Displaying posts tagged as "Mobile"

Mobile

Lady Gaga Launches Social Network for ‘Little Monsters,’ Backplane CEO Talks Online Fan Identity

After several months in invite-only beta phase, Lady Gaga‘s fan-based social network Little Monsters has gone public. Borrowing popular features from Tumblr, Pinterest, Reddit, Facebook and Ticketmaster, the extensive website allows fans to post photos, share memes, chat with other Monsters and purchase concert tickets.

Little Monsters was created in collaboration with Backplane, a Palo Alto-based startup specializing in online communities. Gaga’s manager, Troy Carter, cofounded Backplane, and the pop star herself is a major investor.

“You can go on somebody’s Facebook profile and see they like Lady Gaga, but you don’t know to what degree,” Backplane CEO Matt Michelsen told Rolling Stone. “Little Monsters shows how many concerts they’ve attended and their overall level of participation around a common interest.”

Intuitively, every registered member automatically becomes a fan of Lady Gaga, and so far the site counts over 180,000 members worldwide. One distinctive feature of Little Monsters is multilingual chat rooms. Backplane’s proprietary instant translation feature facilitates dialogue among Gaga’s international audience.

Michelsen believes that the Backplane community experience can work for other artists such as Guns N’ Roses and Green Day. In the fourth quarter, Backplane will unveil a product that merges interests across different communities, thus allowing fans to tailor their individual identity.

“So a Christian Little Monster from New York who likes Nike can be connected to all his interests,” Michelsen explained. Coincidentally, a Backplane community for Nike is expected in the next few weeks. A Backplane mobile app is also in the works, with early screenshots of the product suggesting a similar look and feel to the mobile social app Path.

Written By: Jennifer Boshan
Category: Apps, Bands, Content, Design, Digital, Facebook, marketing, Music, Online, Social Media, Twitter, Web
Tags: App, Backplane, chat, community, empire, facebook, Lady GaGa, like, Little Monsters, meme, Mobile, online, Palo Alto, Pinterest, pioneer, post, public, Reddit, Rolling Stone, share, Social Media, Social Network, Ticketmaster, Tumblr

Billboard’s Guitar Pee [yes, Guitar Pee]

Writing your name in the snow is old news, apparently.

Boys, you can now play electric guitar solos with your pee. That’s pretty sweet, I guess?

You can also grab you pee track and listen to it via Guitar Pee’s mobile app.

Written By: Jennifer Boshan
Category: Apps, Beer, Booze, Comedy, Invention, Liquor, Music, technology
Tags: "Guitar Pee", App, billboard, Billboard Magazine, guitar, Mobile, pee, urinal

It’s Facebook IPO Week: Here’s Everything You Need to Know [VIDEO]

Facebook will be filing its initial public offering this week. The company may be worth more than $100 billion.

The world’s largest social network, with more than 901 million users, is set to become the most valuable U.S. tech company after going IPO. Google went public in 2004 with a valuation of $23 million.

Facebook will sell 180 million shares of its company stock, while more than 157 million shares will be up for grabs. The IPO is slated for Friday, but could happen as soon as Thursday.

Accel Partners, Digital Sky Technologies, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners and other early backers are among the investors expected to win big. Goldman Sachs plans to sell 13.2 million shares, according to PIonline.com. Reports also state Accel Partners will sell about $1.3 billion worth of stock while Digital Sky Technologies will sell 157.4 million shares.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is offering more than 30.2 million personal shares for sale. Facebook announced last Thursday individual shares are priced in the range of $28 to $35.

The young tech company, born in Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room in 2004, is receiving both criticism and support in the days before the IPO release. Institutional investors have expressed worry about Facebook’s advertising model. There is also concern about Facebook’s slow growth on mobile. On the other hand, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak showed his support for Facebook in a TV interview by saying he would buy Facebook stock regardless of the official company valuation, according to Bloomberg.

The 33 underwriters of Facebook’s IPO will have first dibs on stock. This means huge investment banks will direct where the stock traffic goes — generally, to the portfolios of big investors and well-known executives. Zuckerberg is appealing to average investors by allowing a percentage of Facebook’s shares to be purchased in E-trade.com, according to Time magazine.

Watch the video above to find out more about Facebook’s IPO. Plus how, and if, you should get in on the action.

From Mashable.com

Written By: Jennifer Boshan
Category: Apps, Facebook, Online, Social Media, Video
Tags: "Mark Zuckerberg", "Steve Wozniak", facebook, IPO, Mashable, Mashable.com, Mobile

TRENDING: Twitter Rolls Out Promoted Tweets for Mobile

Twitter on Tuesday announced it was bringing Promoted Tweets to mobile devices.

The move, which Twitter had announced was coming last month, means Promoted Tweets will join Promoted Accounts on users’ mobile devices. Advertisers can also specify whether their Promoted Tweets will run on iOS, Android or other mobile platforms.

In a blog post, Twitter noted that the targeting is “great for brands who want to increase the prominence and reach of their message to a particular type of mobile user. For example, mobile game and app sellers can now pinpoint the users who are likely to purchase their products.”

Mobile users will see such tweets in the timelines of their iOS and Android Twitter apps. Promoted Tweets will appear in the timeline just once. The company claims that it will only display the Promoted Tweets in the timeline when they’re “relevant.” If the Promoted Tweet isn’t relevant, you can dismiss it from your timeline with a swipe.

Twitter was careful to note that as users scroll down their timelines, Promoted Tweets will flow with them. Users complained loudly when Twitter rolled out the “Quick Bar” — more commonly referred to as the “dickbar” — last March. The bar hovered at the top of screens as users scrolled, prominently displaying a rotating list of trends, including those paid for by sponsors. The Quick Bar was removed within a month of its release. The new version of Promoted Tweets for mobile appears to be Twitter’s more user-friendly compromise.

Twitter’s migration into mobile advertising comes as Facebook has also begun the process of integrating ads into its mobile apps.

Both are behind the curve compared to Google, which could see as much as $4 billion in revenues from mobile advertising in 2012, according to one analyst’s projection.

Advertising accounts for the bulk of Twitter’s revenues. The company generated $139.5 million in ad sales in 2011, according to estimates from eMarketer. Ad revenues are expected to grow 86.3% to $259.9 million this year.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, ymgerman

By Mashable

Written By: Jennifer Boshan
Category: Advertising, brands, marketing, Online, Social Media, Twitter
Tags: ads, advertising, brands, Google, Mashable, Mobile, Promoted, Social Media, Tweets, Twitter