Talk Radio Startup Stit...

As the Republican primaries wrap up and we head into the Obama vs. Romney stage of the presidential campaign, Stitcher has updated its talk radio app with an Election Center where anyone can track the latest political news. It seems pretty natural for any news-focused app to add an election center, but CEO Noah Shanok says it’s a particularly good fit for Stitcher’s audience, of which 70 percent has engaged with news and political content. In the Election Center, you follow updates from different news sources like Slate, CBS News, and Marketplace. You can also follow official channels from each of the presidential candidates. Shanok says the campaigns see Stitcher as a big opportunity: “They understand that this is the year of mobile.” Will that translate into exclusive content for Stitcher? Shanok says it’s too early to know. The company is also using the Election Center to test out some new technology. Every piece of content is automatically transcribed and analyzed, then used to create a list of trending topics across all of Stitcher’s election content. So you can see what the current hot topics are, look at how many times they’ve been mentioned, and then dive into a specific piece of related content. Shanok says we can expect to see trending topics expand outside the Election Center to other types of Stitcher content too. For now, the Stitcher app is focused on national issues and, in particular, the presidential race, but Shanok says he’s also interested in looking at state and local issues — it just won’t happen this year.

Like Twitter, Google+ N...

Google quietly added a trending topics section to Google+ last night which now shows up when you perform a search on the social network. The new “Trends” section appears on the right-hand side of the page, and currently lists the top 10 items under heavy discussion like “Natalie Wood” and “Breaking Dawn,” for example. The feature was first spotted by Richard Lusk who posted a screenshot to Google+ and tweeted about the update. Because the feature only appears after you perform a search, Lusk and others are suggesting that “Trends” should appear next to the homepage’s main stream, where the feature would be more obvious. That’s probably not a bad idea, but for now that space is used to prompt users to add more friends via “Suggestions” and “Send Invitations.” Since Google+ is still trying to grow its user base, it may not be ready to give up that key spot just yet. What’s more interesting about this development is its potential for future integration into Google Search. Earlier this month, the company announced a change to its algorithm (the “freshness” update) which impacted 35% of searches. The update’s goal was to better highlight more current content, including things like recent events, hot topics, reviews and breaking news items. The increased focus on more recent content seemed to almost forgo the need for a specific “real-time” search vertical, like the one that Google shuttered back in July when its contract with Twitter expired. At the time, the company said it would re-open Google.com/realtime with Google+ search results in the future. The introduction of Google+ Trends could certainly be the first step towards that. We asked Google about its future plans in this area, but a spokesperson would only say that there are “no updates at this time for trends to be incorporated into Google Search.” Image Credit: Richard Lusk

Ad Startup Bets Trends ...

Taykey targets based on trending topics and keywords in social media.

With A $9 Million B Rou...

Social advertising is the next hot thing, and startups are starting to come out of the woodworks with different approaches. One to watch is Taykey , a startup we first wrote about a year ago, but which is which is launching today with a fresh $9 million B round from Crescent Point, Sequoia, and Softbank Capital. It previously raised $2 million in June, 2010 from Sequoia Israel. Taykey tries to determine what topics are trending among different audience groups and then targets them with Facebook ads, promoted trends on Twitter, or search ads. “We think advertising is broken,” says CEO Amit Avner, because it is “based on demographics.” The company tries to figure out what people are interested in based on signals from socialmedia and then respond with ads in realtime. Instead of targeting five million 18 year-olds, Taykey tries to reach people who are into hiphop. “Basically we are doing audience discovery based on trends,” says Avner. “We figure out what is trending for who.” If you know what 18 year-olds who like hiphop are talking about, you can target ads around those topics and search terms. If Paula Abdul is trending on Twitter, Pepsi might want to buy Paula Abdul keywords on Google or Facebook ads targeted at a specific audience with related interests. As we enter summer, for instance, women are talking on social media channels about “friends,” “family,” “fun,” and “sleep.” Whereas men are talking about “twitter,” “beer,” “obama.”, and “itunes” (these are actual top trending topics discovered by Taykey). Taykey tracks public data from 150 different social media services, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg. The data is all anonymous and aggregated, and advertisers pay Tapkey on a cost per action basis. Depending on their goals, that could range from a cost per like to a redemption of an offer. CrunchBase Information Taykey Sequoia Capital Softbank Capital Information provided by CrunchBase

Twitter Rolls Out Slick...

Finally. Twitter has just unveiled a much needed revamp of its Twitter for mobile page, turning what was a pretty clunky looking mobile page into a more dynamic web app with icons for @replies, messages, your stream and search (which was missing from the mobile app previously). From the Twitter blog : “The app is fast – you can quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs and compose Tweets. It’s rich – it takes advantage of capabilities that high-end device browsers offer, such as touch gestures and a large screen. And it’s simple – it’s easy-to-use and has the features you’d expect from a Twitter application, including your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists, and more.” From an interface standpoint the HTML 5-powered app is already far better than the existant mobile page. The app should work on any mobile browser. But you know what the best thing about it is? Its clearly an appeal to users accustomed to Twitter’s mobile apps. Its landing page is exactly like the Twitter iPhone app interface (designed by Tweetie founder Loren Brichter), but turned upside down. The Twitter for Android app has this exact upright positioning, with a different assortment of icons. One noticeable difference? W hen you actually click in to a tweet, media is displayed flush to the screen, with the retweet, star and reply buttons below the tweet but above the image. You still can’t upload photos themselves themselves to the app, which is sort of a bummer. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase