AllThingsD » aggregate

SkyGrid Groups Social Media Conversations and Fans

Liz Gannes — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:00:53 +0000

SkyGrid, the creator of news filtering apps, today launched a free tool that gives public figures and organizations the ability to aggregate fan conversations.

The new SkyGrid Groups pages look like another social network, but they’re not; instead, they link out to fans’ existing profiles and updates on services like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

SkyGrid founder and CEO Kevin Pomplun said an artist like Lady Gaga (who is a launch partner) could create groups for the local areas where she will be touring (so they can meet and organize rides) or for people who are talking about a particular song of hers (based on a keyword search). Another pilot user is the crowdsourcing project Ushahidi, which is using its page to highlight top fans in its community.

Early Adopter: The Daytum iPhone App Visualizes Your Life (and Lunch) as Data

Drake Martinet — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:03:40 +0000

For data nerds everywhere, the pinnacle of numerical navel-gazing has, at least since 2005, been Nicholas Felton’s beautifully designed “Annual Reports” on the numbers behind his personal behavior.

He has meticulously recorded, quantified, analyzed and laid out all manner of data from his life in a series that riffs on the annual reports that businesses issue to their shareholders.

Instead of earnings and capital expenditure statements, Felton’s reports are full of numbers like cost-per-mile-run at the gym and how many hours he worked from home versus office.

And now, of course, there’s an app for that.

Daytum, the name under which Felton and his co-creator Ryan Case have released what is essentially a consumer-focused designers’ portfolio project, previously existed only as a Web app to help users track and organize the everyday data of their lives.

The Apple iPhone version, released on New Year’s Eve, puts the sans-serif-chic data collection interface into your pocket and out into the world, where life’s data actually happens.

So, what is it good for?

Felton and Case hope that the app, plus a forthcoming API to their Daytum Web application, will enable more people to see their own data in a new way.

The app is designed to help you begin tagging the pieces of data that you’d like to track.

There’s no automated input. Just tap the screen to create a category of data you are interested in tracking.

Add the category “Lunch” and then set up some recurring fields under lunch. “Sandwich,” for example.

Then, anytime you eat a sandwich, or anything else, for lunch, you can quickly mark it down.

The app allows you to add data points as they happen, even if you don’t have an Internet connection right then.

How else would you track how much money you give to subway musicians each month?

So, we ask again, what’s it good for?

Whether or not you ate a sandwich today, Felton admitted, is not all that interesting. He claims the data of life becomes more compelling in the aggregate.

Maybe you’d like to know how many miles you walked this month, or how your mood correlated with the weather, or if you or your partner changed more diapers this year.

It might not seem like groundbreaking stuff, but the data of a life starts to tell a story when laid out, clean and collected, in Felton’s various visualizations.

Felton said that data’s value comes on may levels.

“It helps you see and share all kinds of stuff about your life–it can be really interesting to people who know you,” he said.

Digitizing the human analog data of the world is certainly a growth area in tech.

Tools have emerged to find out when users are awake via their tweets, there has been major growth in mobile purchase tracking and patents are being awarded to companies that offer deals based on where a person goes.

If the renaissance of this arena is still years off, it might be the perfect time to try to get ahead of the curve and tap the brains of people who are already thinking like it’s 2015.

Felton has spent the last half-decade staring at and organizing his own data and, more recently, the data of others via Daytum.

I asked him what wisdom he might have gained from his unusual pursuit.

“People seem to record binary items really well–things like one drink, or watching one TV show,” he said. “Recording gets harder and less regular when it’s things without a set size or quantity, like when they ate a meal.”

When I asked if he felt suspicious of the businesses that were gathering his data, he came back with something a little deeper.

“I think the walling up of data by businesses is really a missed opportunity, not cause for suspicion,” he said. “Someone knows how long it has been since I called my mother, but I can’t be certain. That information could be valuable to me.”

He added: “Businesses seem to be stuck on the idea of loyalty rewards being about points.”

For Felton, data can be its own reward.

His next data-driven project might bring the whole idea home.

Felton’s father passed away in September, and he’s decided to postpone his 2010 report for something larger and more personal.

So, he will release a single report on all of his father’s 81 years based on data gathered from years of slides, travel postcards, “FasTrak” auto toll payments and myriad other sources.

“I have gotten to know things about him that I never knew while he was alive,” he said. “I’ve learned that he was much better at maths and sciences than English back in school. I can actually quantify that.”

But the question on the minds of so many emerging data-driven businesses is: How well can we know people, our users and consumers based on their data?

Finding that answer seems to be Felton’s personal mission. And in the spirit of his other reports, he will share it, and the tools he uses to find it, with the world.

Still not convinced of what it’s all good for? We’ll let him explain for himself in this video interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

(Early Adopter is a new column on early-stage start-ups and ideas that will be written weekly by Drake Martinet.)

Yahoo Announces Deep Integration Partnership With Social Gaming Start-Up Zynga

Kara Swisher — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:15:56 +0000

Yahoo announced a partnership to weave Zynga throughout its service this morning.

BoomTown actually called Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and asked him specifically about this deal last week and he denied it completely, not even relying on a more appropriate “no comment.”

In fact, he noted expansively that Yahoo (YHOO) had completely missed the boat in social gaming and that such a deal was probably a good idea to keep the Silicon Valley icon relevant in the space.

Pincus (pictured here, in the mind of BoomTown) did say the pair had been in discussions “forever,” but that there was nothing pending because “it’s impossible to get anything done with that company.”

Guess not (and good luck with the partnership with Pinocchio, Yahoo!).

The move by the gaming start-up is an attempt, presumably, to increase distribution of its popular games, such as FarmVille, beyond Facebook.

Zynga and Facebook recently engaged in a noisy game of brinksmanship over a wide range of issues, including charges for virtual currency, which included empty threats by Zynga, leaked to the press, to leave the social networking site.

Until now and for the most part, Zynga has built its business on Facebook.

But Facebook, according to numerous sources, has been increasingly wary of Zynga despite recently signing a long-term deal with the company, especially due to its practice of aggressively sending what Facebook considers spam to users to spur gaming activity.

Now Zynga has a whole new audience–Yahoo’s huge base of 600 million monthly users–to market to.

In any case, the move is a good one for Yahoo. While it is strong in casual gaming, it is weaker in the fast-growing social arena.

By pulling in a wide range of social services, as it did with Facebook and Twitter recently, Yahoo is seeking to be the place where users can aggregate their social experiences.

Not surprisingly, Yahoo execs touted the deal at its investor day, which is taking place now.

Here’s the press release from Yahoo about the deal:

YAHOO! GETS ITS GAME ON WITH ZYNGA

Partnership Weaves the Web’s Most Popular Social Games throughout Yahoo

SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 26, 2010–Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), today announced a partnership with Zynga that will integrate Zynga’s popular social games through Yahoo!’s global network. The partnership enables Zynga games to reach more than 600 million people worldwide across Yahoo!, giving them access to new and deeper ways to engage with friends and make new ones.

Zynga’s game integration with Yahoo! is part of Yahoo!’s commitment to offer personally relevant experiences to people from across the Web. Zynga games are expected to roll out on the Yahoo! network in the coming months and will include:

Ability for people to play Zynga games and access their personal Zynga game updates across Yahoo!’s properties including the Homepage, Yahoo! Games, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Messenger and others.

Sharing of updates across multiple social experiences simultaneously while playing their favorite Zynga games on Yahoo!

Product integration of Zynga games with the Yahoo! Application Platform (YAP), Yahoo!’s OpenSocial container through which third-party developers can develop applications on Yahoo!

“Yahoo is focused on providing compelling, personally relevant experiences and social games are core to this experience,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president, Yahoo! Americas. “Zynga will bring top notch social game experiences to Yahoo!, including through our open platforms such as Yahoo! Application Platform and Yahoo! Updates. Yahoo! will also continue to work with other partners, developers and publishers to bring compelling innovations and experiences from across the web to our users.”

“With over 35 million unique users playing our games every single day, social games are fast becoming a leading source of entertainment worldwide surpassing most television shows,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “Our partnership with Yahoo! gives millions of new users the ability to connect with friends and families through games.”

Today’s partnership along with Yahoo!’s recently announced Facebook and Twitter relationships brings together social experiences from across the web and extends Yahoo!’s social strategy by providing multiple places across Yahoo! for people to play social games, access and share information, and connect with the people that matter to them the most.

Groupon's Andrew Mason Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:00:03 +0000

The last time I really was truly bullish on a start-up and its founder–BoomTown’s motto is wait-and-see rather than hype-it-up–was AdMob’s Omar Hamoui.

That turned out pretty well, with the sale of the mobile advertising site to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last fall.

My 2010 start-up that passes the slightly-less-raised-eyebrow test is Groupon, a group-based social buying service that nabbed another $30 million in funding in December.

So earlier this week, I sat down with Groupon’s Midwesternly-nice Andrew Mason, 29, to talk about where the start-up is headed with its pile of dough and growing base of consumers who want to make a deal.

The Chicago-based Groupon has actually raised a total of just under $36 million from angels, New Enterprise Associates and Accel Partners so far.

Not that it needs it. The company–like AdMob–is profitable, despite having 200 employees and and a lightning growth path to expand its base of local sites.

The innovative service, which launched only a year ago, features a “daily deal” with a huge discount on a wide range of things–from spas to skydiving and, recently, pole-dancing lessons–in more than two dozen U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston, New York and San Francisco.

Not everything works–a recent offer of a lobster dinner shipped to buyers was a bomb, as was a tour of Michael Jackson’s childhood home in Gary, Indiana.

The deals are offered to large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, Groupon–a mashup term for “group” and “coupon”–tries to use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If it reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, Groupon sells coupons to the consumers and collects a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

At the cost of discounting and of paying off Groupon, small businesses get a crack at a lot of new customers–think of it as social networking lead-generation or, perhaps, the “Social Shopping Network.”

Groupon grew out of a project of The Point, an online community launched in 2007 for organizing group action.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing them in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones–Mercata–got $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

But now the group-buying space has been reinvigorated, with a spate of competitors, some of which are clear copycats–which, touchingly, really bugs Mason.

There is even a site, called Yipit, that aggregates all the group-buying sites.

Here’s the video of my interview with Mason at the Accel offices in downtown Palo Alto, Calif., on his second visit to Silicon Valley–as well as a video below it from Groupon about how the service works:

[ See post to watch video ]

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

Yahoo Is Trying to Connect to the Social Boom Without Stepping in It Like Google Buzz

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:00:50 +0000

Is there more than one way to skin a social graph?

Yesterday, Yahoo (YHOO) took another step in its efforts to play fast catch-up in the social networking arena, by dramatically expanding its relationship with Twitter and integrating the microblogging service broadly throughout its Web site.

In much the same way it did recently with Facebook, Yahoo’s move is part of a massive integration of more innovative and popular third-party social networking sites across the giant Internet portal, which is code-named internally “Project Rushmore.”

Some think outsourcing the job to more capable companies is yet another monument to Yahoo’s failure at its own much touted plans to socialize itself.

And while this is true to a large extent, BoomTown is not so sure it’s a bad idea, especially compared with the flailing experienced by Google (GOOG) recently from its own attempts to compete with Facebook and Twitter via the rollout of Google Buzz.

That has certainly turned out to be a confusing mishmash so far and most definitely a privacy quagmire for the search giant, which–let’s be honest–might not be able to grok social even if it got poked in the head relentlessly.

And while Google execs have loudly claimed that they are not aiming at the social networking’s twin phenoms, the air of aggressive desperation–or maybe desperate aggression–is palpable.

That’s why what the Silicon Valley icon is doing might be the best solution for it at this point–if you can’t innovate, aggregate!

“We want to integrate across all social networks to give consumers a better experience,” said Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Yahoo’s open strategy, in an interview yesterday. “Yahoo then becomes a network of social networks, making it easier for users.”

And that effort to make Yahoo the one place to gather it all is just what it seems to be trying to do. In December, Yahoo announced it would integrate Facebook Connect with its many properties–from its powerful media sites to its Flickr photo service to its email.

That has now been followed by the weaving of Twitter’s real-time feed throughout the service in a variety of ways. Under terms of the deal, users can access the data stream of tweets while on Yahoo, make status updates and share Yahoo content.

In addition, Yahoo said that search and media properties “like News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports will include real-time public Twitter updates across a variety of topics.”

Yahoo sources said the company would be striking similar deals with other social networking sites, and MySpace and LinkedIn are likely candidates for the next two spots on Yahoo’s social monument.

This kind of search and presentation improvement is key, of course, as Yahoo must present a more innovative palette of tools to consumers as Microsoft (MSFT) takes over its search technology and others offer users an increasing number of features.

Without naming Google Buzz, Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s VP of Communities, said he thinks it is the best course at this point in the game, in which Facebook and Twitter have run far ahead with the social ball and do not show any signs of slowing down quite yet.

“I don’t think yet another social network, no matter how you try to force it on consumers, is what people want,” said Stoneham, in a not-so-veiled slap at Google Buzz. “So, Yahoo will obviously not be doing another social network.”

That’s the best news I have heard in a long time from Yahoo. Now, let’s see if it can turn not making something into, well, something.

Google Outside Counsel Clearly Well-Prepared for FTC Fight Over Apple Board Seat–See This Internal Doc

John Paczkowski — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:46:04 +0000

If the Federal Trade Commission takes issue with Google and Apple’s interlocking boards, Google will be well prepared. Last October, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati–the company’s outside law firm–gave a presentation on this very issue. (Though available on the Web at the time of this writing, the presentation document has since been removed. You can see it, however, in a Google cache or scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Ironic, yeah?

It’s not certain why WSGR prepared the presentation, but the document obviously applies to the close ties between Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) and, if nothing else, offers insight into the “interlocking directorates” provision of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and just why the FTC might be concerned that the companies may be in violation of antitrust law by sharing four board members and advisers between them: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Genentech (DNA) CEO Art Levinson, Intuit (INTU) chairman Bill Campbell and former vice president Al Gore.

According to the WSGR presentation, the Clayton Act stipulates that a person cannot serve as director or officer of two or more competing companies when the two are engaged in U.S. or foreign competition; each has $25,319,000 in aggregate capital, surplus, and undivided profits; and at least one has two percent in overlapping sales (note: while that $25 million figure was correct at the time the deck was prepared, it has since risen to $26,161,000). Now, Apple and Google clearly both meet the “aggregate capital, surplus, and undivided profits” condition. They probably don’t meet the second, but it’s conceivable that they might in the future as Google’s Android platform rises to challenge Apple’s iPhone in the mobile phone software and services market.

And if and when they should? Well, that leads to what WSGR describes as “occasion of sin”– a theological term that refers to circumstances that by their very nature lead to sin.

In other words, inevitable sin. And competition between the two companies is no absolution, either. As the presentation explains, there is “no safe harbor for de minimus competition.” Given the obvious overlaps between Google and Apple–between both products and directors–the two companies would seem to be heading for some sort of confrontation with the FTC. Especially if, as sources say, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has no intention of resigning from Apple’s board–even in the face of increasing government scrutiny of the company.

UPDATE: WSGR tells me the document was prepared for an internal training session. It had no explanation for why the firm published it on the Web.

UPDATE: As Danny Sullivan notes in the comments, Google has removed the cached version of the document — rather expeditiously. However, there’s still a cached version available over at Microsoft.

Clayton Act Section 8 Interlocking Directorates – Free Legal Forms