup that's launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, that presents you with a personalized stream of photos that it thinks you'll like, regardless of who took them. To use the service, first you'll be asked to connect with your Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare accounts. The service will then scour Twitpic, Yfrog, and Instagram for photos it thinks you'll like, using things you've liked on Facebook, the people you follow on Twitter, your current geographical location, and the places you check into most frequently on Foursquare. In addition to offering a personalized photo stream, the service also offers real-time image search. Run a search for TCDisrupt, and you’ll see the images that were recently uploaded on the aforementioned image apps. So far the company has developed applications for iPhone and Android, as well as a web portal at Skylin.es The company plans to monetize by selling subscriptions (you'll be able to access more advanced statistics and premium features); a firehose data feed; and ads. Publishers can also access widgets that canbe embedded on their site, displaying a photo stream of whatever interests they want. Bradley Horowitz: I think it’s really cool. Q: How are you going to make this into something that goes beyond just search, and more into an experience where you’re browsing? A: We currently offer explorer — what we think are interesting topics. We have something called PictureRank, based on relevance, based on interests we show you pictures. Q: I’m trying to think how this becomes big. Do you expect people start going to skylin.es? A: With release of widget, any publisher… Gary V could put our widget on his site and include ‘wine’ as the keyword, and will post photos of wine. Expecting to grow from publishers. | |
| Weotta: Find Something To Do Tonight In Three Clicks Or Less | Top |
| Looking for something to do this weekend without having to sift through your newspaper or scour the web for a fun event? Weotta , a new startup launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to help (say the name out loud). The service offers a very easy 3-step process for making a plan: first, tell it what kind of outing you’re embarking on (Business, Dating, Family, Friends, or Solo). Next, pick the mood. Finally, hit the generate button, and you're good to go. Once you've hit 'Generate', the service will present you with a handful of itineraries, each of which provides an at-a-glance overview of the event, with pins marking the venues and small icons depicting the atmosphere, time of day, and more (the icons are reminiscent of the ones you'd find in a hotel guide). You can also use filters to refine your suggestions, choosing the time of date, date range, geographic radius that the event can encompass, and more. Weotta also helps you quickly find events that are focused around current concerts and movies, and using your Facebook Likes and social graph to make recommendations. Once you've chosen an event, you can invite your friends using Facebook. You can also book reservations and/or purchase tickets using services including OpenTable. Q&A Q: How does it work? A: Hundreds of signals, scouring the web. It learns as you use it and as more people around you use it. Using Facebook profile at this point, but it’s going to get richer (not very much of it is used now). Q: Why a web app not a mobile app? A: Did interviews — found that most people do planning while they are at work. That’s why we launched this first. Q: I find this exciting.. a lot of traditional media falls short of being able to do this. Big question for most people, it’s date night, what am I going to do. Inevitably, if I’m single this is great. If I’m going on a date how does it know what my date is interested in? A: First layer: we’ll give you idea of what other people have done on dates. Could collaborate too. Haven’t released that yet. Q: Normally trying to figure out also who you can do things with. A: Here’s where we can tie into Facebook. FB Events has been relatively ignored to where it could be. Q: Is there a feedback system so you can go back and say this worked, didn’t work. A: There will be, we’re working on it. CrunchBase Information Weotta Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Rexly's Social Music Discovery App Is What Ping Should Have Been | Top |
| Ah, the power of choice. Browse through your Facebook News Feed or Twitter stream and you’re going to be assaulted with an endless array of links, shared songs, videos, and products. Add a few more topic-specific services, like iTunes Ping to the mix, and you have even more recommended pieces of content to choose from. And then you get a headache. The latest startup to take the stage at TC Disrupt is Rexly , a service that’s looking to give you the power of content recommendations, minus the overwhelming amount of choice that makes many recommendation engines and social sites so confusing. The company’s founders say that when it comes to discovery, the problem isn’t with the algorithms — it’s with the data itself. The reality is that many people only trust a handful of their friends to make good music, book, or movie suggestions, but most services connect you with way more people than that, often via Facebook Connect. So Rexly takes a different tact: it actually forces you to choose six people whose taste you trust. Try to add a seventh, and you’ll get an error. The list of people you choose is never exposed, so you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings, and the net effect is that you have way less noise to deal with. Every action you take in iTunes, like listening to a song, will create an item in your Rexly stream, and the actions taken by the people you follow will show up as well. The service uses a variety of signals from iTunes, including how many times you listen to albums, to help figure out what you’ll be interested in. But don’t worry, you don’t have to share all of your listening habits with everyone, as Rexly has a handful of privacy setups. First, if you want the experience to be private, you can share with only with the friends you designate (similar to the way Twitter’s private feeds work). Other people want everything to be broadcast to everyone, and you can do that too. You can also hide certain content from your feed. The service monetizes through affiliate links (it recommends a song, you buy the song on iTunes or Amazon, and Rexly gets a cut). The company says that down the line, it intends to expand far beyond music to include movies, books, TV, and more. The service is web-based now, but they’ll be coming to iOS soon with more platform support in the future. Q&A Q: I think the question is, if you can really solve this in a way that iTunes Genius/Ping hasn’t. Then you’ve done something extraordinary. But how are you going to get past, is this something users have to decide how it compares to what they are using elsewhere. A: You don’t have to stop using other media platforms. Easy to set up. We want to help netflix, we want to be the best iTunes affiliate. We can do something as a third party — cross platform data. Q: In event Apple launched something deeply integrated, would this stand up? A: I think they already did. We’re web based and cross platform. And we learned from their launch, looked at what people wanted. Q: When would I as a user use Rexly instead of Netflix etc? A:We could either be the place you go to when you have an hour to kill and want to see what to do. Or could be more personalized. CrunchBase Information Rexly Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Do@ Bridges The Divide Between Search And Mobile Apps | Top |
| A couple years ago, Steve Jobs drew a line in the sand between mobile apps and search. “On a mobile device,” he declared, “search hasn’t happened. Search is not where it’s at. People aren’t searching on a mobile device like they do on the desktop. What is happening is they are spending all of their time in apps.” Up until now, the divide has remained. You can either search the mobile web or you can search inside narrow apps. But today with the launch of Do@ at Disrupt NYC, you can do both. Do@, which is an iPhone app available today, is a new kind of mobile search engine. It doesn’t search the web. It searches apps. Lots of them. Instead of search results presented as ten blue links, they are presented as fully-functioning, relevant screens from iPhone apps. So if you search for the movie The Godfather , Do@ will allow you to swipe through screens from Flixster, IMDB, Netflix, and Fandango, all showing their results for when somebody searches for that movie in those iPhone apps. A search for “sushi” will turn up results from Yelp, Foodspotting, and Foursquare. A shopping search might turn up Amazon, eBay, and Shopping.com. Instead of having to open up a thousand different apps depending on what you want to do, Do@ allows you to do a general search, and then brings up the appropriate app as the answer. What’s more, it can do this whether or not you have those apps already installed on your iPhone. Do@ is actually serving up HTML5 apps in a browser. You can think of it as a bunch of mobile vertical search engines all in one. It brings up different apps for shopping searches than it does for movie, music, or food searches. In this way, it also serves a sa great way to discover and experience new apps without downloading them first. Instead of crawling the Web to come up with the best answers for a search, it relies on app publishers to answer the questions as if someone were searching inside their apps. The order in which apps are presented can be rearranged base don your preference, and is also influenced by the apps your friends use in various social networks. Do@ is an Israeli-based startup founded by Rami Kasterstein, Ami Ben-David, and Joey Simhon. It’s raised $8.6 million, including a recent $7 million round by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Judges Q&A (notes) Barney Pell, Bing : I really like the user experience. I like that you are launching deep into the web pages and the scrolling is nice. It all comes down to search quality. How are you measuring your results? Ami Ben-David : Social radar is built into the results. If I put a mark on The Guardian app, that is quality for me. It is a social system that measures quality Barney : How are you objectively testing? Ami : We are trying to stay away from making these decisions. We think the best results are through competition. Hilary Mason, bit.ly : I have a smartphone, I never think what if I had a meta app to find other apps. How do you convince people to even start using it? Ami : You can share there is a share button. Second, we are very publisher friendly, it works with their existing business model. Third thing is the team, a great team with a lot of experience Bradley Horowitz, Google : One thing that is hard about a mobile interface is that it is hard to scan the results. You have to flip through, so the rich get richer. My question is are you going to have business model, or do you consider that passé Ami : This a search engine, there is a business model built into that. These are the same apps that give you the best results. Barney : So the real issue is that every single publisher thinks they have the best app, but I as a user don't necessarily agree. How do you decide who is right? That the one you are delivering to users is actually good? Ami : If you go to Google, you get a list of names, then you click and go back. On our system, you swipe. You actually see the result so you can make a conscious decision. It is the fastest way to results, not the fastest way to a link. Michael Wolf, ACTVATE : The user interface is so interesting, in the apps world it is very hard for apps discovery, but how do you get past the cynical user who feels like they you are directing me to an app I have not bought, that you are spamming me with apps? Ami : I think that the consequences for spamming will be quick. And you do not have to have the apps downloaded on your phone. This is one interface across al the apps that is HTML5 CrunchBase Information Doat Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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