Berlin Entrepreneurs Trying To Curb Facebook Fatigue With Flowsee

A new Berlin based startup called Flowsee is hoping to take advantage of Facebook fatigue by offering users a social network with a local angle and curated multimedia. Flowsee is a mashup of Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.

The Flowsee social network has multiple category pages like music, tech and photography. In each of the categories users can upload photos and videos that are relevant to that category or whatever other categories they like. Pictures, links and videos are then voted up or down in a way similar to both Digg and Reddit with the most “likes” getting to the top of the page.

While the site is stating out and focused on Berlin, the company feels that it’s readily scalable. Back in late October they told us that they had already surpassed 10,000 users per month.

Like some other social networking projects, while Flowsee has a definite infrastructure to it, they are letting early adopters use the social network the way that they want to. For instance, vendors at the Mauer Park Flea Market has started using the platform to post their handmade and vintage goods for sale. Co-founder Olivier Jarfas told Silicon Allee that it didn’t take long for the vendors to start adding photos and even videos to their pages.

We all know that Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, they past the billion users mark last year and continue to move forward despite the fact that their stock market price is a lot lower than they had hoped. Nibletz co-founder and CEO Nick Tippmann also reported earlier this week that Facebook may be perceived by teenagers as “for older people”.

As a result more and more social networks are popping up. Most of the newer social networks are finding verticals to launch in like food, academia and careers.

As for Flowsee, we got a chance to talk with the Berlin based team. Check out the interview below.

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Steal Time Back From Social Media with “Productive Sharing” – James Sposto Founder Of Xtrant

Xtrant,James Sposto, Guest post, Memphis startup,startup,everywhereelse.co The Startup ConferenceHow much do time do you spend on social media?  How many hours a week does Facebook take from you?  How often do you pause to tweet, to post a photo, even to send a group text?

Yes, you enjoy it.

Yes, there is networking to be done.

Yes, Twitter is part of the fabric of your life…we all get it.

But as those hours get sucked away there are things that need to get done, things you are putting off: It could be that novel you are writing, right? Or that report that’s due on Friday. Or this blog post – the one you are reading now – the one that I put off a few times, and you’ve found thanks to social media (don’t feel guilty, this counts as research.)  Social media – or “Social Sharing” is addictive because it’s so useful – so easy to adopt.  But like any opiate, it steals from our personal productivity, and in the aggregate it steals from humanity’s productivity as well – deep down you know the millions of hours spent on FarmVille could be used to cure the disease of your choice.

Okay, you can argue that most of the folks who sit and while away the hours on social media wouldn’t be doing much anyway, and it’s better to keep some of them occupied instead of stirring up trouble – but that’s another essay. 

Let’s be idealists here – and cite an artificial statistic (I know, damn lies and all.) “When Twitter goes down, worker productivity skyrockets 50%.”

continue reading at the xtrant blog

James Sposto is a film maker, designer, entrepreneur, co-founder of digital creative agency Sposto Interactive  and the co-founder of Xtrant, the official project management startup for everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference.

 

Charlotte Serial Entrepreneur Unveils Soccer Startup Social Network KYCK

KYCK,Charlotte startup, North Carolina startup,NC Startup,startup,startups,soccer social network,startup interviewMac Lackey and Ross Saldarini are serial entrepreneurs in Charlotte North Carolina, they’re also soccer enthusiasts.  The pair have started several startups and even had a few exits. Their most notable exits were selling internetsoccer.com to a public European media company, and selling Mountain Khakis to Remington.

Now they’re back at it again, infusing their love of startups, social media and soccer into one new company called KYCK.  KYCK is a social network, and community for soccer enthusiasts connecting them to each other and an abundance of great soccer related content.

Through a proprietary content delivery system that Lackey calls “media layers” they are able to offer even the most scrupulous  of soccer fans the best possible experience through their own personal soccer focused dashboard.

While we’re all familiar with how popular soccer is overseas, a poll conducted by ESPN earlier this year showed that soccer has climbed to the second most popular sport in the United States behind football among those age 12-24 which is one of the most important demographic for professional sports.

(source: ESPN)

With the vast amount of soccer related content, pouring in from across the globe, and the increase in popularity for the sport, KYCK is poised to become the destination for soccer fans around the world.

We got a chance to talk with Lackey about soccer, KYCK and raising a startup in Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out the interview below:

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Tampa Startup OBCIDIO Is All About Social Collaboration INTERVIEW

OBCIDIO,Tampa startup,Florida startup,startup,startups,startup interviewA new Tampa startup called OBCIDIO mashes up social networks to make one easy to use collaboration platform. OBCIDIO combines real time social communication with file sharing, content management and networking tools. It’s like Asana meets Facebook and LinkedIn to focus on working together with different people in your social networks.

In addition to your private feed that’s leveraging your personal social networks there is also a public feed where you can share whatever you would like with the entire OBCIDIO community.

When we asked co-founder Ryan Waier how he’d describe OBCIDIO to his grandmother he said:

“OBCIDIO is best described as a mash-up between Facebook and LinkedIn. By creating or plugging into different social communities, members can filter out the noise and focus on the communication, people and content that is relevant to them.

Every member that creates an OBCIDIO account also receives their own personal cloud to manage communication, contacts, files, tasks and schedules with the ability to create or plug into existing social communities.

Social communities on OBCIDIO can range from members creating regional networking groups for sharing referrals, to companies creating their own private social network for coworkers to share content, ask questions and crowdsouce feedback.

Our communities provide social communication, collaboration, and project management tools unlike other forums or groups you would find on sites like LinkedIn. The purpose of these communities is to give members both a voice and a medium to actively engage in solving problems, pooling knowledge and forging new opportunities.”

Check out the rest of our interview with Waier, below:

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Facebook Is What I Like, NY Startup Mirror is What I’m Like INTERVIEW

Mirror, a startup in New York’s bustling flat iron district, has created something innovative and different bridging parts in a few different spaces. Mirror says that Facebook is what I like, and Mirror is what I’m like. With Facebook you talk about the things you do and like. With mirror, other people talk about what you’re actually like. It’s in essence bridging online personals, online dating, and people recommendation engines in a unique way.

Where California startup Recmnd.me is about people recommendation at a professional level, mirror is more personal, and more free flowing. For instance if you’re a really nice guy, and a great romanticist, people on Mirror can vouch for you or as the Mirror team calls it, people can give their “take” on you. If you’re a passionate entrepreneur that’s helped a bunch of folks, one of your takes can say that. Or to borrow an example from their website, if you’re a really great DJ, people can add that to their take on you.

Mirror bills themselves as real recommendations by real people. The platform can be used for dating, to find new business colleagues and to make new friends. They leverage real contacts and real opinions of someone rather than trying to build around a social graph or recommend people based on whether or not you like Mark Zuckerberg’s dog. The Mirror platform has real potential.

We got a chance to interview Dan Mattio, check out the interview below:

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Buy,Sell,Swap Your Clothes With NY Startup ClosetDash INTERVIEW

Just yesterday we brought you the story of a new social e-commerce platform centered around the newest and latest fashions. With Ann Arbor startup HangTrend you can see the latest styles, talk about them with your friends and even purchase them direct from the designer. HangTrend is about the hot new clothes.

NY startup ClosetDash is about the buying, selling and swapping of gently used clothes. Face it there are tons of clothes in most people’s closets that they’ll never actually wear out in public again. For whatever reason, that great dress, or pair of slacks is hanging in the closet .Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily sell them, or swap them?

What if you’re looking for a way to affordably outfit a new wardrobe. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could go through someone else’s closet and find your next great outfit?  Well with ClosetDash you can.

ClosetDash was created by Jennifer Lee, for exactly those things. The concept sounds a lot like Australian Y-Combinator startup 99dresses sans the virtual currency model (which in most cases is actually better).

Jennifer Lee goes into detail about how ClosetDash works in the interview below, but it’s basically this, you upload your closet and open it up to the ClosetDash community. You can sell clothes, swap clothes and buy clothes to put in your virtual ClosetDash closet and your actual closet at home.

Check out our interview with Lee below:

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Boston Startup: HoursForEquity An Alternative Jobs Social Network INTERVIEW

Let’s face it, in the earliest stage of a startup many founders are looking for co-founders, and other team members that will work for equity rather than an actual paycheck. It’s a gamble for the employee, if the startup doesn’t get off the ground, all that hard work may not have paid off. On the other hand, if the startup catches on fire like say, Instagram, you may have just earned seven figures for six months of coding.

Finding workers, co-founders, designers,engineers etc, that are willing to work for equity is a challenge in itself. Some workers feel that working for equity is like volunteering, and with the statistics for startup success as low as they are it’s definitely a gamble.  Some founders don’t like to advertise that they are looking for equity workers, and they don’t necessarily know how to find them.

That’s where Boston startup HoursForEquity comes in. HoursForEquity is exactly what the name suggests, it’s a web portal connecting folks that are willing to work for equity, to those willing to give up equity for their work.

Bill Lott, co-founder of HoursForEquity tells us that their platform allows employers and founders to search a database of local, national and global people willing to work for equity. This way you can find the perfect team with the skills you need to succeed.

We got a chance to interview Lott about HoursForEquity. Check out the interview below:

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A Social Network For Skilled Workers Interview With NY Startup: SkilledWizard

LinkedIn is a professional business social network for all kinds of professionals. Sure there are some blue collar workers, and truck drivers out there on LinkedIn but for the most part “skilled workers” don’t have their own social network to go to. There’s a lot of money in trade labor, trucking, and manufacturing. There are plenty of people in these fields making great incomes and loving life. With more and more people turning to social networks every year there is a wide open opportunity for New York startup SkilledWizard.

The team behind SkilledWizard is hoping to connect “skilled workers” to each other, and to future employers. Skilled workers everywhere will be able to interact with each other, share extra side work, find out the ins and outs of employers and more, on their own social network.

SkilledWizard co-founder and CEO John Ducar climbed the corporate ladder in some of the companies that employ hundreds of thousands of skilled workers; UPS, DHL and even Saks 5th Avenue.

Many, including Ducar, say that there is a global shortage of “skilled workers” and SkilledWizard will help skilled workers across the globe connect with each other and with employers.

Check out our interview with Ducar below:

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Could Social Discovery Get Any Easier? Boston Startup Tagzidy Says Yes INTERVIEW

If you’re a long time reader of nibletz.com the voice of startups “everywhere else” then you are well aware of how we feel about social discovery startups. To get coverage here on nibletz, you need to “bring it” if you’re in the social discovery space. SXSWi 2012 was all about social discovery, and since then, hundreds have tried to do something in the space.

Tagzidy, a New York startup, has created a social discovery platform that is extremely easy. In fact, if you allow it to, Tagzidy will help you discover people with like interests, wherever you are, and you don’t even need to take your phone out of your pocket.

Tagzidy has a couple of unique components. You can tag and be tagged by people you don’t even know when you’re in close proximity to them (again with your permission). If you’re already linked up with that person your experience is gamified with trophies, points and other nifty stuff.

One of the really exciting features about Tagzidy is it may even be the replacement for business cards that Florida startup Fethr is hoping to be, without any button pushing, or taking out your phone.

We got a chance to interview Daniel McCarthy the co-founder of Tagzidy, who does an exceptional job of describing his startup in the interview below:

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Our Twitter Philosophy: Why We Tweet So Darn Much And It Works

First off Thank you for following us on Twitter and reading nibletz.com “the voice of startups everywhere else” everyday.  Whether you say it under your breath, have tweeted us about it, ignored it, or just noticed it we tweet a lot and we retweet the same story a lot with a different text before the owl.ly link.  We originally published this story on our first highly successful new media site. We entered an agreement where we can’t mention that site by name.

Also, I speak about Twitter, social media and this specific philosophy that’s been working for four years, at conventions, conferences, and seminars across the country.  The chart above is from Robin Sloan’s research that supports our theory.

In the post Robin Sloan correlates the twitter findings to TV.  We correlate it between Twitter and my experience in Radio in major markets.  As much as “active” people tend to say they hate it, I was instrumental in the 90′s to deriving the current top-40 format where the “hits” are played sometimes 90 times per week which equates to every 70 minutes. Imagine in the mid to late 90′s when the Spice Girls and MMMBop were the songs getting that spin factor.  Irritating right? However the stations that used this programming and still do today, and the artists that experienced it saw great ratings (and still do today) and the artists sold more records.  More ratings meant higher ad prices so even the bosses were happy.

Why though…

Radio, like twitter, can be very passive at times.  Especially now most people listen to the radio in a short car ride, a short job, or passively at their desks at the office. Maybe you listen baking a cake, or making dinner. What else did you do when you were listening to the radio? Handle a fussing child? Laundry? Cleaned? Dishes? An Argument? It was passive.

For most (not all but most) people using twitter it’s a passive form of social media.  When you log on to facebook you check your updates, profile, friends updates, maybe you play Farmville or Cityville or Family Feud, but your engagement time on Facebook is more than that on Twitter. What do you do with Twitter, most people “scan” it, just like the radio, looking for something that strikes their curiousity.

Add that to the fact that our analytics show us a mix of 50% US based twitter profiles follow us with the other 50% being based in other countries around the world, and that is exactly why we post things so much.  Without revealing our entire strategy we rank the stories as their posted at thedroidguy.com based on our keywords from analytics and what people are currently interested in.

Also consider the variety in followers we have, we have brand new people to Android, people who like Android but aren’t gung ho into it, Android Enthusiasts, Ecosystem partners, Android Developers and modders. Based on this variety and what’s hot we rank our posts, a top ranked post gets tweeted once by word press automatically, then we do a manual bit.ly link almost immediately following and then based on the ranking we tweet it out 32-56 times over the next 2-5 days.  If it’s really hot we’ll post it every 40 minutes for the first couple of hours.

Now consider some of our top retweeters and people we know that follow us religiously and have for a while (Thank you again) we’ve noticed, and you may have too, that even these folks who are on twitter all day may actually retweet something that was fresh 7 hours ago.

Now Robin’s piece was focused on Hashtags and not actual tweets but it tells the same story. We want you to read Robin’s post so we aren’t going to re-post the whole thing but link to it here

Here’s what Robin Sloan writes to explain the graph

“The vertical axis (P) is a fraction of Twitter users tweeting with a particular hashtag. The horizontal axis (K) is the number of times they had seen that hashtag before tweeting with it. So basically, the graph is telling us: You need to see a hashtag four or five times before it really clicks.”

Robin summarizes by saying that if you use a hashtag repeat it, users are more likely to pick it up and retweet it after more exposures.

Now back to MMMBop at a radio station in Washington DC the 8th largest market in the country, Mmmbop actually played on the radio station 214 times before it started requesting on the phone lines.

Linkage:

London Startup: GreenLight, Not Just Another Social Discovery App INTERVIEW

GreenLight,London Startup, Paul Carr, TechCrunch,PandoDailyEveryone could use more friends right? Well now that finding friends has turned to social networks and everyone wants to be the match.com for friends, social discovery has become a common household phrase (at least in startup circles).

Most social discovery platforms use your social graph to determine who you need to meet. For instance, before being acquired by Facebook, Glancee would use your likes and interests on Facebook to match you with likeminded people close by. We quickly realized how faulty this process was.

Case in point, I signed up for Glancee, and used it at SXSW. Now for whatever reason, when Mark Zuckerberg got a new puppy named Beast, I liked him on Facebook. Shortly after that when I attended SXSW this year I was matched up with 30 people who also liked Mark Zuckerberg’s puppy. Maybe we should have started a fan club and had a drinking party or something but really that raw data algorithm is flawed.

Gaz Evans, one of the co-founders of GreenLight, tells us that their social discovery platform is better. They actually ask personality driven questions about each user in order to match them up with other users. They also tap the users social graph so some of their likes are built in, but overall this may be a good alternative to other social discovery platforms.

We got a chance to interview Evans and the team from GreenLight, check the interview out below. You better read it quick though, before the next social discovery platform comes along.

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Miami Startup: Sumpto It’s Like Klout For College Students, But Better INTERVIEW

Klout is still a big mystery to most, how do you get those crazy Klout scores. If you know how it’s really calculated feel free to send me an email. Klout Perks is a great program that puts manufacturers products into peoples hands. They presumably want the cream of the crop when it comes to Klout, but we have no idea who that really is.

Sumpto is looking to do something along those lines when they launch next week. They’re going to match products to college students with influential social graphs. Sumpto will rank a college students social clout (with a c not a k) and then link manufacturers with college brand ambassadors who can presumably get the word about those products out to the masses.

Manufacturers love it when they can get exposed to people with real influence. Ranking that influence can be a challenge but Sumpto’s Founder and President Ben Kosinski seems to have figured out the magic formula. Yes, Sumpto’s partners will most likely reach the hands of the right people. 

The college demographic is a hard one to crack, with free stuff though it may be easier. When you add the free stuff to an exclusive layer of folks, your destined to gain exposure down the lines to the masses. That’s exactly what Sumpto is going to do.

We got a chance to interview Kosinski check out the interview below:

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Interview With Canadian Startup Hashcaster

Back in June we brought you this story about Canadian startup Hashcaster. Hashcaster provides a curation, and measurement (analytics) platform for event coordinators to manage their social media graph. It really comes in handy when gauging the effect of marketing, press and media efforts on behalf of an event just about any size.

At Social Media Camp in June not only was Hashcaster used by the event organizers but they also received a “Coastie” for “Most Innovative Social Media Product or Technology”.

Event organizers everywhere are counting on social marketing efforts more and more everyday as traditional marketing has fallen to the wayside. Organizers need to be able to capture tweets, likes, and mentions and then aggregate them, and analyze them to make sure the cohesive message is getting across. They also want to know who their top influencers are and what kind of impact any paid social marketing may have had.

All of these things are why Geoff Clendenning and Paul Vet created Hashcaster.

Now social media dashboards are nothing new but this particular use case is. Hashcaster also takes into consideration that the social graph of a particular event is going to swell as the event draws closer. When you’re at a popular event, especially one with a social media focus, tweets, likes and mentions can come in a matter of seconds.

We got a chance to interview Clendenning about Hashcaster, check out the interview below:

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Social Media: Why Wait For Zac Moffatt Of Course Romney’s New Twitter Followers Are Fake

A sudden surge in Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers has started making the rounds in the news. Our friends at Mashable have reported that Zach Green of 140elect.com, a blog that monitors Twitter trends revolving around end Presidential election, found an abnormal surge in Romney’s Twitter activity.

Romney normally receives between 3000-4000 new followers per day on Twitter. Friday he received 23,926 followers, Saturday he received 93,045 followers and Sunday he received 25,432 followers.

There has been a lot of discussion as to whether the Romney camp paid a Twitter following agency, and if those followers are fake.  In fact Vincent Harris, who was a digital advisor to former Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, rang out on Twitter in defense of Mitt Romney’s digital director Zac Moffat. Harris and the Gingrich camp were also accused of buying fake followers for their candidate.


I speak on social media and Twitter quite a bit and have used Twitter virtually since the beginning. I use a tool called Tweepi to maintain the health of both of our key Twitter accounts, my personal account and the account for Nibletz. So when this story started to break I went myself and checked out Romney’s newest followers and here’s what we’ve found.

First off over 40,000 of Romney’s new followers have yet to change their Twitter icon from the cute little egg you get when you first join Twitter.  This is usually a good indicator that someone has a lot of fake Twitter followers.

The next big indicator is that over 25,000 of the new followers have 0 followers themselves. Again this is a sharp indicator that the Twitter followers are fake.  Now in the interest of transparency many of the new Twitter followers Romney has that have 1 or zero followers themselves are the same ones that haven’t changed their profile pic.

Of course the final big indicator is the fact that 30,000 of the new Twitter followers Romney has have tweeted zero times or have tweeted just one time.

Another big indicator for fake Twitter followers is that many of these new followers have never updated their biography in their profile as well.

Their are several ways to buy followers. There are sites that sell followers with similar stats to these. They use bots and other methods to set up Twitter accounts very quickly and then sell a bulk follow, typically automated at one time.

It would take hours and hours to check President Obama’s Twitter followers but the first 500 pages of 200 Twitter followers on a page of the account @barackobama, the newest followers look like this:

 

These newest followers of Obama’s look to be a much healthier set of Twitter followers.

There would really be no benefit to fudging followers in a political campaign unless Romney’s camp is just looking to cross the million follower count. Currently President Obama has over 17 million followers while Romney is hovering at 800,000 followers.

President Obama was the first candidate to really embrace social media ahead of the 2008 election. He has seen a surge recently in new followers as the race gets down to the final months.

Source: Mashable