February 22nd, 2012
With one fell swoop, Twitter has confronted privacy concerns, returned missed features to its mobile audience, and opened its information network up to even more tablet-toting folks.
Twitter for iPhone and Android received updates Tuesday. The fixes address previously identified shortcomings, and optimize Twitter to run on Android tablets.
Twitter released a version of its application for the Kindle Fire on the Amazon Appstore today. The company also promised that the Barnes & Noble Nook Store will get a Twitter app on Thursday.
Both iPhone and Android applications now alert the mobile Twitterer before accessing her address book to find friends. Should the Twitter user navigate to the “Find Friends” feature in the Discover portion of the app, she will find a message that reads, “We will securely upload your contacts to help you find friends and suggest users to follow on Twitter.” The user must then click “OK” before proceeding.
The addition of the alert comes just a week after VentureBeat uncovered evidence showing that a slew of iPhone applications, Twitter included, access the user’s mobile address book without first requesting permission.
Twitter’s mobile apps also now include a much-loved shortcut feature of yore that allows a person to swipe a tweet to interact with it. The swiping action brings up a shortcut screen that includes reply, retweet, favorite, share, and user profile-viewing options. The feature should (again) appeal to the power Twitterer.
iPhone application users may appreciate the returned abilities to copy and paste the text of tweets and mark all direct messages as read.
Filed under: mobile, social, VentureBeat 
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February 20th, 2012
LG unveiled Sunday its new 5-inch device that blurs the line between phone and tablet. It’s called the Optimus Vue.
Before Samsung released its Galaxy Note, the term “phablet” wasn’t in our vernacular. But since the Note measured in at 5.78 inches tall by 3.27 inches wide with a 5.3 inch screen, it pushed the limits of how big a smartphone could be. Especially since the Note is just two inches smaller than the seven inch tablets on the market, including the Kindle Fire and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.
Now, LG is diving into the phone-tablet form factor with its Optimus Vue. The Vue is slightly smaller than the Note with a five-inch screen. The Optimus Vue also takes a hit in screen resolution, delivering 1024-by-768 pixels compared to the Note’s 1280-by-800. Both phones are come with a 1.5 Ghz dual-core processor and eight megapixel rear camera. The Optimus Vue also has 32GB internal memory and runs Android Gingerbread 2.3. And what phone-tablet hybrid would be complete without a stylus? The Optimus Vue comes with a Rubberdium pen to use when your finger just won’t do.
LG describes the phone as “the slimmest among all LTE phones currently on the market and is perfectly suited for a hand and fits comfortably in a jacket pocket.” Note that it doesn’t mention a jean pocket, because we’re sure even LG realizes this phone won’t fit into most pants pockets.
The Optimus Vue launches in March 2012 in Korea. No word yet on whether it will make its way to Europe or the United States. Maybe that’s a good thing though, I’m not sure America is ready for two Frankenstein-like phablets just yet.
LG hasn’t yet released pricing details for the device.
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February 18th, 2012
Researchers are working on an on/off switch for the next generation of credit cards. No, not to stop you from spending money you shouldn’t, but to help protect you from theft and fraud.
Credit cards are moving away from magnetic strips to more modern, no-contact technology. Now, with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips or near-field communication (NFC) cards, you can just wave your credit card in front of a reader to quickly pay for a cup of joe.
However, this ease could open up the doors for a new type of criminal. In theory, shady characters with portable scanners can read the information off your RFID card by getting close enough to so that your card is in their reader’s electromagnetic field. This type of theft hasn’t taken off yet, due to clunky technology and minimal monetary gain (most RFID and NFC cards have low spending caps), but an on/off trick could be a smart preventative step.
Researchers at the Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering are working on a simple new technology that would require customers to place their finger on the card to turn it “on” when they pay. When you place your finger on a specific spot on the card, say a logo or icon, it would complete a circuit and enable readers to charge the card. If the circuit isn’t complete, the card’s NFC or RFID technology would be disabled and not work.
“Our new design integrates an antenna and other electrical circuitry that can be interrupted by a simple switch, like turning off the lights in the home or office,” explains professor Marlin Mickle in a statement. “The RFID or NFC credit card is disabled if left in a pocket or lying on a surface and unreadable by thieves using portable scanners.”
The extra step would take very little time for the customer, and researchers think the technology would be fairly easy and inexpensive for credit card companies to adopt. They recently filed a patent application for the on/off card technology.
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February 17th, 2012
Twitter has announced a new partnership with American Express to allow small businesses to advertise on the popular social network. The program is due to launch in late March for American Express cardholders and merchants.
Until now, advertisers have had to work with Twitter’s team. This has limited the number of advertisers Twitter could successfully scale to.
If done right, this partnership represents a significant threat to recommendations site Yelp, which is on its road to IPO. As I wrote earlier, Yelp charges some merchants a $ 600 CPM for advertising that is often lacking in any relevance to the business.
Yelp also requires a commitment of at least three months and charges early termination fees for businesses that don’t meet their commitment. These rates and conditions are so bad that I can’t recommend Yelp for any business.
On the other hand, I recommend that every small business create a Twitter account to connect with their existing customers.
While Yelp’s model most closely resembles a Yellow Pages model, early indications are that Twitter’s product will be more performance driven and accountable.
A number of startups have been pushing small businesses to use their services for new customer acquisition. But tools from companies like Groupon, LivingSocial, and Yelp are not cost effective.
Many small businesses will do just fine using Twitter’s free accounts to build loyalty. But Twitter’s self-service platform offers the promise of a cost-effective new customer acquisition vehicle. Businesses will be able to pay for each new follower and build an ongoing relationship with those consumers.
I would expect that, over time, consumers will be able to load electronic offers onto their American Express card directly from a tweet. This would open the door to redemption-based advertising, where advertisers are only billed when an ad delivers a new customer.
I would also like to see Twitter develop a localized version of its user recommendations; when someone is first signing up for a Twitter account, they can enter a location and get a list of recommended businesses to follow.
There are two important keys to success with small businesses:
- Simplicity of the user interface. Complex bidding and keyword management won’t work. An interface with a lot of form fields won’t work.
- Marketing. Small businesses need to be aware of the product offering. This is an area where American Express can help, with its large merchant base. American Express is also funding $ 100 in marketing credit for the first 10,000 eligible cardholders and merchants.
Without both of these in place, a self-serve product won’t work. A third important factor is scale — and only Twitter, Facebook, and Google have the scale that is necessary for success with self-serve in the highly fragmented local market.
The companies that have reached a reasonable degree of success with small businesses have mastered both. Groupon, LivingSocial, and Yelp all work with a very simple user interface — the telephone. You don’t have to use a computer to manage their ads. They also have an effective marketing program — someone calls you.
But because dialing for dollars is expensive and takes a large team, their marketing programs are also expensive with large commitments.
Twitter and American Express have the potential to deliver better targeted prospects for far less money.
Rocky Agrawal is an analyst focused on the intersection of local, social, and mobile. He is a principal analyst at reDesign mobile. Previously, he launched local and mobile products for Microsoft and AOL. He blogs at http://blog.agrawals.org and tweets at @rakeshlobster.
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February 15th, 2012
VentureBeat has a bold new look today.
We’ve had the same site design for several years now. It’s worked well, but it was past time for us to update it with some of the best features that modern HTML and AJAX design can offer. Plus, as the quantity of posts we publish has grown, it’s become harder for readers to find the stories that they care about and that are most important; we needed a better way to point readers to our best stories. We wanted to make it easier to find content related to whatever you’re currently reading. Finally, we wanted a look that reflected the sophistication and excellence of the content we produce.
Our new design accomplishes all that.
Here are some of the highlights of the new look:
A more dynamic homepage. We’ve got a bigger, bolder section at the top of our home page to show off the top, featured stories of the day. This section now has a greater variety of layouts, and we’ll update it several times each day to reflect the most important, breaking stories of the moment. Check out the before and after screenshots below (the old site is on the left, the new site is on the right):
A better way to show off our best stories. Just below the featured stories section, we’ve got a section for “editor’s picks.” These are the stories that we’re proudest of, selected from the past several days of VentureBeat. This is where we step outside the breaking news cycle and bring you longer features, interviews, reviews, and other pieces that are worth reading. This is a rolling selection of stories that will always show the most recent 10 editors’ picks.
More consistent VentureBeat branding throughout the site. You may notice that the old “VentureBeat” logo has been replaced with a black and red “VB” at the top of this page. That’s going to appear on every page in every section. In the previous version of the site, each section (SocialBeat, GreenBeat, MobileBeat) had its own look, but now we’re going for a more consistent look. We’ve also eliminated the “Beat” suffix from these section names, with one exception: GamesBeat is still GamesBeat (more on that in a minute).
A better way to discover related stories. When you’re reading a story on VentureBeat, like this one, there’s a “carousel” of related stories at the top of the page. This shows three stories at a time, selected from the same section as the current story. You can scroll left and right to see even more stories. Here’s a comparison of the old story page (left) and the new one (right):
A window into the most popular stories on our site. In the right-hand sidebar, there’s a box that shows the most popular stories from the past several days. A second tab in this box shows the stories that readers have been sharing the most.
Easier navigation and sharing. When you scroll down to read a story, a navigation bar pops up at the top of the page to provide a few tools for sharing the story on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the like. If you like what you’re reading, we hope you’ll use these buttons to share our stories with your friends. This bar also has arrow buttons to let you read the previous story or the next story in the same section.
Finally, there’s one section that has retained the “Beat” designation, and that’s GamesBeat. In the next couple of months, we’ll be building a better, stronger GamesBeat, turning it into a destination site in its own right as we incorporate the community members and content from Bitmob, our most recent acquisition. Stay tuned for more details on that. In the meantime, GamesBeat will remain a section within VentureBeat. It will have many games-related stories that don’t appear on the VentureBeat homepage, so if you’re interested in games, bookmark the GamesBeat homepage and subscribe to the GamesBeat RSS feed.
VentureBeat’s new design is the brainchild of Henry Brown, with technical implementation by Oomph, led by our chief technical officer Christopher Peri.
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February 13th, 2012
Shape, the company behind online instant messenger service IM+, announced Monday it has raised $ 10 million from Russian brokerage firm Finam.
IM+ is an online instant messenger and mobile app that connects with many instant messaging services including AOL instant messenger, Jabber, Skype, Google Chat, and Facebook Chat. You can send instant messenges with multiple accounts in one interface and save your chat history. The service has more than 17 million monthly users.
Shape also recently released a new instant messaging app called Beep (pictured above) to compliment IM+. The app sends push notifications to your phone when you receive an instant message. The company hopes the app will take the place of traditional text messages.
“With the new release of Beep in-app push messenger [it will] allow people to save on SMS and MMS while simultaneously chatting on Facebook, Skype, Google Talk and tweet,” said IM+ founder Igor Berezovsky in a statement.
The funding kicks off a partnership between Finam and Shape, which are teaming up to create an instant messenger service for the Russian market.
Shape was founded in 2002 and has grown to include more than 60 employees. The company’s headquarters reside in Germany, and it maintains offices in the U.S. and Asia.
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February 12th, 2012
There is an interesting article from Andy Baio over at Wired that looks at how easy it has become to give total strangers a window into our lives. With the advent of OAuth, people can easily sign up for new services and apps by relying on their Facebook and Google profiles. Instead of filling out a lot of forms and trying to remember a new password, you can just rely on these companies to handle everything and finish the process in one or two clicks.
But this frictionless (Mark Zuckerberg’s new favorite word) world has serious risks. Baio uses the example of Unroll.me, a service that helps him avoid unwanted mailing lists and spam. He was about to sign up, when he realized that, when he stopped to think about it, he actually knew nothing about the people behind this startup.
“For all I knew, it could be run by unscrupulous spammers or an Anonymous troll looking for lulz. And I was about to give them unfettered access to eight years of my e-mail history and, with password resets, the ability to access any of my online accounts?”
To use a real world example, it would be like walking past a billboard that offers to keep unwanted flyers and catalogs out of your mailbox. Without bothering to learn anything more, you drop a copy of your keys into a black box. Sounds risky when you put it that way.
For anyone who’s suddenly thinking, “oh man, I’ve given access to a ton of random apps”, there is a relatively simple solution. The best one we’ve come across so far is mypermissions.org, which gathers together the services like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Foursquare that power a lot of third party apps. We were a bit shocked to find close to one hundred apps had permission to access our Facebook data, nearly a dozen of which we didn’t recognize or remember signing up for.
It’s fun to try out new web apps, but these digital one night stands doesn’t mean you should be giving away your data to relative strangers from that point on.
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February 10th, 2012
Rebtel, the second-largest voice-over IP calling company behind Skype, announced major milestones today that prove consumers just can’t get enough of cheap phone calls.
The company says that it has surpassed 15 million connected users (it’s unclear how many of those are active) since its launch in 2006. Rebtel users have made over 500 million calls on the service and have chalked up over two billion minutes of international calls.
Rebtel offers mobile and desktop PC apps that let its users call each other for free, or make inexpensive calls to international numbers. The company’s service is also accessible through any landline or mobile phone without an app. Rebtel just recently released version 2.0 of its iPhone app, which added a first-ever feature to let you hop between voice and data networks during a call.
Not only is Rebtel growing quickly, the company boasts that its average revenue per user (ARPU) is triple Skype’s. Skype now sees a monthly ARPU of $ 8 per month, while Rebtel’s ARPU is $ 24. The company increased its revenue by more than 55 percent last year to reach $ 60 million, and it expects to earn $ 95 million in 2012.
The Swedish company has spent considerable funds and effort setting up the infrastructure for its service. CEO Andreas Bernstrom told us previously that it brought in $ 20 million worth of financing from Benchmark Capital and Index Ventures in 2006 to build a system that could connect with operators around the world and terminate voice calls in any country. During 2011, the company put together the data side of its infrastructure, including codecs and stacks to carry voice over data connections.
VoIP call photo via Shutterstock
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February 8th, 2012
Facebook product chief Carl Sjogreen gave developers and others a few clues about what to expect from Facebook over the next year.
At the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco today, the Facebook executive laid out the three most important parts of Facebook’s third-party development platform: Open Graph, mobile, and games.
“The point of Open Graph is a tool to let apps deeply integrate with Facebook and fill out your Timeline and enrich the News Feed,” he began. “It’s based on the belief that Facebook is more interesting… if it includes more than just your status updates.”
Most importantly, he stressed, “What you’ve seen of Open Graph so far is just a small taste of the overall vision.”
Structured data takes the driver’s seat
As we saw with the launch of Facebook Actions, many applications are adding more color to users’ Timelines through graphically appealing summaries of activity from within the app. Pictures you share, miles you run, foods you taste, and more actions all appear in well-organized sections on Timelines all over the site.
That’s the kind of structure that Sjogreen said is vital to making Platform apps easier and more engaging, as well as getting more distribution.
In the past, he said, “You’ve had to have a PhD in Facebook to get value out of building apps for Facebook.”
Now, with more structure added via the Actions feature, “By simply taking the actions you do in that app and adding them to Facebook… that lights up the Facebook experience,” Sjogreen said.
“I definitely think there will be ways to optimize Open Graph in terms of the kinds of stories you generate and how they aggregate,” he continued. “We’ve created a dynamic where more structured information is more interesting.”
Developers, he said, can expect to do well on Facebook with third-party applications by “aking the activity in the app you’re building and letting users add that to their Timeline in a structured way… just make that communication channel work.”
The Facebooker continued to say that giving Facebook “a more structured representation of the core activity within the application… we can turn Ticker and Timeline on (and whatever we come up with next) without a lot of extra effort.”
Again, Sjogreen stressed, what you’ve seen from Actions so far is just the beginning.
“We’re still figuring out all the right ways to structure data. But we want Open Graph to be a simple process for developers,” he concluded.
Games & mobile as growing parts of the Facebook ecosystem
Sjogreen also talked at length about the importance of Facebook-connected games to the overall platform, saying that for many millions of Facebook users, the games are what keep them on the site and keep them coming back.
“It’s critically important to us that games are successful,” he said. “There are some people who would find their Timeline incomplete without a lot of games activity.
“To the extent that we can help our games grow, because of that audience, it’s good for [game developers] and good for us.”
In fact, games are so important to the Facebook audience, Sjogreen said, “We have a whole Platform team focused on just making sure games are going well. That includes building games-specific features… to create discovery for games.”
He hinted that new Timeline Actions or stories might be coming to better highlight achievements, high scores, and other gaming milestones.
Even so, games isn’t edging out other types of Facebook apps in terms of attention or investment of effort. “It’s absolutely not true that we’re investing in one at the expense of the other,” Sjogreen said.
Finally, Sjogreen turned his attention to Facebook’s mobile ecosystem, which he sees as an largely untapped resource.
“We have 854 million people using Facebook every month, and half of them are using a mobile device,” he said. “It’s one of the least understood parts of our platform, given that it’s so new, and it’s also the most underused opportunity.”
Previously, Sjogreen said, Facebook’s mobile tools were not at all fleshed out. “Platform on a mobile device just didn’t work,” he admitted.
As Facebook creates more and better ways for third-party devs to reach that huge audience of Facebook mobile users, however, Sjogreen and the rest of the Facebook team hope app developers will find equally huge success with the mobile side of Facebook integration.
“We want as many mobile apps as possible to find that Facebook is an integral part of their success.”
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February 7th, 2012
While personal financial services like Mint.com offer a pretty dashboard with detailed information about how your money is spent, they does little to prevent the powerful emotional responses associated with impulse purchases. For instance, the knowledge that you’ve already spent $ 50 at Starbucks this week won’t prevent you from buying yet another cup of coffee under the right circumstances — (especially if you’re a drowsy journalists working on deadline).
New startup Urge plans to address the emotional side of spending with its iPhone app, which officially launched this week. The concept behind Urge is that people will pull out their phone every time they have the urge to buy something frivolous and record what they would have spent. While the app itself is free, the company offers users an option to connect their bank account to Urge for a one-time fee of $ 1.99, which will allow them to transfer money from their checking account to a savings account.
“The app may not make people stop drinking coffee, but it might make them change their behavior,” said Urge founder Salil Shibad in an interview with VentureBeat. “So, maybe people decide to buy a bag of coffee from the grocery store that will last them all week rather than spending $ 5 on a single cup.”
Upon opening the app, you’re greeted with a suggested list of goals to work toward (iPad $ 500, Kindle Fire $ 200, vacation $ 1,000) as well as the option to customize your own goal. One thing to note is that you can only work towards saving money on one goal at a time, which is a good strategy for keeping people focused.
When you encounter the urge to buy something you don’t need, you simply pull up the app on your phone and hit the urge button. When you “Urge”, a screen pops up allowing you to select whatever it is you’ve decided not to purchase (food, coffee, snacks, entertainment, etc.) and enter in the amount the item would have cost. According to Shibad, this is done to both connect users with their emotional behavior for purchases and track what they’re saving the most on.
I’ve tested a number of “expense tracking” mobile apps that give you a comprehensive overview of your spending habits. I usually end up ignoring them after a few days for the same reason I spend too much money on overpriced coffee every week. I know I should stay more aware of my spending habits, but I’m not really compelled to. Urge, however, doesn’t want to track behavior, it wants to become a behavior.
Shibad said the startup is in talks with a handful of large banking organizations to offer an expanded version of the app to bank account holders, which could potentially become a source of revenue. The startup also has plans to add new feature like a donation function that would allow people to use those emotional spending habits by giving money to different charities.
The Nashville-based startup has an initial $ 15,000 in seed funding from Jumpstart Foundry as well as investment from Shibad, Townes Duncan, and Vic Gatto.
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