Monday, May 23, 2011

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Twitter Will Now Send You An Email If A Follower Retweets Or Favorites Your Tweets Top
Twitter just sent out a Tweet notifying users that starting today, the startup is “rolling out an email notification that lets you know if someone you follow retweets or favorites one of your Tweets.” Users currently receive email notifications when they receive a new followers and when they are sent direct messages. Emails notifying you of retweets and favorites, while convenient, seems like it could cause an email overload for some power users. Of course, it is an interesting feature considering that Twitter is looking to make its platform more powerful for users, as it faces competition from other clients. What do you think—will retweet notifications be useful or will you find it to be spammy? CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase
 
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 Rowehl, “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 “lifts” 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. 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. CrunchBase Information sneakpeeq Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Arrived Lets People Know When You've Arrived Top
"Ping me when you're in New York,” you tell your friends, but then you forget to text and the next thing you know you're on an outbound flight at JFK and you haven't even seen anyone you went to school or hooked up with or whatever. Or let’s say you wanted to go to Bloomingdales with your bestie, but have a bunch of stuff to do before hand and aren’t hard pressed on time so you can go whenever.  Arrived attempts to solve this problem. Founder  Clarence Wooten Jr.  thought that there was a better solution to give people a heads up when people where in the general or hyper-local area, enabling people to make “soft plans.” With the Arrived app you can select a place, and add people to notify when you get to the specific location. The people selected can either opt in to be notified or to notify you upon their arrival to that specific location. Combining geo-fencing, auto-checkins, and notifications Arrived wants to provide value consumers without requiring them to change any behavior patterns or check-in. With a roster of advisors that includes Shervin Pishevar, Rich Skrenka and Eghosa Omoigui, Arrived plans to monetize (it better) with "Arrival Rewards," where merchants will track consumer arrivals in exchange for the potential to earn rewards. CrunchBase Information Arrived Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Sonar Finds You The Most Relevant People In The Room Top
Using almost every publicly available profile, Facebook, Linked, Foursquare, Instagram, Eventbrite etc, mobile app Sonar , shows you who, how many, and why particular people are relevant to you in a room. Says founder Brett Martin, "It’s simple- you open up sonar and we tell you that the guy sitting across from you is facebook friends with your college roommate, the dude by the jukebox is a VC that you follow on twitter, and the cute girl by the bar also likes the Arcade Fire and Hemingway." This is a particularly difficult problem to solve as you almost never achieve hyper local density, anonymous strangers can be intimidating and most people are hesitant to adopt yet another app! Sonar solves this problem by using data that people have volunteered and is primarily focused on communicating through public available arenas. Sonar plans on monetizing as a data play, "Our ambition is to aggregate and analyze all of the real-time geo-demographic data to help brands and SMBs identify, in real time, who and where their audience is, enabling the provision of timely and relevant offers at the point," says Martin. Q&A Judges express concerns about privacy. Paul Carr says he particularly liked Sonar, which is a first. CrunchBase Information Sonar.me Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Karizma Lets You Video Chat With People Around You, Whether You Know Them Or Not Top
Like a combination Tango, Skype and Facebook and Chatroulette (or a Chatroulette for Facetime), Karizma is a location based video chat messenger that banks on the theory that people want to video chat with people who are geographically close to them. Karizma allows you to call people who are in your proximity, not just your current contacts. Users can turn on Karizma and get connected to other Karizma users who are in their near vicinity based on age, friends in common, language and interests, whether they are on a 3G or Wifi Network. Another possible use case for Karizma is being able to call a store or a local business you're passing by or curious about and inquire as to whether or not they are busy or there are reservations available. Imagine what this will do for the glutted SF brunch rush. Founded by the Russian-born Egor Lavrov, Karizma plans on monetizing by subscription, offering unlimited calls to users nearby as well as iAd and AdMob for the freemium model. As for the privacy concerns here, that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. Q&A Generally ambivalent reaction from the judges, primarily based on the chicken and the egg problem. CrunchBase Information Karizma Information provided by CrunchBase
 
Google Acquires 'Kayak For Consumer Electronics' Sparkbuy Top
Google has made an acquisition today— Sparkbuy , a ‘kayak for electronics.’ Sparkbuy, which has raised $1 million in funding, is a high-powered product search engine and comparison shopping site. You enter which criteria are important to you, and the site will give a listing of laptops that it thinks you'll like best. You could also use in-depth filtering options to break down results. At launch last year, the startup was only focusing on laptops. The assumption is that Google will use Sparkbuy’s expertise and/or technology to boost Google Product Search, the search giant’s own comparison shopping engine. The site has been shut down, and from the note below it looks like the startup’s founder are joining Google as employees. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. We are pleased as punch to announce that Sparkbuy has been acquired by Google. I know, right? We can hardly believe it ourselves. When we built Sparkbuy way back in the waning days of 2010, we wanted to make it really easy to find the gadget that's perfect for your needs. Our idea was that you could combine huge piles of structured data with an intuitive interface, et voila: a few clicks to find the electronics widget with exactly the features you want. Have you tried to find a great laptop or TV recently? Crazy hard. But when people started actually using Sparkbuy, we started to see that the opportunity was bigger. In fact, it was much, much bigger. There are so many “crazy hard” search problems out there we know it could take ages for us to deliver what our customers are asking for. So when Google showed up and suggested we could work together to turbocharge our efforts, we just couldn’t pass it up. We're stoked about the opportunity to share our vision for search with a broader audience. And while we won’t be offering services at sparkbuy.com any more, stay tuned for truckloads of new awesome from our team at Google. Thanks for coming by! CrunchBase Information Sparkbuy Information provided by CrunchBase
 
SpotOn Shows What You Should Do And Who You Should Do It With Top
Need to find an amazing Hatha Yoga class in the West Village? Want a press friendly restaurant in Soma. New app SpotOn takes into account existing data like Foursquare checkins, Facebook Likes and more in order to provide choices that are tailored to you and your friends (whether they download the SpotOn app or not). Friends can also recommend merchants to SpotOn by rating them through its innovative and delightful petal interface, “an entirely different layer of data that did not exist before. While it does provide user accounts,  SpotOn has solved the zero start problem by importing your already existing social graph from Facebook and Foursquare. SpotOn maps take into account which one of your friends has been to a particular venue or who has rated a particular venue highly in order to offer up its suggestions. It can visually recommend places to go based on checkins, Facebook info, similarity to what venues your friends visit, the time of day etc. "In short, we take your digital preferences, whether it be Facebook Likes, Foursquare checkins or anything else  and make them useful in the real world,” says SpotOn CEO Gauri Manglik . SpotOn monetizes by daily deal affiliate fees, as it already shows users recommendations, it’s only one step further to show recommendations for daily deals near by. But right now the company ia focusing less on monetization and more on product Gaunglik says. Daily deals services are a dime a dozen but an app that offers recommendations tailored to your social graph on on all your mobile platforms, not just limited to the Facebook platform, is one to watch. The app is currently bootstrapped and has an iPhone app version is in the works. Q&A Positive reaction from the judges. All judges: The difference between SpotOn and 4Sq? SpotOn: Foursquare is just Foursquare, we are pulling in data from Fourquare, Facebook, Hunch. Spot on is where should I go, where do I want to hang out with/ CD: There’s a lot of noise a lot of apps in the space. SD: We didn’t have any marketing it the space with Foodspotting and we did pretty well. CrunchBase Information SpotOn 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.
 
Path Launches 'Stacks', A Visual Way To Browse Your Friends' Favorite Things Top
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, Path founder and CEO Dave Morin unveiled the latest version of the privacy-focused photo sharing app. And it brings with it one key, new feature that could change how you use the service: Stacks. The feature is probably best described as a combination of Path’s core photo sharing experience and Facebook Places. Up until now it’s always been possible to tag your shared Path photos with people, places, and things. But there’s never been a way to actually browse through these. Now you’ll be able to browse through albums sorted by tag, each of which is called a Stack. When you browse to a friend’s profile, you’ll now see a series of thumbnails (actually, it’s more like a small stack of photos) that represent the people, places, and things they interact with most. Tap on one of these, and you’ll see of your friend’s photos that include this tag. The idea, Morin says, is to expose you to new places and things that you may be interested in. Because of the way the system works, the things your friends like most will bubble to the top, which could help you discover new venues, things to do, and friends.
 

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