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What’s a Picture Worth? To Facebook, $1 Billion as it Buys Instagram

April 9, 2012 by 2 Comments

Social media powerhouse Facebook has purchased Instagram in a combination cash and stock deal that is valued at $1 billion. Instagram is a photo sharing site that permits users to share photos with their friends.

While some have seen Instagram as a potential rival to Facebook and others just a flash in the pan the deal is the biggest in Facebook’s history by a large margin and will help expand its already enormous reach in the social media space.

Instagram had been only available on Apple’s iPhones until just last week when the platform moved to the Android platform where it was greeted with a tremendous rush of downloads and usage by an entire new group of users.

Facebook made it clear to customers wondering if it would just assimilate the company that the answer was no, but that it would use some of its technology in Facebook going forward. Instagram is expected to continue to operate, and develop, as an independent company.

I wonder if this will really add that much to the Facebook empire. When Yahoo was still a high flying company back in 1999 it purchased one of the most popular Internet portal sites, GeoCities, for $3.6 billion in a deal what looked like it would greatly enhance Yahoo’s position as a portal site. You may well as ask what is a portal site now.

A user can already post a photo pretty easily to Facebook, maybe not with the bells and whistles that come with Instagram but still pretty quickly. Now with some f those bells & whistles incorporated into Facebook, will there be a need for an independent Instagram in the long run? I bet no.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Yahoo Tagged With: , , ,

Boston Bruins Combine all Social Media in Bruins DEN

March 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

While lamenting the fact that it is impossible for my March Madness team, now in second, to gain any additional points I failed to notice that the Boston Bruins have launched one of the most aggressive aggregation sites for social and traditional media concerning the team.

The Bruins, winner of the last Stanley Cup, have launched the Bruins Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), a site that combines television, ticket info, with a wide range of social media contacts and sources.

The site promises that it will provide not only what fans have come to expect in terms of data on players and games but it also said that it will be creating original content for fans to view. You can follow the team in a variety of manners including via BostonBruinsTV.com, at its popular web site BostonBruins.com or on Facebook. The list goes on with support at Twitter, Google +, Tumblr, as well as Facebook and Foursquare check-ins.

The Bruins DEN is a tool that will enable the teams’ corporate sponsors to reach out towards fans with a focused effort, and the site said that it expects to have 2.5 million unique visitors each month, so it should be quite an opportunity for them. Not only that but any technology that it uses is often highlighted with the name of the developer or partner,

An example of that is when the site says that its partners will benefit from its enhanced social analytics capabilities, courtesy of startup Umbel. It has an app for fans called the Official Boston Bruins Mobile App (Bruinsmobile.com) powered by AT&T. The app already features a sitcom series called ‘The Bear and the Gang’ that centers on the teams mascot. The bear also has his own Pinterest page.

The site is easy to navigate and all of the social media connections are clearly marked and easy to find. There is the almost obligatory Twitter feed, pictures from other fans posted using Instagram, and a hsot of additional connections ranging from one that gives you the all-time player roster to one that has a list of giveaways and events.

The organization is moving to provide fans access to its team in a great number of ways, and allowing them to show their pride and interest in the team. Regardless if you download and use the mobile app, post images on Instagram, comments of Facebook or check-in the Bruins are putting the fan experience first. At the same time the business side is carefully intertwined with the effort so that the team can monetize itself and its partners’ efforts in this endeavor.

About a decade ago just a few baseball teams had an Internet presence but MLB quickly learned what a tool the Internet was and pushed all of its teams online, and has since been very aggressive with all forms of social media. I hope that the NHL takes a page from that book and uses this as a template for the other teams in the league because I believe that fans will greatly embrace this opportunity.

Filed Under: Apps, AT&T, Facebook, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NHL, Pinterest Tagged With: , , ,

ESPN Adds Twitter, Facebook ‘Share’ Buttons to In-House Commenting

March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For a long time, we’ve wondered how ESPN was going to resolve the two different social worlds it was playing in — the comments on its own posts and games from “registered” ESPN users, and the Tweets and Facebook comments it used to add fan commentary to its shows, columns and more.

The answer? We just noticed in our ESPN bracket that if you comment in a group, you now have the option to “share” that comment to Twitter or Facebook. See the screen grab to the left:

When you Tweet it appends code showing the comment came from ESPNFantasy, which is a great way for ESPN to get people to play games on their site. Now all we need to complete the circle is the ability to “sign in” on ESPN with our Twitter handles so we don’t have to have all these logins.

Make it so, Worldwide Leader. Make it so.

UPDATE: According to the great folks on the ESPN PR team, Facebook and Twitter share have been a part of the site for almost two years now. But I would swear that I haven’t seen them integrated into the comments system, like they are for the fantasy games and now even in the regular story comments, like the one I just grabbed below. Anyone else notice these things before? Since I am not a “regular” ESPN commenter maybe I’ve just missed them.

UPDATE II: I think I am right and these things were added recently. If you look at the screen shot we took of the ESPN site when the whole “Greater than Tebow” thing erupted on their comments pages, you can see that the tools that are available now for sharing weren’t there last fall. So this has to be a recent, and much welcome, addition. Looking for the day that the whole ESPN and other-site registration thing goes away… we don’t need a personality for every site.

UPDATE III: According to ESPN, the new sharing buttons were just added this week. We stand by our story! 🙂

Filed Under: ESPN, Facebook, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

PlayUp Releases Version 2.0 of Fan-Interaction App

March 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

PlayUp has released version 2.0 of its fan-based social networking app, with improved navigation and “Live Now” scoreboards for individual sports.

PlayUp, which has signed several exclusive deals with college conferences and schools this year and also hosted NFL players for exclusive online chats during the Super Bowl, said the new features available immediately include:

— The ability to choose your favorite leagues to easily see live scores, stats and hangouts for the sports you care about most
— “Live Now” scoreboards by individual sports
— An enhanced interface with bigger and brighter graphics
— Improved navigation and user experience including faster load times, better calendars, and quicker access to live updates
— Enhanced Facebook and Twitter integration
— The ability to receive notification alerts when fans add you as a friend or when you are invited to a game
— The ability to message easily across multiple rooms with “Recent Hangouts” for the latest action you and your friends have been following

Screen shots of the new version of the app are below. Click here to download the PlayUp app.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Facebook, PlayUp, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Kwarter Seeks to Meld Social Apps and Sports with FanCake

March 14, 2012 by 1 Comment

Kwarter, a San Francisco-based startup that is focused on developing mobile apps that will serve as a melting pot that blends social media, sports viewing and fan interaction has delivered its first product, FanCake, just in time for March Madness.

FanCake boils down the essence of what many fans do today using multiple applications and technologies. FanCake combines it all into a single app. Instead of tweeting groups, texting individuals and logging into the Internet to follow individuals, make predictions and look up trivia, it is all here, and more.

The company touts the app as having the ability to turn a televised sporting event into a interactive event with connected fans around the country. Fans can focus on players or teams and compete by predicting the next play, among other activities. The app will support all of the games during the Men’s NCAA Hoops March Madness tournament and will have an in-app contest for participating fans with a variety of FanCake related awards available.

Create your own ‘Game Rooms’

There are several components to the FanCake app. Possibly first and foremost is the creation of game rooms. A game room is a chat room and one can be created for each FanCake event. This is where the fans interact with each other. They are all public venues and while in one, information on the live game as well as contests will be broadcast in all game rooms, keeping everyone up to date on what is going on.

It features a live, in-game leader board that has storable features enabling fans to find or focus on information that is relevant to them. Click on any player and it is a live button that reveals details about the individual.

The overall goal of FanCake is to not just to create online communities built along team, player or sporting events, but also around fan participation and the creation of fan communities that actively interact with each other. The app is fully integrated with Facebook and Twitter.

The free app is now available and is available at Apple’s iTunes store for iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone users.

Kwarter has managed to deliver the app in a relatively short time and with minimal outside investment, receiving $950,000 in seed money in October 2011 as its sole infusion. The company is led by co-founder and chief executive officer Carlos Diaz who has founded three previous startups and served as CEO at all of them, including Kwarter. The other two were Reflect Digital Agency that was acquired by Emakina group in 2007 and BlueKiwi Software in 2006. Sam Hickmann is co-founder and head of product at Kwarter and has worked at several other startups including peetch.com and twit, both as CEO.

Filed Under: Apps, NCAA Hoops, Social Media, Sports Betting, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Facebook makes Mobile Push at Mobile World Congress

February 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

One of the interesting things about the discovery period for Facebook’s initial public offering was that the social media giant reported that it had literally no income from the mobile environment. Since mobile is the top form of access this is surprising.

It is obvious that this is one of the most important market segments for the company to monetize as the opportunities are huge. And it has started to lay out its plans during a public speech by Bret Taylor, Facebook’s chief technology officer at this week’s Mobile World Conference in Barcelona.

In its push it is also striking a blow against a number of companies such as Apple that have been able to cash in on the markets demand for apps. Apple reaps as much as 30% of the revenue from app sales.

Taylor laid out a series of moves the company is currently working on that could tremendously enhance its position in the mobile market, including an effort to partner with mobile carriers for billing on Facebook transactions and the establishment of cross platform standards.

In the mobile payments market it is working with carriers to fix a process that it calls broken and fragmented. It is talking with a number of players including Vodafone, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, T-Mobile USA, Verizon, KDDI and Softbank.

It wants to streamline the process and reduce the number of steps needed to make mobile payments. App developers would sell their offerings from the carriers via Facebook, allowing carriers to garner some of the revenue for the apps that are often used on their networks and allow app developers to avoid paying Apple, Sony and others a portion of their revenue.

It seems to me that the issue here is that this is letting Facebook become a partner in this, how do you then later stop them from gaining a more controlling position and adding on revenue for themselves from the users and or carriers as well?

On the standards side Facebook is part of a workgroup called W3C Mobile Web Platform Core Community Group that is seeking to develop HTML5 standards for the mobile web. The recently formed group has 30 members that come from a wide spectrum of mobile players from carriers to web browser developers according to its web site.

The current members of the group have a very impressive lineup. Samsung, HTC, Sony Mobile Communications, Nokia, Huawei, ZTE, TCL Communication, AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, Orange, Telefónica, KDDI, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp., Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc., NVIDIA, ST-Ericsson, Intel, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, Adobe, Netflix, VEVO, Zynga, @WalmartLabs, Electronic Arts, Sencha and Bocoup.

Of course a prestigious lineup is no guarantee of a successful solution but it seems that it is the interest of these players to have a more efficient mobile web and as long as there are no hidden agendas in the group hopefully we will see a stead stream of updates from the W3C showing progress.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, AT&T, Facebook, Motorola, Samsung, Social Media Tagged With:
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