Tuesday, September 1, 2009

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See Which Conferences Your Friends Are Attending With EventVue's 'Discover' Widget Top
EventVue , a company that builds online communities for conferences in order to improve conference networking amongst individuals, has launched a new product called Discover designed to help conference attendees find friends who are attending the same event. The goal of Discover is to work with different companies’ APIs, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Contacts, and Yahoo! Contacts, to help identify matches. Discover is a simple widget that conference organizers can install on their sites to showcase an event’s speakers, sponsors, and attendees. It’s currently in private beta testing, and only selected conferences are using the widget on their sites, according to a company blog post . It’s interesting to note that LinkedIn’s API is a private API that only a handful of companies get access to, and EventVue was one of the companies given access to the API. EventVue Co-Founder Josh Fraser says that the product can actually help get more attendees to visit conferences, explaining: “Over the past 2 years, we’ve heard from conference organizers that their biggest challenge is getting people to register for their conference. These conversations have had increased urgency in the past year as the economy has brought a lot of cuts to conference travel. We heard this enough times that we finally decided to do something about it. EventVue Discover helps conference organizers market their events and get more butts in seats. We learned from talking with organizers that the most effective way to market an event is to get attendees to encourage their friends to attend. Discover lets attendees see who they know is attending a conference from their social networks and makes it easy to invite their friends.” EventVue was part of the inaugural batch of startups under the TechStars incubator program, and offers direct integration with some of the largest online ticketing services Eventbrite , RegOnline and Acteva . Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Twitter: Just Make Sure You Spell Everything Wrong And Swear A Lot Top
Another winner from The Onion, which tells parents how to keep tabs on their kids via Facebook and Twitter: “Within minutes you can be writing on their wall. I write to my son Jeffrey about 5 or 6 times per day..It’s a great way to remind him to take his psoriasis medication or just to remind him how much I love him.” There are also useful tips on stalking your children using a fake Twitter account so they don’t know who you are. “You can send them messages all day long and they won’t know who you are. Just make sure you spell everything wrong and swear a lot.” This isn’t the home run that Google Privacy Opt Out and Macbook Wheel were, but it’s a solid double. I love The Onion . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Press Army Helps Enterprises Separate The Signal From The Noise In Social Media Top
According to a study market research company eMarketer released yesterday, a whopping 52% of American social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand. 46% of users said something positive about a company or brand via social media, while 23% said something negative. About two thirds of marketers used social media in 2009 (up from 20% in 2007), another recent survey says. But monitoring the sheer amount of activity of potential customers in social media is a big challenge for enterprises. Just a few examples: Nike Shoes has 1.6 million fans on Facebook, Oreo has 2.6 million, Coca Cola even has 3.7 million. Dell’s twitter account is followed by well over one million people, as is Amazon MP3’s . Not to mention the millions of status updates, tweets, videos, pictures and comments people post about a company or brand on a daily basis. How can companies systematically keep track with what’s being said about them on the web? This is where a social media analytics tool called Press Army comes in. The platform, which has officially launched today, intends to help companies understand the impact they have online. And the early adopters include some big names (Audi, McDonalds, Ikea, Diesel and Dove to name a few). Press Army trawls sites like Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and the blogosphere, tracking, analyzing and visualizing the buzz a brand, product, event or topic currently has in social media - virtually in real-time. The results can then be viewed on a single page, in email inbox-style (see the screenshot below). Reports can be broken down into several categories that contain aggregated data. Press Army army can show you how many times you and your competition were mentioned in social media, in which context, which keywords were used or who the key influencers are. Most of these elements are customizable (it’s even possible to distinguish Twitter influencers from influencers writing blog posts). It also shows many people viewed your social media items in any given time frame (”touches”). One of Press Army’s key selling point is sentiment analysis: The tool helps to capture the current sentiment towards your company on the web by showing you how many times a certain expression appeared (in connection with your brand name) in online conversations. Certain words can be weighted or filtered out in order to boost relevance. Press Army, the brainchild of Mike Sheetal (who is CEO of Tokyo-based creative agency UltraSuperNew ), is currently available in English and Japanese, with more languages to be added in the near future. Enterprises interested in the (paid) service can sign up starting today. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Coupa Raises $7.5 Million, Helps Companies Spend Smarter Top
Coupa , a provider of on-demand e-procurement solutions, has secured $7.5 million in Series C funding led by El Dorado Ventures and joined by previous investors BlueRun Ventures and Battery Ventures . With the new capital injection, the total amount raised by the San Mateo, CA startup gets doubled to a healthy $15 million . Coupa markets a Ruby on Rails-driven software suite that allows companies of any size to maintain better control over costs by keeping tabs on purchases, suppliers, existing contracts etc. and automatically looking for ways to spend budgets in a cost-saving manner. The software is subscription-based and Coupa boasts that implementation and training times are way shorter than would be the case with its competitors. Aside from making it easier for people in charge to make purchasing decisions, the completely web-based e-procurement program also helps streamline communication between all employees and executives with a stake in the decision. Ultimately, the software is designed to help companies spend smarter and improve their bottom lines without too much hassle. The company also manages to leverage popular technology in its solution, boasting a one-click integration with Twitter that enables companies to solicit competitive bids from suppliers across the world using the micro-sharing service. Coupa even offers an iPhone app dubbed Mobile Approver that can be used to access the purchasing system at no extra cost for existing subscribers. ZDNet recently published a favorable, detailed review of the service in case you’d like to learn more about Coupa. On a sidenote, Coupa has got one of the best corporate websites I’ve seen in a long time, and I’ve seen many. Even the demo videos are more entertaining than the bulk of what I’ve (been forced to) watch over the years. They’re also great at marketing, having recently invited any federal, state and local government agency to use Coupa e-Procurement free of charge for six months in order to help them establish control over inefficient procurement practices. Definitely one to keep an eye on. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
The Mobile Payments Rivalry Heats Up Top
Mobile payments for micro-transactions on the web are catching wind and there are several players in the space vying for the top spot in the field. Today, Boku, a recently launched mobile payments conglomorate of sorts, is announcing a slew of new customer acquisitions as well as details of its international expansion. Boku, which acquired competitors Paymo and Mobillcash and raised $13 million in Series A funding back in June, doesn't require users to have a credit card or bank account to make a micropayment. Users enter their cell phone number on the site, reply to a text message and then all virtual charges are automatically charged to the user's monthly cell phone bill. As we’ve said in the past, it’s ridiculously easy. Because of its acquisition of Paymo and Mobillcash, systems that had significant international reach, BOKU gained a strong base of users around the world. Today’s announcement adds availability of the payment service in Finland, Indonesia, Slovenia and Taiwan, bringing the company's global reach to 56 countries. Boku’s marketing chief Ron Hirson tell us that they are seeing a strong foothold in Southeast Asia and will be expanding to the Phillipines within a few weeks. Boku has also added a number of online gaming sites, social network applications and the social networks themselves over the past few months, including Playfish, HitGrab and Gambit. Boku says that currently they have over 1000 customers that use its mobile payments platform. So far, Boku has powered 6.5 million online mobile transactions. But competition is stiff in this field and one competitor in particular, Zong, has also witnessed strong growth over the past few months. Most recently, Zong was chosen to test a pilot program for mobile payments for Facebook’s virtual currency, Credits. While Zong may not have had the organic international base that Boku has (Zong is available in 19 countries), this partnership is sure to help Zong’s global reach thanks to Facebook’s ever growing presence and popularity around the world. Zong also reached a big milestone a few weeks after processing mobile payments for 10 million unique users in 2009. However, the potential obstacle to Boku, Zong and other mobile payments platforms are the high fees that mobile carriers charge to the payment systems (which are then passed on to the consumer). Boku told us on June that different cell phone carriers charge varying fees that range between 10% to 50% of the purchase price, which is a hefty amount in transaction fees. But if mobile carriers lower their fees, mobile payments have the potential to be the go-to way to pay for microtransactions. David Marcus, CEO of Zong, says that many U.S. and European carriers that Zong works with are contemplating reducing these fees by building large-scale models to process payments that would in turn lessen the pressure on startups like Zong and Boku as well as the applications and social networks using the systems. Marcus feels confident that if this does happen, the sky is the limit with mobile payments. Regardless, as shown by growth witnessed by both Boku and Zong, mobile payments are catching on and attracting the attention of some of technology’s giants, like Facebook. And of course the rivalry and ensuing competition between the two companies could continue to spur further innovation and growth. It will certainly be fascinating to see which startup comes out ahead. Crunch Network : CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Top Developer Reveals Android Market's Meager Sales Top
It’s no secret that Apple’s App Store has been leaps and bounds more succesful than Android’s comparable Market, but it isn’t often we get concrete data that shows just how poorly Android’s store is faring in comparison. Today Android developer Larva Labs has posted some of the sales figures for its top applications, and the results are not impressive: Larva has two apps in Android’s top paid apps list called Battle For Mars and RetroDefense , ranking #5 and #12 respectively, and between them the company has raked in an average of $62.39 per day over the last month. Ouch. Larva’s Matt Hall attributes this poor performance in part to Android’s shoddy App purchase flow. Unlike the iPhone’s integrated App Store, Android Market doesn’t have screenshots of apps, forces you into the browser at times, makes you use Google Checkout, has some unintuitive navigation issues, and a handful of other problems. These issues are widely known — you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks the purchase process is as smooth as it is on the iPhone — but they’ve been around for quite a while. Hall also points out the poor sales of the smash-hit iPhone game Trism , which pulled in hundreds of thousands of dollars on the App Store. On Android, it has seen fewer than 500 downloads. Granted, there’s no guarantee that lighting will strike twice when there are many other games available for both markets, but that isn’t exactly an encouraging statistic. Hall also writes that the rumored Android market size of $5 million a month (which still pales in comparison to the App Store’s) is likely an overestimate. He concludes that if Larva is considered an average developer, then half the other developers on the platform would have to be seeing similar sales figures to reach that figure, which isn’t likely. This news comes at a time when many developers would be happy to leave Apple’s troubled App Store, with its ridiculous approval policies and poor treatment of developers, in favor of greener pastures. With a slew of new devices coming out this year and policies that are much friendlier to developers, Android has the opportunity to give these apps a new home — now it needs to build out a marketplace that gives the App Store a run for its money. Google has said improvements will be coming soon, likely with support for PayPal, credit cards, and carrier billing; let’s just hope these come sooner rather than later. Crunch Network : MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 
Yazzem Launches Version 2; Improves Latest Activity Among Users Top
Yazzem , the simple topic creator for Twitter or FriendFeed, has launched version 2 of their online service. Yazzem allows you to start topics about anything you want, basically creating a new way to interact with both Twitter and FriendFeed. Once the topics have been created, anyone can join your topic to connect and discuss about it in 140 characters or less. Yazzem launched in June 2008, and has picked up quite a user base for a very specific core audience. Launching in version 2 of Yazzem is a redesign of the Yazzem site, themes that users can choose from for their page, and latest activity streams for all your friends. Also launching with this version is subscribers, which is similar to Twitter followers or FriendFeed subscribers. Another key feature that is launching is user stats, so now users will be able to see information like number of subscribers and activities a particular user has deciding whether or not to subscribe to them. Yazzem also launched a new mobile version of Yazzem which is basically just a redesign of the old mobile version that fits much better for iPhone and iPod Touch users when browsing on the go. It’s unclear how Yazzem will make money, but for such a young company, Yazzem does show some promising features and a future. Yazzem was started by Zachary Collins and Dustin Snider , who are both 14 years of age. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
 

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