This is a new post called Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications:

Published on: 2012-05-23 18:25:08

This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar , a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the “Here-Now” social network. The app previously focused on providing relevant information to users about others around them based on connections via Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Twitter. Extremely useful for conferences like Disrupt, when you’re at a party or maybe even starting a new job. So what’s new? Aside from the usual under the hood tweaks, Sonar has crammed in Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging. The status update serves as a hyperlocal broadcast tool for those within close proximity and even pushes out a notification to your friends when they’re close by. Sonar Presence runs in the background to let others know what you’re up to or when friends are nearby, pushing a notification to alert you to folks you are already connected to. Sonar says one way they’re set apart from other apps in the space is that they’re most interested in showing you real connections and people you actually care about. Like others in the space, battery issues remain because current devices aren’t optimized to use GPS properly. You can pause Sonar in the background, BTW. Notifications will only ping you when friends you actually know and are connected to are nearby. Messaging is pretty straight forward and lets you lob chats back and forth with other Sonar users. So if you’re heading into the office and Sonar notifies you that a co-worker is close by, you can send a message asking them to hold the elevator or ask if they need a coffee. Sonar also offers a replacement to the irritating “Where are you guys” texts that are a staple of meeting up at a concert or park. Brilliant, no? Oh, you think you’ve heard this before, have you? How useful is Highlight outside of the San Francisco tech circle? Because it’s pretty worthless in New York. There are folks working in every industry imaginable, not just tech. The connections that I’ve personally made with folks in fashion, entertainment and countless other industries are innumerable thanks to Sonar. And what about getting results anywhere outside of a tech hub? Sonar says they had users in 35 countries just within a week of their launch last year, and have seen usage in more than 65 countries total. If you don’t see the value in a service like Sonar, then you’re totally missing the point and drinking the kool-aid. Oddly enough, I’d heard this pitch before but it came at a time before the App Store was even a thing. Back in 2008, Mike declared that he’d seen the “ Future Of Social Networking .” He described it as such: A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar. Given the intimate connection we have with our mobile devices, who wouldn’t want this type of service at our fingertips? It’s not like we don’t immediately Google someone we’ve just met anyway. Mike never disclosed the name of the company and we never heard from them again. But it doesn’t matter. Sonar does just that and more. Sonar  [App Store]

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Published on: 2012-05-23 17:13:22

David Lawee , Google’s VP of Corporate Development, sat down for an informative chat with MG Siegler at Disrupt NYC this morning, and it wasn’t long before the conversation turned to Google’s track record with mergers and acquisitions. “We’ve done 120 acquisitions since 2003, maybe one in 2002,” Lawee said. “And two-thirds of them have been successful.” Doing the math, that works out to roughly 40 deals that didn’t quite pan out the way the folks in Mountain View had hoped. Of course, some them are more pronounced than others. When asked about Slide — the social gaming company that Google picked up for a cool $228 million only to shutter their services a year later — Lawee noted that Slide was “definitely” in that bottom third. But what does it actually mean for an acquisition to fail (or succeed) for Google? When pressed on the issue, Lawee pointed out that each deal has its own particular metrics that Google weighed before they chalked it up as a success or failure. Widevine, the streaming video DRM solution that Google acquired in late 2010 is measured for instance in how many devices it’s reached (and Lawee noted that number has doubled in a year, firmly ensconcing it that top tier of wins for them). The teams attached to these acquisitions moved on to different roles within Google (and often very fruitful ones), but they ultimately didn’t meet the “four or five” key goals that Google had in mind when they inked their deal. Aardvark was a prominent example — Lawee mentioned that M&A team felt very strongly about the role social Q&A would play in search, but Google’s search organization felt differently. Though the Aardvark team (including co-founder Max Ventilla) found a new home working on Google’s Knowledge Graph , the acquisition is still considered a failure because those original goals were never met. The pair also tackled Google’s recently-completed Motorola Mobility acquisition, and Lawee was quick to shoot down the notion that it was a spur of the moment deal. He was, though, a bit more hesitant to tackle the notion that the Motorola deal was put together because of their bid to nab Nortel’s patents. “It’s a complicated area, and it’s not an area that one can just dabble in.” Lawee said. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, he says Google still doesn’t want to buy Twitter.

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Google’s David Lawee: One-Third Of Google’s Acquisitions Are Failures (And Slide Is “Definitely” One Of Them)

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Published on: 2012-05-23 15:11:21

Well, well, well. As if you couldn’t get your fix of sling-shotting irascible fowl on every other mobile and social platform known to man, Rovio announced this morning that Angry Birds for Facebook (officially known as Angry Birds Friends ) has finally done flown the coop and left the warm nest of its beta. Avian double-speak aside, what does that mean exactly? It means that, having gone through the requisite user testing, tweaking, and multi-billion-dollar IPO-ing, Rovio’s Facebook app — with a handful of new features in tow — is finally ready for public consumption. As to those features, Angry Birds Friends brings a number of trendy social gaming features to Angry Birds, including tournament mode, new weekly levels, new ways to earn power-ups, rewards, and, of course, tons of social integration. As Angry Birds fanatics are well aware, Rovio launched Angry Birds Friends in beta earlier this year . On top of those things I mentioned earlier, the beta version of Angry Birds Friends has also been a testing ground for Rovio to test out new business models, like offering $1 power-ups beyond pay-to-download options or the infamous Mighty Eagle. The game’s port to Facebook likely had the social network excited, considering that Angry Birds has been a presence on Google+ and other Goog products for awhile now — not to mention the fact that massively popular games like Angry Birds could mean good things for Facebook’s revenue. But, as to Angry Birds Friends’ (what an awkward and clunky name to say aloud, by the way) new features, they’re pretty much self-explanatory, but its new tournaments feature allows user to compete with their friends on four different levels — from Monday to Sunday. The pig-popping user with the highest overall score earns a gold trophy, with silver going to second, etc, etc. And, thankfully, unlike crowns, users get to keep their trophies for ever. For. Ever. The “New Weekly Levels” refer, specifically, to those four new levels being offered in tournament mode, although Rovio hinted that it will be launching further levels every week. Third of all, there are those power-ups, which, on top of the daily rewards users can already collect, users can now earn power-ups in tournament mode. Earn three power-up bundles and you’ll receive a shiny gold trophy. As for context, in case it wasn’t already abundantly clear, Angry Birds is popular. More than five people use it. In fact, earlier this month Rovio announced that its coven of Angry Birds apps had amassed 1 billion downloads. To date, Rovio has released the original, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, newer arrival Angry Birds Space, and now, what one might consider its newest arrival, Angry Birds Friends. If you’d asked me two years ago if Angry Birds merchandising would be extremely popular, and that an Angry Birds movie would be in the works, I would have laughed at you. But, considering I’m wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt right now, eating Angry Birds cereal, and that Rovio’s 2011 earnings were about 10-times its estimated revenues from the year prior, with 30 percent coming from merchandising, well clearly I didn’t get the last laugh. Updating in realtime

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Rovio’s FB App, Angry Birds Friends, Flies Out Of Beta With Tournament Mode, New Levels & More

Published on: 2012-05-23 13:00:23

TechCrunch has discovered and confirmed that software giant Oracle has bought social marketing platform  Vitrue  for $300 million. [ Update : A press release has confirmed the buy at an undisclosed price, though we know it to be $300 million.] As if Oracle didn’t offer enough products and services already, the acquisition will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients. Vitrue had taken $33 million in funding over the years and grown to become one of the most popular solutions for big companies trying to win Facebook fans and push out marketing messages to the news feed. Vitrue, according to a source, was on course for revenues of just under $100 million this year, although we have other sources disputing it may have been that high. TC understands there were a lot of potential acquirers interested. Several bidders approached the company but Oracle was the most aggressive. Oracle is no stranger to massive acquisitions. It bought talent management solution Taleo in February for $1.9 billion . Beyond Facebook, Vitrue helps marketers manage their presences on Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram , and other platforms. One of the hallmarks of Vitrue has been it’s ability to rapidly integrate with new partners like Klout to give it talking points for dissuading clients from going to competitors.  Vitrue is “nearly profitable” and was projected to reach profitability in this fiscal year, said our source. TechCrunch understands that Reggie Bradford, the CEO, will “very much remain part of the equation” when Vitrue becomes part of Oracle. His exact title is to come. The purchase  continues the trend of large, old-world Internet marketing companies buying their way into social after being slow to adopt. Adobe bought social advertising provider Efficient Frontier for $400 million in November 2011, just a few months after Efficient Frontier had bought Facebook marketer and application developer Context Optional for a reported $50 million. With time, social has proven too important to ignore. Rather than scrambling to build something and trying to pull brands away from established social marketers, Oracle will instantly gain a massive list of notable clients along with Vitrue. Oracle will also inherit Vitrue’s ongoing battle with competitors like Buddy Media, Wildfire, Involver, ThisMoment, and more for social marketing supremacy.

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Social Media Marketer Vitrue Has Been Bought By Oracle For $300 Million

Published on: 2012-05-23 00:00:02

I thought you would like this post I found for this blog. Read it here – Wall Street Survivor Gamifies Financial Education With Help From Bunchball

If you’re someone who thinks gamification is just a fad, you may want to look away now. To be clear, Bunchball isn’t just jumping on the latest buzzword. The company was founded to deliver gamification tools all the way back in 2005 — founder and Chief Product Officer Rajat Paharia has told me that he probably came to the market too early, and has had to keep the company alive while the industry caught up. Now it’s focused largely on enterprise customers who want to use game mechanics to turn employees into better workers . There are, however, other applications. For example: Bunchball just announced that it’s partnering with financial literacy site Wall Street Survivor . The site already offers a virtual stock market simulator, but apparently that wasn’t game enough, so it has been redesigned using Bunchball’s Nitro platform. On the new version of Wall Street Survivor ( viewable on the beta site ), there are now “missions” where users learn about stock market concepts. They receive badges for completing those missions and making trades. They can also receive rewards if they have some of the best returns among the virtual portfolios in the Wall Street Survivor database. The change is being touted as a way for the site to appeal specifically to millennial, who may be intimidated by investing and the financial world, but will enjoy the gamified approach.

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Wall Street Survivor Gamifies Financial Education With Help From Bunchball

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Published on: 2012-05-22 22:14:29

One of the hottest trends in gaming right now isn’t mobile, social, or massively multiplayer games, but online casinos. This may seem somewhat surprising considering that it was only a year ago that the Justice Department seized the domain names of some of the country’s largest online poker platforms, like PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, UB.com, and Absolute Poker, charging their founders with bank fraud, money laundering, illegal gambling, among other offenses. And five years prior, the Unlawful Gambling Act effectively putting a stop to online gambling in the U.S. and sending the market into a tailspin. However, in December, the Justice Department reversed its stance on many forms of online gambling, paving the way for what is becoming a revitalization of the social gambling market. Naturally, with activity in the space increasing, a number of startups have popped up to take advantage, like the rebranded Titan Gaming , for example. Today brings another entrant into the social gambling space with RocketFrog , which is setting out to bring casino entertainment to Facebook with the launch of a free-to-play online casino that offers players the chance to win real prizes. Traditionally, online casino players participate in the casino gaming experience recreationally, with the rewards being the opportunity to socialize with friends or earn a few virtual badges. So, RocketFrog wants to change this by leveraging the Facebook platform — where all of your friends are already — to create social tournaments, where players can interact and compete against their friends to win real prizes, not just accumulate points on leaderboards or vie for status increases. Each day, the startup will run poker, blackjack, and slot tournaments in small-ish fields of 80 to 300 players, with levels lasting two to five minutes. In a somewhat unusual business model, RocketFrog plans to recruit a different advertiser each day to sponsor a variety of prizes, including movie tickets, music, and good, with prizes obviously being related to whatever company happens to be paying for the ads. If it’s Pizza Hut, prizes will likely include coupons, meal offers, and probably some free pepperoni. The platform intends to accomodate gamers of all abilities, so that if a user is new to a game, for example, they can peruse through the startup’s suite of learning tutorials, game strategy articles, and expert tips. Its games also allow players to choose their stakes and limits in an effort to customize the overall gaming experience, while challenging friends, tracking their bank roll, sharing achievements, earning loyalty rewards, and comparing game stats and rankings. RocketFrog was founded in 2010 by Brett Calapp, Matthew Osborn, and Uri Kozai. Calapp is the former CEO and co-founder of Centaurus Games, a subscription-based gaming network that sold to PartyGaming in 2010. The startup’s leadership, along with the potential market opportunity, has attracted a familiar face in social networking. Tom Anderson, also known as the co-founder and former president of Myspace, has joined RocketFrog’s advisory board alongside reality TV star and celebrity poker player Brody Jenner. When asked what he sees as RocketFrog’s core value proposition, the former Myspace president said that few have “really pushed incentive-based gaming on the Facebook platform.” It’s as simple as the fact that millions of people play online poker for free, he says, so if they’re given an engaging platform and gaming experience, why wouldn’t they want to play for realworld prizes? What’s more, “RocketFrog is also giving advertisers what they always want but can’t seem to get — an immersive and deep experience that actually features their brand — banners alone aren’t enough.” CEO Brett Calapp says that, while legislation and regulations will take time to iron themselves out (legislation may not be put in place until next year, or 2014) and casino platforms are popping up by the minute, RocketFrog’s core strategy is to avoid making players feel inferior about their bankroll in order to drive sales of virtual currency, but instead to reward its players by offering them the ability to compete in tournaments for quality, realworld prizes. Rather than relying on a small, obsessive segment of addicted players, Calapp says that RocketFrog wants to expand its community to include new players, those not typically classified as gamblers, but who don’t want to just play for meaningless virtual rewards. RocketFrog has a steep uphill climb to track down the bigs in the space, like DoubleDown Casinos and Zynga’s Texas Hold ‘em, but with some influential advisors and a mission to bring social, tournament-style gamble-gaming to the masses, the startup may just be onto something. For more, check out RocketFrog at home here.

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RocketFrog Wants To Build The Largest Social Casino On The Web, Myspace Tom Joins As Advisor

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Published on: 2012-05-22 21:44:47

What good is a Foursquare check-in if it doesn’t lead to a coupon or freebie? Why bother tweeting about a brand you like if they don’t acknowledge your undying love and loyalty? With TechCrunch Disrupt finalist SocialStock , those types of actions may now be rewarded…or at least that’s the company’s vision. The service, founded by Subbu Rama, aims to be a stock market for people and places which assigns a point value to users’ social networking actions. Mimicking the framework of a real stock market, those actions become shares and then those shares can turn into real-world rewards from participating business or brands. What’s interesting about the concept behind SocialStock, is that it makes the idea of someone’s social capital – their “worth” in terms of their social networking actions, check-ins, Foursquare mayorships, tweets, etc. – portable. If you lose your Starbucks mayorship after moving away, for example, you could just turn around and buy “shares” of another local coffee shop that doles out rewards. All your hard work in being a loyal coffee-drinking local doesn’t have to go to waste. In addition to earning shares for your activity, users are assigned a share value of their own, too. The system is based on someone’s social capital, which is determined using algorithms that measure things like the number of friends and followers you have, your history of check-ins, as well as the influence and importance of those who you’re connected to. It’s a bit of a simpler computation than Klout’s Kscore , perhaps, which measures your reach and influence in more sophisticated ways, but then again, it’s a different system than Klout, too. Instead of handing out special “perks” only to those who have mastered gathering “influence,” SocialStock has users building up their virtual shares through their actions – a tweet, a Facebook post, or a check-in as related to a business or venue. Further down the road, other actions will be rewarded, too, like a Yelp review or even an Instagram photo. By aggregating the actions, businesses and brands would have better insight into who their most loyal customers really are. In other words, SocialStock is taking a more holistic view of the social networking ecosystem. There aren’t any launch partners teamed up with SocialStock for today’s debut – only the framework itself is going live. But, if the concept proves successful, participating brands could use the system to set the conversion rate on translating these stock market-like “shares” to real-world rewards. For example, 1,000 shares could be exchanged for a free latte or a free meal. And then, to earn the same reward again, the customer would have to remain loyal by tweeting, Facebooking and checking in some more. Based in Sunnyvale, SocialStock is basically in bootstrapping mode with under $100,000 in funding from a few friends. The website is launching today as is the mobile app, which lets you discover people and places nearby that have spikes in social activity. Disrupt Q&A Judges: Michael Abbott (KPCB), Soraya Darabi (Foodspotting), Patrick Gallagher (CrunchFund) & Charlie O’Donnell (Brooklyn Bridge Ventures) (Note that the questions reflect a somewhat confusing pitch) Q: Not sure I understand, is this loyalty thing? Why not pull up my Klout score? Who’s the target? A: If you move from NY to somewhere else, you lose your social capital. With Social Stock, you can transfer the social stock to the new place. Q: But aren’t you worth less because you can bring less people to that shop? A: More about your importance – it’s a bet on that person. Q: Do I get social capital dollars when I sign in? A: Everyone gets capital based on their influence on Twitter/Foursquare, etc. Buying and selling like stock market. Q: How are you picking social networks/how algorithm works? A: If person has a lot of activity on Facebook, their value is higher. On Twitter, it looks at followers. Existing social graph + frequency of visits to shops. Q: What’s the core reason for product? A: Goal is take social capital and make it a platform.

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SocialStock Wants To Turn Social Networking Into Real-World Rewards

Published on: 2012-05-22 15:45:00

I thought you would like this post I found for this blog. Read it here – Facebook Shows Fast Growth in Brand Value

Millward Brown’s BrandZ finds other social platforms are “social climbers” too.

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Facebook Shows Fast Growth in Brand Value

Published on: 2012-05-22 12:00:00

I found this article I found for this blog. Read it here – Sidecar Reimagines The Humble Phone Call

The quick rise of smartphones over the last few years definitely changed the way we use our mobile phones, but one aspect that never changed much – and maybe even took a step backwards – is the humble phone call. Sidecar , which is launching out of beta today, wants to change this and re-invent what a call should look like in the 21st century. As Sidecar co-founder and CEO Rob Williams told me last week, a lot of innovation has happened on data, but voice calls have basically remained unchanged. They are siloed and remain separate from the rest of the smartphone experience. With Sidecar, Williams and his team want to introduce new ways to “think outside of the phone icon.” To do so, the company has built iOS and Android VoIP applications that integrate voice calls with the ability to share location, pictures and short messages. Sidecar integrates with your contacts on your phone and lets you make free VoIP calls over WiFi to other Sidecar users anywhere in the world and to any number in the U.S. and Canada. As Williams told me, it was important to the company to create an application that would work, no matter whether your contacts use it as well. The app’s features include live video streaming and photo sharing. Another nifty little feature is the ability to share contacts as well. The location-sharing feature, too, is worth looking at, as it doesn’t just let you compare your location with that of your contact, but also lets you decide on a place to meet up with just a few clicks. Sidecar uses the phone’s proximity sensor to automatically toggle the phone’s speakerphone mode on and off to enable you to access these extra features. After you hang up, all your shared photos and locations can be found in the app’s contacts list. The Sidecar team, which is largely made up out of a number of former Real Networks veterans, previously worked together on a video chat service called SocialEyes . Sidecar is backed by Ignition Ventures, The Webb Investment Network, Rob Glaser and other prominent individual investors. In the long run, the company hops to work directly with carriers. Phone calls, after all, are still at the core of what the carriers do, Williams told me, and the company’s mission is directly aligned with the carriers’ missions as well.

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Sidecar Reimagines The Humble Phone Call

This is a new post called GroSocial Nabs $1M From HubSpot Execs & More To Become The “Buddy Media For SMBs”:

Published on: 2012-05-22 11:38:38

Back in October, GroSocial raised $450K in seed funding from the Kickstart Seed Fund, Monarch Ventures, Rock & Hammer Ventures and a handful of angel investors. The seed funding acted as early validation and fuel for the Utah-based startup, which is on a mission to help SMBs — and organizations that lack the resources to train or hire dedicated social media teams — boost customer engagement and monetization via social media. Today, the Utah-based social media marketing company has officially received further validation from investors, with the announcement that it has closed an additional $1 million in funding. Each of the investors that participated in the startup’s initial financing have re-upped, along with a handful of newcomers, including HubSpot Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah and HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe. Thus far, GroSocial has focused its efforts primarily on Facebook, but with the new capital, Co-founder and CEO Zach Mangum tells us that the startup will be expanding its scope to include integrations with other social networks in an effort to become the “ Buddy Media for SMBs.” Since October, GroSocial’s partner list has grown to include Yellow Pages, LegalZoom, SurveyMonkey, and HubSpot, among others, adding to the thousands of businesses (across some 20+ countries) already using its products. The startup is also in the process of working with a number of SMB aggregators to white label its platform and sell it as their own social media marketing product. For some context, GroSocial has been primarily focused on its flagship “Customizer” platform, which allows brand managers to launch custom-designed promotional tabs on their Facebook partner networks. Partners can use those tabs to run contests, offer promotions, coupons, services, or to add videos. Managers can choose to add a “like gate,” meaning that customers must “like” the company’s brand page in order to access the promotions that live on the tabs, and have the ability to choose which parts of its tabs can be modified by partners and take advantage of engagement statistics. And, thanks to integrations with services like SurveyMonkey , users can not only use the drag and drop application to design custom content for Facebook pages, but take advantage of social distribution of surveys, collecting feedback from Facebook fans as they visit your brand pages. As for what’s next, according to David Cohen of AllFacebook , GroSocial will be looking to expand its offerings to small to mid-sized marketing agencies, enabling access to white-label services — something traditionally reserved for larger agencies with more sizable social marketing budgets. Agencies will be able to resell GroSocial services at a price point that begins at $200 per month, making it easy to turn a profit and recoup costs. This new functionality will allow GroSocial to become both a content and training provider for the many small-to-midsize marketing agencies out there, allowing the startup to monetize as it scales, while reducing the headache agencies find when trying to juggle the implementation of their clients’ social media marketing initiatives while managing their accounts. Though GroSocial has been targeting SMBs, using Facebook as the foundation for its apps, with its new funding in tow, the startup will be looking to expand to other social networks as well as court larger companies, building on the recent additions of eBay and SkullCandy to its client roster. Mangum said that he expects GroSocial to pass 50,000 paying customers by the end of the year, which, along with the funding, will enable the startup to double its headcount. For more, find GroSocial at home here , or check out a few of the apps that were created by some of its SMB users. Video on Customizer below:

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