Helzerman's Odd Bits » Launch

GigaTribe file sharing service launches in the US

oddbits — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:33:56 +0000

GigaTribe, the file sharing service with the worst tag line – “Opening your hard drive to your friends” (seriously) – has launched in the US. The service allows users to share photos, videos and other files with groups of people in a peer to peer environment. GigaTribe will hold its official US launch at the Euro Tech Showcase, November 18-19 in Redwood City, CA.

GigaTribe is offered free with the option of a GigaTribe “Ultimate” upgrade with more advanced features (such as faster downloads), priced at $29.95/year.

According to the company, photos and videos uploaded to GigaTribe remain in their original full size, and resolution and are not lowered for posting. The site also allows users to share complete file folders regardless of size and users can control access based on user groups. As part of the free service, businesses can opt to set up an Virtual Private Network (VPN) for added file security.

GigaTribe currently has over 900,000 users worldwide.

Social Network Qlubb adds photo and file sharing

Interviews — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:30:55 +0000

Qlubb, a social network targeted at offline groups such as book clubs and sports teams, announced new features today including photo and file sharing. The network, which launched in August of this year, provides groups of users, or Qlubbs, with publishing and planning tools that can be used to manage projects, prepare for events, or engage in other types of community activity. As part of today’s announcement the company is increasing the amount of free photo sharing space to 1GB per Qlubb. Community members will also be able to upload and download files to share with the rest of the group as well as associate those files with calendared events. The company also announced volunteer notification, a feature that will automatically notify users of upcoming volunteer opportunities.

In a Q&A with Helzerman’s Odd Bits, Qlubb CEO Sophia Chiang discussed today’s announcement and the competitive landscape for location-based social networks.

What is the most popular feature on Qlubb today and why do you think users will be excited about file sharing?

I think the most popular features on Qlubb today are the online sign-up sheets and calendar reminders. The hardest part about organizing groups is the scheduling and delegation of tasks to members. With Qlubb’s online sign-up sheets and automatic reminders, the back-and-forth of emails and scheduling is virtually eliminated, and the “nagging” and reminding of people of their tasks and events are all handled by Qlubb. We have many members who love the ability to set up all of the events for the year and let the reminders guide everyone on when they need to take action. All the overhead is taken care of upfront.

As a veteran school and community leader, I am very excited about the new file sharing and photo functionality. Nearly all groups produce documents to support its various activities and events. These documents (flyers, handbooks, newsletters, permission slips, brochures) are often associated with a group event. With our new file and photo sharing functionality, Qlubb gives group members that ability to categorize and store files by calendar date or event – making retrieval and reference SO much easier and much more intuitive.

So instead of telling a fellow parent ” please filter through the 20 documents online and find permission_slip_08-10-12.pdf, uploaded on 08-09-10″, with the new Qlubb capability the parent could just go to the event “field trip to pumpkin patch” and see the file “permission_slip.pdf” on the calendar and associated with the date.

Do you have any opinion on new neighborhood-based social networks?

I think there is a need for them, but the challenge is to build a neighborhood-social network that has something more in common than just a zip code. There has to be a reason for people to go on to share and connect – it could be a network concerned about the school system, or a neighborhood watch program, or parenting. In a given zip code there are many types of people with different interests, and so these neighborhood sites need to create a common thread across all these groups – which I believe is difficult.

The addition of a section for volunteering opportunities seems to place Qlubb in direct competition with some pretty big volunteering sites such as VolunteerMatch. Do you see them as competitors?

Our ability to more easily publicize volunteering opportunities are within the group as opposed to publishing volunteer opportunities for the world to see, thus VolunteerMatch is not a competitor to Qlubb. Qlubb is about giving existing real-life groups a place on the web to communicate, organize and get stuff done. We believe VolunteerMatch is about finding people to help and so it’s really an individual recruitment service.

What would you like for people to know about Qlubb?

Qlubb is about how to help real-life groups communicate and work more efficiently and effectively. We originally started Qlubb to help parents to be more involved and active in their children’s lives. But over time, we have found Qlubb to be useful to a much wider swath of people – just about any group of people who communicate, share and work together. By giving groups a centralized place to congregate online and that is so simple to use that anyone can figure it out, members can easily contribute and participate in their groups. After only a few months, Qlubb users are seeing significant increases in user participation and significant reduction in email and miscommunication.

New York Times Social Network Lets you share stories, but it won’t get you a date

Quick News — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:50:39 +0000

The New York Times entered the world of social networking with the launch of TimesPeople today. The network is designed as a venue for readers to share and comment on NYtimes.com stories. Users can make recommendations, share articles, videos, blog posts, reviews of movies, restaurants and hotels.

What TimesPeople is not is a hook-up site or a traditional social network where people meet friends, get followers or gather vast networks of contacts.

TimesPeople begins its site FAQ with this statement:

TimesPeople is a social network for Times readers. But it’s not a social network like Facebook or MySpace — you won’t have Times friends, and it won’t get you Times dates. Instead, you’ll assemble a network of Times readers. Then you’ll be able to share interesting things on NYTimes.com with others in the network. For example, when you recommend an article, comment on a blog post, or rate a movie or restaurant, these activities will become visible to other TimesPeople users in a special toolbar at the top of every NYTimes.com page. You’ll also have a personal page that keeps track of your TimesPeople activities and lets you browse your network of readers.

Got it?

Image courtesy of The New York Times

Marvel Apps Releases Fantasy Football ‘08 for iPhone

oddbits — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:42:12 +0000

Marvel Apps, LLC has released what it claims is the first iPhone application for in-season fantasy football news and advice, Fantasy Football ‘08 by Fandora’s Box. The game runs on both the iPhone and iTouch and is available on the iTunes App Store. Fantasy Football ‘08 acts as an “assistant coach” offering the latest player and team news, injury updates, game recaps and fantasy advice. Fantasy football fans will find a lot of features in this first release including details such as matchup analysis and game weather reports. Marvel Apps plans on delivering additional content based on customer feedback in an update planned for early November.

“We are excited to offer this product to Fantasy Football fans. With this app, users will always have the latest information needed to field their best lineups and win games.” said Bill Leisenring, President of Marvel Apps, LLC. Leisenring also stated, “We are planning on adding more content based on customer feedback in an update planned for early October. It is important to the Marvel Apps team that we constantly listen to the customers and deliver a product that they will love to use.” Fantasy Football ‘08 by Fandora’s Box works on both the iPhone and iPod Touch and is available today in Apple’s App Store in the Sports and Entertainment categories.

For the football fan who wants up to the minute alerts, Marvel Apps, LLC has a product called Fantasy Football Advisor. For “less than $1 per week,” the Advisor provides live player stats alerts to mobile devices via SMS for scores, yardage milestones, and final game stats. Additional news notification and analysis features are available with this service which works on any SMS enabled devices and does not require a cell phone.

BuzzLogic Launches Conversation Ad Network for Bloggers

oddbits — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:17:32 +0000

This week at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo event, BuzzLogic, an online social media ad network, announced general availability of its Conversation Ad Network. The product had been in beta since June of this year. Today, Conversation Ad Network includes over 500 websites across categories including entertainment, technology and politics. BuzzLogic and its partner networks represent a total reach of 2 billion monthly impressions.

Unlike ad networks that reward high traffic sites, Conversation Ad Network is targeted toward blogs of all sizes that are influential within their scope of expertise. Sites receive compensation based on their influence ranking within the Buzzlogic system, which considers factors such as incoming/outgoing links and subject matter expertise. Bloggers may be invited to join the network or can apply for membership.

The Conversation Ad Network leverages the company’s Conversation Ad Targeting platform to identify high-impact conversations and the blogs leading the dialogue. The platform then matches those sites (and the audiences actively engaged in specific areas of discussion) to the most appropriate network advertisers.

“We’ve seen a strong correlation between campaign effectiveness and the quality blogs our technology is able to surface since launching our targeting platform last year – now we’re expanding our targeting approach to our own network of sites,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of BuzzLogic. “In this fragmented media environment, it has become clear that a popular site isn’t necessarily influential when it comes to niche subject areas. Many lesser-known blogs have the capability to deliver great advertising results, they’re just not getting paid for it – our technology helps correct that imbalance.”

This is something the print publishing world has known for some time –a small, targeted audience, is sometimes better than a wide reach. Just look at those skinny, expertly written trade journals on niche topics that successfully collect subscription rates in excess of $500 for twelve thin issues, or the narrowly focused advertising in society magazines focused on small communities, such as Bridgehampton, New York. For a narrow-focus brand that wants to reach out to a specific audience, a blog read exclusively by that audience is more valuable than a spot on the New York Times website, which would sell for thousands of dollars.

A social network devoted to menstral cycles -Seriously

oddbits — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:48:19 +0000

There is a social network for just about everything these days including, apparently, menstrual cycles. Sporting what has to be the ugliest interface ever designed, MyMonthlyCycles covers everything related to a woman’s cycle including topics such as trying to conceive (TTC in Internet lingo), period calendars and reminders for those who want their computers to alert them when that time of the month is imminent.

Today, MyMonthlyCycles announced that it has added a wishing well to its site, so that members can shout cute messages to each other. Although I personally found the site hard to navigate, members apparently like it and hundreds of messages have been posted in the two weeks since it went on line.

One thing working in the social network’s favor is that it doesn’t require a log in so users can post quick messages without a lengthy registration process. This is something I wish more websites would offer.

BlueHaze Launches Communities for Concert Fans on facebook, iPhone and the Web

oddbits — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:09:28 +0000

BlueHaze has announced the launch of a multi-platform community for concert fans at bluehaze.com, facebook, and the iPhone. While BlueHaze claims to be the first company in their space to launch in multi-platform, expect this to become the standard moving forward as people get more attached to their mobile devices and sites like facebook remain a core part of our web experience.

Targeted at concert goers, BlueHaze offers features including the ability to find local shows and buy tickets through partner sites. Users can check out what concerts their friends are attending and share concert photos, reviews and set lists with other fans. The site also allows members to scan their iTunes library and get tour alerts from their favorite artists.

I asked Mark Shedletsky, the CEO of BlueHaze, about his vision for the company.

Our goal at BlueHaze is enhance the live music experience for concert fans before, during and after the show.

Before the show, we aim to make it really easy to discover new bands and find shows – through local concert listings, tour alerts from your favorite artists, and the ability to see what shows your friends are seeing. We also give you an opportunity to socialize and meet other fans that have similar live music taste.

During the show, our iPhone app can be used to snap and share concert photos in real-time with other fans at the show. The photos are immediately available for viewing on the phone for the entire world to see, as well as on the site and facebook app. In short, we set out to create the dominant community to connect the hundreds or thousands of fans at each show to each other and to the artist – something that didn’t exist before BlueHaze.

After the concert, BlueHaze.com – and the facebook app – connect all of the fans together that were at the show and offer the chance to share photos, reviews, and set lists. In the near future, we will giving a handful of tools to artists to make it really easy for them to interact with their local fans that are actually paying to see them live.

BlueHaze is brand new on the scene having just launched on September 3rd (about a week ago, as of this writing), but already they’ve seen 40,000+ downloads of the iPhone app and they have a solid base of users on both the site and facebook application.

Shedletsky said, “The reaction to date has been amazing. We’re getting great user feedback and seeing lots of interactivity with the site and apps.” The blogging community and press has supported our launch completely, and at our demo yesterday, we received a ton of very positive feedback.”

One thing he said that struck me was, “Every concert is a community. For one night, in that one venue, you’re a part of something bigger.” Although I’m not really a live music fan, I distinctly remember the “feel” of big concerts I went to in my youth from artists like The Grateful Dead and Ozzy Ozbourne. I wonder what the experience will be like for today’s audiences getting together to chat about Molly Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers.

MeetingWave Brings Social Networking into the Real World

oddbits — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:00:25 +0000

We’re all online these days, but have we forgotten how to interact in person? With unemployment topping six percent, business networking is more important than ever and some people (albeit probably not antisocial folks like me) might want to get to know their neighbors. MeetingWave, recently launched in beta, is part of a trend toward social networking sites designed to enable offline interaction.

The concept is simple, you sign on to the free website, create a profile and post an invite to meet new people. You decide who can attend and how much information you want to share in advance on the location, details and particulars of the meeting. Feeling shy about posting an invite? You can also browse existing invites and accept any that are of interest. When I browsed the site for meetings in the Bay Area, I found listings around topics including real estate, mom’s groups, and even romance.

A large percentage of users are traveling business people who want to meet like minded people in cities they’re visiting. This was actually the inspiration for the site. I spoke with John Boyd, MeetingWave, CEO and Founder who said he originally thought of the idea in 1999 when he was a patent attorney and frequently traveling.

“My only options,” Boyd said, “would be eating in the hotel room alone or eating in the dining room where I was also alone. I thought it would be useful to have a networking tool where I could meet people when I was on the road.”

MeetingWave offers new users guidance on how to structure their invites to generate interest and provides easy step by step instructions making the process simple. The site also provides practical safety tips that should be followed in any offline networking setting, such as meeting in public places and bringing a friend with you if appropriate.

In addition to the current FAQs, Boyd pointed out that there will soon be a “features” page dedicated to explaining how the site works and highlighting useful features people might miss, such as the ability to import contacts from Linked-In, GMail, Yahoo! Mail and other web mail services, forward invites of interest to friends for their review, use RSS to be notified of new invites of interest and more.

By the end of Q4 2008 the company plans to roll out a geolocation platform on either Blackberry or iPhone that would allow users to do things such as search for meetings on a particular topic within a certain distance, such as 10 miles, of their current location or be notified of invites of interest based on their location. Other features in the works include email notifications of new invites of interest and widget technology that would enable users to seamlessly integrate MeetingWave into existing social networks on sites such as Ning.

Asked about his feelings on the Beta program Boyd said, “We’re excited about moving forward.”

As well he should be. With possible applications ranging from end user social networking to closed systems for setting up meetings at places such as large conferences and tradeshows, MeetingWave has a lot of market potential.

Just Launched: Investor Behind Skype Bets Big on Online Ticket Social Network LiveStub

oddbits — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Morten Lund, the investor behind Skype has just launched his latest venture, LiveStub.com, a social network dedicated to reselling tickets to events, concerts, you name it.

Making money from reselling tickets is one of the oldest gigs going (as old as gigs themselves) and a hotbed for scam artists. So, what better place for Lund to put his financial muscle to create a legit site and do for ticket selling what Skype did for long distance calling?

According LiveStub, some ticket resale sites tack on additional fees of up to 25 percent that cut into sellers’ profits and raise costs for buyers. LiveStub allows users to post their listings for free, cutting out what LiveStub co-founder, Michael Hershfield, calls “glorified middlemen.”

”It is time for a ‘fan driven ticket site’ that was truly created with the needs of the fans, both buyers and sellers, in mind,” stated Morten Lund “By offering a platform that quickly and efficiently connects buyers and sellers based on location, and does not attach inflated fees for either party, LiveStub will help grow the secondary ticket market amongst the general public,” Lund said.

Apparently, Lund is betting big. With this investment, LiveStub will become the top site in the “secondary ticket market” which sees nearly $5 billion dollars in annual sales.

Talking Over the Fence: How One Social Network Brings Neighbors Together

oddbits — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:00:03 +0000

Ryan Kuder knows something about building communities. At Yahoo!, he worked on some of the company’s largest brands including Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Answers. Now, along with entrepreneur Jonathan Tarud, he is turning his attention to issues closer to home. Kuder made the announcement on his blog, http://www.ryankuder.com,

My co-founder, Jonathan Tarud, and I are starting a company called Neighborsville answering the question, “What’s going on in my neighborhood?” And when you want to know what’s going on in your neighborhood, who better to ask than your neighbors? We’re building a neighborhood based social network to do just that.

Our hypothesis is that by enabling neighbors to share information with each other, you’ll know more about what’s going on in your neighborhood…which makes your neighborhood a better place to live.

While there is a bit of an overlap with sites such as Yelp, which offers online reviews of local restaurants and services, Neighborsville is more complimentary to local reviews and directory sites rather than a direct competitor. What those sites don’t hit on is the more intimate conversations that happen between neighbors.

To get a feel of where Kuder is going with Neighborsville; look to where he has been. One year ago, Kuder built a small network with the idea of communicating with his neighbors in the town of Willow Glen, California. It quickly grew to over 400 members.

A quick visit to that site found conversations you might expect about restaurants, local events, meets and sport, but also more “between neighbors” talk that you’d never find on Yelp such as this exchange, (edited for brevity, user names removed),

Posted by Xxxxxxx — A neighbor was arrested earlier this month and the details involve the shooting of a gun or rifle in his home. Nicest guy however, we would like to know the details (we think it may involve another neighbor and both of their front doors are just steps away). It was a horrible scene to see our neighbor face down on the ground for well over 30 mins.

Reply by Zzzzzzz — Look here: http://www.crimereports.com/map
In the past 14 days, a Rape at Bramhall park was reported as the only crime on Willow. I hope you are not referring to the house on Crescent and Willow. That guy is a registered child molester.

Reply by Xxxxxx —Thank you for the link. The case you’ve brought up is not the same as my post however, do appreciate the info. Especially, since that local is right around the corner and yikes, that’s really creepy news!

Now that’s the kind of valuable information you’d get from your best friend, or the fellow next door, but certainly not from Yelp or the Yellow Pages or any other online site -perhaps until now.

Helzerman's Odd Bits » Launch

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