Corporate Shake-Up: Do Recent Twitter Departures Suggest a Leaky Ship?

  • Twitter has announced that venture capitalists Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson, two of the company’s earliest investors, will be leaving Twitter’s board of directors.
  • Additionally, Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury confirmed his departure, ironically enough, through his own Twitter account.
  • “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Twitter was an amazing experience & even greater set of people,” tweeted Chowdhury. (The first sentence is a reference to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” spoken by hyper-intelligent dolphins on their flight from the end of the world, reports VatorNews.)
  • The departures mark the latest in a series of related moves in what Vator refers to as a “mass exodus” that “reveals a leaky ship.”
  • Two of the company’s co-founders, Biz Stone and Evan Williams recently resigned from day-to-day operations (Williams remains on the board) and CTO Greg Pass left in May. Also, four product managers have reportedly been dismissed.
  • Other reports suggest the departure of the two directors may be less about a “leaky ship” and more about financial restructuring. “The person familiar with the matter said their departures were related to the reduction of their firms’ stakes in Twitter as part of a financing round in August,” reports The Wall Street Journal. Twitter recently announced it had raised a significant round of financing, putting the company’s worth at $8 billion.

Social Discovery Platform: Get Ready to Prescreen Your Favorite Indies

  • A new startup dubbed Prescreen launched this week as a marketing platform for independent films.
  • Since indies typically find it challenging to gain exposure, Prescreen provides an alternative for filmmakers and distributors to generate buzz and potentially find an audience for their projects.
  • “Basically, Prescreen offers users the ability to subscribe to a daily email alert, which will inform them of one indie film per day,” reports TechCrunch. “The user can then visit Prescreen to view trailers for free and if interested, can rent movies to stream on demand for up to 60 days. Users can also earn rewards and discounts for sharing movie information on their social networks.”
  • Additionally, the service provides filmmakers and distributors with audience demographic data.
  • In response to the trend regarding more mainstream services such as Netflix and Hulu starting to feature independent movies, Prescreen founder Shawn Bercuson explains that the discovery mechanism for finding and marketing these titles remains weak. He hopes that Prescreen’s email model and social features will help address this issue.

Ooyala Everywhere Goes Social with TV Platform for Facebook Users

  • Ooyala Social, a new HD-quality Social TV platform (and additional entry point for Ooyala Everywhere) allows Facebook users to “share video with their friends and family, live chat while viewing, discover new content and watch video across multiple screens and devices,” according to the company’s press release.
  • It supports several business models including rentals, subscriptions, purchases and advertising.
  • Discovering new shows is based on user’s social circles. Viewers can share videos they “like” with their friends, or “loan” a show for later viewing.
  • Users can watch from tablets, mobile devices and connected TVs. They can purchase, rent, or subscribe to content by using Facebook Credits, PayPal, a credit card or a mobile phone number.
  • “Broadcasters, distributors and Hollywood studios can capitalize on the Social TV trend by using Ooyala Social to make premium on-demand and live video widely and easily available on Facebook,” suggests the press release. “The solution offers built-in social features and other tools that enable media companies to grow audiences, boost viewer engagement and realize new revenue streams.”

Facebook Responds to Google+ Features, Unveils Smart Lists

  • Facebook has unveiled improvements to its “friends” lists with a new feature dubbed “Smart Lists” that automatically generates friend groups so that users no longer need to manage their own lists.
  • The improvement — which follows the lead of popular Google+ features — is currently based on categories that create lists based on workplace, school, family and city. “For example, if a user lists their college on their profile, Smart Lists will automatically find all their friends that did the same, and group them together for easier sharing of content between them,” reports CNET.
  • While the social networker has previously made list creation available, the company explains that users complained about “how time-consuming it is to organize lists for different parts of your life and keep them up to date.” These improvements should address this concern. Facebook also points out that users can still manually add or remove friends from their lists.
  • Additionally, a new “Close Friends and Acquaintances Lists” component has been added. The option allows users to categorize friends into either their “Close Friends” list or mere “Acquaintances.” The distinction will help funnel updates through the news feeds; users will see all updates from close friends and just important updates from acquaintances.

Nielsen Report Details the Rise of Social Media: Companies Take Note

  • Americans currently spend more than 22 percent of their online time engaged with some form of social media, indicates a new report from Nielsen.
  • According to the research company’s “State of the Media: The Social Media Report,” these networkers spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May of this year (following Facebook was Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter and LinkedIn).
  • With 70 percent of users now shopping online, social media has become a crucial tool for many companies, says Nielsen executive Radha Subramanyam. “Social media is becoming increasingly mainstream,” she notes, and as a result, “there’s a need for companies to engage even more strategically in the space” than they already do.
  • It is interesting to point out that in regards to the Facebook tracking, 62 percent of the visitors were females. Additionally, while more women than men were reported to watch video clips on blogs and social networks, men streamed more videos and spent more time actively watching them.

YouTube Co-Founders Bet You Will Find Social Bookmarking Delicious

  • YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are taking over Delicious from Yahoo and will attempt to breathe new life into the social bookmarking service.
  • “Created in 2003, Delicious lets people save links from around the Web and organize them using a simple tagging system, assigning keywords like ‘neuroscience’ or ‘recipes,'” reports the New York Times. “It was praised for the way it allowed easy sharing of those topical links. The site’s early popularity spurred Yahoo to snap it up in 2005 — but in the years after that Yahoo did little with it.”
  • The two men want to change that. “Twitter sees something like 200 million tweets a day, but I bet I can’t even read 1,000 a day,” explains Chen. “There’s a waterfall of content that you’re missing out on.”
  • “You’re Googling around and have eight to 10 browser tabs of results, links to forums and message boards, all related to your search,” he said. The new Delicious, he added, provides “a very easy way to save those links in a collection that someone else can browse.”
  • Despite the lack of attention from Yahoo, Delicious still draws about half a million visitors a month, according to comScore. Chen and Hurley plan to “invite the earliest users to test a version of the new site and solicit feedback about the designs and features,” indicates the article.

Facebook Doubles Revenue: The New Operating System for Online Ad Delivery?

  • Facebook’s revenues have doubled the first half of 2011 to $1.6 billion, putting the social network on course to possibly earn $4 billion this year.
  • “It’s simply too late for anyone, perhaps even Google, to create a social network that can compete with Facebook,” writes Robert Hof in a related story.
  • Reuters suggests this news underscores the social networker’s appeal to advertisers. “We really see Facebook as becoming like the operating system for delivering ads on the Internet,” said Dave Williams, CEO of Blinq Media.
  • Williams added that Facebook’s “like” feature, that now helps endorse products and companies, provides valuable data that other online services can’t match.
  • “Companies like Yahoo are relying on third party user behavioral data based on things like cookies. On Facebook that’s data that users have revealed about themselves,” he said.
  • “The price that companies pay for every consumer that clicks on a Facebook ad increased 62 percent between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011, according to Efficient Frontier, another firm that helps companies deliver ad campaigns on Facebook,” reports Reuters.

Why is PostSecret the Best-Selling iOS App in America this Week?

  • In its first four days of availability, the PostSecret iTunes app has drawn more than 100,000 users sharing more than 50,000 secrets.
  • The $1.99 app is an extension of the popular community art project that started with people mailing in postcards containing their secrets and later spawned five New York Times bestselling books and a 2.1 million member online community.
  • “Sharing a secret and connecting with someone that has a similar secret provides a cathartic release for people to overcome loneliness,” explains creator Frank Warren. “While the PostSecret app allows secret sharers to connect, they are doing so in a safe, anonymous and protected environment where no personal information exchanged.”
  • Wired.com adds: “At a time when we often don’t know if our connection to our gadgets is pulling us away from actual human interaction or revealing too much about who we are and where we go, creating an app that collects our most intimate secrets and keeps us anonymous — while simultaneously making us feel closer — could prove to be a welcome relief.”
  • An Android version of the app is expected later this year.

Delicious Founder Launches Jig to Target Precise Social Connections

  • Joshua Schachter, founder of social bookmarking tool Delicious, recently launched a new social media project. “Jig” is a network that Schachter describes as a hub or marketplace for social transactions.
  • “He said he feels that other social Web services focus too much attention on popular people and topics — rather than more precise, meaningful and useful connections between people,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
  • The site puts a practical spin on the social-Q-and-A model, with users posting specific problems and soliciting answers from their targeted social graph.
  • At Jig.com users simply complete the “I need” query in order to start the process. For example, I need a lawyer, I need to lose weight, I need a car rental in Mexico, etc. Once your query has been entered, you have the option of filling in fields for Location and Details.

Kinetik iPhone App Helps You Discover and Share Great iPhone Apps

  • Kinetik has made social discovery easier with its free iPhone app that helps users weed through the massive collection of available apps. It is designed to streamline the search for relevant iPhone apps based on users’ selected apps and other users’ feedback of apps.
  • “Just load up Kinetik, choose an app that you have downloaded and then you can leave a comment about the app, then share it to Twitter and Facebook,” reports The Next Web. “As you add friends via your social networks and inside of the app itself, you can see recommendations that your friends have made too. There’s even an online profile for each user, where you can see the apps that they’ve shared, commented on and the like. You’ll also see apps that are trending on Kinetik.”
  • Kinetik will compete with similar offerings such as AppShopper and AppsFire, but TNW likes its chances: “I’ve tried loads of different ways to find new apps. I can tell you that Kinetik is one of the best ways I’ve found yet. I’ve had the chance to play with it for the past couple of weeks while it was in beta and it’s slick, useful and really quite fun.”

Music Integration: Will Facebook Become an All-In-One Social Media Hub?

  • Facebook has informed media executives that it will begin allowing online music services such as Spotify and Rdio to publish user activity on Facebook pages and could allow music playback without leaving the site.
  • The announcement is part of Facebook’s efforts to become a social center for media including music, games and movies.
  • According to The Wall Street Journal: “CNBC reported Wednesday that Facebook was working to create a music platform. In response, Facebook said: ‘Many of the most popular music services around the world are integrated with Facebook and we’re constantly talking to our partners about ways to improve these integrations.'”
  • Facebook was reportedly encouraged to pursue the music plan following success with social games such as “FarmVille” by Zynga Inc. The social media site is also integrating movies through deals with the likes of Warner Bros.

Movie Site Flickme Launches, Betting Big on Social Interaction

  • Former COO of Funny or Die Mitch Galbraith launched the beta version of social streaming movie service flickme this week with deals in place from Sony and Warner Bros. The venture was founded by Galbraith and Mark Smallcombe, who received funding from Sequoia Capital.
  • The new service lets users rent or purchase movies and watch instantly, via their Facebook accounts. Users can also socially connect with friends to share deals and recommendations. According to the website: “About one third of the movies on flickme feature pass-along perks: the first person to rent or buy can share special offers with friends, including discounts and access to rentals before they are normally available.”
  • The service will face competition from streamers such as iTunes and Netflix but is hoping the social connection will make it distinct.
  • “We’ve built a short cut to find movies you’ll love,” says Galbraith. “We’re assembling a library of thousands of top Hollywood titles and enabling highly personalized recommendations from close friends to ensure every movie you watch on flickme is a winner.”

Security: Facebook Pays $40,000 to Hackers in Bug Bounty Scheme

  • Facebook has already paid out $40,000 to hackers for identifying flaws in its website, just three weeks after the social networker launched its “Bug Bounty” program that offers compensation for finding vulnerabilities in the site’s code.
  • “Schemes such as Facebook’s illustrate the push towards greater disclosure of security weaknesses and hacking incidents, as the technology industry strives to pool its resources to protect itself better,” reports The Financial Times. “The approach has won praise from digital advocacy groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”
  • “The program has also been great because it has made our site more secure — by surfacing issues large and small, introducing us to novel attack vectors, and helping us improve lots of corners in our code,” explained Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer.
  • Facebook joins others such as Google, Mozilla and HP that have programs in place to offer payments to outsiders who identify vulnerabilities.

Do NFL Fans Really Want to Read Tweets During Game Broadcasts?

  • The New York Giants claim to be the first NFL team to introduce live, realtime Twitter updates into broadcast TV coverage.
  • The team will display fans’ tweets during games via video boards and digital displays at Giants stadium, while fans watching at home will see realtime Twitter updates as part of the game’s graphics.
  • The Giants are collaborating with Mass Relevance, the firm that will aggregate and deliver the Twitter posts to the in-stadium displays, TV broadcasts and Giants.com website.
  • I saw this feature this week during NBC’s coverage of the Giants-Jets game. I found it to be an unnecessary distraction that occasionally obstructed my view and I didn’t read a single tweet that added value to my viewing experience. When I first submitted this story, I commented: “Based on my experience during last night’s game, this is my question: Who can I pay to make this go away?”
  • However, I understand why this may become popular. Perhaps the concept would be better served by delivering only to those fans actively seeking social interaction.

Shazam for TV Offers Fans Access to Exclusive Media Content

  • Shazam, an application that recognizes audio content, tags and shares it on social networking sites, has raised $32 million in an effort to expand integration with TV.
  • The company is currently working with Syfy, Bravo, Oxygen and Spike TV to allow viewers to tag and unlock content.
  • Shazam recently helped promote Lil Wayne’s new music video, which is currently at 4 million views.
  • During the MTV Video Music Awards, Bing ran ads that Shazam could recognize and brought users exclusive content related to the show.
  • It is also said to do the same for ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” promos, allowing viewers to access new content such as music videos and exclusive scenes as the season progresses.
  • The app is already a big driver of iTunes downloads. Shazam PR manager Rica Squires said that there are “over 4 million tags each and every day that result in 300,000 song downloads across iTunes and other vendors.”