Back in June, Brightcove unveiled a new strategy to take its App Cloud development platform open source, and at the same time it introduced a new dual-screen Apple TV feature aimed at growing its business on connected TVs. Today, Brightcove is announcing the very first implementation of that, with Discovery Networks International, which will be using it first in Italy. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Brightcove, tells TechCrunch that this is a global deal with Discovery, meaning that if all goes well, Discovery could take the features to other markets where it operates in Europe, the U.S. and the rest of the world.The new service will run on iPad and iPhone apps from DMAX Italy, a free-to-air channel operated by Discovery with 20 million subscribers. And it will give users the ability to initiate an action on, say, an iPhone or iPad, and then shift that content directly on to the larger screen of the TV using Apple's AirPlay technology. This makes dual-screen functionality a step beyond companion apps -- now very common in the TV world -- in that it gives users the ability to actually port features and functions from one screen directly to the other. read more..
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
Discovery Networks Is Brightcove’s First Partner For Its Dual-Screen Apple TV Service, Live First In Italy
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Bingo Simulator-Ipad App Store-Ipad Devices
If you had to take a guess at what has been at or near the top-grossing spot in the U.S. iPad App Store for the past month without looking, I'd bet a bingo simulator wouldn't be high on your list. But India's BitRhymes has proven that in fact users are interested in playing good old-fashioned bingo on their ultra-modern iPad devices, and revealed to TechCrunch that it's currently tracking to realize an annual run rate of $45 million in revenue on the back of its premiere title, Bingo Bash for Facebook, iPad and iPhone.That one of the best-performing social games on the App Store and Facebook right now isn't from someone like Zynga is a sign that there's still plenty of opportunity to be had in this space, but that it might be best explored by peering into corners that don't immediately seem like winners. Bingo is traditionally seen as a game for octogenarians, but BitRhymes' CEO Sumit Gupta said in an interview that surprisingly, there's been lots of interest from younger demographics, and users have predominantly been women. read more..
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Gift Certificates-Profitability-Startup
GiftRocket, a 2011 Y Combinator grad, is a simple P2P digital gifting service that lets users send and receive digital gift cards via email. Originally, the startup was focused around location-based gifting, allowing friends to send each other digital gift cards that could be accessed once they checked-in to a certain location. With some angel funding behind it, the startup pivoted to a more universal use case, becoming a way to easily gift cash within a digital eCard.Co-founder Kapil Kale tells us that, since that change, people have begun to use the service as a replacement for traditional gift cards and gift certificates and usage has increased as a result. Today, the startup is announcing that it's profitable thanks to a $2 million in sales in 2012 (and what he expects to be $5 million run rate by December). It's also making some additions and changes to its service, including an API, bulk orders and reduced fees. read more..
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
Social Network-Glam
Glam Media is announcing a flurry of new features today centering around Ning, the social network building service that it acquired last year. Collectively, they give some sense of what Ning looks like once it has been integrated into Glam's business and products.Since Glam is primarily an ads business, perhaps the most important change is the fact that Ning creators can now run Glam ads in their community. Previously, if you had a network on Ning and you wanted advertising, you were mostly on your own. (In fact, Glam CEO Samir Arora says there were already two Ning networks had decided on their own to join Glam's advertising program.) Now, assuming you fit into one of the company's ad verticals, you can start monetizing in a more serious way, by running premium advertising from the network. read more..
Sunday, 1 July 2012
Bose Headphones-Dearest Alexia-Car
On the 25th of June, our dearest Alexia Tsotsis had an incredibly rough day. First, her car was looted by very bad people in San Francisco, who stole her laptop and a pair of excellent Bose headphones that were near and dear to her heart. And as if that wasn't enough, her car then got smashed by someone running a red light, totaling her vehicle and leaving her in quite a bit of pain. When fellow TechCrunch sharks heard the news, we knew we had to do something to help out one of our fearless leaders, and so our very own Ryan Lawler stepped up to the plate with a suggestion to buy some new headphones for Alexia. "Knowing that we can't replace the sentimental value, I was thinking we could maybe (at least) help replace the item that was taken." After a little back and forth, the team settled on an app to help us accomplish the task at hand (we at TC need an app for everything), and that's where CrowdTilt enters the mix. read more..
Monday, 18 June 2012
Historical Photographs-Olympic Athletes-London Olympics-London 2012-Facebook
A lot of Londoners (me included) haven't been able to get tickets to the London Olympics this summer. But we'll all get something else, Facebook announced today. The company is launching Explore London 2012, a dedicated page for athletes to communicate with fans and provide their own personalized updates around the event, including metal wins and their own photographs as well as status updates. Alongside that, Facebook is adding other data to pad out the story: historical photographs and other information about notable events -- part of an effort to be able to claim that 2012 will mark the first "Social Olympics."Officials from the International Olympics Committee tell me they started to work with Facebook on the effort some 18 months ago. So far there are only 250 of more than 10,000 Olympic athletes on the site, including UK athletes Tom Daly, Jessica Ennis, and the cycling team, although Facebook expects that to ramp up significantly in the weeks ahead. Significantly, although the pages may expect to get a huge amount of traffic from the millions of people who tune in to watch the sporting event, Facebook will not run any advertising alongside any of it. read more..
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Advertising Business-Battery Ventures-Product Teams-Core Product-Patel
Satya Patel joined Twitter in March of 2011, after a four-year stint as an investor with Battery Ventures. He took on the big job of managing the company's core product as well as its growing advertising business. But now, as its ads are starting to take off, he's leaving the company.The decision was amicable, I've heard from a source familiar with the matter. Twitter's executive leadership is looking to separate the ads and product teams more fully, with each one getting a new leader. Patel's options were to take one of those roles instead of continuing to run both.“Satya has done a great job building out an amazingly talented product team," a spokesperson tells me today, in confirmation "We’re grateful for everything he’s done and wish him the best.” read more..
Monday, 28 May 2012
Social Networking-Social Shopping-Social Media-Yandex
It's not a given that a leader in search can successfully pivot into other areas like social media -- just ask Google -- but a new service launching in Russia today, from that country's search leader Yandex, shows one route a company with a lot of smarts can take to make sure they remain a central player in the social game. Today sees the launch of SocialMart, a social shopping startup financed by Yandex (through its seed-funding program Yandex.Factory), and powered by Yandex (via Yandex.Market), but is not Yandex itself.Both Yandex and SocialMart are banking on the fact that the rising popularity of ecommerce in Russia is inevitably going to cross over with the equally popular trend of social networking: up to now, those twains have not met, unlike in other markets, where services like Mertado (now part of Groupon), Sneakpeeq, and Fab have been running away with the "social shopping" banner, picking up users and funding in the process. read more..
Thursday, 24 May 2012
Patent Infringement Case-Deliberations-Bated Breath-Oracle
Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California dismissed the jury this afternoon after a unanimous decision that ruled in favor of Google's mobile OS -- declaring that Android did not in fact infringe on the Oracle patents in question. The decision follows an opposing verdict earlier this month, in which the jury in the long-running infringement case found that certain components of Android APIs had too close of a resemblance to code used in Oracle's Java programming tools. However, the jury ended up splitting on the notion of whether or not Google could in fact claim fair use in its defense (which could have then led to a mistrial.) read more..
Social Networks
We spend more and more time on social networks, but sometimes it can feel like work. I mean, scrolling through your news feed isn't work work, but it's not quite as easy as vegging out on your couch and watching TV.That's where a new startup called Stevie comes in, with a website launching today at Disrupt, along with mobile apps that function as remote controls. Stevie looks at content shared in your social network feeds and elsewhere on the Web, and it assembles that content into TV shows that you can watch, shows with names like The Comedy Strip, Music Non-Stop, and Celeb TV. Naturally, the shows incorporate video content that your friends have shared, but they also include things like Facebook status updates, tweets, shared headlines, and birthdays, running mostly as tickers under the video. Essentially, it's a way to watch Facebook and Twitter on your TV. read more..
Friday, 11 May 2012
Facebook Status Updates-Highlight
Only 12% of your friends see your average status update, but Facebook is testing an option called "Highlight" that lets you pay a few dollars to have one of your posts appear to more friends. Highlight lets users, not Pages or businesses, select an "important post" and "make sure friends see this", but not color it yellow as Stuff wrote when it first spotted the feature. A tiny percentage of the user base is now seeing tests of a paid version of Highlight, but there's also a free one designed to check if users are at all interested in the option.Highlight could show Facebook's willingness to try more aggressive ways of making money, which should delight potential investors. But Facebook is playing with fire here. The service has always been free for users, and a pay-for-popularity feature could be a huge turn off, especially to its younger and less financially equipped users who couldn't afford such narcissism. read more..
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Ecommerce-Facebook-Coupons
Facebook has a plan to squeeze more ad dollars out of ecommerce sites and anyone else selling products on the web. It's quietly testing a new version of its Offers coupons that can be redeemed at online stores, not just at physical shops. Sources clued us in and Facebook has now confirmed with me that users will see Offers in the news feed, ads, and Sponsored Stories that feature a promo code or special link to click through for a discount on off-site purchases.Similar to how the existing version of Offers lead to foot traffic and revenue for brick-and-mortar stores, big brands with web stores, ecommerce hubs, and celebrities with merch to sell could soon use Offers to drive sales. Coupons like "Take $5 Off A Purchase Of $50 Or More" can produce real return on investment. So while they're free to run, businesses will pay Facebook to show their Offers to more people. read more..
Friday, 4 May 2012
Promotional Product-Physical Stores-Drive Business-News Feed-Facebook
Today any local U.S. business can start using Facebook's Offers product -- free-to-create coupons that businesses can share to the news feed, and that users can bring to brick-and-mortar stores for redemptions. First announced in February at the Facebook Marketing Conference, the product has been in private testing with a select group of brands who worked with Facebook reps to run the offers. Now the promotional product is available in a self-serve interface.While it doesn't cost businesses anything to run offers, Facebook could still make money on them. If they perform well in the news feed and drive business to physical stores, those stores may spend more on Facebook ads that increase their Page fan counts -- and the subscriber bases for the coupons. read more..
Thursday, 3 May 2012
Music Services-Deezer
Music streaming provider Deezer is one of the bigger (and older -- it's been around since 2006) services of its kind, with some 20 million registered users in 48 territories, and 15 million tracks in its catalog -- but it has failed to capture mindshare in quite the same way as rival Spotify; and some might argue that this will make it harder in the long run for Deezer to keep up and grow.Today sees the launch of the company's latest attempt to turn that situation around: "Open Deezer," a new set of APIs for iOS, Android and Java-based web apps, which it hopes will help it bring on a new raft of developers to create music services around its platform. read more..
Monday, 9 April 2012
Social Software-Social Networks-The Enterprise-Social Media-Linkedin
The use of social media in the enterprise has been a path well-trod by companies using mass market tools like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to communicate with peers, customers, investors and anyone else who might be interested in what they’re up to. But when it comes to the most senior information executives, they’re actually a little antisocial.According to data compiled by social software provider harmon.ie, only about 10 percent of CIOs in the top companies -- Fortune 250 and and Global 250 -- actively use public social networks. Within that group, only four CIOs write blogs, and more than one-third either do not have LinkedIn profiles, or have profiles with fewer than 100 connections. read more..
Saturday, 31 March 2012
South By Southwest-Nearby Friends-Exact Location-Sxsw
Let's say you want to use your phone to find interesting new people or reconnect with nearby friends -- without revealing your exact location. Glancee is the app for you, particularly if you're an Android user. And the polished competitor to Highlight is getting a big update today, ahead of South By Southwest. The changes should please the people who want what it already offers.The most obvious alteration since I covered the app last month is a nod to location precision. The Radar feature now shows you how many "steps away" somebody is, as measured in number of feet. Before, you'd see people as either "nearby" or as X number of miles away. While subtle, the difference could make it easier for connections to happen. If you only have to walk a few feet to meet someone, you're more likely to do it than walk half a mile, particularly if you're in the middle of a giant party in Austin, Texas. read more..
Friday, 23 March 2012
Posterous-Tumblr
Twitter just announced that it has acquired Posterous, the Y Combinator-backed blogging and sharing platform that competed early on with Tumblr.Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Posterous had raised $10.1 million in two venture rounds plus early fundraising with angels. Posterous says its service Spaces will stay up and running and that the company will give plenty of notice to users if they start to change the service. read more..
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute-Community Engagement-Community Foundation
To work with Congress and encourage minority-owned small businesses to use its marketing products, I've learned Facebook has just created a new Head of Community Engagement role to be filled by Susan Gonzales. Until now, Gonzales was a full-time consultant in Facebook's DC office where she's led external affairs since August. Before that she was the VP of Comcast's community foundation, and is currently the Vice Chairperson of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.Gonzales will manage outreach to diverse communities, be a liaison to key Congress members, and help run Facebook's Small Business Boost and digital citizenship "roadshows". Facebook could increase revenue and public support by putting this experienced relationship builder at the front of its education initiatives. read more..
Friday, 24 February 2012
The General Elections-Friendraising-Social Media-Custom Apps-Sean Parker
Just in time for the general elections coming up later this year, Votizen, the social media site that helps like-minded voters get together and influence how those elections go, has raised $750,000. And while that may sound like a modest number -- in true voter influencer fashion -- it's the backers that are going to count here. read more..
The BYOD struggle: From writing custom apps to defining security
Companies are grappling with the question of whether and how to let employees use their own smartphones and tablets at work even as a huge push is being made to set up internal "app stores" of approved and custom-built corporate mobile apps. read more..