Posts Tagged ‘facebook’
- In: Israel | Pictures | Startup
- 9 Comments
Face.com lately has been in the news,is a start up that is focussing on a face recognition technology and they think its the best out there.
I have an alpha invite to their fbook app and will be reviewing them soon. So tune in again
They recently announced their Facebook app called Photo Finder to test their technology. However their plan seems to build face.com into a much bigger service and instead of being just a fbook app.
If they can build a scalable backend to support a healthy traffic, they should be in for sometime to come. They are slowly uncovering sheets from their technology and starting to talk more about face.
Their First post on their official blog was on March 24th
They also recently won best show award at Techonomoy. Here’s an excerpt from a post on their blog
“Today we got our first chance to speak in public about face.com. It was at Techonomy, a great event that “delves into the business and economy behind the Web 2.0 technological revolution”. The 6 selected companies were all fresh, innovative, and very cool. Each company had its 7 minutes to speak followed by a round of questions and comments from the on-stage panelists. All the speakers put on a great show, and the tweets in the background kept the crowd engaged. Sarah Lacy wrapped up the event, giving a chance for the crowd to vote for their favorite company. We were very honored to be selected as the best in show by the crowd, for us it was great to get this recognition – thanks to all of those who voted!
For the first time we’ve also demo’d face.com’s face recognition engine in action, processing a staggering 50 photos/sec on my laptop. Check it out in this flixwagon video: ”
http://blog.face.com/2009/03/31/facecom-voted-best-of-show-techonomy/
URL: http://face.com/
Follow them on Twitter @facedotcom
If you any queries about face.com you can drop a line to gil at face dot com
Facebook App Called Photofinder
I just Upgraded my Facebook iPhone Application v 1.0 to v 2.0 : Facebook launches new iphone app
Posted on: September 30, 2008
- In: facebook | SNS
- 2 Comments
“After Facebook released v1.1 of their iPhone application, they promised that a bigger, badder v2.0 was in the works for September. They cut it pretty close, but they’ve kept their word. Just a few hours ago, the second major release of the Facebook application hit the App Store, bearing a whole new user interface and a slew of fresh features.” Techcrunch
Techcrunch announced however i downloaded the app before this article cameout
My exp with 1.1 was annoying since you could’nt do a lot of new things that have made facebook even more addictive. Comments on newsfeed items, pic comment from a Div pop up etc etc ….
Anyways ..im still testing it ..and will post it here again
New Facebook iPhone App
- In: Applications | microsoft | Yahoo
- 1 Comment
Wall street journal is reporting that Yahoo’s board plans to reject Microsoft’s bid. WSJ is still paid, so below is what Bloomberg has to say.
I can’t say whether its undervalued or not, but Yahoo’s brand would definitely get diluted with microsoft’s acquisition.
Yahoo! Inc., the world’s second most popular Internet search engine, plans to reject Microsoft Corp.’s $44.6 billion unsolicited takeover offer, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the situation.
The board decided the price “massively undervalues” the Sunnyvale, California-based company, and Yahoo may face risks because regulators could oppose the combination, the newspaper said today. On Feb. 1, Microsoft offered $31 a share in cash and stock for Yahoo. The company wants at least $40, or more than $12 billion more than Microsoft offered, the Journal said.
Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang, who said this week that Yahoo is examining its options, may consider a partnership with bigger rival Google Inc. or ways to wrest a higher offer from Microsoft. Yahoo’s failure to crack Google’s dominance in search led to eight straight profit declines and cut the stock’s value in half in the two years before the offer.
“Yahoo still has one of the largest brands on the Internet,” Bill Tancer, general manager at researcher Hitwise Pty. in San Francisco, said in an interview before the report. “It confines Google to continue to grow their revenue from a single revenue stream, which is search.”
Yahoo directors, who met over the past week to weigh the offer, will send a letter to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft on Monday that outlines its position, the Journal said.
“The board is continuing to evaluate the proposal,” Yahoo spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said today after the report. “We’re not commenting beyond that.” Microsoft spokesmen Frank Shaw and Bill Cox didn’t immediately return calls.
Higher Bid
Yahoo is betting Microsoft won’t take hostile measures to win the bid, the Journal said, even though the software maker has indicated that is a possibility. A person familiar with the matter said this week that Microsoft may seek to oust Yahoo board members should they reject its offer.
“Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal,” Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer said in a letter to Yahoo’s board that was made public on Feb. 1.
Yahoo rose 16 cents to $29.20 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading and Microsoft added 44 cents to $28.56.
The offer is 62 percent more than Yahoo’s stock price before the bid. The shares have climbed above the value of the cash-and- stock bid, showing shareholders expect a higher price. Microsoft plans to let investors choose cash or stock, at a ratio that will end up being about 50-50.
$34 to $37
Microsoft shares have declined since the bid, lowering the value of the stock portion and pushing the total value of the deal to about $29.08 a share. Microsoft may have to bid $34 to $37, said UBS AG’s Heather Bellini, the top-ranked software analyst by Institutional Investor magazine.
Since the bid is half cash and half stock, Microsoft may fix the offer at $31 before pursuing an increase, so the value doesn’t decline with its shares, she said.
Yahoo is getting financial advice from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Moelis & Co., according to two people familiar with the matter. Spokespeople for Goldman and Lehman declined to comment and a Moelis representative didn’t immediately return a phone call.
Morgan Stanley and Blackstone Group LP are counseling Microsoft.
Google Possibility
Yang, 39, has resisted letting go of the company he co- founded in 1995 as a graduate student at Stanford University. Initially a way to help people find their favorite places on the Web, Yahoo became the most-visited U.S. Internet site by combining search, news, sports and finance in a single place.
He replaced Terry Semel as chief in June after Yahoo’s share of Web searches tumbled and the company lost sales of banner ads.
Yahoo might seek help from rivals, soliciting other bids or seeking partnerships with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. or Google to thwart Microsoft, according to analysts including Stanford Group Co.’s Clayton Moran.
The New York Times reported Feb. 4 that Google CEO Eric Schmidt contacted Yang to suggest a partnership between their companies. A partnership with Google may allow Yahoo to outsource its search service, shedding the costs of running its own search engine and sharing ad revenue with its larger rival.
Google spokesman Matt Furman didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail today seeking comment.
Regulatory Scrutiny
While a search and advertising partnership with Google is an option, it would face stiff regulatory scrutiny, Moran said. News Corp. isn’t interested in bidding for Yahoo, Murdoch said on a Feb. 4 conference call. That means Yang’s options probably won’t pan out, said Andrew Frank, a New York-based analyst at research firm Gartner Inc.
The U.S. Justice Department is “interested” in reviewing the antitrust implications of a Yahoo-Microsoft transaction, agency spokeswoman Gina Talamona said last week. Neelie Kroes, commissioner of competition for the European Commission, said her agency also would scrutinize a deal.
Google has grown faster than Microsoft in every quarter since Google’s 2004 initial public offering as its search engine won more users. Even after CEO Steve Ballmer’s efforts to build a new search engine from scratch, Google outsold Microsoft in Internet ads by 7-to-1 in Microsoft’s latest fiscal year.
Microsoft and Yahoo combined would still fail to seize the lead in Internet search. Google, based in Mountain View, California, got 56 percent of U.S. Web queries in December, which is almost double Yahoo and Microsoft’s shares together, according to New York-based Nielsen Online.
Microsoft and Yahoo! have been struggling ,as we all know, to monetize the real estate of the Internet World, i.e the Page Views. Where Microsoft lost about 250M$ in the online business last quarter, Yahoo also suffered a 23% drop in their net earnings in the same quarter. It’s not that these giants don’t know the business, they just seem helpless especially since they have no share in the strongest online business value chain, i.e. the Search. No wonder google still raked in a kewl 17% increase in their annual revenue.
While Microsoft was busy writing petitions against a possible buyout of double click by Google, Yahoo was busy firing its employees and trying to lower the opex to show healthy earnings to its investors
But Investors are smart and they can clearly see the Armageddon. They know that Dinosaurs did extinct and so can Yahoo.
But was Yahoo sleeping the whole time? No
Jerry Yang,Mr Yahoo, tried to reinvigorate life back in Yahoo management by calling a 100 day management review last year in July. Here’s a presentation
Irony is that do u really need a 100 days to identify a disease that has such visible side effects. When you don’t have a share in the Search market, no matter if your clicking Trillion page views you just cant make money. For the four weeks ending in January 2008, Google accounted for 65.98% of U.S. searches, while Yahoo! and Microsoft combined amounted to just 27.84% of searches.
The second big question for Yahoo has been how to enter the SNS market. But Can you really sell the concept of making money by doing SNS now to Investors, NO? You could have 2 yrs back,but you wont have the back of your investors to invest into the SNS space especially When Google’s struggling to monetize their Myspace inventory
So does this mean the quest to make money on Social networking sites is never ending?
Well Microsoft seems to think otherwise, especially since they’ve been acting happy about their investment and the advertising deal with Facebook. Hmmmmm……
Does all this hint that Google is the Achilles with out the week heel ?
O Sorry, not yet the Giants are trying their Last move…..lets wait until then…
Here’s more stuff for you to munch on the deal: Cnet
Social networking is one of the biggest and fastest-evolving phenomena on the Web, and Microsoft’s proposed takeover of Yahoo will undoubtedly send it in new directions. More than anything, a MSFT-YHOO acquisition will shake up the debate over just how you can make money off a Facebook or MySpace.com–because they’re running out of time to figure that out.
Should the Microsoft-Yahoo acquisition go through, expect them to try to corner the social-network advertising market.
The common wisdom is that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo is a real force in social networking. Both companies own multiple social media properties, and the only resounding success among them is Yahoo’s Flickr. (Sorry, Microsoft, I’m not counting the Zune’s “song-squirting.”) “They’re very interested in the space,” Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said in an interview with CNET News.com. “They haven’t been able to get traction in it. They look at it very longingly.”
Social networking, in addition, will be a tasty slice of the Web for a hypothetical Microsoft-Yahoo because it’s also one of the few niches of the Web on which Google doesn’t already have a stranglehold. Its OpenSocial developer initiative isn’t ready yet, its Orkut social network has only gained traction in a few regions of the globe, and the company admitted in its recent quarterly earnings call that social advertising (specifically on News Corp.’s MySpace) isn’t bringing home the bacon.
Taking the reins on the advertising market is probably the best way for Microsoft-Yahoo to make waves in social networking without actually launching a big social-media initiative–and I certainly hope they don’t try to, because there are way too many networks out there already. Microsoft already has a foot in the door with its $240 million stake in Facebook. (Yahoo tried to acquire it outright in 2006 and was promptly spurned.) And Facebook’s own Social Ads were met with high-profile opposition and plenty of bad press.
With Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s resources pooled, the two companies could devise a more effective social advertising strategy (if such a thing is even possible). Even if it’s dubious in its effectiveness, expect it to be very high profile. Think about it: Microsoft-Yahoo could claim they’re doing what Google couldn’t do. How’s that for instilling confidence?
“A potential acquisition, if it actually goes through, could be a much, much more interesting player for Facebook to want to do business with,” Li said, noting that Facebook’s current deal with Microsoft only covers display advertisements, not search ads. “If Microsoft and Yahoo can actually make a play in search, that makes Facebook a lot more comfortable going with an all-Microsoft deal and maybe even be acquired by it. Who knows?”
But beyond advertising, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo has a massive social-networking tool at its fingertips, Li continued. “Yahoo and Microsoft both have this wonderful asset called e-mail address books and instant-messaging buddy lists, which are essentially a social graph,” she said. “A lot of people are using those services, much more so than Gmail, for example, and so that’s an instant social graph.”
- In: Company | facebook | Revenues | stats
- 10 Comments
How much Facebook earned last year? 50 million?, 100 million?
The actual figure is $150 million which Facebook’s 23-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed in a company wide open call. Obviously Mr Zuckerberg didn’t think that these details could be leaked.
The Times carried an article on how the leaked figures look like.
Overall, the details are pretty interesting and show how the company is bracing up for the future. They say that they are going to invest $200 million of expenditure which looks like to be mostly on storage capacity. With millions of photos on facebook, that’s sure going to be a good investment.
What obviously doesn’t come up here is whether Facebook would be making any acquisitions ? I myself would think that if they had a cash pile, then an overture(which was acquired by yahoo) like acquisition would be the best investment for them given that all of their earnings come from serving ads.
Its true that Microsoft handles it for them now but given that Facebook’s revenues are all from ads – I won’t keep something as important as that disassociated from the company.
Let’s see how’s facebook performing in the context of SNS advertising market
Here’s a presentation on SNS(facebook) market valuation …to help you understand where facebook stands today in the over all SNS advertising market…..
More Controversy around Facebook
Posted on: January 24, 2008
- In: Applications | facebook | SNS | stats
- 7 Comments
Facebook is no stranger to the complaints of privacy activists. First, it was the site’s News Feed feature back in 2006. Most recently, the company’s Beacon service drew widespread criticism. This blog post will outline yet another major privacy issue, in which Facebook recklessly exposes user data.
Facebook launched its widely popular application developer program back in May 2007. As of press time, there were more than 14,000 applications. Some, including most of the popular apps, are made by companies, while a few of the popular apps, and a significant number of the long tail of the less popular applications are made by individual developers.
But a new study suggests there may be a bigger problem with the applications. Many are given access to far more personal data than they need to in order to run, including data on users who never even signed up for the application. Not only does Facebook enable this, but it does little to warn users that it is even happening, and of the risk that a rogue application developer can pose.
Privacy problems for the user
In order to install an application, a Facebook user must first agree to “allow this application to…know who I am and access my information.” Users not willing to permit the application access to all kinds of data from their profile cannot install it onto their Facebook page.
Screenshot of adding an application
What kind of information does Facebook give the application developer access to? Practically everything. According to the Application Terms of Service,
“Facebook may…provide developers access to…your name, your profile picture, your gender, your birthday, your hometown location…your current location…your political view, your activities, your interests…your relationship status, your dating interests, your relationship interests, your summer plans, your Facebook user network affiliations, your education history, your work history,…copies of photos in your Facebook Site photo albums…a list of user IDs mapped to your Facebook friends.”
The applications don’t actually run on Facebook’s servers, but on servers owned and operated by the application developers. Whenever a Facebook user’s profile is displayed, the application servers contact Facebook, request the user’s private data, process it, and send back whatever content will be displayed to the user. As part of its terms of service, Facebook makes the developers promise to throw away any data they received from Facebook after the application content has been sent back for display to the user.
Researchers blast Facebook
Some applications may make use of all this data, but as researchers from the University of Virginia have detailed in a recent report, Facebook provides applications with access to far more private user information than they need to function. Adrienne Felt, a student and lead researcher on the project, told me that of the top 150 applications they examined in October 2007, “8.7 percent didn’t need any information; 82 percent used public data (name, network, list of friends); and only 9.3 percent needed private information (e.g., birthday). Since all of the applications are given full access to private data, this means that 90.7 percent of applications are being given more privileges than they need.”
(Credit: Adrienne Felt, with permission.)Felt condemned this practice, and said that it violated the the idea of least authority, an important security design principle that states that an actor should only be given the privileges needed to perform a job. In other words, she said, an application that doesn’t need private information shouldn’t be given any.
“Regardless of the click-through disclaimer that Facebook makes users accept, I don’t think people understand what’s happening to their data behind the scenes. If applications don’t appear to use private data–but then they all have this same standard click-through screen–how can users differentiate between applications that really need access to data and all the rest?”
More than your own data–selling out your friends
Facebook’s Web site and lengthy application terms of service curiously fail to mention something rather important. In addition to providing the application developer access to most of your private profile data, you also agree to allow the developer to see private data on all of your friends too.
Many Facebook users set their profiles to private, which stops anyone but their friends from seeing their profile details. This is a great privacy feature that can protect users from cyberstalkers and is completely gutted by the application system. To restate things–if you set your profile to private, and one of your friends adds an application, most of your profile information that is visible to your friend is also available to the application developer–even if you yourself have not installed the application.
The good news is that Facebook lets you configure the amount of your own private data that your friend’s applications can see. The bad news is that it’s hidden away, requiring several clicks through menus to find a page listing specific privacy settings (Privacy -> Applications -> Other Applications). Furthermore, the default values are extremely lax, such that a user who has yet to discover the preference page is essentially sharing her entire profile by default.
This friend data-sharing “feature,” and the ability to protect against it, isn’t mentioned anywhere else on Facebook’s site, nor are users informed about it when they install an application.
On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer. During our conversation, he dismissed claims that Facebook does nothing to inform users that applications have access to data on user’s friends, stating that “we have made things very clear to users, and they understand it very well.” However, by press time, he had yet to send me a link to anywhere on the site where this information was “clearly” explained.
I also spoke with George Washington University Law professor and privacy expert Daniel Solove to get his thoughts on the issue. Regarding Facebook’s claims that it makes its privacy policy clear to users, he said that “they seem to be going on the assumption that if someone uses Facebook, they really have no privacy concerns.” Furthermore, “a kind of vague notice in a privacy policy that no one reads suddenly permits Facebook to do whatever they want with minimal to no privacy protections.”
As for actually getting user permission before using their data in new and creepy ways, Solove said that the company “seem to have a very cavalier attitude to their users consent.”
Rogue developers
Ok. So in order to give your friends virtual naughty gifts, play scrabble online, or see your daily horoscope, a user has to hand over all their private profile data to some unknown company or developer. No need to worry though, because Facebook has safeguards in place, right?
“Before providing any information to any Developer through the Facebook Platform, Facebook requires each Developer to enter into an agreement…which…strictly limits their collection, use, and storage of Facebook Site Information.” (Facebook application terms of service)
Ah, good. Facebook requires that each developer protect the privacy of the user information and requires that they not store a local copy. I’m sure Facebook enforces this vigorously, audits developers, and throws the book at anyone who violates this rule, right?
“[each application] has not been approved, endorsed, or reviewed in any manner by Facebook…we are not responsible for…the privacy practices or other policies of the Developer. YOU USE SUCH DEVELOPER APPLICATIONS AT YOUR OWN RISK.” (Facebook application terms of service)
I asked Facebook’s Kelly what his company is doing to ensure that application developers do not violate the rules by saving a copy of user data that passes through their servers. He cited “extensive security mechanisms operating behind the scenes,” although, he refused to expand on this, due to “security reasons.” He wasn’t too happy when I accused him of practicing security though obscurity, a concept widely mocked in security circles. He dismissed my charge as a mischaracterization.
Kelly claimed that his company “has a variety of techniques to determine if [developers are saving user data.]” As a PhD student in Information Security, I can quite confidently say that from a technical perspective, this is impossible. Simply put, once the data leaves Facebook’s servers, the company has no way of knowing what happens to it. Thus, giving Mr. Kelly the benefit of the doubt, I can only assume that Facebook has a team of trained psychics on staff who use their mysterious powers to ferret out rogue developers.
Who are the application developers
Kelly said that users can determine a developer’s trustworthiness by looking at their profile page, and that somehow, users can combine to form some kind of intelligent hive mind. “One of the factors is what applications your friends are installing. Untrusted applications don’t get added very often as the collective mind is choosing what is trusted in real time.” He further added that it is “up to your friends to make that determination in real time. If an application is going to give them some utility, they’ll know that the applications have to obey the rules.”
Call me a cynic–but I fail to see how thousands of 18-year-olds can collectively assess the data protection practices of some random developer in a foreign land. Remember, these are the same 18-year-olds who post photos of themselves passed out drunk on their public profile pages.
Would I trust the hive mind of Indiana University students to tell me which bar in town has the cheapest beer? Sure. But to expect them to evaluate a company’s privacy practices? No way.
A public outcry
Unfortunately, as alarming as this issue is to privacy activists, there is a good chance that it may fail to gain the attention of the millions of Facebook users necessary to actually force the company to fix its policies. While both the newsfeeds and Beacon scandals were “in your face,” most users have no way of knowing what, if any, data is being transmitted to application developers by Facebook, and thus are unlikely to be motivated to complain.
Furthermore, even users who are aware of the privacy risks of Facebook applications may still end up installing them. To not do so is to isolate yourself, to cut off communication channels, and in some cases, to cause insult your friends.
In what can only be a great example of life imitating art (see below), I asked security researcher Adrienne Felt which, if any, applications she used. She told me that in spite of the fact that she had spent significant time investigating the privacy risks, she still ended up installing an application because her friends wanted to send her some virtual Christmas presents. Not wanting to offend them, she put aside her privacy concerns, and installed the app. As she told me, due to the peer pressure, “I had a hard time saying no.”
The Joy Of Tech on Facebook- In: facebook | SNS
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As has been long expected, Facebook has begun to work on making its service available in multiple languages as it expands internationally–and it’s doing so by utilizing the power of its millions of users by enlisting them to volunteer a few minutes. The site has spent the past few weeks asking international users to participate in the process by installing a “Translation” application that lets them translate words on Facebook from English to their native languages. It only applies, of course, to Facebook-generated text; anything entered by users, like interests or favorite movies, remain as-is.
The Translation application is initially available in French, Spanish, and German, and Facebook has said that thousands of users have enlisted in the process and are “actively translating.”
A preview: Facebook en espanol
(Credit: Facebook)
But it’s more complicated than that: “This doesn’t mean that once a user has finished translating the site will be available in that language,” a release from Facebook explained. “In order to get the best possible quality translations, we have a voting system. Other translators of that language will be able to vote on the quality of the translation by giving it a thumbs up or thumbs down. Users are also able to report any poor translations or translators.” Essentially, Facebook has prank-proofed the system.
Full versions of Facebook in French, Spanish, and German will be available, ideally, before the end of March; when those are complete, the next set of languages (which have yet to be determined) will enter the translation process.
A handful of other social networks already offer a variety of languages based either on personal preference or geographic location. Friendster, which is popular in Asia, allows its users to toggle back and forth between English and Chinese; MySpace operates more than a dozen international sites with both language and content targeted toward the culture in question.
on webware.com
NotchUp: A brilliant Jobsearch Startup with an Idea that’ll change the Business Value Chain
Posted on: January 23, 2008
- In: Company | Funding | Jobsearch | Startup
- 6 Comments
Here’s a niche but a brilliant idea that in my view will create a whole new layer in the existing Online Jobsearch value chain
Founded by two guys, Notchup is trying to expand the target audience for the Jobsearch market. At present, you only enter the world of jobsearch if your looking to move…. but what about the rest of the professionals
Notchup thus is trying to give a reason for all those professionals who are happy in their roles and may be doing well , to come online and to not only make money by charging for being interviewed but also open themselves to some real good opportunities and serious employers
Please find below a review of the site on Techcrunch
The problem with most job sites is that the people companies really want to hire don’t put their resumes on them because they are happy in their current positions. If you are a star manager, chances are your employer knows it and is treating you well so that you don’t even think about leaving. Who wants to bother looking for a job anyway if you don’t have to? That’s right up there with looking for a new house in terms of time-sinks to avoid.
The folks at NotchUp, a stealth startup based in Los Altos, California launching later this month, have a better idea. Founded by two Peerflix refugees, Jim Ambras and Rob Ellis, NotchUp tries to lure talented-but-complacent workers and managers into its recruitment pool by turning the job search on its head. Instead of desperate out-of-work employees going hat-in-hand to companies begging for a job interview, on NotchUp, the companies have to pay to interview you. This is supposed to bring out those passive job seekers every company really wants to find.
The site lets you set whatever price you like per interview, but also provides a calculator that takes into account your current position, experience, education, and salary to come up with a number. What I like about this approach is that it uses economic incentives to try to bring a better inventory of talent onto the market, just like Zillow does with its “Make Me Move” feature that lets people make unsolicited offers on houses that are not officially on the market. If a company is willing to pay you a few hundred or even a thousand bucks just to interview you, chances are they are pretty serious and it is not going to be a waste of time. It acts as a filter for both the employer and the prospective employee.
According to the site, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Powerset are all corporate beta testers using NotchUp for recruitment (well, maybe not Yahoo). NotchUp is still in stealth. The only way to get into the site right now is to be invited by a current user, which is how I learned about it.
Setting up a profile is easy, especially if you already use LinkedIn. NotchUp just imports your LinkedIn profile, you set your price, and you are ready to go. Any friend you refer to the site who gets an interview earns you a 10 percent referral fee. As employers search the site, they can make offers to interview you, which you see in your inbox. You can choose to only get offers from corporations, or from headhunters as well. And you can block recruiters from any particular company (like the one you currently work for) from seeing your profile. The service is free for job seekers, and companies pay NotchUp a fee for each resulting interview.
NotchUp is a really good idea. It turns job hunting into something more people will want to do in a way that makes them feel good about themselves. Even if you don’t get the job, you get paid for your time.
- In: Applications | e-Commerce | facebook | Startup
- 2 Comments
If you sell anything online, whether physical goods or services, you’re probably keenly aware of the 2-3% (plus $0.30) lost through transactional fees every time someone makes a purchase with their credit card. This fee rears its ugly head whether you use PayPal, Google Checkout, or Amazon Flexible Payment Service since those companies are largely just passing on the fees imposed on them by credit card companies.
Noca, a startup founded by ex-Visa employees, is attempting to virtually eliminate transaction feeds by bypassing the credit card companies altogether with its own online payment service. Since $5 billion goes towards online transaction fees every year in the United States alone, and since online vendors have particularly slim profit margins, the company thinks that the near elimination of transaction feeds would be a huge boon for online vendors. Concurrently, Noca seeks to provide consumers with a more rewarding and more secure purchasing experience, thereby making its service appealing to both actors involved in a transaction.
While Noca aims to eventually facilitate online payments for purchases of all sizes, it begins with a focus on micro-payments, and on micro-payments made through Facebook in particular. It has launched two Facebook applications to test its payments system out: OneClick Pay and HelpYourWorld.
The former provides a simple way to send money to friends. As you can see in the screenshot to the left, the idea is to send someone a digital check; you actually enter your routing and account numbers into the application instead of using a credit card. This poses a significant obstacle to adoption (who remembers these numbers or carries around a check in their pocket?). But the company insists that using checking information rather than credit card information increases security and reduces the chances of identity theft. Plus, Noca is working to provide functionality that would allow you to enter your online banking credentials in lieu of your checking information.
The latter Facebook application, HelpYourWorld, provides a good use case for Noca’s micro-payment system. Since the application solicits $1-at-a-time donations for a series of causes, it benefits greatly from Noca’s lack of transaction fees (especially the standard fixed one of $0.30). Noca hopes that many other Facebook applications with similar micro-payment needs will use its APIs to implement its payment service.
As for the benefits to the consumer, Noca promises to provide strong and flexible incentives through cash back schemes, frequent flier miles, and the ability to designate a part of your payment to a charity of choice. The company also insists that its service will be substantially easier to use than others like PayPal, and that consumers will gain access to a much more comprehensive transaction history than they would get elsewhere.
In the longer term, Noca will become much more like a credit card company itself, providing credit to users through direct partnerships with banks. In doing so, it will be able to provide users with the same benefits of buying things on credit without charging vendors standard transaction fees, which it considers mostly oligopolistic fat. To make money, Noca will also attempt to leverage its user data to target them with tailored advertising and product deals.
from Techcrunch
- In: Applications | facebook | gaming | SNS
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as reported on news.com
So said one adamant Facebook user in the wake of the news that game manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel were trying to do something about the wildly popular, unquestionably addictive online game known as Scrabulous.
The game, which rose to fame when its creators turned it into an embeddable Facebook application, is a word game that’s a whole lot like the classic board game Scrabble. It uses a playing board with “bonus” spots just like Scrabble. In fact, the rules are identical to Scrabble‘s.
The companies in charge of the “real” Scrabble, for obvious reasons, aren’t happy.
Game companies Hasbro, which distributes Scrabble in North America, and Mattel, which is responsible for its overseas trademarks, have reportedly asked Facebook to remove the game from its application directory. And you can tell it’s a serious legal matter because nobody’s talking.
Facebook declined to confirm the report, and it said that it has not yet issued any kind of statement about Scrabulous; representatives from Hasbro did not respond to calls for comment.
The similarities between Scrabble and Scrabulous are crystal-clear, and it’s a no-brainer to see why Hasbro and Mattel are miffed. To add to that, Scrabulous serves up advertisements, which means that its creators are making money off the concept. But what the game companies really ought to do is take a step back and realize that they can use Scrabulous to their advantage–without removing the viral game from Facebook.
Fans of Scrabulous, for one, aren’t happy about the takedown news. On Facebook, an unofficial group called “Save Scrabulous” is growing fast, with more than 7,000 users at last count (and 5,000 hours before.) Its members, including the aforementioned “hunger striker,” are livid.
“Leave Scrabulous alone!” one of them posted in the group’s message board, a thinly veiled allusion to the “Leave Britney Alone” viral video.
Others were more visceral: “I’ve burnt my Scrabble board in protest!” one exclaimed.
A game of Scrabulous on Facebook.
(Credit: Scrabulous)
Scrabulous is the creation of two brothers in India, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla, who founded Scrabulous.com in 2006. When Facebook launched its developer platform in May, the Agarwallas soon transformed their Scrabble spin-off into an application designed for the social network, and it caught on like wildfire. More than 2 million Facebook members are active Scrabulous users, and several hundred thousand of them play the game each day.
It was a catch-22 for the Agarwallas. The “Scrabulous guys” became Facebook celebrities, but the exposure meant that they were much more visible–and so were the obvious similarities between Scrabble and Scrabulous.
“It wouldn’t be an issue if Scrabulous weren’t so popular, right?” observed Darren Herman, director of digital media for marketing firm The Media Kitchen. It’s the sheer mass of Facebook Scrabulous users that have made it a high-profile case as well as an inevitably ugly situation, if the game is indeed taken down. “We’re seeing the power of social media in its early days. Since we’re still trying to figure out the rules of the game, no pun intended, these types of issues are bound to arise.”
In other words, according to Herman, the debate over Scrabulous is indicative of the fact that the world–or at least certain mainstays of the game industry–still hasn’t quite figured out that a traditional course of action just doesn’t always work on the Web.
“I don’t think they are crazy to think this way,” Darren Herman said when asked if Hasbro and Mattel are totally off base. “Scrabble came out in a time when everyone guarded their (intellectual property) tightly.”
In the old order, a takedown notice may have been the only route. But this is the Web, and plenty of people have pointed out that Hasbro and Mattel are sitting on a marketing gold mine with Scrabulous. They have a gleefully addicted fan base, a machine for viral buzz (Facebook’s platform), and the deep pockets to offer to buy Scrabulous outright–or at least strike an innovative advertising deal.
There’s also no direct competitor. Neither Hasbro nor Mattel operates a Web-based, ad-supported version of Scrabble; video game manufacturer Electronic Arts owns the rights to electronic versions of the game, and it currently sells a PC game of Scrabble for about $20. (EA was not available for comment on the Scrabulous issue.) With Scrabulous, all three companies may be sitting on a marketing treasure trove.
Hasbro and Mattel might not get it. But the members of Save Scrabulous think that they do.
“Do these greedy fools not realize that they should be paying the creators of Scrabulous for all the damn fans of the game they created?” one angry Scrabulous fan from the United Kingdom asked on the group’s “wall.” He brought up a further point–that this is getting people excited about the musty old board game in a way they haven’t in years. “It’s like the music vids put on YouTube. It makes me buy tracks I never would have done, and frankly, before this game emerged, Scrabble was just something for rainy days in my childhood.”
Another member of the group put it more concisely. “Scrabulous brought Scrabble back in style. They should be thankful.”
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