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News, insight and tips from the social web.
The Hoop blog covers the evolving digital landscape, social media, mobile communications, content marketing and also includes 5 top finds and Fish on Friday. Feel free to make comments.
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Startups of the week #6 »
It's the penultimate roundup of our weekly list of interesting startups for 2011! If you missed the first three from this week you can find them here, here and here. As always, get in touch with your feedback on our selection!
4. ThingLink
It's that time of year when you start finding e-cards in your inbox. Generic e-cards are less than appealing and, nine times out of ten, are liable to end up in your trash (or worse spam) folder – unless they're from someone really special. But, if these e-cards were to be interactive; with embedded media like audio from Soundcloud or video from Youtube, would you open them more? Or at least pay them a bit more attention?
That's (in part) the logic behind Finnish startup ThingLink's product offering.
A thinglink is an interactive hotspot you define inside an image, from a thing (an object, a person, or a place) to a link (a shop, a blog post, or anywhere you like).
The ability to embed rich media with an image is somewhat of a novel concept but, as ThingLink say in their recent blogpost, definitely comes in handy if a situation ever arises where you need to send a personalised e-card with embedded audio or video streams.
The 8-strong team, based in Helsinki with an office in California, have so far raised €700,000. Whilst ThingLink are still a relatively young service, both Mashable and the Canada's National Post have shown how innovative thinglinks are – and we're inclined to agree!
5. Rovio
Continuing with the Finnish theme, it's hard to think of a startup who's had a more successful 2011 than Espoo's Rovio. Maybe better known for the success of their mind-blowingly succesful 'Angry Birds' app (and subsequent merchandise spin-offs), the world's best-selling paid app on iTunes; Rovio have had a long and bumpy road to the movie franchises, sequels and the multi-billion dollar attempted acquisitions of today.
Rovio produced 51 titles and flirted with bankruptcy before hitting the jackpot with Angry Birds. Some were successful, some were flops – but none prepared the company for the popularity of a story that revolves around pigs stealing birds' eggs.
In November, Rovio announced the game had been download half a billion times, making it one of the most successful (if not the most successful) app in history. The rumoured attempted $2.25 billion buyout from games maker Zynga followed a few weeks later.
After raising $42m in funding this year, Rovio's CMO (or 'Mighty Eagle') Peter Vesterbacka recently revealed that revenue figures for 2011 ($100m) had seen a pretty huge increase on 2010 ($10m). It'll be hard for Rovio to improve on such a fantastic year, but we're betting 2012 will see the startup continue to build on their successes!
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Startups of the week #6.3 »
Our third startup of the week is one we think you'll be hearing a lot more of in 2012; an upcoming leader in the field of companies attempting to quantify social influence.
In real life social circles, people are influenced by their peers. On social networks, influencers are trusted friends and authorities linked by interest-based communities.
How do you analyse and quantify influence on the social web? A search query for 'Social Media Experts' on Google returns 366,000,000 results – but how do you determine a so called 'expert' is exactly that?
There have been a few attempts at evaluating social worth and influence (Klout being the most memorable); but none do so in a completely transparent (or understandable) way. San Francisco's Kred, built by 'high tech social analytics company' Peoplebrowsr, are a new startup aiming to solve that problem.
Kred uses a set of rules that are publicly displayed on their website to rate influence. Users are scored by their 'Influence' (which is measured on a 1-1,000 scale with points awarded when you or someone else interacts with your content) and 'Outreach' (which awards a user points when they interact with other users or users' content). It may sound complicated, a quick read of the Kred scoring guide [PDF] will explains it in an easy-to-understand way.
Kred's been in closed beta since first launching in September. You can request access via email or Twitter on the Kred holding page and they'll be releasing invites slowly over the next few weeks. We've been using our account for the past month or so and, once it scales up from the relatively few users it has now, we can see Kred becoming the leader in the social analytics space. We're predicting some big things from Kred and Peoplebrowsr in 2012!
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5 top finds #28 »
Social sharing trends from 2011, Google Street View tours Japan after the tsunami, Ice Cube discusses LA's architecture, a success story on Kickstarter and a delay to Google's Motorola Mobility takeover. It's 5 top finds...
1. Social sharing trends from 2011
Given we're winding 2011 down and gearing up for 2012, now's the time when all the interesting analysis from the year starts surfacing. We spotted an awesome infographic the other day, courtesy of AddThis and Clearspring;
AddThis, a sharing platform, and Clearspring, a social data aggregator, present the sharing trends of 2011. With over 1.2 Billion users analyzed, this may be one of the most comprehensive sets of data available about online sharing.
You can read the article on TheNextWeb and see the full infographic on Flickr.
2. Tsunami streetview
It's hard to believe but the earthquake and subsequent horrific tsunami that destroyed the coast of Japan was in March.
A virtual tour via Street View profoundly illustrates how much these natural disasters have transformed these communities. If you start inland and venture out toward the coast, you'll see the idyllic countryside change dramatically, becoming cluttered with mountains of rubble and debris as you get closer to the ocean. In the cities, buildings that once stood proud are now empty spaces.
In the 10 months since, the country has gone some way to rebuilding itself but, as Google's 'Memories for the Future' Street View project shows, there is still a huge amount of work to do.
3. Talking buildings with Ice Cube
Did you know Ice Cube studied architectural drafting before pioneering gangster rap with N.W.A.?
No, we didn't either.
But, according to the man himself, it's the gospel truth. We spotted Cube discussing the Eames' house in Los Angeles over on Creative Review. Well worth a watch.
4. The 'Cadillac of iPhone docks'
We're always impressed by the ingenuity of people advertising products on crowd-funding platform Kickstarter.
Nine times out of ten, we've found that iPhone docks are more hassle than they're worth. It seems Casey from Portland's industrial design Elevation Lab agrees with us. He posted a Kickstarter project yesterday afternoon asking for funding for his (CNC'd block of aircraft-grade aluminium) dock, and 15 hours later the project has $110,570 (almost $36,000 over the project's goal) worth of funding from 1,200 backers.
We'll hopefully be seeing the Elevation Dock here in the UK one day; they look awesome!
5. The European Commission presses pause
Remember when Google tried to purchase Motorola Mobility back in August? It seems the EU Commission isn't happy with the proposed deal and has delayed the proposed takeover on antitrust grounds.
Among key questions that it has already tried to tease out are whether Google would favour Motorola over other hardware manufacturers which license Google's Android software for mobile phones and tablets. Google has repeatedly insisted that it would not.
The Guardian's Technology blog has the details.
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Startups of the week #6.2 »
As we said yesterday, we're now posting about a startup every day of the week. We'll then post a roundup piece (like we have done for the past 5 weeks) on Friday!
2. Path
There's only ever been one major digital social network. Think about that bold statement for a second; pre-2007/8 had Myspace, the then most-visited online social network in the world. The post-Myspace era has Facebook marching towards an IPO in early 2012, accompanied by an astounding $100bn valuation and its 850+m userbase. There are, and always have been, alternatives to these social behemoths – but it's rare to find one special enough to to tempt users away from their 130 "friends" posting an endless stream of cat videos.
Path is one of those rarities. Path's astoundingly stunning iOS and Android app (no web integration; Path is purely mobile) is designed to enable its users to share their lives in a digital journal with 150 of their closest friends (Path pitch themselves as a "Personal Network"). If you do have an urge to share your life publicly (some people do); Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr connectivity will allow you to do so.
Founded in 2010 by the co-founders of Napster, Facebook Platform/ Connect and Macster, Path are a remarkable success story waiting to happen. Their first iteration, based around documenting your life with photos, caught Google's eye at the start of 2011. Google tried to buy the company with a rumoured $100m. Path turned Google down, welcomed a new round of investment, hit their first million users in October (up from 500,000 in June) and launched the updated 'Path 2' a fortnight ago.
So if you're on an Android or iOS device (a tablet app is on its way) and your nearest and dearest are too, download Path from iTunes or the Android store. Start sharing your path and you won't look back.
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Startups of the week #6.1 »
Instead of featuring the weekly selection of innovative startups in one go, we thought we'd try something a bit different and blog about a startup every day of the week. We'll then post a roundup piece (like we have done for the past 5 weeks) on Friday!
1. Flipboard
Given the exponential growth of the web and the knowledge it allows us to share and consume, information overload has become a bit of a problem in the 21st century. We've covered a few startups trying to solve this issue before – but none do it quite as well as Flipboard do.
Founded in early 2010 by Palo Alto's Mike McCue and Evan Doll, "digital social magazine" Flipboard have raised around $61m+ in funding and, as of September this year, the app has been downloaded 3.5m times from iTunes.
Built around the logic that you're most likely to be interested in content shared by those in your social circle(s), Flipboard connects to your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and Google [RSS] Reader accounts. When your social contacts share links, or the RSS feeds you follow update, the content is presented in a minimalistic flipboard that you flick through (as you would a book or magazine) on iPhone or iPad [iTunes].
We've yet to find any other startups trying to combat information overload that present content in a such a beautiful and engaging way as Flipboard do – even Steve Jobs was a fan! If you own an iOS device and have yet to try Flipboard, download it today and start using it. You won't regret it!
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Fish on Friday revisits the top deck. »
As London waves an extended goodbye to the bendy bus and says hello to more double-deckers, we couldn't resist replaying this and recoining an old phrase...
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