Group items tagged

"Facebook is making strides towards becoming a multi-media communication juggernaut, its head of Messenger David Marcus announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. Out of Messenger's one-billion users, 300 million people use its audio and video calling features each month. That's around the size of Skype's entire user base. Facebook is uniquely well-suited to disrupting traditional home and mobile phone voice calling and their successor, video calling. It has the most complete social graph of family, friends, and acquaintances - going beyond what's in most people's phone contacts. It has a one-billion user chat app where people are already spending tons of time. And it has the technology infrastructure to support high-bandwidth transmissions."

But in the last several months, AT&T has been reducing the number and length of calls to its call centers by relying on so-called smart videos from New York City-based SundaySky. The videos are personalized tutorials that are built on the fly using pre-scripted clips mixed with the subscriber's own data. The system works off a video template that incorporates visual elements, narration and integrated information from a user's account. Users end up seeing a video bill that addresses them, acknowledges their recent account activity and leads them through their biggest billing questions.

"Activision is set to launch a new social gaming platform for fans of its multi-million selling Call of Duty titles. The long-expected service, named Call of Duty Elite, will feature detailed multiplayer gaming statistics, community elements and user-generated content sharing."

Line has supported one-on-one video and voice calling for some time, but this new feature takes things to a new level by allowing more than one person in on voice calls. In fact, Line said it supports up to 200 people concurrently.

"Players of Call of Duty: Black Ops II will now be able to livestream their gameplay to YouTube directly from their Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles. While casual players may be interested in posting their games, this is big news for the lucrative gaming-commentary industry on YouTube, and for the eSports scene as a whole."

"Clarity, a division of Plantronics dedicated to making communication devices with amplified audio for those with impaired hearing, has teamed up with a company called ClearCaptions, which provides text transcription captioning services for phone calls to create the Ensemble. The Ensemble packs a one-two punch for people who have trouble hearing: It provides sophisticated amplified audio like a hearing aid, and real-time text captioning of the ongoing conversation on a seven-inch screen."

But if we have learned anything in the last few years, it is that traditional media are now only in charge of part of the story. There is a paucity of facts and an excess of processing power because everyone with a keyboard is theoretically a creator and distributor of content. Most of those efforts begin from behind a firmly established battle line, then row backward to find the facts that they need. Was that a dark spot on the back of George Zimmerman's head in the grainy police video, or evidence of a beat-down? We retweet and "like" what we agree with and dismiss the rest. As if the overheated cable news debate weren't enough, social media are fueling the story with misinformation, along with incendiary calls to action. There is a Twitter account called "@killzimmerman" that suggested George Zimmerman needed to be "shot dead in the street." On Twitter, the movie director Spike Lee passed on what he thought was Mr. Zimmerman's address, but it was wrong and an elderly couple was forced to flee from their home. And what if Mr. Lee had gotten it right? (Mr. Lee has since apologized and reached a settlement with the couple.)

"Photos and videos have become key social currencies online. 46% of adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created. We call them creators. 41% of adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and repost them on sites designed for sharing images with many people. We call them curators."

Mobile messaging application Viber has released version 2.2, introducing group messaging as well as improved call quality and several user interface enhancements. The company also said it has reached 90 million users, with users making over 1.5 billion minutes of calls each month. This is a jump of 20 million users in just over two months.

Within twenty-four hours of uploading the video, Robert had about 200,000 YouTube hits, calls from news stations around the globe, and even calls from weight loss guru Chris Powell and Dr. Phil's team-all thanks to YouTube.

Tony Hsieh from Zappos0- you get a consumers undivided attention for 5-10 mins on a phone call, only 30 seconds on a superbowl add ...people watch the superbowl for the commercials though, so how does this play into it?

One function, called LoveMail, allows musicians to record short audio messages to fans, a touch that the company, also called FanTrail, sees as more personal than artists' sometimes ghostwritten Twitter feeds. Another feature, LoveMeter, ranks fans' loyalty by measuring their activity in buying music and checking in at concerts.

Tired of reading Facebook status updates from ALL your so called "friends?" Um, yeah, who isn't? Then check this out. Toyota is pushing their recently redesigned Yaris model with this useful app. They call is the Social Snap Shot. Just pick 10 of your fave peeps on Facebook, and it brings their updates to life in a video. And it's got a funky beat, and you can dance to it.

free skype landline calls for a month during world cup

Success of google's click-to-call ads for mobile. Many advertisers seeing great response rates include car insurance companies and cruiselines.

"Like seemingly every startup currently exploring an ad-supported business model, Waze has gone native for its ad platform. Typically startups wade into advertising by working directly with brands then erecting a self-serve platform down the road. Waze sped things up. The company began testing ads in its U.S. app over the summer, working directly with Zipcar, Best Buy and a number of fuel brands and convenience store chains; at launch it has added Procter & Gamble, Dunkin' Donuts, Wyndham Hotels, Whole Foods, Jamba Juice, CircleK and Kum & Go to its advertiser roster. The direct sales channel continues, but Waze has also set up a self-serve platform for its most basic ad units. The self-serve platform operates on an auction model with floor prices set at $1 per thousand impressions. In addition to a branded search result, marketers can pay to plot branded pins at their locations on the Waze map. When users click on these branded pins, they can click a link to the company's website, a number to call the location or-borrowing the idea of drive-to advertising popularized by driving navigation company Telenav-a button that would navigate them to the location."

"The native advertising side consists of Federated's conversational marketing products, conversation targeting and native conversational ad units. While some of what Federated calls conversational marketing is similar to content marketing (that is, helping brands produce content much like media companies), Federated is clearly looking to embrace native advertising units, such as Facebook's Sponsored Stories or Foursquare's Promoted Updates. Federated founder John Battelle has been blogging extensively about the move toward ads-that-don't-look-like-ads of late."

"The program, which Boston.com calls Insights, came about partly because so many advertisers are creating content for their own sites, according to Thomas F.X. Cole, executive director-business development at Boston.com and The Boston Globe, units of The New York Times Co. "It's a new unit to address a new need," Mr. Cole said. "Our advertisers and particularly our smaller advertisers have been creating their own content. They need to get it exposed. As much as 50% of small businesses are blogging. The one thing they want is to have people see their material.""