Concert Attack Tracks Artist Activity and Launches Facebook App
June 2, 2008 — 04:04 PM PDT — by Alana Taylor — — 1 Comment
“Think MySpace/Facebook meets YouTube, Flickr and Fandango.com, but focused solely on concerts.” That’s how Concert Attack describes itself.
It’s a web 2.0 site geared towards the music-loving community that provides information about concerts, picture and video reviews, and both artist and concert profile pages.
The last time we reviewed Concert Attack, we were intrigued by the tag clouds for popular artists that lead to their profile pages where content is pulled from across the web. However, we didn’t see the “it” factor in the service or it’s unique qualities in comparison to other similar services.
But in the last two months, the site has undergone a few changes. They have added live-music news, video interviews with bands and musicians, and Label and Management profiles like Warner Brothers Records and Tenth Street Entertainment.
Now fans’ concert pictures, videos and reviews for a specific concert, like Plain White T’s, are grouped into concert experiences, and Concert Attack has even launched a tour/festival section where users can create an itinerary of the artists they will be seeing at certain events. Lastly, the new Artist Activity Tracking feature alerts users when a fan or artist adds concert for their favorite bands.
Although the live-music angle makes this social network pretty niche compared to other music sites, I wouldn’t be surprised if their new Facebook app helps Counter Attack gain widespread popularity over the web. It lets Facebook users add concert pictures to their profile and “Concert Attack friends with videos of over-exaggerated funny artist stage moves and fan dance moves.”
Disclosure: Concert Attack is a current sponsor of Mashable
Ping This!Wisdom Of The Crowds: Is CrowdChess Worth $50,000?
June 2, 2008 — 03:48 PM PDT — by Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — — 2 Comments
CrowdChess, a Web 2.0 startup that’s been covered heavily in the mainstream press as well as the tech blogosphere, has been thrown up for sale on eBay, according to a keenly observant Mashable reader. Based on the same sociological theory that power’s Digg’s news selection, CrowdChess sets up games where the moves are determined by crowd voting, and the moves that get the most votes are the ones that are played out.
The reason for the sale isn’t named (as is typically done whenever a Web 2.0 project is listed on the typical forums), but they do include a large amount of site stats that show a not inconsequential amount of usage for the month of May:
~70,000+ visits
1,050,000+ page views
2,500,000+ hits
780+ total unique referrers
1,700+ registered users
Google PageRank 4
The site is currently listed with the starting bid of $50,000, with no bids and no Buy It Now price. The site doesn’t appear to be monetized in any noticable way at the moment, and as such has no history of profit and loss to justify any sort of valuation they are putting on the site. Lacking that and any high amount of engagement (a guess here - online web games don’t typically have highly sticky viewers, or if they do, they tend not to click on advertisements), this is probably a gamble of a purchase.
Still, it might fit into a number of folks’ portfolios, as casual gaming is a big deal. Overhead is low on the site, and aside from the purchase price, it could provide a steady stream of income for the purchaser.
Let’s play our own game of crowd wisdom. Would you bid upwards of 50k for CrowdChess?
HD Greetings: Forget McCain. Vote for Cashmore in ‘08!
June 2, 2008 — 03:46 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 1 Comment
Tired of the same old debates about Obama and Clinton– even McCain? Show your support for any other candidate but these three by creating your own HD Greeting. You can enjoy the one that was created for Pete Cashmore below, but making one for your friends (or yourself) is cool too.
This can all be done on HD Greetings, an eCard service that offers animated messages that you can send to friends. There are a few services that play on custom animation as a way for users to add a bit of engaged humor through greeting cards, and like most similar services, poking fun at the political realm is an easy way to encourage users to participate.
HD Greetings has eCards across multiple categories including birthdays and holidays, and has a premium service for marketing solutions as well. An Artist’s Studio plus a basic community on HD Greetings makes the act of creating and sharing eCards a social affair, but further development on both these ends can enable HD Greetings to pursue a self-sustained market approach to this niche site.
In order to truly achieve this, however, HD Greetings will have to address its biggest downfall. Finished cards from other users can be shared via URL, but not emailed or embedded. There is an option for emedding and emailing HG Greetings cards, but you’ll have to customize it first, hence minimizing the viral capabilities of the service.
Even as eCards seem to be relics of the first Internet wave, the online greeting card industry is still going strong, so new implementations of eCards with customized options could eventually lead to some interesting integration across social media and increased advertising opportunities therein.
Mayor Bloomberg Announces NYC Seed Fund to Kick-Off Internet Week
June 2, 2008 — 03:44 PM PDT — by Adam Hirsch — — 3 CommentsTo kick off Internet Week New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced NYC Seed, an investment fund focused on early stage technology companies in New York City. The fund is a partnership between ITAC, New York City Investment Fund, The New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation, New York City Economic Development Corporation, and PolyTechnic University.
The video above features the mayor discussing technology in New York and the launch of the NYC Seed Fund. More information and an application for start-ups is available on the NYC Seed web site.
Facebook Platform Goes Open Source
June 2, 2008 — 03:07 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 1 Comment
What a difference a year makes. I won’t get too mushy-faced on this one, but Facebook’s platform just celebrated its one-year anniversary. The past 12 months have completely changed the face of online social networking, in large part due to Facebook opening up its platform, and others following suit. Facebook is taking the opportunity to use its anniversary celebration to launch the next stage of its open platform strategy: open source.
Brief History of Facebook’s “Openness”
Since opening its platform last May, Facebook has since offered a licensed version of its platform for other networks, and has also launched Facebook Connect, which has resulted in some underwhelming complications given the current “open network” environment. So in typical Facebook fashion (that is, an insatiable need to be among the first to the table), Facebook is open-sourcing a great deal of its Facebook Platform. This includes “most of the code that runs Facebook’s Platform plus implementations of many of the most-used methods and tags,” according to a statement from Facebook.
Facebook and the Developer Community
This is a first step for Facebook, and it will really be up to the developer community to make the open source option shine. There are built in extensibility points, so added functionality can be incorporated into whatever renditions of the code you’d like to use. You can download the source code here.
Licensed under the Common Public Attribution License, the open-sourcing of Facebook’s platform is focused on the community approach for development and implementation, as well as direct capabilities to connect brands with Facebook’s, for whatever purpose necessary. It’s also important to note that the rest of the code is licensed under the Mozilla Public License.
Will Facebook Open Source Help Global Adoption of its Licensed Platform?
With an open source option, there’s also an increased potential for Facebook’s platform to take on more global growth, as easier adoption for such a platform could encourage additional activity on a wider scale. What we’ve seen from a number of global markets is that the opening of one’s own platform isn’t considered a viable option, especially at earlier stages, but the ability to utilize the new open source code while also pushing one’s brand through Facebook could be a bit more enticing across the board.
Trackur Releases New Trends Feature
June 2, 2008 — 12:40 PM PDT — by Kristen Nicole — — 2 Comments
Online reputation monitoring tool Trackur has added a new feature called Trackur Trends. It’s a progressive next step for the service that lets you see what the world is saying about you, aggregating all the data it collects and presenting it with a better-formatted reports feature.
Trackur Trends is in fact a mini-chart that will display directly in your Trackur dashboard, giving you an at-a-glance view of relevant activity. That’s activity based on your specific reputation, and the buzz occurring around competitors as well. It’s a broader approach for staying abreast of ongoing activity that’s related to you and your brand. The reports are based on keywords that you designate, so you’re able to view the trends that you find necessary (similar to a personal feed reader with reporting functionality attached).
The good thing about this new development is that the price for Trackur’s service isn’t increasing with the added Trends feature. In fact, founder Andy Beal recently dropped prices for the initial Trackur service. I think that maintaining those low prices in the face of added benefits to users is a good move.
As RSS tools become increasingly sophisticated, however, one can wonder about the future of a paid service for tracking brands’ reputations online. But, as RSS still hasn’t become fully adopted by mainstream culture, and even brands with in-house development teams can sometimes use some help when it comes to utilizing RSS capabilities towards their own ends, third party services like Trackur will continue to present themselves at the intersection of time and resources as the alternative to the necessity of weighing opportunity costs of a DIY approach. The more simplified the process is, the more accessible it becomes, and that seems to be the going trend that will continue for the next year or so.
GraphicLeftovers Monetizes Unwanted Designs [The Startup Review]
June 2, 2008 — 11:34 AM PDT — by Alana Taylor — — 5 Comments
Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here.
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: GraphicLeftovers
20-word Description: GraphicLeftovers provides a haven where graphic designers can sell unused graphics and illustrations and buyers can find high-quality, easy to use designs quickly and inexpensively.
CEO’s 100-word Pitch: GraphicLeftovers.com is a new site that allows graphic designers and illustrators to sell their miscellaneous graphic design leftovers like those 15 cool logos your client rejected. The one thing that differentiates this site over other stock sites is we ONLY offer graphic design, illustrations, icons/symbols, logos, digital artwork and NO photography. Graphicleftovers uses a credit system similar to other sites where contributing artists decide the value of their artwork from 0-100 credits, and they receive $0.52 for each credit, which is a significant amount compared to other sites who offer $0.22/credit or less.
Mashable’s Take: Coming up with a logo for a company is not easy. It takes time, serious thought, creativity, design, and multiple drafts. Thousands of graphic designers brainstorm with logos, icons, designs, templates and illustrations every day. Many of them are discarded and never get a second look.
With Graphic Leftovers, rejected art can be recycled to be used over and over again. The site lets professional designers and illustrators sell or donate their unused work, creating an online marketplace for the buying and selling of digital art. All the designs and illustrations are user-generated, and it is free for anyone to share their own leftovers.
By far the most positive aspect of Graphic Leftovers is the ability for an artist to determine their own price for their artwork. They can rate a piece by credits — 0 credits, meaning it’s free, and 100 credits averaging to about $52 dollars. Compared to other image/artwork libraries like iStock, VectorStock, and Magnify who (on average) offer only $.20-$0.25/credit, at $0.52 per credit Graphic Leftovers might be a bit more profitable.
If you’re a graphic designer or illustrator, GraphicLeftovers.com is worth considering to get exposure and make some money. If you’re a person who is simply looking for a ready-made logo or design, Graphic Leftovers provides a garage sale of affordable digital art. Besides, even if what you find isn’t perfect, you can always edit the art yourself.
Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
Zannel Raises $10M to Take On Twitter with Mobile Multimedia Service
June 2, 2008 — 10:11 AM PDT — by Alana Taylor — — 2 Comments
Zannel, the 2008 Webby Award Winner in the “Mobile Social Networking” category, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from Alloy Ventures and other venture capital firms, according to PE Hub.
Zannel is the first “Instant Media Messaging” service that allows friends to share what they’re doing, feeling, or seeing straight from their mobile phones. The free service allows you to post videos, pictures, and text updates that your friends can comment on. Zannel’s open API lets you update from anywhere at any time, share and embed videos or pictures, create a widget and post your updates to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.
Zannel, as in “zillions of channels,” has millions of visitors per month and has partnered with over 50 leading media and consumer brands such as Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, and Toyota. The multimedia microblogging service has now raised a total of $16 million in funding and hopes to turn Instant Media Messaging into a massive, global trend.
Without a doubt, one of the main reasons microblogging-style social networks are taking the internet by storm is because of the ability to update on-the-go. Users demand mobile media abilities from services like Aki Aki and Zyb so that they can stay connected at all times.
In many ways, Zannel is like a video Twitter. It lets people show what they are doing through more than just text. But the difference between Zannel and Twitter is that instead of just saying “Here’s what I’m doing,” it lets users say “Here’s what I’m seeing.”
With Zannel, you have the ability to comment on your friends activities and even use your own mobile media to do so, i.e. by posting a video response to a picture. Plus, Zannel treats all phones equally by allowing those phones that cannot support videos to receive links instead. Thus, an easy virtual conversation is possible between mobile phone users around the world.
I like to think of Zannel as the ultimate microblogging mashup.
It has the profile capabilities of Facebook, the microblogging tools of Twitter and Jaiku, the mobile opportunities of Zyb, the commenting features of FriendFeed, the video-sharing side of Pownce, and the uber-wide conversational aspect of Plurk.
Zannel brings online socializing to cell phones without having to sacrifice any of the social tools we love most.
See what some celebrities have to say about Zannel:
RickProof: Because a Bad Joke Won’t Die
June 2, 2008 — 09:41 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — — 5 Comments
“Rick Rolling” probably reached its peek in popularity back on April Fool’s Day, but like any huge viral phenomenon, there are still plenty of people trying to capitalize on it. The latest attempt, RickProof.com, promises to help you “get the upper hand in the vicious and deceptive world of rickrolling.”
Enter a URL and RickProof will tell you the Rick Rolling “threat level” ranging from Minimal to Extreme Risk. I tested it quickly, and it seemed fairly accurate: Mashable was deemed Minimal Risk, while a YouTube video with the original RickRoll was gauged Extreme Risk. The site was developed by the creators of Logobama, the service that lets you create your own Barack Obama campaign logo.
This just in: Rick Astley’s second fifteen minutes are up.
Free Real-Time Stock Quotes Proliferate the Web
June 2, 2008 — 08:54 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — — 3 Comments
While real-time quotes have been available since the early days of the Web through online brokerages like E*Trade and Ameritrade, if you didn’t have an account with one of these services, you were mostly out of luck and had to live with delayed (usually 15-20 minutes) quotes.
That has changed today, as Google, CNBC, and The Wall Street Journal have launched real-time quotes for free on their respective web sites, with no registration required. These new services are made possible through the launch of NASDAQ Last Sale, a new service from the tech-heavy stock exchange baring the same name. Separately, Yahoo has signed a deal with BATS Trading to launch its own real-time quotes as well.
This news probably would’ve been a lot cooler 10 years ago, when it wasn’t so easy and inexpensive to open an online brokerage account. Nonetheless, free real time quotes will let you take advantage of some of the other features the various finance portals offer and spares you logging into your brokerage account.
What would be more exciting is if the NASDAQ offered an API for Last Sale, so that the numerous startups like SocialPicks and UpDown looking to build a community around investment information could utilize the data. Alas, one miracle at a time.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario