Social Media Archives - Page 7 of 9

Follow Up: Twitter’s Fame Game Shut Down Already

Just a few weeks ago we brought you the story of the Fame Game. Fame was a side project for Adam Ludwin a principal at RRE Ventures in New York. The premise was simple, a raffle website “game” where the winner of the daily raffle got everyone who entered that days contest to follow them in one fell swoop. It was up to the winner to engage all the new followers into sticking around.

Well according to Betabeat, the Fame game is now over. The company sent out a Tweet on Thursday saying they planned to shut down the service because it violated Twitter’s terms of service. When it first launched Twitter didn’t seem to mind at all and in fact the team behind the Fame game thought they were clear because of a loop hole in the Twitter api.

“It was always a question mark about what Twitter would do,” RRE Ventures principal and Fame cofounder Adam Ludwin told Betabeat via phone. ”I have a lot of respect for the guys at Twitter and they gave us an extension, they gave us ideas about ways to change the app to conform more with what they viewed as in line with the spirit of their terms.”

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Facebook’s Other Acquisition This Week: Tagtile

Now that we’ve all heard that Instagram’s $500 million valuation drove Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg into a frenzy because he had to have Instagram, it’s time to check out Facebook’s other acquisition this week. While Instagram looks like a pretty solid acquisition into the Facebook family, their other acquisition, Tagtile, may fit better with the Facebook business.

Tagtile is a company that allows you to walk into a store, and tap your phone against a special cube. When you do that, your phone shakes hands with the business. The business gives you discounts and special offers and your phone shares the information you allow it to, back to Tagtile, like your contact information, and a little more if you let it.

Business Insider suggests that the Tagtile deal was an acqui-hire. A posting on Tagtile’s website suggests that Tagtile won’t continue the way it has been once they join Facebook. This is similar to the Gowalla deal, not the Instagram deal. Zuckerberg quickly let people know that Instagram would function as is, for now. Gowalla on the other hand officially shut down during SXSW as the founders and team relocated to Palo Alto to work on Team Facebook.

Tagtile hasn’t said how many merchants they have using the Tagtile cube or how many users have downloaded the app however they did say that Tagtile will continue to work the way it has, again for now…

source: SAI

New Zealand Social Startup For Kids, MiniMonos, Announces Funding As They Approach 1M Members

The New Zealand based social network startup for kids MiniMonos is taking off like wild-fire. CEO and Founder, Melissa Clark-Reynolds, has reported that the company has just received $1.3 million dollars in funding and they are quickly approaching 1 million users.

MiniMonos allows kids to sign up for their social network using a monkey avatar. From there they can play free games and interact with other kids on the network. There is also a premium based subscription which opens up a world of virtual currency and other features. Clark-Reynolds has also teamed up with Buy1Give1 so that for every subscription membership purchased the company then purchases clean water for a child in India.

Currently MiniMonos is converting about 3% of their users from free membership to paid membership however Clark-Reynolds has reported that the 3% of paid memberships are driving 90% of their revenue. They are quickly approaching 1 million members, their current member tally is about 840,000 members with more than half being in the UK.

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Chattanooga Startup Retickr Filters Out The Noise From News And Social Media.

Most of us are too busy to sift through the noise of news sites and social streams to get exactly what we want. Many times the important information is lost in the shuffle. That’s where Chattanooga based startup ReTickr comes in.

ReTickr was created by three young entrepreneurs and University of Tennessee graduates; Travis Truett, Brian Trautschold and Jared Houghton.

The threesome has seen enormous growth after being featured in the Mac App Store for three weeks back in October 2011, but it wasn’t always that easy.

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Film & Broadway Producer Max Gottlieb Unveils “Lovvvit”A New Beverly Hills Start Up

If you’re expecting a story about an app that helps you find posh deals on Rodeo Drive, that’s not what Lovvvit is all about. Lovvvit was just recently released into the iOS app store by founder, movie producer and Broadway producer Max Gottlieb.

Lovvvit is a recommendation app that’s based on videos and improves interaction between local businesses and their best customers. Long are the days when everyone is waiting for the latest daily deals app. Recommendation and rewards apps seem to be the app du jour.

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DC Startup Profile: Next Game Because Nothing Is More Social Than Sports (Rawporter Roadshow)

We’re in the midst of the Rawporter Roadshow visiting with startups and checking out tech everywhere. While in DC we stopped at the Fort accelerator where we met with Next Game. NextGame thrives off the fact that nothing is more social than pick up sports. With Spring in full swing millions of people will be flocking to the local park, open fields, and gyms to participate in pickup sports and other activities, this is where Next Game fits in.

When you’re in grade school, high school and even college sports are a way of life for most people. They’re also a given all school levels have sanctioned sports, intramural sports and pick up games. When you’re living on a college campus you can look at your dorm room window and find a soccer game, frisbee golf, hacky sack, pickup basketball and more. Once you get out of college the drive and want to participate in pickup sports is still there but finding pick up sports or men’s or women’s leagues is for lack of a better word, a pain in the ass.

Often times, unless it’s a real established adult league, participating in sports is contingent on organization and follow through and no one seems to communicate well. NextGame handles that for you.

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Print Your Instagram Pics To Posters, Stickers And More With Prinstagr.am

Social Print Studio, a San Francisco based company, that specializes in making apps that print photos from social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter to stickers, posters and other printables. They’ve just announced their most recent endeavor surrounded by the phenomenon we all know as Instagr.am.

Now your favorite Instagram photos with their glorious filters can be captured in real life non virtual goodness. Sometimes the memories you’ve created need to be shared outside of the online world and that’s where Prinstagr.am fits in.

For $25 you can have between 50-400 of your favorite Instagram pics made into a 40 inch poster with all the photos laid out on a grid. That cute picture of your kid that got 400 likes on Instagram can now be made into 48 miniprints and shared with your entire neighborhood for just $12.

In all seriousness though with more and more people using photo apps and camera phones, and of course digital cameras less and less pictures are printed out. Taking your USB stick to Walmart or Target for that special photo novelty is time consuming and cumbersome and sometimes doesn’t even turn out right. With Prinstagr.am you’re not going to have that problem.

Check it out for yourself right here.

Source: Gizmodo

In The Courts: Federal Courts Rule That Social Networking Can Contain Trade Secrets

In a move, that is interesting to say the least, a Colorado Federal Court and a California Federal Court have ruled that social networking accounts, and lists can contain trade secrets.

In the Colorado case an employee of a nightclub was responsible for maintaining the nightclub’s MySpace page. The nightclub had several thousand friends on MySpace and was often used to promote specials, and performances at the club. That was all well and good until the employee left that club to work for a competing night club in the same town.

Once the employee started working for the competitor he started to use the same MySpace friends list to market the new club to the old club’s patrons. In that case Christou v Beatport the judge in Colorado ordered that the MySpace list of friends was protected by the Colorado Uniform Trade Secrets Act.

JDspura.com reported:
The court held that, using the same logic for protection of customer lists, a friends list could be entitled to protection if it meets the traditional tests under which customer lists can constitute trade secrets. The court noted that the list could not readily be compiled from public sources, and that the plaintiff had limited access to the employer’s login and password information.

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New York Startup: Get Shitter Puts Your Tweets On Toilet Paper

Before we dive into the bowl on this one let me first say that this is a 100% true story, now on with the runny details…

A recently announced startup that was founded by a four man team of developers in New York and Australia, has revolutionized the Twitter API in a way no one has ever thought of. These four men have found the ability to turn your tweets into four, useable rolls of toilet paper. This is actually brilliant.

All you do is log into their website at getshitter.com pay the $35 via paypal and voila your toilet paper will arrive shortly. It’s perfect for openhouses and press events, lets see how many rolls of getshitter paper we find at SXSW next year.

“Obviously this is fairly tongue in cheek, but we’re reasonably pleased we monetized Twitter in a way that avoided advertising,” said founder David Gillespie Told Venturebeat’s Ben Poper ”… The direction is still settling, but I think there’s some kind of course to chart around just trying to entertain people. I don’t know where the revenue is, it may very well wind up needing to be funded by brands when the right project comes along. I can’t imagine Kleenex having put their name to Shitter though!”

They may not be too far off fro funding as StockTwits founder Howard Lindzon tweeted that he wanted to invest in the shitter.

source: VB

Seattle Based Urban Spoon Sees Big Growth In Reservations

While OpenTable is still by far the giant in the world of table reservation apps, Seattle based Urban Spoon is making great strides in a territory that once exclusively belonged to OpenTable.

UrbanSpoon has been known since it’s inception for it’s slot machine style interface for serving up great restaurant suggestions. When you open up the Urban Spoon app on your Android or iPhone you shake it and the three bars rotate like a slot machine. They eventually land on a restaurant recommendation.

UrbanSpoon reported to Geekwire that last month they sat one million people using their reservation system. That’s not a lot considering San Francisco based OpenTable claims they’ve sat over 280 million people since coming online in 1999. Opentable also claims to have 25,000 restaurants in their system.

Urban Spoon on the other hand says they have restaurants in the thousands, the San Francisco Chronicle says that Urban Spoon has 4,000 restaurants in it’s network.

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New “Fame” Game Could Get You A Whole Lotta Twitter Followers (For A Day?)

Adam Ludwin a Principal at RRE Ventures and some developer friends have created an interesting new game called “Fame”. The purpose is to raffle off Twitter followers. One lucky person each day will be followed by everyone who has entered the contest. According to their website as of the time of this posting the current pot of followers is 359 followers.

How does this work exactly? Well you login to the game at playfame.com with your Twitter account. You are then in the daily drawing along with everyone else who enters that day. Logging in gets you one chance to win that day. Tweeting about Fame gives you ten more entries per day, and if your Tweet gets more people to sign up, you get one raffle chance per new entrant that signs up using your link.

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