Squrl Updates iOS Apps ...

There is no shortage of apps on the market to help users find new, interesting videos to watch and enjoy. But video discovery startup Squrl still thinks there’s work to be done. The company just released a new version of its iPhone and iPad app that provides new ways to share with friends and find content that is more personally relevant to them. The new version of Squrl comes with a big redesign that breaks down the design and puts the content or categories that are most important on the front page of the app. There are now nine options available on the home screen, highlighting Featured videos and What’s Hot, as well as Channels, Recommendations and what users have liked, watched or added to their queues. The typography has gotten bigger and there are simpler icons to click on. And once users have clicked on a certain icon, that icon changes dynamically to highlight content that viewers will see in that section. That gives a little bit of a preview into what’s available to users. Those cosmetic changes are designed to simplify navigation throughout the app, but Squrl has done a lot more under the hood to improve recommendations and provide more relevant videos. The app combines the search and customize options so that users can customize the channels from within that screen. There’s also been a big upgrade to its recommendations engine, which uses collaborative filtering and interest-based matching to serve up videos based on what its users have already watched. The app needs users to watch about four or five videos to get started, but once that’s happened, it creates a stream of videos that should interest viewers. With the update, Squrl has also made its app more social. While it has always been easy for users to share with their friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter, they can now share content and communicate with others within the app, as well. It’s improved the Find Friends feature inside the app, and enabled private messages so that users can share videos and chat privately with each other. Squrl provides access to videos from a whole bunch of on-demand and live aggregators, including YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, TED, Vimeo, Aol, and Blip.tv. Users who want to download the newest version of the app can get it here .

Ahead Of The Presidenti...

Live streaming startup Ustream has come a long way over the last several years, but one thing holding it back is its homepage, which is a hodgepodge of “featured” and recommended live stream feeds, some of which are active, some of which click through to archived, on-demand videos. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on, what’s new, what’s popular or what’s trending. It’s looking to change all that with a redesign that goes live Wednesday, just in time for the first of the presidential debates. I got a preview of the site, as members of the Ustream team came all the way downstairs from their offices on the fourth floor of 410 Townsend to TechCrunch’s first floor suite. The new homepage is designed to highlight live videos across a number of different content categories, allowing users to click a thumbnail and have the video instantly appear. That means instant access to live video without having to click through to another page for viewing. The launch is meant to coincide with the first of the Presidential Debates, during which Ustream will have at least two live feeds from AP and CBS News. But it will also have a ton of other debate-related video feeds available, including commentary from a number of other Ustream partners, like the Debate Drinking Broadcast or RuPaul from Logo TV. It’ll also have featured videos across its major verticals like news, and will even feature eagle, donkey, and elephant cams. The design that users will see on Wednesday is skinned and built all around the debates, which is something that Ustream will be doing more of, as it plans to highlight major live events and breaking news. It might not have a reskinned homepage every day, but it could program the site two or three times a week, depending on what’s happening, according to SVP of marketing David Thompson. Partners are a big part of this release, as Ustream herds together a number of live video producers. In addition to RuPaul, Ustream’s got content from PBS NewsHour, Occupy Denver, Occupy the Debates, Breitbart News with Larry O’Connor, League of Young Voters, PopSugar, comedian Scott Rogowsky, Crack.com, Show Interrupted, and comedians Al Del Bene and Rich Aronovitch. And powering the whole new Ustream homepage is a 12-person editorial team that will curate videos based upon topics and what’s popular or trending on the site, bringing more visibility to content that previously might have been difficult to find. One surprising thing that will be missing at launch is ads. Throughout the demo, I was amazed(!) to find that not a single ad showed during the whole visit. No crappy banners sitting alongside the video thumbnails. No crappy pre-rolls when videos were launched. No mid-rolls jumping into the middle of my streams, slowing my roll. Really dudes? How’re you gonna make the monies? Thompson says the redesign is rolling out ad-free as part of Ustream’s attempt to bring the best viewing experience possible, which is awesome for now. The lack of ads on the new homepage follows the rollout of Ustream’s Broadcast for Friends (BFF) app , which hooks into Facebook and also streams video ad-free. Ads will eventually return, but Thompson said Ustream is devoted to balancing the optimum viewing experience for users while also monetizing via ads. What does that mean? Fewer ads? I think it sounds like fewer ads. Ustream has famously raised a buttload of money, but seemed to be struggling for a while, trying to find itself with founder John Ham at the helm. He’s since stepped down and the company, now being run by CEO Brad Hunstable, seems to be more focused on product and introducing new applications for users, which is cool and aligns more with my interests, rather than just pitching me every time a celebrity does a 30-second live stream.

Now With 1.5M Lessons, ...

Over the last year or so, we’ve seen an auspicious rise in the number of startups looking to tackle those seemingly intractable problems in both K-12 and higher education. One of these startups, the New York City-based ShowMe , found some early financial validation from an impressive set of investors, raising $800K last August from the likes of Lerer Ventures, SV Angel, betaworks, Learn Capital, and angel investor Naval Ravikant. Those familiar with Khan Academy — the startup that offers an impressive web library of videos on everything from arithmetic and physics to finance and history to let students learn at their own pace — will likely find it easy to understand ShowMe’s appeal. The startup is taking a bottom-up approach to the Khan Academy model. While Sal Khan (the founder and head teacher of Khan Academy) has proven to be an incredibly skilled instructor, procuring the equipment, software, and resources that have allowed Khan Academy to thrive is difficult to say the least. Creating that depth of quality content and building a sizable user base requires a lot of time and significant financial backing. Thus, ShowMe wants to bring the classroom-flipping power of Khan Academy’s platform to the millions of teachers out there looking to share their knowledge and experience with students of every age. “We want to create thousands of Sal Khans,” ShowMe CEO San Kim tells us, taking Khan’s approach and turning into a community and P2P-based model. To do so, the startup built an iPad app (with a corresponding web platform) that transforms the device into an interactive video whiteboard, allowing teachers of all stripes to record lessons while speaking into the iPad’s microphone and drawing on the accompanying touchscreen whiteboard. Once those instructors have created a video, they can then be shared on the app or on the Web, where other users can peruse through videos, voting them up, and sharing their own favorites. Since the app debuted on the App Store last summer, it has racked up over 400K downloads (which is impressive for an educational app), and Kim tells us that ShowMe teachers have now created over 1.5 million lessons. ShowMe’s technology is also now powering Princeton Review’s SAT prep app . Behind this early traction, the startup is today officially launching version 2.0 of its iPad app and Web platform, which turns ShowMe into a central hub where all lessons can be posted and searched for, bringing lessons posted from a teacher’s iPad directly into the web platform for easy searching and sharing. ShowMe initially started off as a standalone iPad app, which Kim says was a big hit among K-12 teachers. What surprised the team was how eagerly this growing community of teachers began sharing the lessons they created on Twitter, blogs, and beyond. And, again, while grade school teachers were the primary target for ShowMe’s whiteboard, with its new online content hub, the startup wants to make it clear that the technology is meant to be used by anyone who has knowledge or lessons to share — whether they be writers, musicians, artists, chefs, etc. ShowMe’s lessons are now aggregated on the Web in one place, as users can browse through featured videos, or jump to “All Topics,” to peruse by category. As to who is in charge of these 1.5 million lessons, Kim says that the community itself is the gatekeeper of the content, which crowdsources and filters the best content and groups it into categories. As to what’s up next? The CEO says that the next step for the company involves enhancing these filtering mechanisms so that it can curate and organize its content in a way that’s personalized to individual learners. Everyone has a different learning style, and with thousands of teachers producing content on ShowMe, the key going forward will be finding the best way to match those various styles with right teachers. The beauty of ShowMe is that it takes the whiteboard out of the classroom and puts it in students laps, so that they can continue to learn and practice lessons when they’re not in school, in a much more engaging and multidimensional world, thanks to the iPad. Opening up its library of lessons to the general public, and enabling easy search and discovery, is an important step for ShowMe in its progress toward bringing high quality education to the masses. For more, check out the startup at home here, or watch the video below:

Parenting Fills Faceboo...

Articles about natural disasters and parenting advice from CNN, Yahoo! News, the New York Times, and Huffington Post topped Facebook’s new list of the most shared articles of 2011 . Facebook measured which articles were Liked, Shared, or copy and pasted into the social network and found that subjects such as “Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps” and “What teachers really want to tell parents” were the most popular, along with news about the Japan tsunami and rumored changes to zodiac sign arrangements. The list provides insight into Facebook’s user base, which skews more towards middle-aged parents than most expect. Unfortunately, it also illuminates our attraction to tragedy and aversion to real issues — only one article in the top 20 dealt with the financial crisis. With 800 million users, studying Facebook has become the best way to take the pulse of the world. It does exclude much of the world’s truly impoverished, but these people are difficult to poll at scale with any method. Outside of a bias towards those of higher socioeconomic class, and China’s absence, Facebook represents a relatively accurate cross section of the world’s demographics, making this study of most shared articles quite telling about both what the world is interested in, and what journalistic forms are most viral. Parenting was likely such a popular topic because the articles are relevant to both youngsters and middle-aged parents, two of Facebook’s biggest demographics. Surprisingly absent were articles aimed squarely at college students, indicating that Facebook has significantly diversified its user base from where it first started. Just one on how to attain a dream job cracked the list. Many of the top articles featured videos, including  Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps  from CNN, and  Father Daughter Dance Medley  and  At funeral, dog mourns the death of Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan  from Yahoo. These types of posts are lucrative for news outlets, as the can charge advertisers high sums to run pre-rolls before the videos. 3 of the top 40 posts related to Steve Jobs, yet only one other entry discussed the passing of a celebrity, so maybe we’re not completely obsessed with death. And of course, posts focusing on animals faired well, as they represent a relaxing distraction that many browse the web in search for. This year’s list of most shared articles did not count automatic shares through Open Graph apps and websites. If included next year, we may get a more accurate look at what were in fact the most read articles, not just the most frequently shared. In a separate Developers Blog post , Facebook described the success of Open Graph news reader apps. Yahoo News’s site has increased Facebook referral traffic by 500% thanks to an Open Graph integration, and the The Independent now has 1 million monthly active users on its Open Graph Site. Some dedicated reader apps that live on Facebook are also finding success, as the Guardian now has nearly 4 million MAU with half under age 24, and the Washington Post has 3.5 million MAU, 83% of which are under age 35. Facebook may want to tout its ability to help news outlets reach younger readers. However, it may have actually revealed that younger users are more negligent, or at least less concerned, with their privacy controls. Older users may be shying away from Open Graph apps and sites that by default share each article they read.

Glam Media Launches Ric...

Glam Media , one of the largest publishing and advertising networks on the Web, is launching a new rich media ad creation platform for advertisers, called GlamSplash. According to Glam, the new canvas allows brand advertisers to deliver the effectiveness of the ’30-second’ TV spot across Glam’s properties. For background, Glam’s various publishing verticals have a reach of 200 million unique monthly visitors globally, and is particularly popular amongst female audiences. Glam Media has more than 2,500 publishers organized across multiple vertical categories online including Glam.com for Women, Glam Entertainment for Adults, Brash.com for Men and Bliss.com for health and wellness. Glam also announced the acquisition of Ning in September. Glam operates a web-based ad serving platform, Glam Adapt, as well as a recently launched mobile ad platform , GlamMobile. Previously, the company served rich media ads through these ad-serving platforms, but with GlamSplash, agencies can now both build and deliver rich media ads throughout Glam properties. GlamSplash’s ad campaigns run across many platforms, including desktop, mobile, and tablets. The canvas allows advertisers to include featured videos, moving images, and quality editorial created by brands. Advertisers can include GlamVideo, an in-stream, in-display and in-mobile video ad platform; optimize with HTML5; and integrate social sharing features within the ad unit. A number of brands are already using GlamSplash as the holiday shopping season approaches, including Timberland and BestBuy. It’s no secret that Glam is gearing up for an IPO in 2012 (the company has also hit $100 million in annual revenue). However, until the Ning acquisition closes, which is expected to close in the next few weeks, the IPO process is at a standstill.

YouTube Rolls Out Its N...

YouTube started experimenting with a new homepage last month, amping up its recommendation features so it would suggest new content you’re interested in. Today it has rolled out that experiemental homepage to all users. YouTube product manager Brian Glick tells us that the decision was made primarily because of positive user feedback, “Over 100,000 people filled out a survey, and most thought that the homepage is better now. Millions of people opted in, now we’re just putting it out to all the rest.” The whole thrust here seems to be increasing the recommendation aspect of the site for users who are logged in Their solution is bringing more of the videos you interact with to the fore. Says Glick, “What we’re trying to turn the homepage into a destination to go to when you don’t know what you want to watch.  Now you personalized list of content that’s waiting for you.” YouTube includes a list of the new features on the previous experiment page, I’ve broken them down below. Combined list Don’t miss a video Delete anything and “grey out” Help me re-find stuff I just watched Easy inbox YouTube has removed some of the less popular impersonal features like “Videos Being Watched Now” and moved the “Spotlight” and “Featured Videos” sections over to the right side. This is part of an effort to make the left side of the homepage more personal to the users. Glick says that the new features are meant to hit three different dimensions of personalization: “Things you’ve told YouTube you like,”"Videos your friends have shared,” and “Videos YouTube thinks you like.” The new homepage focuses on serving up videos your friends have liked, channels you’re subscribed to and other things YouTube recommends based on your taste. The operative term here is YOU. “It’s part of our broader focus on how we can bridge the gap of going from 15 minutes a day to five hours a day” Glick explains, referring to how people usually spend 5 hours on television versus 15 minutes on YouTube. “We want to make this personalized experience follow you anywhere where there is a screen.”