Wednesday, August 1, 2012

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Kevin Rose Responds To Reddit AMA: Biggest Digg Regrets, Thoughts On New Digg, More [Video] Top
kevin-roseLast night, I wrote about Kevin Rose not responding to questions on his AMA on Reddit. Rose was at a birthday party last night but has returned to Reddit today and has posted YouTube responses to five Redditers' questions. After all the coverage on Digg's sale and Rose personally a few weeks ago and now on the launch of new Digg, it's very interesting to hear Rose's thoughts. He does a good job going in-depth in his responses, and seems pretty open. Here are the responses.
 
App.net's Dalton Caldwell Turned Down A Facebook Acqui-Hire Offer Before Rebooting His Company Top
appnet dalton caldwellSo here's the real story behind App.net founder Dalton Caldwell's plans to build a new, open API framework for developers to build off of. According to him, Facebook pressured him into selling his company, rather than compete with the social network's newly released App Center. In an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted to his blog on Wednesday, Caldwell recounted his side of a meeting with Facebook's developer relations team, which occurred in mid-June. Prior to the meeting, App.net was working on a mobile app that would let users see which apps their friends were using, and make suggestions about new apps to download. It used Facebook Connect and Facebook Open Graph to identify interesting apps and to share them with social connections, and Caldwell hoped to get "executive-level support" for his upcoming product launch.
 
Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman On Mobile: Apps Account For Majority Of Weekend Searches, Ads Coming Soon Top
yelp iphone  Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman offered his thoughts on the company's mobile monetization strategy today during the analyst conference call for the company's second quarter earnings report. Not surprisingly, Yelp is seeing a lot of growth on mobile. The company says that mobile apps are being used by 7.2 million unique devices every month, up from 6.3 million in the previous quarter. Stoppelman also said that apps currently account for 40 percent of all Yelp searches — making up the majority on weekends.
 
CEOs Of BranchOut and Top Ad Agency AKQA Will Drop Knowledge On You At Friday's Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp Top
CrunchUp Moves FastFacebook moves pretty fast. If you don't attend the Facebook Ecosystem CrunchUp, you could misunderstand it. To give us the lowdown on how well Facebook's ad business is doing and what it's like to ride the Facebook traffic roller coaster, we've got two big new additions to the day's panels. Rick Marini- founder and CEO of BranchOut, the most popular Facebook-based professional networking tool. Tom Bedecarré - CEO of AKQA one of the world's leading ad agencies that helps brands spend millions on Facebook. Get your tickets to see them and Facebook's heads of product, platform, and engineering  outline the company's philosophy of the answer the tough questions about Facebook's future.
 
Yelp Q2 Beats The Street With Top-Line Growth, Narrowing Losses: $32.7M Revenue, $2M Net Loss Top
yelp logoYelp today reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2012, its second ever financial report as a publicly-traded company. Overall, the reviews site showed continued top-line revenue growth and a smaller net loss than it has posted in the past -- a performance that bested the estimates of Wall Street analysts.
 
TwelveSouth Reworks The BackPack, Now Adds A Handy Shelf To Either Side Of An iMac Or Cinema Display Top
backpack-3The original TwelveSouth BackPack was fantastically ingenious. And now it's even better. Designed exclusively for iMacs and Apple Displays, the BackPack adds a simple shelf to the display without the use of screws or adhesive. Using adjustable brackets, the BackPack can mount on the front or back of the unit, added a nice shelf to hold an iPhone, external hard drive, or your Troll Doll collection.
 
Can A YC, Mobile-Rookie Founder Crack The Image Sharing Space With Imgfave? Top
app_iconPopular image-sharing service imgfave launched an iOS app last week, causing most of their engagement metrics to at least double, and signups to quadruple. Underscoring the power of both mobile and social right now, imgfave's app reached the same level of activity as the main website, which gets 30 million monthly page views and 3.3 million monthly unique visitors, just two days after it launched, according to the founder, Gabe Ragland.
 
Y Combinator-Backed Instacart Wants To Be Amazon With One-Hour Delivery Top
instacart-screenshot-in-phone3When it comes to being the Mall of the Internet, no one really does it better than Amazon. Yet, to truly best its offline competitors and put the icing on the cake in terms of user experience, Amazon has been pushing hard to offer same-day delivery for all items purchased within its virtual walls. However, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said last week during the company's second quarter earnings call that it "doesn't see a way to do same-day delivery on a broad scale, economically." In the meantime, one startup wants to pick up Amazon's slack and offer not just same-day delivery, but one-hour delivery. And naturally, it's a product of one of their own. Founded in early June, Instacart is the brainchild of Apoorva Mehta, an ex-Amazon Supply Chain engineer, who is leveraging his experience building Amazon's own complex backend logistical systems in the hopes of creating a more efficient back and front-end grocery delivery experience at Instacart.
 
Flipboard Founder Mike McCue Steps Down From Twitter Board Of Directors Top
47024v4-max-250x250Mike McCue, the longtime tech entrepreneur perhaps best known at the moment as the founder and CEO of Flipboard, is no longer serving on the board of directors at Twitter. McCue, who has been on Twitter's board since late 2010, announced his departure via a Tweet, naturally...
 
Rumor: Google Puts A Hold On New Google+ Acquisitions Top
plus_logoAccording to a source close to Google, the company has put a stop to all acquisitions related to Google+ until at least the end of the year. This source also tells us that Google is not growing the Google+ right now and not providing the team with any additional resources until the end of the year. The Google+ project itself is not on hold, but if this rumor is indeed correct and Google is cutting back on expanding the team's resources, this could be an indication that Google+ isn't doing quite as well as the company's public comments would indicate.
 
This Is Medium, Obvious Corp's Secret New Product Top
This Is MediumWhen Evan Williams and a bunch of other Obvious Corp teammates suddenly follow a snazzy, un-launched product called Medium, you know something big's about to happen. For now, Medium.com is a website that lets you easily drag in or upload a photo and annotate it with overlaid text, but we hear there are bigger ambitions for the product. Medium's Twitter account describes it as "The new thing", and its only tweet is "Getting antsy", which was posted last night and seems to foreshadow an imminent launch. We couldn't find other details, but Medium's placeholder product lets anyone combine an image and quote to quickly get a point across. That doesn't seem world-changing enough for Obvious, though, so expect it to reveal something much grander.
 
T-Shirt Company Picks A Fight With Anonymous Top
normal_unfair_fight2A French t-shirt company has brazenly picked a fight with one of the world's fiercest hacker groups. Anonymous, known for crippling the world's most secure websites (including the FBI's), has vowed revenge against apparel company, Early Flicker, who registered the hacker group's logo as their own intellectual property.
 
Google Wallet's Huge Upgrade Adds Support For All Credit/Debit Cards, Remote Disable Feature Top
Google WalletOf all the limitations that Google's NFC-based Wallet payment system had, perhaps the biggest was that of card compatibility -- once you blew through that free $10 credit, it only ever worked well if you owned a CitiBank MasterCard. Note the use of the past tense in that sentence. Google recently revealed a substantial update to the Wallet service that allows it to (finally) play nice with Visa, Discover, and American Express credit or debit cards.
 
AppAide Helps You Find The Apps That People Are Actually Using Top
AppAideHere's an interesting approach to the seemingly eternal problem of mobile app discovery: A new app called AppAide recommends apps based on actual usage. The App comes from BetaBait, a company that connects startups with early users. Back in May, BetaBait acquired BetaNoodle, a company doing something similar for Android apps, and BetaBait co-founder Cody Barbierri (a former co-worker from my VentureBeat days) says AppAide takes advantage of BetaNoodle technology.
 
Study: Texting Iz Destroying Student Grammar Top
no-cell-phone-sign1Texting-addled young minds are losing their grip on the English language, according to a new study from Wake Forest. The research, which reveals a correlation between the use of SMS-abbreviations and poor grammar proficiency, comes as bitter sweet vindication for modern teachers who have to waste time decrypting the odd new language of teenagers.
 
VEVO Inks Deal To Bring Music Videos To Upcoming OUYA Android Game Console Top
ouyaThe folks behind the stylish, Android-based OUYA game console have been on a hot streak lately. Not only has the project raked in over $6 million in Kickstarter pledges, but cloud gaming service OnLive and legendary game developer Square-Enix have thrown their collective weight behind the $99 gadget. Now there's another hefty name to add to that list. Music video provider VEVO has announced that it has entered into a partnership with OUYA that will allow gamers access to its sizable catalog of music videos between long stretches of random encounters in Final Fantasy III.
 
Quora Launches 'Views' To Show You Exactly Who Is Reading Your Posts Top
quoraYou may have noticed recently that Quora has increasingly required you to log in to see the full breadth of the site's question-and-answer content. Today, it's rolling out a new feature that shares some of the data it collects from those signed-in users: Quora 'Views,' site analytics that show you just how many people have read your Quora questions, answers, or posts.
 
Getting Married? Wedding Party Collects Photos From Guests' Phones To Create Beautiful Online Albums Top
cover photoMany of the startups targeting the weddings space today are focused on offering better services for the bride and/or the couple, but with a new mobile application called Wedding Party, that model has been flipped on its head. Wedding Party wants to offer a better wedding experience for the guests first, which then, in turn, will benefit the couple being married. The app offers a simple way to allow wedding guests participate in the creation of a digital wedding album by sharing photos, notes, and later on, videos. It's the modern-day equivalent of the guy running around with the video camera, bugging you to "say something nice about the couple."
 
Yammer Is Launching A Chat Feature Called Online Now 'In A Couple Of Weeks' Top
online_now_screenshotYammer, the enterprise social networking company that was recently bought by Microsoft for $1.2 billion, is getting ready to add a new instant messaging feature called Online Now to its main service, enabling users to chat to each other in real time. Online Now will sit alongside existing services that let users post status updates and media as well as send private messages. The feature was spotted earlier today by TNW, and we have now confirmed exactly what is happening with Yammer itself, including the name: "We will be announcing the chat feature through a press release in a couple of weeks as part of our summer release," a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
 
Twitter Launches Its Own Political Barometer To Track U.S. Presidential Elections Top
The Twitter Political IndexTwitter just announced the launch of its Twitter Political Index. This index, says Twitter, is "a daily measurement of Twitter users' feelings towards the candidates as expressed in nearly two million Tweets each week." Every day, twitter will evaluate and weigh the sentiment of tweets mentioning both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney relative to every other message that passes through Twitter's systems. The system then calculates a score for both candidates. Currently Obama's score is 34 (and trending down) and Romney is at 25 (and trending up a bit). The Twitter Political Index will be updated every day at 8pm ET.
 

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