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- Facebook For iPad Gets Retina-Ready
- Flash Sales Giant Gilt To Offer Special Discounts To Pinterest Pinners
- Business Audience Marketing Company Bizo Raises $10M
- The Serge SDK Can Find Almost Any Brand You Shoot With Your Smartphone
- NTT DoCoMo, Samsung Call It Quits On Mobile Chipset Joint Venture
- Dow Jones: 20 Companies Raised $1.4B In Q1 2012 IPOs; M&A Deals Decline
- Consumer Reports Names New iPad Top Tablet, Says Heat Isn’t “Cause For Concern”
- Pastebin To Hire “Monitors” To Keep The Creeps Off Of Its Servers
- Music Upstart Songza Co-Founders On Battling Pandora, Spotify
- Add A Cool Linen Background To Google Docs
- Nokia Aims Directly At Apple And Google With “The Smartphone Beta Test” Ad Spots
- 2tor Raises $26M D Round To Put Online Degrees In The Same Class As Their On-Campus Rivals
- Dell Buys Cloud Client Computing Company Wyse To Expand Desktop Virtualization Products
- Dachis Group’s Advocate Insight Finds A Brand’s Most Valuable Fans
- Survey: Folks Rate New iPad As Best Ever; Hot On Retina Display, Pretty Cool On Heat-Gate
- Updated: Has Dating Site Badoo Found A Love Match In The Form Of Hot or Not?
- Facebook’s Mobile Viral Channels Are Working For Wooga, Europe’s Biggest Social Gaming Company
- Tandem: Mobile Accelerator Unveils Inaugural Batch, Gives Sneak Peek At Round Two
- SoFi Reinvents College Loans With Alumni Funding
- Up To 1.5M Credit Card Numbers May Have Been Stolen In Visa, MasterCard Security Breach
| Facebook For iPad Gets Retina-Ready Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:49 AM PDT  Facebook rolled out an update this morning that adds support for the new iPad’s Retina display to its iPad application. According to the release notes in iTunes, users with the new iPad will now see “a crisp, high resolution interface.” The update (version 4.1.1) brings other bug fixes, too, as well as support for additional languages. The Retina-ready version of the app was hinted at last week, when someone spotted a teaser for the upcoming app in the iTunes App Store’s “New and Noteworthy” section. The message displayed at the time read “Enhanced for the New iPad,” presumably meaning it would soon add support Retina graphics. As sure enough, that’s just what it did. The update brings a number of other bug fixes, too, including the following:
In addition, Facebook users can now change their language to Czech, Danish, Greek, Indonesian, Malaysian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Portuguese (Portugal) or Thai in the updated app. However, as much as new iPad owners may be excited to see one of their most heavily used apps updated with Retina support, perhaps a more highly anticipated feature (or rather feature request) is support for the Facebook Timeline. As the boldest revision to the Facebook user interface to arrive since the News Feed, the Timeline offers a new way to both display and consume Facebook content. And given the iPad’s screen size, it doesn’t seem like it would be a problem to migrate that interface to the iPad. The updated Facebook app is available in iTunes now.
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| Flash Sales Giant Gilt To Offer Special Discounts To Pinterest Pinners Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:15 AM PDT  Thanks to online pinboard’s Pinterest’s fast growth, many retail sites are placing “Pin It” buttons next to items for sale as a sharing mechanism. Flash sales giant Gilt is taking the whole Pinning trend to another level by allow users to access special deals on pinned items. Called “Pin it to Unlock,” the new social commerce feature allows shoppers to unlock a special deal on a GILT Kids product by repinning. Here’s how it works. If a product’s image from Gilt’s site on Pinterest has been pinned 50 times the pin will link to a hidden sale on Gilt.com where shoppers will have the opportunity to purchase the special item. We’re told products will be reduced by 77% off the original retail value and the deal will be exclusive to the Pinterest page (meaning it won’t be available on Gilt.com) The idea is to encourage users to interact with the product on Pinterest. "We are giant fans of Pinterest. We think it's the future. This is a new and exciting way to offer a promotion. We know our moms are highly engaged there and it's a great way to interact with them. We think this is just the beginning of endless Pinterest possibilities,” said Rachel Jarrett, General Manager, Gilt Kids. Obviously, retailers are trying to get creative in capturing the viral effect of Pinterest in a meaningful way beyond just traffic. Now sites like Gilt and others want to see how they can use the traffic and sharing from Pinterest to help conversions.
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| Business Audience Marketing Company Bizo Raises $10M Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:10 AM PDT  Bizo, a company offering technology to help advertisers reach a business audience, has raised $10 million in a Series B round of funding. The company has now raised a total of $20 million. Crosslink Capital led the round, and the firm’s newest partner David Silverman is joining Bizo’s board of directors. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Venrock also participated. Bizo’s ad platform includes ad targeting and audience analytics, and it uses that platform to sell both brand display and direct response ads. CEO Russell Glass says Bizo now reaches 80 percent of the business audience in the United States, whether they’re making purchase decisions in the office or at home. At the end of last year, Bizo claims it reached an annual revenue run rate of $18 million. It also says that there are more than 400 leading brands using its technology, and that new publisher partners include Forbes, Crains B2B, PC World, and Thomson Reuters. Bizo has been working on new technologies too, Glass says, for example by investing social marketing and video tools. However, one area that it hasn’t emphasized is mobile. Glass says the ad spending just isn’t there yet, though “we know it’s coming.” He adds that as the company expands, “Bizo’s focus remains on helping marketers more effectively reach business professionals.” The company spun off from ZoomInfo.
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| The Serge SDK Can Find Almost Any Brand You Shoot With Your Smartphone Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:36 AM PDT  Have you ever wanted to take a picture of a purse and figure out where to buy it instantly? Probably not, but now you can. Serge has built a mobile search engine that uses voice, music, vision, barcode, QR code, location, augmented reality and video recognition technology to connect users directly with brands. So, unlike a Google, you’d take a picture of a pair of Nike shoes with the Serge search, and the engine would instantly direct you to Nike.com. What’s great is that Serge has partnered with companies like Nuance and GraceNote to ensure that the quality of the search itself is as accurate as possible. Their video recognition technology operates at 60fps, meaning that you can take a picture of a video on the TV or computer and get a direct connection to content the brand is trying to offer you. The same is true for bar codes, logos, and QR codes, meaning brands can get creative with the way they use Serge to campaign. The dedicated Serge app also features a carousel, which allows users to filter their results by choosing which channels they’d like to search on (Facebook, YouTube, Bing, Twitter, Google, etc.). Developers can add both a Serge search bar with its full functionality and the carousel to their own apps, whether they be for big brands or small businesses. To make people actually use their product, the company is offering up to $1 million in cash to the developer that best integrates the Serge SDK into a new app. Developers interested in the SDK challenge can submit both new and existing apps with Serge integration. After that, rewards will be given based on how many downloads each app gets in a given time. Rewards include $10,000 (30 days), $20,000 (60 days), $100,000 (90 days) and a $1 million for the first app to reach 20 million downloads. Click to view slideshow.
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| NTT DoCoMo, Samsung Call It Quits On Mobile Chipset Joint Venture Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:35 AM PDT  What happens when you put some of the biggest names in the Japanese wireless industry in the same room to work up a plan to develop some home-grown mobile chipsets? The answer is, apparently, not much. Just over three months after NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Fujitsu, NEC, and Panasonic Mobile Communications announced the creation of a mobile joint venture to do just that, DoCoMo has recently announced that the deal has unceremoniously fallen apart. According to a NTT DoCoMo spokesperson, the deal fell through because "the various stakeholders each had their own ideas, and an agreement could not be reached by the March deadline." News of the alliance first broke back in September, when it was revealed that NTT DoCoMo would own a majority stake in the venture (thanks to an outlay of ¥450 million/$5.8 million USD), and that the companies would jointly develop those baseband chipsets for use in their own devices. I suspected at the time that those chipsets wouldn't get much play on the global scale, but DoCoMo proved me wrong with their official announcement — their LTE and LTE-Advanced friendly products were indeed intended for international distribution to boot. This whole thing strikes me as a shame — as I understood it, the original deal was meant to help these reduce their reliance on components from companies like Qualcomm, who at last glance accounted for something like 80% of the baseband chipset market. Sure, it’s tough to say what kind of impact the joint venture would’ve had on the market, especially considering how entrenched a player Qualcomm is, but there’s no such thing as too much competition. If nothing else, it would help keep the big guys on their toes.
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| Dow Jones: 20 Companies Raised $1.4B In Q1 2012 IPOs; M&A Deals Decline Posted: 02 Apr 2012 08:29 AM PDT  It looks like IPOs were up significantly in the first quarter of this year, while M&A dipped for venture-backed companies. Dow Jones VentureSource is releasing a new report this morning indicating that Q1 2012 was the most active quarter for IPOs since the fourth quarter of 2007 and the most active first quarter since 2000. Twenty companies went public in the first quarter, including Yelp, Millennial Media, Brightcove and others. Ninety-four companies were acquired during the same period, which marks the second-straight quarter of declining deal volume for M&A according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Twenty companies raised $1.4 billion through public offerings in the first quarter, which is up from the 11 IPOs that raised $768 million during the first quarter of last year. Currently, 50 U.S. venture-backed companies are in IPO registration. Thirteen of those companies filed during the first quarter. "Big exits by Groupon and Zynga dominated the end of 2011, but small- and mid-cap IPOs have taken center stage so far this year," said Zoran Basich, editor of Dow Jones VentureWire. "The public markets proved receptive to a broad range of companies, which is a positive sign for the industry.". It took companies a median of $68 million and 7.7 years to reach an IPO, which is a 22% drop in capital raised but an increase in time from 6.2 years during the same period a year ago. Dow Jones says that 94 mergers, acquisitions and buyouts raised $18.1 billion in the first quarter, which is a 32% decrease in deals and 42% increase in capital raised from the same period last year. The median price paid for a company spiked to $190 million from $43 million in the first quarter of last year. Major deals included Zynga-OMGPOP, and Amazon-Kiva Systems. Google, which was the most active acquirer of venture-backed companies in 2011 with 12 acquisitions, did not buy any companies in the first quarter of 2012. Groupon has been on a buying spree, acquiring six venture companies in the first quarter, which is double the three acquisitions the company made throughout 2011. To reach an M&A or buyout, companies raised a median of $13 million in venture financing, 13% less than in the first quarter of 2011, and took a median of 4.9 years to build their company, slightly more time than the 4.6-year median a year earlier. Disclosure: My husband is an employee of Groupon.
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| Consumer Reports Names New iPad Top Tablet, Says Heat Isn’t “Cause For Concern” Posted: 02 Apr 2012 07:19 AM PDT  Consumer Reports, clearly moving on from whoring pageviews over heatgate, just planted the new iPad at the top of its recommended tablet chart. Citing the great screen, 5MP camera, and fast, dependable 4G Verizon data connectivity, the iPad is the best of the bunch, says Consumer Reports. But what about the new iPad’s excessive heat? Clearly people still need to, as a Consumer Reports’ spokesman said, “exercise caution”, right? Nope. Much like Antennagate, the issue regarding the new iPad’s heat is merely a footnote in Consumer Reports’ final word. The new iPad still earned the top spot in its respective category. The iPhone 4 went on to sell millions of units, even with Consumer Reports’ negative slant, so Apple probably wasn’t sweating through heatgate. Heatgate, or perhaps warmgate, fizzled out rather quickly when the temperature was put into perspective with competing tablets. Other outlets also quickly debunked Consumer Reports’ strange results regarding the battery. Like most products, the new iPad has quirks, but they’re greatly outweighed by the high-points. Still, Consumer Reports finally got it right. The new iPad is the most impressive, and by that, the best tablet to buy on the market right now. It does get a tad warmer than its predecessor — something MG noted in our initial review — but it’s an amazing and immersive slate device.
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| Pastebin To Hire “Monitors” To Keep The Creeps Off Of Its Servers Posted: 02 Apr 2012 06:53 AM PDT  It’s hard being a hacker’s darling. Pastebin is a dox dumping site – as well as a useful tool for programmers and writers who want to share a piece of text or store it for later – and it is facing what could be a termed a problem of popularity. Because groups like Anonymous have used the service to dump sensitive information, the company has been banned in Turkey and Pakistan and, more important, has become the target of DDOS attacks by kiddies who want to test their exciting new scripts. The result? A company that is, by all metrics, growing, now needs to spend money and solicit volunteers to protect itself from its biggest fans. After a BBC story noted Pastebin’s problems, the site’s owner, Jeroen Vader, received a number of offers to help police the site for free. The monitors will pull down questionable content when users report seeing it using the site’s interface. “Exactly how many people will be hired is not known yet. What is surprising is the amount of offers that I received in the mail since the publishing of the BBC article. It’s quite amazing how many people are willing to help out as volunteers,” he said. He said Pastebin is seeing 17 million unique visitors per month and that he’s getting more DDOS attacks than he currently can handle. “Fighting these certainly is no fun,” he said. His goal is to create a space that is used more for code and text sharing than information dumps. Anonymous isn’t happy with this move, recommending its minions use a Pastebin clone, PasteBay, instead. PasteBay claims to be uncensored and unmonitored, something that I’m less inclined to trust than a dude who is just trying to run a legal business by working within the confines of international law.
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| Music Upstart Songza Co-Founders On Battling Pandora, Spotify Posted: 02 Apr 2012 06:28 AM PDT  Ever since I met the Songza guys at New York Tech Meetup, I’ve wanted to learn more about the app. It’s the first music service that I’ve been excited to use, mostly because it removes the work entirely. I’ve been curious about a few things, like how Songza plans to combat the big boys, namely Pandora, and how exactly these guys are making any money. Remember, Songza has no audio ads, no limits, and is free to download. Co-founders Elias Roman and Eric Davich sat down with me to discuss this and more, saying that the only way to enter into a space as crowded as streaming music is to bring something totally different to the table. They said that they see a really big gap between music subscription services and radio services, in that using a Spotify can be hard for some people and Pandora can get stale. What Songza does is eliminate the mental math of figuring out exactly what you want to listen to. But the possibilities extend far beyond that. Songza is collecting tons of data on the way we listen to music and what we’re doing when we choose a particular genre or playlist. Since Concierge is meant to get smarter the longer you use the feature, this data should be invaluable in fine-tuning the app even more.
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| Add A Cool Linen Background To Google Docs Posted: 02 Apr 2012 06:23 AM PDT  Today’s PSA is brought to you by the letter L. What word starts with L? Linen! If you’ve ever used Google Docs, you’ll recall that the interface is wildly ugly. Well no longer. Using a plugin and a nice, big Linen JPG, you can turn GDocs into a thing of beauty. For whatever reason (probably for SEO), a Brisbane, Australia driving school is hosting this Linen background for GDocs and is offering a set of simple instructions to set it up. While I don’t want to ruin their Google juice, here’s how to do it: 1. Install Stylish for Chrome or Firefox (IE users can pop over here). The creator, Matt Williams, noted that the background is “inspired by iOS/OS X Lion” and his noble goal was to make Google Docs pretty. Thanks to you, Mr. Williams. And if I’m ever in Brisbane, I promise I will take driving lessons from your teachers.
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| Nokia Aims Directly At Apple And Google With “The Smartphone Beta Test” Ad Spots Posted: 02 Apr 2012 05:43 AM PDT It’s on like Donkey Kong. Nokia is back and ready to take on the big dogs. Several Nokia TV adverts started airing last night that don’t dance around the prime targets. Nope, Nokia’s latest ad campaign, The Smartphone Beta Test, is a clever but very direct shot at Apple and Google. The campaign uses three videos (one above, two after below) with so-called behind the scenes footage showing a nondescript work space where three random workers are vetting issues about their upcoming smartphone. “Don’t hold it like that!” “The screen is fine. People can just stay inside.” “I just think the phone is fragile.” Nokia’s success hinges on the success of of the Lumia 900. The phone has a good amount of buzz surrounding it. Besides the Galaxy Note, the Lumia 900 will be the largest phone launch so far of 2012 — an impressive feat considering it’s a Windows Phone. The 900 is priced very aggressively at $99. It packs a very impressive screen and great battery life into a durable and attractive casing. But best yet, Windows Phone has finally matured into a platform even hardcore smartphone addicts can finally use as a daily driver. The 900 might be my next phone. This latest marketing stunt will hopefully just be the first of many campaigns. If Windows Phone and Nokia is to succeed, it needs a strong and direct message.
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| 2tor Raises $26M D Round To Put Online Degrees In The Same Class As Their On-Campus Rivals Posted: 02 Apr 2012 05:14 AM PDT  If you’re unfamiliar with 2tor, this may do the trick. Today, the education startup is announcing that it has closed a $26 million Series D round of financing, led by an affiliate of The Hillman Company, WestRiver Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank Capital, with participation from its existing investors, which include Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, and City Light Capital. The startup’s significant new infusion of capital brings its total investment to just under $97 million, making it one of the highest-funded education startups in the country — if not the top dog. So, what is it about the four-year-old 2tor that has attracted this kind of heavy investment? Well, for starters, in spite of growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, online education is still kind of a joke. Traditionally, it’s been seen as the source of simple (or ineffectual) micro-correspondence courses designed to be supplemental to — not a replacement for — on-campus education. Well aware of the unexceptional quality of many online educational programs, 2tor was founded in 2008 to take the long-view: For online education to become more than just an afterthought, the job would require more than a good idea and some sexy technology. Rather than point and laugh at higher education, the startup set out to partner with universities to build, administer, and market their own online degree programs, collaborating with institutions to create digital education programs that would not just be equivalent to in-classroom education, but perhaps even better. To do this, 2tor has endeavored to supply universities with the tools, expertise, capital, and global recruiting necessary to lift up online ed by the bootstraps. Specifically, 2tor has been partnering with graduate-level, degree programs to provide technology platforms that help institutions extend the classroom experience. So far, the startup has partnered with USC’s Rossier School of Education for their online Master of Arts in Teaching degree, as well as the Masters program for Teaching and Social Work, Georgetown’s nursing program, UNC’s MBA program, and today they’ve announced the addition of another program: UNC’s Master of Public Administration. (With plans to go after another eight or so degree programs.) To give these programs a viable digital educational platform, 2tor developed a web-based infrastructure that enables professors to share materials with their students, provide lectures and interactive lessons, student support service, social interactivity and more. On top of that 2tor has been moving into mobile, releasing an iPad and iPhone app this year that gives students the ability to participate in live, synchronous class sessions via webcam — from anywhere, via 3G or 4G networks. Last month, 2tor added support for Android. When we last spoke to the startup, it had grown to a staff of more than 370 and had over 3,500 students participating in its first three degree programs, hailing from 30 different countries. And because its mobile and web combo platform gives graduate students access to stuff like an interactive whiteboard, along with the ability to flip through the deck of a slideshow, split off into a break-out session with other students, then hop back into a live webcam class, is a pretty serious upgrade for online education programs. Of course, it’s not easy (or cheap) bringing institutions on board, especially with the stigma that’s surrounded online education, and that’s much of the reason why we’ve seen 2tor raise nearly $100 million in funding. As Co-founder Jeremy Johnson told us, 2tor has been investing as much as $10 million in each program it creates. Customizing the platform for each program, working with faculty to get them on board, designing intercampus social networking, and synchronous video capabilities has required significant capital investment. And so far it’s been working. CEO Chip Paucek and COO Rob Cohen tell us that its first three programs have seen nearly 50 percent adoption of 2tor’s mobile apps, and the online programs are collectively seeing a retention rate of over 80 percent. Obviously, with the amount of capital 2tor puts into these programs, it’s in a sense not a surprise, but these programs are being judged by the same criteria with which one evaluates on-campus, in-classroom education. From class size and student-to-faculty-ratio to retention rate and how, for example, graduates of the USC Teaching program place after completing the program. This allows the programs to keep the same admissions process they have for on-campus education, applying the same criteria for selection to online degree candidates. That, in and of itself, is largely unheard of in online education. Both Cohen and Paucek said that their wives are participating in 2tor’s programs at these institutions, and report that the digital courses are “hard.” And in that way, the startup is on a mission to create online student experiences that graduates talk about as if they’d been living on campus for two years — even if they were living in Siberia the whole time. Not only that, but ensure that the program is just as rigorous. 2tor has also begun to launch a fleet of microsites intended to become online resources for teachers across the country, regardless of level. Certificationmap.com, for example, is a guide to teacher certifications and lays out the steps necessary to becoming a teacher in each state in the U.S., while Teach.com offers info on teacher salaries, prep work, how to teach abroad, etc. We’re beginning to see a lot of startups take flipping the classroom more seriously, and from digital textbooks to online education, there’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in the space. 2tor is taking just one approach, and so far, it seems to be working well for them, but higher ed is the low-hanging fruit, next, it will be interesting to see if this formula can be applied to undergraduate degrees, then high school, and on and on. The trick is maintaining the quality, and 2tor may be proving that if startups aren’t willing to take the long-view, and get the necessary capital backing, it’ll be an uphill climb. For more on 2tor, check ‘em out at home here.
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| Dell Buys Cloud Client Computing Company Wyse To Expand Desktop Virtualization Products Posted: 02 Apr 2012 05:09 AM PDT  Dell has just announced the acquisition of cloud client computing company Wyse Technology to expand its desktop virtualization offerings. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Wyse portfolio includes thin, zero and cloud PC client solutions with advanced management, desktop virtualization and cloud software supporting desktops, laptops and next generation mobile devices. Wyse independently partners with datacenter, networking and collaboration providers within its global partner ecosystem to help businesses move to a secure cloud – in a private, public, government or, even in a personal cloud. Wyse, which was founded in 1981, offers a number of products including cloud clients, cloud storage, mobility and virtualization software. Among these products is PocketCloud, which turns smartphones and tablets into virtual desktops by letting you control anything on your PC from a mobile device. To date, Wyse has shipped more than 20 million units worldwide and has over 200 million people interacting with its products each day. The company has more than 180 patents, both issued and pending, covering its solutions, software and differentiated intellectual property. The company says the addition of Wyse “will expand Dell's desktop virtualization capabilities and provide new solutions and services opportunities for the full range of Dell's enterprise offerings.”
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| Dachis Group’s Advocate Insight Finds A Brand’s Most Valuable Fans Posted: 02 Apr 2012 04:00 AM PDT  There may be millions of people or more following and commenting on a brand, but how can it find the ones worth reaching out to? That’s the question that Dachis Group is trying to answer with a new product called Advocate Insight. Founder and CEO Jeffrey Dachis (previously the co-founder of interactive agency Razorfish) says the new product will help brands “engage at scale.” He contrasts that to tools that just help companies push their content to social networks. It’s not enough to broadcast your message to fans, he says — you also have to spread your message by reaching out to the most engaged and influential of those “brand advocates.” (Other companies, such as Zuberance, are also trying to help businesses target brand advocates specifically.) CTO Erik Huddleston says this goes beyond something like Klout: “When I look at something like a Klout what they’re identifying is topical influence. … We’re looking specifically at the influence an individual has on the members of a brand’s audience.” He says Advocate Insight could find not just the most influential people in a given subject area, but also (for example) the 50 people who have the biggest positive impact on the reputation and mindshare of Coca Cola specifically. So Advocate Insight gives customers a list of their advocates who are the most effective at “amplifying” a brand’s message. It creates a profile of each advocate and segments them based on things like region and platform. There’s also an algorithm that excludes employees and “spamvocates.” The new product, which customers will need to pay for with a separate subscription, is built on top of the same social analytics platform that powers Dachis Group’s other products. Last September, it launched a free Social Business Index, and the company says the index has added nearly 1,000 corporate users in the past six months. Dachis Group also says “dozens of large enterprise customers” have either purchased or contracted to purchase its first paid service, the Social Performance Monitor.
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| Survey: Folks Rate New iPad As Best Ever; Hot On Retina Display, Pretty Cool On Heat-Gate Posted: 02 Apr 2012 03:46 AM PDT  Another consumer milestone of sorts for Apple, and one more sign of how competitors are going to have to raise the bar yet again: the new iPad is proving to be highest-rated yet of the three versions of the iPad tablet released so far by the company, according to the latest report from ChangeWave Research. In a survey from the last week of March, more than four out of every five owners — 82 percent, to be exact — said they were “very satisfied” with the new device, with 16 percent saying they are “somewhat satisfied.” And while the high-resolution Retina display has proven to be the biggest hit with new owners, one of the more high profile drawbacks, claims that the device was getting too hot during prolonged use — turned out to be not such a hot issue after all. The caveat in this research is that it only covers 200 people. 200! That’s nothing, and only a small piece of the 25,000 that ChangeWave says that it has access to for surveys. On the more constructive side, this is one more indicator of how this newest tablet from Apple will progress in sales in the months ahead. Another are stats from Apple itself, which noted that it sold three million of the new tablet in the first three days it was on sale. And a third is a report out today from Consumer Reports, which has also put the new iPad tablet at the top of its list of best tablets. ChangeWave says that owners of the new iPad have rated it higher than any other iPad yet, as based on the research group’s surveys. In comparison, when ChangeWave surveyed new owners of the iPad 2 after it launched, 74 percent of iPad 2 owners said they were “very satisfied”, and a further 23 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied”. This time around, ChangeWave noted that the Retina display was named by 75 percent of users as the best feature of the new tablet, with the extended battery life only coming in at a distant second at 22 percent. One reason for that may be because users might not have noticed a particularly bad battery life with the older model in comparison. The third most-liked feature was the 4G/LTE capability, although other data from Localytics seems to indicate that this is not a feature much used by most new iPad owners, with only six percent of traffic on the iPad coming from 4G networks in its research. Outside of the U.S., where there is still little in the way of LTE services — and controversially even less that work with the radio equipment in the new iPad — the number of people using that capability might be even lower. Last month, Consumer Reports made a big deal about the heat generated by the new iPad, a claim that got amplified by others, Apple has deflected a lot of that criticism, and it appears that most consumers have not taken the bait, either. When asked by ChangeWave what they did not like about the new device, only seven percent named the heat issue as a bad point. Asked for more detail, these users also said that they didn’t see the heat issue as a safety concern. To put this in context, seven percent is the same proportion that cited lack of integration with other devices as a problem with the new iPad. Apple has taken precious few steps to solve the integration issue — and in some ways has built an ecosystem to make sure that when users do want to “integrate” it will be with other Apple devices and services. ChangeWave says that no other dislike picked up more than five percent of user response, meaning that heat scored very low indeed, and no one — 0 percent — said heat was a big issue. Also, comparing the heat issue with “antenna-gate”, the latter issue around iPhone 4′s antenna and cellular reception apparently found a lot more users noting this as a problem — with seven percent calling it a “very big problem” — something even Apple itself had to eventually address. In contrast, the biggest negative was the cost of the new iPad (26 percent), followed closely by the cost of a new data plan to use it (23 percent). The iPad’s pricing begins at $499 for the most basic 16GB model. Given that device makers have yet to be able to make anything that has matched or beaten the iPad on a specs level (at least where consumer mindshare is concerned) it will likely be price that continues to be the force that helps competitors like Amazon (with its $199 Kindle Fire) and others compete against the iPad.
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| Updated: Has Dating Site Badoo Found A Love Match In The Form Of Hot or Not? Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:17 AM PDT  Maybe even dating sites deserve to find a special someone at one point in their lives… it looks like Badoo, the UK-based dating site, has joined forces with U.S. rival Hot or Not, with Badoo inking a white-label deal to power the smaller site. The two have yet to issue a formal release of any kind, but Hot or Not now boasts the same amount of registered users as Badoo (146 million+), and Hot or Not now directly refers users to Badoo’s terms and conditions (pictured below). There have been a few observed signs from users, too… Someone who moderates on Hot or Not posted a question to Yahoo Answers saying that her moderator login now goes directly to Badoo. And the pop-culture blog PopCannon noted on Twitter that Hot or Not had changed “once again” and that the ratings had disappeared with the appearance of Badoo branding on the site. Hot or Not’s Facebook fans, meanwhile, are now Badoo’s as well. Badoo is the bigger of the two sites, and says it currently has users across 180 countries. While Badoo bills itself more as a social network than a straight dating site, and Hot or Not is more of a game-like ratings site, you can see how the two might complement each other as Badoo expands out the features it offers to users. You can also imagine that as time goes on, networks like these need scale to survive — another reason they might be joining. We are reaching out to both companies to try to figure out what is going on and will update as we learn more. Update: This is very much a scale play for both Badoo and Hot or Not. Badoo has confirmed to us that this a white-label deal, in which it is effectively powering Hot or Not’s service on its behalf. It is not disclosing any financial terms. This deal signals another direction for Badoo’s growth: as a backbone, B2B provider for other social networks. Other sites that also use Badoo’s service like this include On the link up with Hot or Not, a spokesperson tells us the deal was attractive for two reasons. The first is that it gives Badoo more headway into the U.S. market, as this is the first white-label deal signed by Badoo in the U.S. The second is that Badoo already had a product, Encounters, that worked similar to the photo ratings game on Hot or Not. “We thought we could build on the Hot or Not game and add additional features to make the site even better for Hot or Not users,” she said. The change happened over the weekend, and Badoo is still working out a few bugs. “Once we’ve got that sorted, Hot or Not users will be notified of the change,” she added. “While some of the features may look different, ultimately, Hot or Not users will come away with a lot more functionality–like more messaging and search features.”
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| Facebook’s Mobile Viral Channels Are Working For Wooga, Europe’s Biggest Social Gaming Company Posted: 01 Apr 2012 10:04 PM PDT  Viral channels are slowly and inevitably starting to matter for mobile game developers. For ages, many top developers would try and climb up the charts through a combination of mobile advertising, offer walls, free app promotions or more nefariously, download bots. But as the charts have become crowded with north of a half-million apps and as Apple has clamped down on less savory means of acquiring users like bots, other ways of getting users are becoming more important. Wooga, which is Europe’s biggest social game developer, is an example. Today, the Berlin-based company is saying that it has crossed 11 million downloads, which is respectable considering that the company only really entered the mobile space three months ago when it brought Diamond Dash to iOS. For those who are unfamiliar, Wooga is a Berlin-based social game developer that is second only to Zynga in terms of daily users on Facebook. It’s raised more than $32 million in funding from investors including Balderton Capital and Highland Capital Partners. Diamond Dash was one of the first games that really made use of Facebook’s new viral channels for native mobile applications after they launched last October. So it’s an important litmus test in seeing how marketing is changing on the iOS and Android platforms. After Diamond Dash launched on iOS, Facebook drove about 18.5 million clicks to the game’s landing page in the iOS app store. About 64 percent of Diamond Dash’s mobile players connect to Facebook, up from 28 percent in December. That’s a super high share. I often hear from mobile developers in the social networking category that about 25 percent of their users might log in through Facebook. EA PopCap, for example, says that only about 20 percent of its Bejeweled Blitz players on iOS connect to Facebook even though the game is big on the social network too. Wooga uses Facebook to create a real-time leaderboard for players and let users gift their friends. The company adds that mobile gamers who log in with Facebook are eight times more likely to pay. If they do pay, they tend to spend about 50 percent more than non-Facebook connected users. That said, Facebook alone is still not enough to drive any single game to the top of the charts on iOS. Diamond Dash is doing well in European markets, where it sits in Top 50 grossing for Germany and Top 20 grossing for France. But it sits at around 200 in the U.S. Facebook is also seeing some definite competition from Twitter as a driver of traffic to mobile apps. Twitter has a special deal with Apple to have its sharing features deeply integrated into iOS while Facebook-Apple talks have been at an impasse for years. Before OMGPOP sold to Zynga for $180 million in cash and plus an earnout, I had been talking with the company’s chief executive Dan Porter about where the developer’s hit game “Draw Something” was getting users. He told me that about 50 percent of the game’s downloads were probably coming from word of mouth and social networks, instead of the app’s top ranking in the store. Porter also said that Twitter was probably more important than Facebook for driving new users to Draw Something. He said that on Facebook, “You are competing with stream stories about Spotify, Pinterest, other games, Fab.com and so forth. Twitter and Instagram are more available and less congested right now.” One other game developer and venture investor is also rethinking Twitter as a mobile game marketing tool too. Charles Hudson, who runs Android game developer Bionic Panda and is a venture partner at SoftTech Venture Capital says that while the game developer community dismissed Twitter early on, the picture is starting to change with the success of Words With Friends and Draw Something. “I've come around to thinking that Twitter could be a really useful channel for games that are designed to target really large mass-market audiences given the broadcast nature of Twitter,” he wrote in a recent blog post. So it’s still early days in seeing this shift from focusing on getting high rankings to viral promotion. The real test of Facebook should be coming in a few weeks. Facebook only has viral channels for native iOS apps right now. They should be launching these channels for native Android apps any day now.
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| Tandem: Mobile Accelerator Unveils Inaugural Batch, Gives Sneak Peek At Round Two Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:43 PM PDT  Tandem Entrepreneurs, for those unfamiliar, is a Silicon Valley-based accelerator and capital fund that focuses exclusively on early-stage mobile businesses. Like other accelerators, Tandem works hand-in-hand with its founders on everything from strategy and product design to user acquisition and employee recruiting. However, unlike others, it seeds each startup with a $200K convertible note in exchange for 10 percent equity, and keeps the size of its batches small (two to four teams) in the belief that smaller size equates to higher returns and higher success rates. Each team spends six months in Tandem’s acceleration program, with new batches beginning each season. There’s no demo day, or set graduation date, as Tandem likes to avoid making its founders feel like they’re about to get kicked out. While Tandem has been operating as a capital fund since 2007 — having funded and worked closely with startups like Play In The City, Playhaven, and Zumodrive — its mobile accelerator only launched in July. And, today, Tandem is officially unveiling its inaugural batch of four startups, as well as giving us a sneak peek at the two startups chosen to participate in its winter program. Below you’ll find a description of each of the four companies, as well as the accompanying teaser. For those interested in applying, the accelerator is also accepting applications for its spring batch, with a deadline of April 3rd at midnight. Those interested can apply here. BitRhymes is a social game development company, which is focusing on building social casino games for women that can be played across online and mobile platforms. Its first game, Bingo Bash, was released in December, and has already attracted 1.8 million monthly active users on Facebook. BitRhymes’ first social game combines the basic tenets of Bingo with some creative collection and rewards mechanics, adding the ability to collect treasures (gems) and power-ups to make a game that’s traditionally reserved for older folks into a far more exciting, addicting, and social experience. Heck, there are even synchronous chat features and sometimes crowds of more than 100 playing at any given time. BitRhymes will soon be bringing Bingo Bash to iOS and Android, and is currently in the process of releasing several new titles. The startup’s team counts members who have previously built titles like Vegas, Salon Street, The Warlords, and Tagme, which have collectively seen over 25 million installs. Flit is an online shopping tool that allows people to enter a search just once, and use that term to search for products or merchandise across their favorite stores. Using this patent-pending Go Search tool, users can initiate a single-click search across 275 retail sites, from fashion and home goods to electronics and sports products. The startup has been beta testing its service, and is looking to focus more specifically going forward on making shopping on the tablet fun — for women. It is developing an app that builds on its previous online experience, allowing women to find items they like from hundreds of online stores, while saving products for later, and sharing their favorites with their friends. Flit plans to launch its tablet app this month, so stay tuned. UpOut is an online event discovery service that is targeted at busy people who may not have had a lot of time to plan, but suddenly decide, say, after leaving work, that they want a fun, local event to check out. Thus, UpOut provides a realtime listing of local events that are accessible on the go, and currently offers over 2,000 events in San Francisco. The startup plans to officially roll out of beta early this month, and bring its service to a host of new cities over the course of the year. You can read more about the startup’s beta launch at TechCrunch here. Gimmie is developing a real-world reward program that lives within mobile apps that aims to boost in-app purchase revenue for mobile developers, while connecting consumer brands to mobile app users. As Kim-Mai wrote at Inside Mobile Apps, Gimmie is a hybrid between the install networks that give gamers virtual rewards for watching ads or downloading apps with services like Kiip, which turns in-game achievements into coupons. Gimmie was co-founded by a long-time Popcap Games engineer, Roy Liu, who just so happened to be the lead developer for Plants V. Zombies. Liu left when Popcap was acquired by EA last year. Gimmie is now working with over 50 developers (which, combined, have millions of active users), and beta launch titles include Peter Pog, Art Jam Trance, and Ziggurat, among others. As mentioned above, Tandem is also officially announcing the two startups that were chosen to participate in its winter program, which is still ongoing. Both startups’ products are currently in stealth, so they’re not saying much about them. But, what we have been able to gather is this: The first, called Sift, is an intelligent shopping service, which was co-founded by former executives from Digital Chocolate and VMware. The founders have dubbed their product “a Flipboard for brand promotions.” The second, Tydy, is an interest-based content discovery service. Tydy was founded by former Opera executives, and plans to offer a better way to filter the droves of content we share on a daily basis, based on customized, personal filtering mechanisms. According to the team, it has struck distribution partnerships to have Tydy be “included on tens of millions of mobile devices for its initial launch.” Obviously, we’re looking forward to learning more, and will share when they’re ready. Again, applications for Tandem’s spring class are due by April 3rd at midnight. Apply here.
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| SoFi Reinvents College Loans With Alumni Funding Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:00 PM PDT  As the cost of a college education continues to rise, a startup called SoFi is offering a way for alumni to offer students financial assistance and more. Co-founder and CEO Mike Cagney describes the current student loan system as a “classic market failure,” resulting in students who are stuck with high interest rates and heavy debt that they struggle to pay off. He says that if you can remove government from the equation (specifically government loans) and replace it with alumni, then “you create a very virtuous cycle.” So that’s what SoFi tries to do. The company is creating university-specific funds for alumni to invest in, and those are used to make loans to students. SoFi says it’s offering to cover the full cost of attendance for participants, with loans ranging from $5,000 to $200,000. The loans are 6.24 percent fixed rate, and they can drop to 5.99 percent, lower than federal Stafford and PLUS loans and many private loans. So students get relatively low interest rates, while alumni get a significant financial return. The benefits aren’t purely monetary. Through its website, SoFi tries to connect the participating alumni and students, for example if someone is looking for mentorship or help with their job search. Cagney notes that the loans create a financial incentive for alumni to pitch in — after all, they want students to do well so they can pay off the loans. On the flip side, he says that some alumni don’t care about making money from the investments at all, and want to use the interest payments to a nonprofit organization that will help the students (something that SoFi is investigating). Of course, alumni donations are already an important source of funding for university programs. Cagney says these loans can be made from tax-deferred accounts like a 401k, so they shouldn’t divert money from traditional alumni giving. Cagney and his co-founders ran a pilot program at Stanford (where they attended the Graduate School of Business) last fall, raising a $2 million fund from 40 alumni. This fall, SoFi is expanding to 40 locations and hopes to lend out $150 million. As for its own funding, the company has raised $4 million from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, and board members Joe Chen (founder and CEO of RenRen) and Steve Anderson (founder of Baseline Ventures).
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| Up To 1.5M Credit Card Numbers May Have Been Stolen In Visa, MasterCard Security Breach Posted: 01 Apr 2012 07:16 PM PDT  On Friday, we heard the news that payments processor Global Payments was hit with a massive security breach involving MasterCard and Visa cardholders. At the time it was unclear the reach of the security issue, which was being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service. Tonight, Global Payments reports that those cards affected in the breach processing system were confined to North America and up to 1.5 million card numbers may have been exported. Visa had originally pegged that number at around 50,000 cards stolen. So far, the investigation has revealed that card numbers may have been stolen, but that cardholder names, addresses and social security numbers were not obtained by the criminals. As stated in the release: Based on the forensic analysis to date, network monitoring and additional security measures, the company believes that this incident is contained. “We are making rapid progress toward bringing this issue to a close. Our nearly 4,000 employees around the world are focused on providing exceptional service. We are open for business and continue to process transactions for all of the card brands,” said Global Payments CEO Paul R. Garcia in a release. The fact that data like social security numbers and addresses weren’t stolen in the security breach is good news for cardholders. Still, credit card companies will have to re-issue new cards to those affected and monitor accounts, and the potential reach of the breach is much larger than expected. The Wall Street Journal reported that Global Payments handled $120.6 billion in Visa and MasterCard card volume last year alone. It’s still unclear the origin of the hack.
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