Posted by Renegade Saw on Fri, Jun 15, 2012 @ 09:15 AM
Without a doubt, one of the biggest social media stories of the year has been Facebook’s cool $1 billion dollar purchase of Instagram, a free photo-sharing mobile app that allows users to edit, stylize, and upload photos to several social media platforms. Instagram’s popularity and success can be attributed to a variety of things they recognized about the social media world and its users. First and foremost they appreciated the growing importance of social media on the go, and made their app fast and efficient for mobile use. They also saw the potential in enhancing a mobile photo into a work of art with digital filters: people have the tendency to be more enthused about a personalized pretty picture they created than a regular ol’ snap shot on the iPhone or Android. Since the new Facebook with Timeline has become increasingly oriented around photos and aesthetics, it is not surprising that Mark Zuckerberg would decide to purchase the best app best suited to enhance this aspect of Facebook users’ experience (and perhaps even knock out future competition). Although Instagram is still immensely popular, social media stops for no app, and the company’s success has only energized other start-up tech companies to come up with the next big media-sharing app. And this future big app on campus will undoubtedly be a video-sharing equivalent of Instagram.
The Front-Runner
Leading the way for video-sharing apps at the moment is Socialcam, which is second only to Instagram in the Apple Store’s most downloaded free Photo & Video applications. Boasting over 10 million downloads, Socialcam allows users to upload their videos to social platforms and edit videos right after taking them on their mobile device. While the formula seems to follow that of Instagram to a ‘t’, Socialcam also allows users to further personalize their mobile movies with soundtracks and custom titles, as well as with Instagram-esque digital filters.
Socialcam is one of many hopefuls in the race to be the next Instagram, and the competition is sure to heat up with apps like Viddy, Klip, and others gaining momentum. Because these apps are all free, users are able to discriminate by personal preference, aesthetic, and desired capabilities.
The Competition
Viddy allows users to upload 15-second videos to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Tumblr. Like Socialcam, Viddy allows you to edit your mobile movies on the go with music, digital filters, transitions and more. The Viddy celebrity community is spearheaded by Britney Spears, who has 28.3K followers. While Viddy is the 9th most downloaded free Photo & Video app, it might be able to amass more of a following if the app was available for Android phone, as only iPhone users can enjoy Viddy now.
Klip, another iPhone-only app, offers users 20 real-time video effects. On klip.com, users can upload directly and share their movies with the klip community publicly or more privately. Klip also encourages social media platform integration not only by sharing movies on a variety of platforms, but also by enabling searchable hashtags on the klip site. Users can use hashtags in the title of their videos, track trends or find like-minded movie makers.
Video might not kill the Instagram star, but these apps are certainly the ones to keep an eye on in the upcoming months.
Have you downloaded a video-sharing app? What do you think the next Instagram will be? Let us know what you think.
- Emma Neisser
Posted by Renegade Saw on Thu, Nov 03, 2011 @ 03:45 PM
For all the Tech nerds out there, here is an article on incredible apps that you should bookmark to make your life easier. These apps will help you do everything from modify un-editable PDFs to share music, edit photos and design you dream home.
It is sometimes overwhelming how many apps and sites are mentioned to us daily. It is even more overwhelming how many of them are completely useless, and just takes up time in our busy day and slowly invades our computer. But with a push on the right direction and a little research there are apps out there that make our lives if not easier, a bit more fun.
There is an app that especially caught my attention. Everyone knows what a pain it is to find an apartment in the right place, with the right feel and the right price. PadMapper is an app that will literally map all the apartments on craigslist on Google maps and when scrolling over each apartment you get the complete info. You can even pick a list to ad to your favorites to then contact the owners and make a selection.
In short if you like music, cooking, design, news, or just plain being organized you should definitely check out the list and see which app fits with your lifestyle.
Posted by Renegade Saw on Thu, Sep 08, 2011 @ 10:12 AM
In 2009, Twitter became the talk of the town. The next year, daily deal sites like Groupon and Living Social kept the social media community on its toes. As 2011 approached, Geosocial applications like Foursquare and Gowalla looked as though they would become the newest communications craze. Even Facebook prepared for such a possibility by adding a Places feature to its networking options.
But as the third quarter winds down, the year no longer seems ripe for a check-in revolution. A survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that while 28 percent of cell phone owners use location-based services for directions and recommendations, but only 5 percent are checking in. When looking specifically at smartphone owners, the former figure jumps to 55 percent while the latter only increases to 12.
If Facebook were an oracle hinting at Foursquare and Gowalla’s potential growth, perhaps it is also a harbinger of their decline. Just two weeks ago the social networking giant dispatched Places in favor of more versatile (and less stalker-like) location functions.
The failure of geosocial services to find traction could be attributed to a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is privacy. While some critics might site safety concerns, others simply do not want to broadcast their location across the various networks. Although check-in applications didn’t become this year’s social media darling, such services could always make a late-game resurgence. After all, it took Facebook six years to turn a positive cash-flow.
— Nicole Duncan
Posted by Renegade Saw on Thu, Sep 01, 2011 @ 12:02 PM
Somewhere along the way to smartphone ubiquity and tablet trendiness, offline became an unsavory word. Not as repugnant as dial-up or spam, but certainly not magnanimous like 3G. Social networks, web searches and general connectivity became more important than offline activities like word processing and Minesweep. The short-lived popularity of netbooks is a testament to the notion that if you’re not connected, you might as well turn your [insert device] off.
But what if you’re in a cafe that has no wireless? What if your Aunt Elsie’s house is out of range of your 3G network? Unless you had the foresight to download your work beforehand, such situations serve as flashbacks to pre-2008 computing. The only difference is that now your choice of activities is even more limited as offline has been left to the wayside by many digital innovators.
One of the tech behemoths that started this shift was Google: It introduced free programs like Gmail and Google Docs much to the chagrin of software developers. This May the company released its own netbook, the Chromebook, which seemed to solidify its commitment to the online occult.
You can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google was rolling out an offline version of Gmail. The application, which can be downloaded through the Chrome Web Store, is similar to its tablet version in appearance and functionality. As a dumbphone user who loves frequenting wifi-free cafes with my laptop, the ability to read, respond and sort through old e-mails without a connection is a major boon. Traditional mail servers like Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail have worked offline for years, but their mobility limitations, screwy settings and bland appearance kept them from reaching Gmail rock star status.
Google announced that it plans to extend this capability to Google Calendars and Docs as well— the latter of which will prove tricky given its collaborative nature. And if the search-engine-turned-tech-giant decrees “offline” to be an option for the 3G world, others may soon follow in its path.
— Nicole Duncan
Posted by Renegade Saw on Mon, Aug 01, 2011 @ 03:49 PM
I am a self-professed former foursquare skeptic. Check in to places so people can better stalk me? No thanks.
Times, however, have changed.
A quick look at my foursquare profile reveals I have over 100 check-ins, 18 badges and a mayorship. Not the most avid user, but I open the foursquare app to check-in pretty much on a daily basis.
I changed my stance on foursquare for the following reasons: specials, a reminder of cool places I’ve gone, and badges.
Specials:
Check in somewhere on foursquare and receive free things? Sold.
It’s a great marketing platform. I check-in and spread word about an establishment to my social network and in return I get a free mini cupcake or 20% off my bill. The MLB Fan Cave in New York is actually running a promotion with Showtime’s documentary about the San Francisco Giants (called “The Franchise”) where people who check-in get a free baseball. No gimmicks. Check mine out:
Foursquare has also recently partnered with Groupon and now shows Groupon’s daily deals via the foursquare app. You can read more about this collaboration here.
Places I’ve gone:
I don’t keep a journal. I should, but I just can’t seem to consistently write about my days and events. In fact, my memory isn’t always the greatest and I often forget some of the great places I have been to. Foursquare is not my journal, but it is nice to be able to see where I have checked-in in the past. A glance at my profile lists places like Coney Island and the NHL store in New York.
Badges:
The badges on foursquare don’t give any sort of physical reward. They are simply colorful icons that go on the foursquare profile. Yet, I find myself drawn to earning badges such as Fresh Brew, awarded upon checking into 30 coffee shops. It’s petty, sure, but it’s fun and keeps some foursquare users coming back.
-- Niko DeMordaunt
Posted by Renegade Saw on Fri, Jul 22, 2011 @ 11:05 AM
Justin Bieber gave the photo sharing application Instagram a big boost when he tweeted a picture to his more than 11 million followers. The result? A server or two blowing up.
Soon after he tweeted the instagram picture (of LA traffic), he was gaining 50 followers a minute and a comment every ten seconds on the app. Instagram, though an already popular application with 6+ million users, has never seen activity like that before.
Justin started using Instagram on his own, which is a positive sign for the rapidly growing company. Celebrity endorsements are valuable, especially when the celebrity happens to have something of a cult following on Twitter. Now, Instagram can expect a good number of those more than 11 million followers to sign up for the application as well.
-Laura Burns
Posted by Renegade Saw on Thu, Jul 14, 2011 @ 03:33 PM
This week, Klout announced that the location based application Foursquare would now factor into their scores. Klout, the “Standard for Influence”, measures a user’s online influence based on connections and activity across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Foursquare is a growing social network, and they recently made a deal with American Express to reward card holders when they check-in. Corporate partnerships aren’t the only measure of progress for Foursquare, however, as they just reached 10 million users, raised an additional $50 million, and implemented a new daily deals feature into their application.
It seems natural for Klout to include this network as a measurement of influence. The only problem: they have not figured out how. Accurately measuring the ripple effect of the check-in system and other features of the application are not easy to implement into the algorithm. Still, the company believes they will have a tested and perfected algorithm within the next few weeks. Klout has made it very clear that the inclusion of this network into scores is completely voluntary. Only when a user has added their Foursquare account to their Klout profile will any information be collected.
Foursquare integration is most likely the first of many networks to be included in the Klout algorithm. With the growth of social networks on the web, Klout should stay busy integrating the next big thing into their system.
-Laura Burns
Posted by Renegade Saw on Fri, Sep 10, 2010 @ 01:41 PM
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Well, we’ve done it. Chatroulette was officially banned by Apple today from the app store for “too much user generated content that is pornographic.” Or so says Business Insider. I can’t actually read the newly released App Store Review Guidelines, or anything else for developers because you need a special password, which is only provided after Apple approves your developer status. Transparency fail.
UPDATE: “Apps that contain user generated content that is frequently pornographic (ex “Chat Roulette” apps) will be rejected” (Section 18.1 Pornography in App Store Review Guidelines) Thank you Mobile Crunch.
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| Chatroulette has just undergone an overhaul from their previous format, one that supposedly is a more PG version of their once X rated experience. Compared this winter to Twitter and Facebook as the next big social media property, Chatroulette is facing some serious questions after today’s announcement, can it come back from this recent overhaul and banning? The number of users has been steadily decreasing, the percentage of X-rated content increasing. I guess it will depend on how much users mind being mooned by strangers, or how much that is part of the thrill of the unknown- either way I’m guessing we’ll be seeing a lot more of Chatroulette, and each other, very soon. |
Posted by Renegade Saw on Wed, Feb 17, 2010 @ 05:09 PM
As a community manager, I often wonder why companies won’t just accept that they need to engage their customers with social media, and why they can’t see that consumers (not just ad people) are using and consuming social media at an astounding pace. Realistically, there are a lot of good reasons for this, chiefly that they don’t see any empirical evidence that the times are changing. This presents a real big challenge to social media enthusiasts like myself, as we are so consumed by trying to keep up with “it” – “it” being The State of NOW, as Jeff Pulver so aptly puts it – that we have a hard time stepping back and seeing it with “client eyes.”
Enter Gary Hayes of Personalize Media, @GaryPHayes on Twitter. He has created this amazing app (below) that is tracking the rapidly advancing rate of people using the social web. Notice this app is updating itself in real time. Could it provide enough evidence of this crazy media revolution that’s so difficult to quantify?
Thanks goes to Chris Voss for blogging it before me and tweeting the link.
UPDATE: 2/22/2010: Just realized I only mentioned the social media counter and not the tabs for mobile and games. Check out those categories with this counter, too!
Posted by Renegade Saw on Mon, Oct 02, 2006 @ 02:09 PM
I’ve always had the dream of owning a hover-car. This stems from my fascination with Back to the Future and anything that can reduce time spent in traffic. Unfortunately, the hover-car doesn’t look like it’ll be a reality anytime soon, nor, for that matter, does a time-traveling DeLorean. But there are some incredibly fascinating things happening in the technology sector, advances that will make life easier for everyone. (Yes, even those people too ashamed to take dance lessons so they resort to learning from an oddly proportioned plastic robot with Minnie Mouse ears…don’t ask.)
After attending the Wired NEXTFest, I saw so many "good ideas" that I could literally just scan the pages of the festival’s official program and put them up as blog posts. The event showcases cutting-edge ideas, many with practical applications in marketing and advertising. From advertisements projected on the floor that change as you walk over them, to video games that literally put you in the middle of the action, there are some fun and inventive things being created that will change the way we see the world. If only they’d combine their resources, I’m sure my car would be flying in no time.