Blog
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 #15.1 »
Facebook may have made birthday messages arbitrary but Swedish social gift app Wrapp aims to put the giving back into special events.
1. Wrapp
Thanks to Facebook, I never forget a birthday (except for when they briefly moved the events section). I have been able to wish people I haven't seen or spoken to in months, or even years, many happy returns. This convenience can spawn laziness and apathy, as saying happy birthday to a friend becomes a part of the daily routine. It has become even easier now you don't even have to leave your news feed to post on their timeline.
Happy Birthday (enter friend's name). Have a good one x
Happy Birthday (enter other friend's name). Wish I was with you x
These are just two of many templates of saying happy birthday to a friend. It's a nice thought but ultimately, it's just robotic and mechanical. Birthdays used to be about giving to a friend or loved one. It didn't even matter how much you spent, because it was the "thought that counts". Now, however, we don't even think when typing away at our friends wall.
This is all about to change as (free) social gift app, Wrapp, on iOS [iTunes] and Android [Google Play], allows you to post gift cards, many being free, to peoples Facebook walls which they can then redeem at the store using their smartphone, like a voucher. This means that for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries or even just wanting to celebrate a loved one, you can specialise and give them something they can actually enjoy.
The Swedish company are currently having a lot of success, being a huge hit in their home country, the App has now launched in the UK and has received over $10million in backing [CrunchBase]. The first instalment was for $5.5million in Series A funding led by Atomico. The venture capital firm's backing, formed by Niklas Zennström, has led the Skype co-founder to join Wrapp's board of directors. He was later joined by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, who became Wrapp's second investor, with $5million, through Greylock Partners.
However, there are more experts behind the scenes as well as the co-founders, which consist of Hjalmar Winbladh (Rebtel and SendIt) and Spotify founding CTO Andreas Ehn. This experience will be vital as the company gets ready to launch in the U.S, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Asia and more.
Not only is this exciting for social media users as they are able to share gifts with friends, using either the set amount from the voucher or adding more, it's particulary attractive for the companies themselves as Wrapp offers businesses a chance to engage with friend to friend marketing.
Categories: Startups of the week
Tags: e-commerce, facebook
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5 top finds - number 30! »
It's the 30th 5 top finds in the series, and we're celebrating with the new EU directive on cookies, Google's descent in the popularity rankings, pure internet gold(fish), the save Herne Hill velodrome campaign and web addiction is bad for you shock.
1. (Un-edible) cookies (with an illogical direction)
If you've not heard the EU directive (and now UK law) that's made the majority of websites in Europe illegal, don't worry. You've got until May 2012 to comply with what is quite possibly one of the most ridiculous laws ever. As of May last year, all European websites have to...
"gain consent for the use of cookies or similar technologies to comply with the law."
Or face a fine of up to half a million pounds. Wonderful!
To explain what a cookie is and why the law is entirely flawed (you can't track that a user has requested your website to not use cookies without using cookies), we thoroughly recommend watching the entertaining video above.
2. Google face a bit of an uproar with Search+
If you've not been following the repercussions of Google's announcement about integrating content from (only) Google+ into search results, it's worth reading through some of the responses.
Ex-TechCrunch boss Michael Arrington writes of how Search+ is reminiscent of Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows (which led to antritrust lawsuits) in the 90s; Harvard advertising law specialist Ben Edelman writes about the (il)legal implications of Google's initiative and "search engine guru" Danny Sullivan explains what's wrong with Search+. All well worth a read.
3. Goldfish, but not as you think they are
We like fish (if you hadn't noticed) here at Hoop – so when we saw the video above we knew it'd somehow end up on the Hoop blog. Truly amazing stuff from Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori.
4. Save Herne Hill velodrome
As well as liking fish, you may have noticed us Hoopsters are pretty keen on bikes. When we spotted this post on the Brooks blog, about 91 year old (1948 Olympic medallist) Tommy Godwin returning to Herne Hill velodrome and riding the race-winning bike again we then discovered an audio interview with Tommy on the Guardian travel section. Both are well worth reading!
5. Addicted to the internet
Ever struggled stealing yourself from reading updates on Facebook or staying on top of the latest tweets? According to preliminary research from Chinese scientists; there may be such a thing as 'web addiction'. The sample size is tiny (only 17 addicts sampled) but this research could potentially pave the way for treatment for those of us who just can't get off Facebook.
Categories: 5 top finds
Tags: Bikes, facebook, Fish on Fridays, Google, Google+, SEO, Social search, User Experience
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Search, plus Your World »
Google's latest announcement about forcing Google+ into live search results poses some interesting questions; but is the initiative as bad as everyone's making it out to be?
We've covered Google's apparent attempts at becoming social at length here on the Hoop blog; but have always been a little suspicious of their true motives. When we discussed Social Search back in October, we concluded the post with the following:
It's the '+1' button that is going to make or break their attempt to become social. Google+ is just a novel way to encourage people to sign up for a Google profile – which then gives Google access to users' social data but more importantly the '+1' in search. A 'truly social' search experience.
On Tuesday, Google Fellow Amrit Singhal (the engineer partly responsible for the algorithms that Google's search engine is based on) published a blog post entitled "Search, plus Your World" – which is summarised below.
- Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
- Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you're close to or might be interested in following; and,
- People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.
Over the next week, Google are rolling out the above three features (which we'll call Search+ for now); all of which result in personalised search results to live search queries. These features will be available to the 40m users with Google+ accounts; producing individual results for each user's query, populated with content from (only) Google+.
On the one hand, the (opt-out) Search+ intiative is wonderful – and will provide Google+ users with truly personalised (and relevant) content from their social circles. It's also worth noting just how much Google appear to be supporting social data. Just think how (much more) useful Google would become if it were to feature content pulled from every one of your social networks! But then on the other hand, Search+ raises some interesting questions.
- As Search+ won't include results from Facebook (which blocks Google from crawling it) and priorities Google+ content over the publicly available results from Twitter, is Search+ anti-competitive?
- Will Search+ cause Facebook and Twitter to open up and allow Google to crawl their non-public content – or simply deepen the animosity between the three companies?
- Will the personalisation of results from the world's most popular search engine (by market share) have consequences on how we discover information?
Facebook has always been a closed platform, denying Google the right to crawl its databases – although some public posts are available to the search engine. But then Facebook and Google have never really been best buddies.
Twitter did have the 'Realtime Search' agreement with Google, where the search engine's crawlers could access tweets and profiles. But then, for some reason, the two companies couldn't see eye to eye when the agreement came for renewal. So it wasn't.
It has been suggested, although this is a long shot, that Search+ is an extremely risky move to get Facebook (and to an extent Twitter) – its serious competitors in social – to open up (to search) or face the same antritrust procedures that are currently being leveled at Google. Given the history, it's extremely unlikely this is going to happen.
So what's wrong with Search+? Yes, it's a little anti-competitive and will probably lead to a slap on the wrist from an antitrust inquiry – but it'll do little to clear the air between Google, Facebook and Twitter. Search+ won't cause Google+'s competitors to open up their databases either. It's Google's focus on personalisation and their departure from delivering relevant and unbiased results to queries that is causing the issue – an issue explained by Eli Pariser in his TED talk below.
Google's job, as one of the best and most popular search engines in the world, is to deliver unbiased, un-prioritised results to its users. Even if those results do include Google's competitors.
By forcing Google+ into the results page and skewing the relevancy of results, Google is ultimately moving away from what made Google successful in the first place.
Categories: Insight
Tags: Content strategy, Digital strategy, facebook, Google, Google+, Reputation, SEO, Social search, Twitter
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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.
Categories: Startups of the week
Tags: Digital strategy, facebook, Google, iPhone, Mobile First
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5 top finds #26 »
A new logo for London 2012, Facebook's mobile phone is apparently a failure (and it's not even finished yet), Google's take on iTunes, i(can't)Message, chasing deer and chasing investment. It's 5 top finds...
1. 2012 gets a facelift
There was quite a bit of consternation when Wolff Olin's logo for London 2012(™) was unveiled in 2007. We were a little surprised to see the consternation continuing – with an alternative logo being submitted to Logo Design Love just last week (with an accompanying dig at Wolff Olin's attempt). venturethree's version is actually rather good!
2. Poor Buffy's not doing so well
There have been rumours drifting around the internet for years about the possibility of Facebook producing a phone. Or rather Facebook writing the software and partnering with a hardware producer like HTC or Samsung to produce a mobile.
Tech blog AllThingsD recently published a story revealing that FB are actually in the process of producing such a phone running on a HTC handset with souped-up Android. Apparently, according to Inside Mobile Apps, things haven't been going smoothly...
But, on a more positive note, all is apparently not lost. The Wall Street Journal is reporting Facebook are looking into filing their elusive IPO "targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering, said people familiar with the matter" – in which the company is looking to raise $10bn.
Which would value the company at around $100bn...
3. Spinning in control (as long as you live in America)
Google launched their attempt to steal the digital music crown from iTunes (Match) last week. The imaginatively titled (but rather awesome) 'Google Music' lets you upload up to 20,000 of your own tracks to the cloud (for easy listening on any device), share your music tastes via Google+, access your music anywhere and discover new music via the Google Music recommendation system.
Which all sounds great, but it's as of yet unavailable in the UK...
4. To iMessage or not to iMessage
When Apple announced iMessage, their version of Blackberry's BBM service, back at WWDC in June, we all jumped for joy at what we thought would be a (free and) fantastic, SMS-killing service.
But, as is often the way, all is not as magical as first advertised. Entrepreneur Matt Galligan eloquently described what we couldn't. Well worth a read.
5. Chasing deer and rapping for investment
We've two videos in this week's 5 top finds:
1) Benton (no relation to the author, for those of you who were about to ask; who the Sun is reporting is actually called 'Fenton') being admonished – but taking no notice – for taking an afternoon jog with a herd of deer.
2) An intriguing way of marketing your startup and asking for angel investment (but it seems to work).
Categories: 5 top finds
Tags: Apple, #Benton, Buffy, facebook, Google+, iMessage, iPhone, London 2012, Mobile, Music
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5 top finds #23 »
An eye-watering statistic, some interesting research involving a botnet, tweets that are longer than 140 characters, the future of Apple's personal assistant Siri and a call to action we thoroughly approve. It's 5 top finds...
1. We all knew it was popular, but this popular?!
We're all huge fans of Angry Birds here at Hoop – you'd be hard pushed finding someone with a smartphone who isn't. And it seems that 500 million other people agree with us. Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, announced this week that the app had been downloaded by half a billion people. A truly astounding feat!
2. Going fishing (on Facebook, with a botnet)
Facebook are well known for having an odd view on their users' privacy. Google's results for the query 'Facebook Privacy' make for some interesting reading.
But when we read that researchers from a Canadian university used a botnet to steal 250GB worth of Facebook users' data, it looked like the boot was on the other foot. Facebook's security and privacy teams have some explaining to do! TechCrunch has the details.
3. Telling tales with Twitter
There's something wonderfully succinct about a tweet; it's amazing what you can get into 140 characters. But sometimes, the character limit means a tweet just isn't enough. For those occasions, you could use Shortmail, standard email or simply pick up the phone.
But when a tweet is enough, it's pretty awesome what a message on Twitter can achieve. Which is where Twitter Stories comes in. Well worth a look – another example of the power (for good) of social media.
4. Bob
It wouldn't be a true 5 top finds if we don't include at least one video. Lovely hamster Bob and his global travels gets this week's honour, just don't forget to watch the end credits. Watch Bob on Vimeo.
5. #gomobile
As it says on the site, "mobile isn't going to be a medium. It's going to be the medium". Good to see Google trying to get everyone up to speed on what is set to be (one hugely important aspect of) the future of the internet. Go mobile!
Categories: 5 top finds
Tags: Angry Birds, facebook, Google, iPhone, Mobile, Mobile First, Twitter
