5 posts tagged “community”

Tappity is a mobile phone service that has formed a community around sites that are optimized for mobile use.  It also serves as a frontpage of sorts, for your mobile phone.  It's got a pretty high level of interactivity through mobile phone usage, as users can submit and vote for sites they like.  In this sense, Tappity becomes much like a social search engine for your cell phone.  It's apparent that technology and culture are moving in the direction of centralizing the mobile device, but it's companies like Tappity that take the initiative to create applications ready for today that provide a great deal of value for our current lifestyles.

I got a chance to chat with Scott Robbin, the creator of Tappity, regarding his first start-up from his parent company Halobrite.

So tell me about Tappity. Is it more of a hub for sites that are optimized for mobile phones?  Or is it a mobile search engine?

  Eurekster has raised $5.5 million in a round of venture capital funding, suprising many since they've recently lost their biggest client, Friendster, to Google.  The search engine that has dedicated its services to searching communities and social networks has provided value to many, nonetheless, and has become an easy solution for bloggers and niche communities across the board.  When it comes to niche search engines, Eurekster has proven to have staying power. 

Their swiki feature has proven rather popular and useful to those wanting to add a customized search tag cloud to their website or blog.  In terms of the service they provide to communities, it's unique in that they study user behavior in order to provide better search results.  This can be monetized, but not as much as a deal with Google, apparantly.

Eurekster's round of venture capital funding was provided by Technology Venture Partners of Australia and Transcosmos Investments of Japan, as well as additional private investors.  If their loss of Friendster as a client has hindered them in any way, particularly in closing a deal with another larger company, I'm sure their latest round of funding will help them to further their development and put them in a better position in the long run.

    eSnips has launched their music widget, enabling users to take their playlists with them.  While there are a number of widgets out there that allow people to do this, eSnips offers a fairly wide range of options for their music widgets, incorporating a good level of color and size customization in addition to the number of options they offer for widget themes and shapes. 

eSnips is an online community that provides a set of folders in which to keep music, image and video files for personal or public use.  Their service incorporates the basic aspects of a social network, and provides widgets for images and videos as well, though these widgets will only show one image or video at a time.

The next step for eSnip widgets would must likely need to be some sort of "channel" provision for better distribution of other content (images and video) as well as music.  Many content-sharing services are beginning to offer collaborative tools that allow for group contribution to one channel of distribution, and this is quickly being manifested in the form of a widget as well.

My biggest challenge with eSnips widget feature is the lack of ease for turning my own content into a widget, though it is very easy to use someone else's content for this purpose.

  Apple's permitting of Indie film "That" to be sold in iTunes is groundbreaking territory for the dominant retailer of digital mp3 player content.  Many wonder if this means that Apple is willing to open their doors to allow the floods of the long tail to become accessible for the iPod directly from Apple's iTunes online store.  Doubtful, considering the points so nicely drawn out by Steve O'Hear of ZDNet. 

The deal seems to be an exception to the rule, and Apple has namely been striking alliances with major players in the media industry.  This of course saves Apple the greif of dealing with copyright wars, and discourages the type of self-regulated market that would be needed to help control the Indie filmmaker sector.  A good amount of resources would need to be put in place by Apple to harness Indie films and not user-generated content.  But wouldn't that be a hoot? Selling clips made popular on YouTube in the iTunes store?

Nevertheless, you can still get some "community" content on your iPod.        

• SpotDJ's new "wePod" feature updates your playlist with spots from their community every time you synch up.  See original post here, and yesterday's press release here.
• Mogopop has an entire collection of content made for iPods, submitted by the community.  Their service also includes an app for you to create content as well. 

In the case of indie filmmakers wanting their material for sale through iTunes, it may seem like a longshot now, but I'm positive it will happen in the future.  A broker will come to the forefront of indie film distribution, and this is the type of structure that a company like Apple will be more willing to work with. 

  Something like inDplay, which manages film and tv content distribution for the indie community, could become the broker to bridge the gap.  See interview here.