Social Media Archives - Page 5 of 9

Dallas Startup: Ustream’s Brad Hunstable Joins GuideHop’s Advisory Board

Texas native and co-founder and CEO of the world’s most popular live streaming network Ustream has, Brad Hunstable has joined the advisory board for Dallas startup Guidehop.

Guidhop allows users to create and market custom tours and experiences and share them with an online community.

For example, Aaron B, who is a founding member of Guidehop, offers a scooter tour of Austin. One of his tours on Guidehop is “Ride With a Scooter Gang”. For $40 a person he will take people on a scooter tour of downtown Austin. His tour is flexible, you can ride with him on his scooter, or he’ll get you your own to rent and lead you on the tour. If you don’t have any experience on a scooter he will take you to a school parking lot first to practice before hitting the sites. Not bad for $40 a person it’s comparable to what you would pay to rent a scooter in Miami without the tour.

In San Francisco, Ligia C will take you on a legends of Rock tour for $100 a person. The four hour tour includes the homes of Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix.

These aren’t professional touring companies these are user generated experiences, which makes Hunstables appointment to GuideHops advisory board even more meaningful. Hunstable’s Ustream is all about user generated streaming content.

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NY Startup: Fancy Attracts Silicon Valley Backers For Social, Reverse Groupon Platform

If you like something, fancy it? Feeling kind of British? Well it’s not a British thing it’s an internet thing and it’s a new startup in New York that’s attracting some investors from the Valley.

Even though he didn’t get Instagram, that hasn’t stopped Twitter (and Square) co-founder Jack Dorsey from investing in an innovative disruptive new social platform. It’s also attracted the likes of Chris Hughes( Facebook) and Maynard Web of Ebay.

Although he hasn’t invested yet, Fancy has struck the Fancy of Ashton Kutcher. Kanye West, Bar Rafaeli and Selma Hayek have all become celebrity activists of this new kind of e-commerce platform.

So what is it? Fancy is part store, blog, magazine and wishlist. Anyone can join Fancy and when they do they can share the things they love and like with others. When their social friends across Fancy, like something, merchants can step in and offer a “Groupon in reverse type deal”. This is going to create a new, disruptive and competitive e-commere market place.

Fancy has 500,000 users across their web app, iOS app and recently introduced Android app. It’s great for users because they can see all the things their social friends like. It’s great for merchants because they know what’s in demand.

Fancy is free to join and get started. As Fancy tells Nibletz.com everything that you see on Fancy is either for sale or can be for sale.

Linkage:

Check out Fancy here at their website

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St.Louis Startup: BonFyre Brings Social Network Back To Campus, Attracts Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey

Last month we brought you the story of LockerDome a social network for amateur athletes based in St.Louis. LockerDome was able to attract some key investors and advisors. One of those is St.Louis native Jim McKelvey who just happens to be the co-founder of the widely popular mobile payment startup, Square. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Another social networking startup has also received backing and advice from McKelvey. McKelvey sits on the board of Off Campus Media LLC, the paurent company to the BonFyre app.

BonFyre was founded by Mark Sawyier, a graduate of Washington University. The app is a social media and location sharing app aimed at college students looking to plan what’s next with friends, find out what’s hot and save money around campus.

One of the main concepts behind Bonfyre is to take the social network back to students. We all remember the days when Facebook was exclusive to students with a college email address. While everyone wanted to join this exclusive club (and we all eventually did), the exclusive college nature of Facebook at the time, made it more about sharing social events with friends and then getting out and doing stuff together.

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NY Startup: MOWA Launching Today, We Find Out What It Is In This Interview

A new startup in New York City is launching today. The startup called MOWA tells Nibletz.com that they are producing the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive prizes. Sure the social gaming space is a bit crowded but with a unique name and a unique plan we’re hoping MOWA has a successful launch.

Now just as a quick note this isn’t the full launch but it’s a start. We got a chance to interview MOWA on this momentous day for them. Here’s that interview:

What is Mowa?

MOWA is the ultimate social game to win unique and exclusive products.

MOWA is mobile social game with challenging daily missions about fashion, beauty, food, sports and events. It is played by sharing pictures that respond to the challenge of the daily mission. The most voted picture of the day wins coveted prizes sponsored by trendy and high-end brands.

“So, you wake up in the morning and before anything else you grab your phone, just like most of us do. You read MOWA’s mission of the day which might read something like: ‘Who doesn’t love a lazy Sunday? We sure love kicking back and making the most out of the day off. Show us your lazy Sunday pajama and we just might hook you up with some PJs that are even more comfortable.‘ And the mission will show you what is the final prize. After that you snap a picture of your lazy Sunday PJs, and post it up on MOWA. You can promote your pic as much as you want, because in the end it’s all about other people voting for your picture. The picture that receives the most votes wins.”

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

The founder of MOWA is Matteo Franceschetti. He’s an Italian serial entrepreneur, passionate about conceiving and developing business opportunities and always focused on what’s next.

He’s most recent venture, before entering the tech industry, was GIR, an international group operating in the renewable energy industry with a main focus on solar energy.

Matteo’s passion for business and start-ups has motivated him to keep developing projects and mentoring young talents, which is a key element for him when putting teams together.

(you can read more information about Matteo on his site:www.matteofranceschetti.com)

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Wisconsin Startup: Planduck A Social Network Based On Schedules INTERVIEW

A new Wisconsin startup was pitched at last weeks Startup Weekend in Madison Wisconsin as Schedule Link. Now they’ve changed their name to Planduck. The company has been recruiting developers and plan on doing something that doesn’t appear to have been done before. Planduck is launching a social networking platform based on scheduling and events.

To start off PlanDuck will cater to college students, faculty and staff by being a centralized location to plan, and share events. With PlanDuck it won’t be just one singular event like a Facebook event but all of the events that people are having in their lives and that they want to share across the social network.

When we were preparing for this interview I didn’t exactly get the concept, as you’ll see I asked him was it just event sharing, was it like Path. PlanDuck founder Mike Walsh admitted that Path founder (and former Facebooker) Dave Morin is one of the people that he looks up to and hopes that PlanDuck will one day be able to integrate Path APIs.

So let’s talk with Walsh about PlanDuck and launching a startup in Wisconsin.

What is PlanDuck?

PlanDuck will be a social networking platform that helps people find, share, and create all the events in their lives. It will start with the University of Wisconsin – Madison and immediate surrounding community.

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Cleveland Startup: Foundersync Helps Startups Everywhere Find Co-Founders

You may have heard about the exclusive and very cliquish, Silicon Valley based Founderdating. The site suggests they connect the best of the best to founders in the Valley and a handful of other cities, but what about everywhere else? Well there’s a company in Cleveland Ohio has you covered.

The problem with the founderdating site is it bleeds the mantra that everything that happens in the Valley is better. However with over 300,000 startups across the country there are plenty of great ideas, great founders and great startups, well “everywhere else”. Foundersync will of course connect valley startups to founder and other resources, but they definitely realize the growth of startups on a nationwide level.

Foundersync is a startup itself, they started in 2011. Foundersync deals in a pretty easy to understand idea, there are plenty of business oriented social sites that connect you with people that you do know, or are connected somehow. Foundersync connects you with people that you SHOULD know.

Foundersync’s mission is “To ethically and efficiently help entrepreneurs reach their potential by providing a conduit to the resources that will best serve their needs.”

They achieve this mission with their combined mixed experience in marketing, design and development. The four co-founders, Ryan Gambrill, Nick Pavlak, Robert Clark and Todd Goldstein met by accident in 2011 and immediately clicked. They are all entrepreneurs in their own right and wish that they had a service like Foundersync when they were getting started.

If you’re idea driven, a workaholic entrepreneur that bleeds ideas than you need to register for a Foundersync profile. On their website they also offer some great startup advice on their blog page like, exercise before pitching.

If you’re tired of the snobbery from sites like founderdating we’re sure you’ll benefit from the community of founders being built at Foundersync

Linkage:
Go get a foundersync profile

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Florida Startup: WUBB Wants To Be The One Social Network For Business

A Cooper City Florida company has launched a new social network called WUBB. Their mission seems to be targeted at business and very multi-faceted. If WUBB takes off it’s going to be spectacular for them however if it doesn’t it’s going to be one crazy hodge podge of social mess.

This morning WUBB described itself as “a platform for social entrepreneurs across the world that inspires, connects, communicates and manages your business and professional network by joining Entrepreneurs, Cofounders, Freelancers, Investors, Employees, Family and Friends. It is a multi-user, community-based, business networking hub where people join only to be benefited.”

The home page and dashboard look like a hybrid between Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Speaking of which you can login with your Facebook or LinkedIn account or create your own account.

In addition to the usual dashboard links like dashboard,profile, people and even companies, you’ll also find tabs for contests, services, projects, ideas and even domains and websites. WUBB gives you a portal to buy domain names and buy and sell websites. A little odd for a social network but most likely a revenue stream for the new company.

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Portland Startup: Interview With ShopMyPin, Winner Of Portland’s Startup Weekend

Vanessa VanPetten, Shopmypins, Startupweekend portland

26 year old Vanessa VanPetten emerged from the chaotic Portland Startup Weekend as the winner with shopmypins (photo: V. VanPetten)

Portland’s sixth startup weekend will go down in history as one of the craziest startup weekend’s ever. If you were checking up on Nibletz over the weekend you would have read this story about a man who was asked to leave Portland’s startup weekend. After he left he started tweeting that he was going to come back with explosives and guns. The organizers of the event increased security and had the event on a near lockdown for the rest of the weekend.

26 year old Vanessa VanPetten emerged from the action packed weekend as the winner with her new startup idea “Shop My Pins”. It wasn’t easy for VanPetten though, even with the disruption on Saturday she was still pitted against 16 other teams.

Game it up, a startup geared at teaching kids coding for video games won the award for “Outstanding Customer Validation”. “Outstanding Business Opportunity/Business Model” went to Matchable, which is a cell phone dating app. “Outstanding Execution” went to 15 year old Jackson Gariety for HashTraffic, a cross platform hashtag maker.

The Williamette Week reports that 15 year old Gariety and his HashTraffic were big hits and that Game It Up had already talked to Nintendo, Electronic Arts and IBM who had already started showing interest.

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Nashville Startup: Justapinch Wins Two Big Honors; Validates Series A Round

Justapinch, is a Nashville startup in the coveted recipe space. Although it may seem it’s the average recipe repository, they do boast the largest online collection of user submitted recipes in the world. In fact they have over 90,000 recipes available on the site.

Justapinch is a subsidiary of two year old American Hometown Media. As the company name suggests they like to build communities, like justapinch, that focus on user submitted content. That’s been a recipe for success so far for AHM and it’s CEO Dan Hammond (you see what we did there?).

How successful has AHM and justapinch been? Well they were recently named one of Nashville’s 25 most innovative technology companies by the Nashville Post. While that’s an honor in itself, Hammond was named Nashville’s Entrepreneur of the Year by both the Nashville Post and the Nashville City Paper.

Just five months ago the social media startup received a series A round of 4 million dollars. Nashville Capital Network’s Tennessee Angel Fund and affiliated angels, Tennessee Community Ventures, Limestone Fund, and Solidus Company participated in the round.

“The site’s fast growth, engaged user base and proprietary programming were key factors for our group’s investment decision,” says Sid Chambless, Executive Director of Nashville Capital Network. “We were also drawn to the strong management team and their successful track record in previous business ventures. These recent awards only reaffirm our group’s decision to support Just A Pinch.”

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L.A. Startup: Hereon.biz Discover Business Professionals Around You INTERVIEW

The past year has been a big one for discovery apps. We all know about the hype surrounding Highlight, Glancee, and countless other social discovery apps at south by southwest this year. Discovery apps are great for discovering people around you.

Most of the discovery apps are using Facebook and Foursquare as their backbone. This is great for finding people with like minded interests or in the same place but sometimes you want more out of a discovery app. Take conventions for instance. Big conventions like South By Southwest and CES have hundreds of thousands of people around. With everyone checking in somewhere or another it can be kind of noisy.

Hereon.biz solves the noise problem for people that are looking to meet people in their same profession or field. In most cases you’re paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to participate in a work or professional conference. You don’t need to meet the barista from Starbucks that happens to be a block away jamming with friends.

Hereon.biz uses LinkedIn API’s to connect people in like minded professions. Ultimately events like conferences and conventions or being in major hubs on business are the ideal place where Hereon.biz really comes in handy, but you may be surprised at the people that are around you at home, in your same profession.

I know that when I signed up for Google+ and discovered the nearby feature it showed a lot more Google+ users in my hometown than I thought. However, after perusing their streams and profiles most of them really didn’t have much in common with me, outside the fact that they used Google+.

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New Orleans Startup: Neighborland Offers Social Networking For Neighborhoods

One of the fastest growing segments in mobile and web life these days is the social network. Of course MySpace and then Facbeook put the social network on the map but now there have been slices of the social networking pie, carved out in unimaginable ways, that work.

Earlier today we featured a social networking app for pets. There are social networks for picture takers, business people and crafters. Now that people have stopped sitting out on the stoop and grilling in the front yard, a social network is a great way to connect.

Speaking of that stoop and grilling in the front yard, that’s the foundation behind New Orleans’ startup Neighborland.

One thing that makes Neighborland especially intriguing is the fact that co-founder Candy Chang actually took something physical and made it digital. There have been a lot of startups launched to do the opposite, take printstagram and stitchtagram for instance.

Chang came up with the idea after doing two, almost installation art projects, one in New Orleans and one in Fairbanks Alaska. In New Orleans she stuck stickers to structures that said “I Wish This Was________”. In Alaska she draped an abandoned apartment building in a sign that said “Looking for Love” she also installed chalk boards all over the place around the building and encouraged passerby’s to write things down.

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Kansas City Startup: Zippido Achieve Your Goals And Tasks With The Help Of Your Social Network

Most people, whether they want to admit it or not, find that achieving goals or getting tasks completed is easier with a buddy, friend or family member either cheering them on, rooting for them or actually helping out. Think about the last time you told your wife before you went to bed “hey honey remind me to call the care dealer tomorrow” or any other “reminder”. It’s this simple notion which led to the creation of Zippido.

Zippido founder, Ray Haynes describes Zippido to Nibletz.com as “ZippiDo! is a platform that brings the energy of your social network into your goals and tasks. Users of ZippiDo! can easily find, create and track goals – while sharing and discussing them with their friends.”

So think about something like organizing the community yard sale. If you’ve ever tried to organize one of these things it’s a daunting task. With Zippido you could create a task “community yard sale” and then from your social network get the help of your neighbors. You would know who’s making the signs, who’s advertising on craigslist, who’s advertising in the paper and who’s getting breakfast. With Zippido all the tasks are there for whoever you invite into them.

Although Haynes came up with the idea himself, and it’s got an awesome intuitive UI, Zippido reminds us a lot of what Google Wave would have been like if it was on Facebook. The downside to Google Wave was that you couldn’t bring the collaborators in as easy as you could with Facebook. This sets Zippido apart in it’s own right. Trust me, comparing Zippido in this way is a compliment.

We got a chance to catch up with Haynes, who is extremely busy with multiple startup projects. Here’s the rest of the interview:

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

I came up with the concept for ZippiDo! about two years ago. ZippiDo! is an Invenitas company, which consists of myself, Jon Stutzman (Creative Director), Paul Santulli (IT Project Manager and COO), and Bert Weidt (CTO). I am the chief development, and vision leader. Invenitas is also involved with other startups such as 11Mhz Media which recently launched ElevenReasons.com.

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Portland Startup: Chifpify Raises $1.3 Million For It’s Twitter Commerce Platform

Imagine if one of your favorite online retailers was having a sale on a new cashmere sweater that you’ve been wanting forever. Imagine if they tweeted that sweater and all you had to do was reply to the tweet with the word “Buy” and in three days you’d have that sweater delivered to your home? Well that’s becoming a reality thanks to Portland Oregon startup Chirpify.

Chirphify’s founder and CEO Chris Teso, who started the company as “Sell Simply” plans on making buying things on Twitter that easy. “Everybody is trying to become that ubiquitous wallet,” Teso told website oregonlive.com.

It works pretty much as I described it above. A Twitter user registers both their Twitter and Paypal accounts with Chirpify. A Chirpify merchant solicits a sale on twitter for example “Red Cashmere Sweater $19.99 delivered” and those with Chirpify accounts can simply reply with “buy” and the transaction is initiated. Chirpify takes a small percentage from the vendor for facilitating the transaction.

Are people using it? Yes, in fact Nestle has been using it to sell PowerBars on Twitter. Teso is hoping to attract independent musicians who could sell downloads via Twitter to their Twitter followers.

Chirpify’s $1.3 Million dollar investment was led by Voyager Capital and included Ryan Holmes, Hootsuite’s CEO. Private investor Geoff Entress, BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu and Rudy Gadre a former Facebook executive participated as well. Angel investors with TIE Oregon also participated. Oregonlive reports that Portland incubator UpStart Labs provided Chirpify with an earlier backing of $50,000.

Linkage:
Find out more about Chirpify here

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Source: OregonLive

Boston Startup Play140 Acquihired By OOmba Founded By The Creator Of Atari

Play140 CEO Shawn Broderick and his team thought they were onto something that could be game changing. The company had built an acronym game, called The Acronym Game, to be played on Twitter. Their thinking was simple, make Twitter more than just communication. It was a novel idea, play games on Twitter, I mean everyone was doing it on Facebook.

The game was simple, see who could make the most clever phrase out of the acronym provided. For whatever reason the game never took off. The company’s Twitter feed shut down and they stopped posting on their blog. Boston.com reports that the employees of the company, including two of the three co-founders went to find other jobs. That left Broderick and the company’s CTO Michael Johnson left manning what was left of the game.

Fast forward to this week and they’ve had some rather exciting news. A venture funded startup called Oomba has acquired Play140 for an undisclosed amount. What’s really interesting is that this startup’s founders include Nolan Bushnell. Now if y you’re thinking that name sounds familiar, it’s because Bushnell founded Atari and Chuck E Cheese among other feats in his career.

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