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Posts Tagged ‘Ecosystem’

Twitter’s commercial accounts may finally land at Chirp conference next month

Commercial accounts for businesses on Twitter may finally make their debut next month at the company’s inaugural developer conference Chirp.

Anamitra Banerji is leading a session on commercial accounts in the afternoon at the conference. Last summer, co-founder Biz Stone told us that the company was planning to launch a commercial layer over its ecosystem by year-end. They’re several months behind, but it looks like it may finally be happening.

What could show up in them? Since it’s the hub in its vast network, the company may have the best sense of how many times a tweet was delivered, regardless of which partner it was sent to like Seesmic or Brizzly. The analytics the company will offer probably won’t impede too much partners like CoTweet that have developed enterprise-focused Twitter clients. CoTweet chief executive Jesse Engle, who has seen much of Twitter’s plans, said the company doesn’t have any incentive to build workflow management tools, for example. Plus many business focused Twitter clients have broadened out their reach to include Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace status updates.

Dick Costolo is also giving a speech on monetization strategy and we’ve seen hints dropped that the company’s much anticipated advertising network may also be unveiled there. There hasn’t been official confirmation though. You can see the full schedule here.

Tags: Social Media

Companies: Twitter

People: Anamitra Banerji, Dick Costolo

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GDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures

Filed under: Gaming, iPad

One of the best things about going to a convention like GDC is what we in the business call “doing research,” which you might know as “playing games.” We often get to check out the latest and greatest that developers are working on, and so when Tactile Entertainment offered us a chance to check out their upcoming Pocket Creatures title, we gladly took it. The company is founded by four friends from Denmark, one of whom used to be the Development Manager at Crytek (makers of the PC graphics engine and its flagship shooter Crysis), and Pocket Creatures, due out later this year, is their first title.

The game’s backstory tells of an island somewhere with an egg in an ancient temple, and in an intro movie, the egg hatches to reveal the game’s main creature character. But the game isn’t merely a virtual pet simulator. While you can pet the little guy to make him happy or slap him to make him sad, the rest of the game actually embodies a pretty complex ecosystem, of which the creature and his emotions and abilities are only a part.

Early on in the game, the creature was hungry, so we shook a tree growing elsewhere on the touchscreen, and out dropped a banana. The creature wouldn’t eat it at first, so instead we pulled a carrot out of the ground and fed that to him. As he interacted with the carrot, a meter showed up on the bottom of the screen, with the marker all the way to the green, positive side on the left — the creature liked carrots. He didn’t like bananas, however, but with a little petting and reward added to the banana offer, he eventually learned to like it and ate it up.

The peel was carried away by a few ants who appeared on the scene, and this was where things got interesting. Almost anything on the island can be interacted with in some way, and often even more than one way. We dragged an ant to a small nearby pond, where a set of eyes was peeking out, and dropping it in there brought out a platypus. Grabbing the platypus and scratching him across the ground created a small hole in the dirt, and placing the half-eaten carrot there created a sproutling. Sproutlings need water to grow, of course, and while we were told that there were a few ways to get water to the hole, one seemed pretty sadistic — we smacked the little creature around until he began to cry, and a small raincloud appeared above his head to show that he was sad. Dragging the raincloud over to the sproutling watered it, and we were off to the races.

The game is full of relationships like that — feeding the creature certain things can activate certain powers as well, and those can be used on critters and items in the rest of the world for all different kinds of interactions. He can eat a lightning fruit, and gain the power to zap all sorts of things, changing them in some way. Or he can eat a love fruit, and gain the power to convert enemies into friends. Tactile made it clear that if you wanted to turn the island into your own personal garden of peace, that was possible, but they want to make sure and “play in either direction” — you can turn your creature and his surroundings into a mess, if that’s what you’d rather do.

For each of your actions, you’ll get rewarded with various achievements. Those achievements not only track everything you do in the game, but they also give you items that you can use to customize the creature’s appearance — earn the “Devil” achievement and you can get some horns to wear, or earn the “Angel” (whatever that is — they haven’t created all of the different criteria yet) achievement, and you can wear some wings. You can even earn both, and keep both items — however you want to play it is fine.

Tactile says they’re planning to keep the content coming as well — “we like the way Pocket God is doing it,” they told us during the demo. They haven’t settled on a price yet, but they do realize that the game has a lot of potential on the iPad. Even before the game was announced, they said, “the concept was already there for a touch tablet,” even if it wasn’t done by Apple. But like all developers, they’re unsure of making any plans before they actually see the product. “Our destiny is sealed by somebody behind a secret door somewhere.”

If there’s an issue with Pocket Creatures, it’s that the game might be too open in this early stage — there were so many things to do and so many relationships that not too many of them were clearly apparent in our short time with the game. But we did get to see a feature that allowed them to place some tips in the landscape, and they’re continuing to tune and work on development, so hopefully by release, even the most complicated of relationships will be accessible. We’ll keep an eye out for it when it shows up on the App Store in a few months.

TUAWGDC 2010: Hands on with Pocket Creatures originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Firehose May Be Released at Developer Conference F8

Facebook plans to announce the availability of a firehose of user data at its F8 developers conference in April, we believe based on research. Such an offering could be similar to the firehose that Twitter has shared with large partners and select small developers building the famous Twitter ecosystem of 3rd party applications around the web. A Facebook representative did not offer a denial, saying only that the company would not comment on speculation.

The huge social network was once private by default, then made controversial changes in December that pushed hundreds of millions of users toward publishing their information in public and now appears aimed to complete the about-face at its F8 developer conference by offering up public user data in a huge river that outside parties can consume, analyze and build on top of.

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The first F8 conference saw the unveiling of the Facebook Platform, a way for app developers to build games and utilities inside of Facebook. This announcement would represent Facebook as a platform and enable far more to be built outside and on top of the social network. Privacy concerns? For sure. Genuinely world-changing potential? There’s a lot of that too.

It’s not clear exactly what would be included in this firehose, it could be a stream of low-value Fan Page promotional content, for example. The most likely thing content to be included though is user activity data published under public privacy settings. There’s far, far more of that today than there was just a few months ago.

If you’ve participated in a supermarket loyalty program, you’re familiar with the concept of opting-in to sharing data about your activities with outside parties in exchange for benefits. In that common practice, though, consumers gain shopping discounts but get nothing from the analysis of the data they emit.

In the case of the Twitter Firehose, the much sought-after full feed of public user data from across the site, users gain access to all kinds of interesting applications and insights based on analysis of their use of Twitter.

A Facebook firehose would be much bigger. We’re hearing that there will be no launch partners in the announcement, but the imagination runs wild thinking about all the mashup possibilities. We learned last week that user location data is coming to Facebook at F8, now picture all this rich data roaring like a river into the data digesting machines of a wide range of developers all over the world.

A firehose of public Facebook user activity data could function like a living, breathing global census. Cross reference that data with any other data set and we may find an ocean of insights into the human condition, around the world, for slices of people, second by second or over time.

This is something we’ve been calling on Facebook to do for some time. I’ve sat with founder Mark Zuckerberg and discussed the importance and potential of releasing aggregate user data at length.

That, though, was before last December when the privacy policy changed.

Privacy Concerns

Just because something is posted publicly on the web, Microsoft researcher danah boyd said in her opening keynote at SXSW yesterday, doesn’t mean people want it to be broadcast more generally. Making something public is not permission to publicize it.

Is the inclusion of public activity into a firehose programatically available to outside developers a case of broadcast that violates user control and thus privacy?

I don’t think it’s clear either way. In a discussion about aggregate Twitter data analysis late last year, a representative of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told me that Twitter users had no reasonable expectation that their data wouldn’t be redistributed and analyzed in bulk because Twitter was a public forum.

Facebook used to be different. It was private by default, our actions were shared only with friends and family that we gave permission to see our status messages and photos.

Then in December the company made a dramatic shift, prompting users to re-evaluate their privacy settings and making “share with everyone all over the internet” the new default for most options. Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was only changing to reflect the way the world was changing, but we argued that was a disingenous rationalization of Facebook’s culture-changing actions driven in part by its own profit motive. We also argued that by pushing users toward being more public the company was reducing user control over data and spreading distrust about making data available online at all. That put at risk the idea of sharing your data in a way that could be analyzed.

Is there a reasonable expectation that online social networking activity set to “public” will not be redistributed in bulk to outside parties? How can a company like Facebook respect user privacy as much as possible while still achieving the incredible things that can be achieved by making aggregate user data available for analysis?

Let’s begin to discuss it.

See also: The personal blog of Cameron Marlow, Facebook’s in-house sociologist and big data guy.
Related analysis: Twitter 2.0: API Rate Change Could Lead to a World of New Apps & Features
Chewing on the Issues: Twitter Data Dump: InfoChimps Puts 1B Connections Up for Sale

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An Ecosystem Is Born: Animoto Opens Up API

We’re big fans of Animoto, a website that lets you easily create photo and video slideshows matched to music. The site is constantly innovating its nifty product, most recently adding an iPhone app and the ability to incorporate video. For those not familiar with Animoto, the startup basically allows you to take your images, video and your music and mash them together to create cool videos. What makes the videos cool is the company’s technology that renders the pictures so they’re in-step with the music you’ve chosen, adding nice transition effects. This morning, Animoto is opening up its API, allowing partners to now incorporate Animoto’s compelling technologies into independent sites

The first API that being rolled out for the Animoto Partner Platform is Animoto Quickstart.  The API essentially allows any website to tap into Animoto’s video creation flow.  The aim is to make Animoto one click away from any website that has photos, videos or music.  Quickstart allows websites to connect their own content, including photos, video clips and music to Animoto as the first step in creating an Animoto video. So partners can integrate Animoto’s video slideshow creation tool into their sites. And the startup promises that Quickstart takes only hours to a partner to set up on a site.

For example, SmugMug, a photo sharing site that caters to professional photographers, uses Quickstart so users can ‘pass’ their photo albums into Animoto’s video creation flow. So the user now has the option of making a slideshow from their hosted photos and simply needs to pick a song to complete their Animoto video. Once a user clicks to make the slideshow, he or she will be taken to Animoto’s site, where their video and photos will automatically be placed into Animoto’s site.

Another use case is a promotion Animoto is launching with iconic musician John Bon Jovi where fans of Bon Jovi can go to Bonjovi’s site to create an Animoto music video with Bon Jovi’s latest single and footage from his music video.  Pepsi also used the Quickstart API to help users create video slideshows in a contest involving its ShareTheJoy campaign.

With the launch of this API at SXSW, Animoto is partnering with music publication SPIN magazine to allow fans to promote their favorite South by Southwest bands for a chance to win prizes.
From now until March 31, 2010, fans can create and submit Animoto videos featuring songs from top South by Southwest bands for a chance to win $1000 and a spot on Spin.com, and other prizes.
 
Currently Animoto has 1.4 million users and makes money off of its paid subscriptions. On its site its free to create 30 second videos, but you need to pay $3 per video to make an lengthier slideshow. The site sells a year long subscription to users for $30. A large part of Animoto’s subscription business is composed of professional videographers and photographers who pay $250 per year to create their own branded videos that they can download, and burn to a CD (and the slideshow doesn’t bear the “Animoto” logo). Animoto’s CEO Brad Jefferson tells me that 10 percent of users, so 140,000 people, are have paid for at least one product on the site.The company is already cash-flow positive, which isn’t bad for a startup that’s less than three years old.

In terms of monetizing the API, Animoto isn’t charging any of its partners. In fact, it’s actually paying its partners in terms of affiliate fees. So if any partners lead new users to the site who end up buying a subscription, Animoto will give the partner a 40 percent cut of the first year’s consumer subscription fee or $50 of the first years pro subscription fee.

The Quickstart API seems to be the first of a few sets of APIs that will extend Animoto’s technology onto the other sites. It’s a smart move. While many photo sharing sites have the ability to make slideshows, the technology is not nearly as fun and easy to use as Animoto’s. And Animoto is undoubtedly a compelling tool for an brand marketer to use for a campaign. Frankly, the possibilities are endless because Animoto is such an easy tool to use.

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What Do Social Media Marketers Know About Tech? SURVEY RESULTS

First, we’d like to thank all 596 survey respondents and the many Open Thread commenters who gave such interesting and valuable feedback in our recent post “Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?“

Over the past couple days, we’ve been able to put together a decent picture and identify some knowledge gaps and points of confusion for many would-be social media experts. But first, let’s address why some of the RWW staff – and many of our readers, some of whom must hire social media experts – feel it’s important for even the most marketing-oriented of consultants to have a rudimentary understanding of the workings of the Web, including its ecosystem of companies and applications.

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You will always need to know more about the Web.

Konqueror is a popular browser among Linux users. The browser Mozilla hasn’t been supported since 2006, having been replaced by Firefox and, to a lesser extent SeaMonkey, both products of the Mozilla Foundation.

The Web does a lot more and a lot less than the average bear would think.

For the most part, we humans have a hard time admitting that we’re “average bears,” though. Before you earn the moniker of “guru” or “expert” or even “professional/consultant,” you need to be far above average in your knowledge of the Web, not just how to get a few thousand Twitter followers or how to increase sales by X percent through Facebook promotions. Those things can come down to common sense or secondhand advice from true pioneers in social media.

Generally speaking, a social media expert will have been around the block long enough to know a CMS from a CPU, to know a bit about servers and DDoS attacks, to know what kinds of operating systems and browsers and even hardware the tech elite prefer to use (or debate over). And the good ones will remain humble enough to keep learning and will always admit there’s more to know. Some of the wisest social media advisors I’ve know will ask to not be called experts, in fact, for how can any one person truly be an expert on something as vast as the Internet?

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine someone telling you he was a broadcast media expert. That includes television – national, local, cable, satellite, you name it – and all kinds of AM/FM and satellite radio. It might also include pre-show advertisements in movie theaters. That also includes media spend, account management and metrics for all kinds of ads, from branding to direct response. Essentially, the person is claiming to be a one-man ad agency – an impossible claim at best and a fraudulent one at worst.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Start listening to people who disagree with you. Search the farthest corners of the Web for new people and new ideas. Stop hanging out in echo chambers and start telling yourself every day, “I know that I know nothing.” That phrase seems to have done Socrates some good; chances are it could help you, too.

You need to communicate with developers.

Haskell is a rare and complicated programming language. .NET sounds more familiar, but it’s a framework, not a language.

In almost every social media project that doesn’t involve something as simple as setting up a Twitter account, you’ll have to work with and rely on the expertise of developers.

You might not want to learn a programming language yourself – it can take a lot of time, which is a precious commodity. But if you don’t know the basics of what programming languages can and cannot do, as well as what languages your developer colleagues use, you’ll end up frustrated and inefficient. And the aforementioned developer colleagues might feel disrespected as well; being asked to deliver fantastical products or results from someone with no understanding of your work isn’t a fun experience.

Flip Side of the Coin: Imagine a CTO telling you, an interactive marketer, to run a direct mail campaign and get 500,000 new registrations. It could be done, perhaps, but it’s not efficient or a good way to use your skills. Even if he told you he wanted 500,000 new signups, is that a realistic goal? Is it based on current adoption trends? Does this guy have any idea what he’s asking for?

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read up on the basics of programming languages; spend a few hours here and there on Wikipedia and O’Reilly books. Then, ask questions of developers you trust. Don’t be afraid to “sounds dumb” or be inquisitive.

You need to rely on hard data and facts, not gut feelings.

It may seem to be the ad-free fluffy bunny of the social networking world, but Twitter turned a profit through search deals in 2009.

On occasion, we social media folks make intuitive choices that turn out to be dead wrong. While there’s a lot to be said for making bold choices for your users and clients, there’s much more value in making solid choices based on observed trends, analyzed data and tested outcomes. In fact, it’s plain irresponsible to make recommendations to clients based on feelings rather than facts.

Always challenge yourself to make sure your opinions and advice line up with facts, not the other way around. As a wise man once wrote, “You don’t use science to prove that you’re right, you use science to become right.”

Flip Side of the Coin: Rather than looking at marketing budgets or user traffic, your CEO tells you to spend $1 million on an AdWords campaign because “Google and advertising are where’s the money’s at online, right?” It seems like a ridiculous gamble with no logical reason of rhyme.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Test everything you might suggest. Test it over a reasonable period of time, making sure to take peak times into account, and get a reasonable data sample. Learn about A/B and multivariate testing, website analytics, SEO and all the dirty details of traffic and user responses. Most of all, never, ever assume.

You need to know about the finance and investment market to identify competitors, potential partners and pitching opportunities.

Friends and family (and fools) will always be the first to invest in any startup.

Especially if you’re communicating with or about startups, you need to understand a little bit about venture capital, if for no other reason than to understand an app or company’s place in the market. VCs can sometimes be good barometers of a startup’s health or the likelyhood of future success.

Likewise, with regard to our survey question about profitable social media apps and companies, knowing about various stages of development can help you know when to suggest key partnerships. Collaboration between two entities can give a boost to both.

As a strategist, a consultant or any kind of expert, you need to be able to spot a sure bet just as quickly as a sinking ship. And in the startup-filled world of social media, few are better at this all-important task than those with an understanding of tech investment.

Flip Side of the Coin: Your CEO informs you that the company is about to start a marketing campaign on a website that, through your social and industry connections, you know is about to go out of business. In fact, every website of its kind if flailing; you’re surprised he wasn’t aware of the situation.

How to Fill the Knowledge Gap: Read ReadWriteStart, of course! We recommend (and frequently interview and comment on) various brilliant VCs, angels and experienced entrepreneurs on this channel.

We hope you’ve found this information entertaining and informative. The remaining questions on the poll were, by and large, answered correctly. There still seems to be some confusion on the definition of the word “hacker,” but I’m convinced that one will simply take more soapboxing on my part.

What words of advice do you have to share with your less technical colleagues in social media? How can we all improve our game online while making the Internet a better, smarter place? Let us know in the comments.

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Another Nationwide Outage For The Blackberry

The Blackberry just doesn’t seem to have the luster it once did. Today, it had another nationwide outage.

According to Data Outage News:

“A number of users are reporting and an escalated RIM tech support call has confirmed data issues affecting WiFi devices NOT connected to a WiFi network. The outage is sporadic and issues are confirmed on at least on Verizon and T-Mobile on both US east and west coasts. Again, if you are connected to WiFi, you likely won’t notice any problems until you are out of WiFi range. This is not affecting ALL WiFi users, the reports are sporadic, but across all carriers, BIS and BES included.”

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What’s going in with the Blackberry? Once the enterprise stalwart, it is now looking like a struggling behemoth. Its interface almost seems antiquated. An analyst group is now saying the iPhone is expected to beat out the Blackberry in 2011 for the number one spot. And now we have another outage.

Twitter users are all over today’s outage. Some people are saying their service has been out since the morning. There have been some reports that the outage is international in scope.

The last Blackberry outage came in December. Reported outages also came in 2007 and 2008.

Blackberry has been facing a lot of of market pressure. The iPhone, the Android and the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series all present challenges to the Blackberry.

A report by Trefis shows the iPhone beating out the Blackberry by 2011.

The iPhone’s surge into the business community is a major reason for it overtaking the Blackberry.

A Trefi analyst write in Forbes:

We expect Apple’s market share to overtake that of RIM by 2011, and for Apple and RIM to have 11% and 8% market share, respectively, by the end of Trefis forecast period. We believe sales of the iPhone will eventually outpace BlackBerry sales for the following reasons:

1. Apple’s ecosystem of consumer products (Macs, iPad, Apple TV) and services (iTunes, iPhone apps) make the iPhone a more attractive phone for many consumers compared to the BlackBerry

2. End of AT&T exclusivity will give Apple’s iPhone wider distribution in the US (comparable to BlackBerry distribution)

3. iPhone is making inroads with business customers that have traditionally preferred the BlackBerry

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Microsoft talks Windows Phone 7 Series development ahead of GDC: Silverlight, XNA, and no backward compatibility

Microsoft is keen on unveiling the meat of its developer story around Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX10 in less than two weeks, but with GDC coming up next week, they’re figuring that now is a good time to start dropping hints — they’ll want to be capturing the collective imagination of the gaming industry, after all, what with that Xbox Live integration they’ve got going on. To that end, Charlie Kindel of WinPho’s developer experience team has outed a few key items at a reception in San Francisco this evening.

The major points are that Silverlight, XNA, and .NET will figure prominently into the developer story — not a surprise considering that Microsoft is heavily invested in both, gaming is central to the Windows Phone 7 Series story, XNA is a big deal on Zune HD already, and this all lines up with what we’d heard in the past. In fact, Kindel boldly proclaims that “If you are Silverlight or XNA developer today you’re gonna be really happy.” On the flipside, it’s a bit ironic considering that Silverlight spends much of its existence going head-to-head with Flash, and all indications are that we won’t see Flash support on 7 at initial availability (though it’s sounding like a lock post-launch).

One final note at today’s event is that Microsoft has now officially confirmed for the first time that 7 represents a clean break from Windows Mobile as we know it today; existing apps won’t be compatible. Though that’s likely to be a pain for existing owners with specialized apps who are looking to stay in the Microsoft ecosystem, Windows Phone 7 Series itself is a very different beast than the operating system it replaces — it feels different, seeks a different demographic, and symbolically represents a very important clean-slate departure for a company that had lost its way in the mobile space. The bright side for the 6.5 faithful, we suppose, is that Kindel closes by saying that they “will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come” — a message Microsoft has been echoing recently.

We expect to hear much, much more on this at MIX — and we might hear a few more tidbits at GDC as well — but in the meantime, there’s a developer Q&A going down on Twitter around 9:00PM ET (check the #wp7dev tag) where we could get some details. Stay tuned.

Microsoft talks Windows Phone 7 Series development ahead of GDC: Silverlight, XNA, and no backward compatibility originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Silicon Valley Delegation To Go To D.C. To Rally Support For Startup Visa Act

The U.S. needs to be more welcoming of startup founders, no matter where they were born. But the illegal immigration debate is so politically sensitive that startup founders, who create tons of jobs, get lumped in with migrant farm workers and the discussion sort of comes to a crashing halt there. Now is the time for us to rally, though, and avoid this type of situation. There is real momentum behind the Startup Visa Act, and there’s a realistic chance that, for once, our government can do something to actually help the innovation ecosystem in Silicon Valley.

On Thursday 20 or so Silicon Valley entrepreneurs will travel to Washington D.C. to talk with government officials about the Act, introduced last week by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), and drum up more support. Venture capitalist Dave McClure is organizing the trip.

The Startup Visa Act of 2010 would create a two year visa for immigrant entrepreneurs who are able to raise a minimum of $250,000, with $100,000 coming from a qualified U.S. angel or venture investor. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur is able to create five or more jobs (not including their children or spouse), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenues, he or she will become a legal resident.

What can you do to help? Tweet @2gov supporting #StartupVisa exactly at 10 AM Pacific on Wednesday March 3rd (tomorrow). Your messages will be collected and delivered during the group’s visit to the White House on Thursday. They’re hoping to get 5,000 tweets. I’m pretty sure we can do better than that.

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