T-Mobile gestart met verkoop via Twitter

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MarketingFacts/~3/IGuicsAACOs/

T-Mobile start vandaag met twee Twitter kanalen voor service en verkoop. Via T-Mobile_Webcare reageert het T-Mobile webcare team op vragen, klachten en problemen van klanten. Het verkoopkanaal T-Mobile_Shop is vooral bedoeld om consumenten te informeren over nieuwe diensten, mobiele telefoons en T-Mobile aanbiedingen. Alexander Hamel, Directeur Klantenservice bij T-Mobile: Lees meer over: T-Mobile gestart met verkoop via Twitter.

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Better Times for VCs? Redpoint Raise $400 Million Fund Focused on Social, Mobile, Cloud and Clean

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/pQIcUDb7sEM/better-times-for-vcs-redpoint-raise-400-million-fund-focused-on-social-mobile-cloud-and-clean-2010-2

bank vault cash

Redpoint Ventures announced that it had closed a new $400 million fund to invest in early stage start-ups in the “social and mobile Internet, cloud computing and clean technology spaces.” The last fund that the Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm raised was in 2007, which was $250 million.

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What's Next For Geolocation? Apps, Apps, Apps

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/-8Qdi_iN2dE/whats_next_for_geolocation_apps_apps_apps.php

map pins geolocationGeolocation social networks are set to be in 2010 what microblogging was in 2008 - the next big thing. Currently the space is being dominated by Foursquare, with others like Gowalla, MyTown and Loopt trailing in its wake.

While Gowalla has secured a large amount of funding, some $8.5 million, and My Town claims more check-ins than the other services, Foursquare is happily ticking along on the seed money provided by its founders (after they sold their original effort, Dodgeball, to Google), and creating a community of developers who are eager to build secondary applications. There are two reasons Foursquare is gaining so much ground over its competitors.

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This is a guest post by Simon Salt, the founder and CEO of IncSlingers. He is a writer and blogger whose work has appeared in a wide variety of places, including Chris Brogan's Dad-O-Matic.com, American Marketing Association News and the Austin Realtor. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal on social media and is a recognized national speaker on that topic as well.

Firstly, it is available on all phone platforms. While this is also true of Loopt, the game play element of Foursquare makes it more attractive to many users. Secondly, it took the very sensible step of opening its API early on. This has generated a wave ofgeolocation_widget_0210.jpg new secondary applications.

In addition to this, it set up a developer community forum and is extremely active there, providing support, information and assistance to developers that are creating these secondary apps. Just as with Twitter, it is not just the service itself that will create demand, but the applications that run from that service.

There are hundreds of applications that run on the Twitter API now (most of which are listed at oneforty.com). It is very likely that by the end of 2010 we will see similar numbers of applications for Foursquare, and, should Gowalla and the rest open their APIs, for those services too.

The reason geolocation social networking is so popular is quite simply its ease of use. Arrive at a destination, be that your work, the gym, a coffee shop or even the grocery store, fire up the application on your phone, "check-in", and get points, badges and even increased status in the game for doing so.

As with Twitter, early adopters are the ones using the sites the most at the moment, but the services are rapidly spreading beyond the hard core. Unlike micro-blogging, you need no talent to be entertaining, informative or stylish - you simply check-in as you go about your day. You attract "friends" by doing this, or by connecting with people you already know, either online or in real life.

The Next Step: User- and Location-Focused

As with so many other early-stage social network platforms, extending the service with secondary applications is what makes the service truly useful.

At present, the secondary applications that are being developed fall into two main categories: user-focused and location-focused. A good example of a user-focused app is wheredoyougo. This service provides a heat map visual of all of a user's check-ins. Another, foursqpic allows users to upload pictures as part of the Foursquare Venue Tips section, supplementing simple text tips with visuals as well. These are great apps and certainly add to the fun and extend the functionality of the service. However, the real gains are coming in the location-focused apps. geolocation heat map wheredoyougo So far, the most developed of these is placewidget, which allows owners of a location to promote, via a website widget, the "Mayor" of their location on their website. Until now, any real marketing revolving around Foursquare was offline, and had to be location-specific. By bringing the ability to market both their involvement in the Foursquare community and promote a loyal customer, this widget gives a lot more power to businesses looking to leverage this type of social networking.

Foursquare recently announced it had signed two deals with media outlets. The first is an agreement with Metro, Canada's number one free daily newspaper, to have content for venues provided by the newspaper. The second is with Bravo TV, which will include Bravo Celebrity Tips and Bravo-branded badges for over 500 locations. A game is great, but a content-rich social network is something a lot more valuable.

Photo credit: Agata Urbaniak Discuss

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Google Wants To Control All Communication [Google]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/CCheZX_GwHE/google-wants-to-control-all-communication

Google's two new announcements: integrating a Twitter-like service into Gmail and a goal of a real-time speech translation service shows what direction they're taking the company: Into the space between you and every other human being on the planet.

To be fair, these two developments are really far apart in their delivery dates. The Gmail status update could come as soon as tomorrow, whereas the the speech-to-text-to-speech translation system is still a ways out. You can definitely see just how much work Google needs to do by trying to read your Google Voice voicemail transcriptions. (Voice search works better on Android 2.1 because you're talking slower and enunciating.) But both these features point in the same direction many of the company's other products have been hinting at. Here's a list of Google's major products, in case you forgot, and which sector of communication they want to dominate.

Google Voice: This is a big one, and it'll be the most natural interface for Google to slot in the voice-translation into. If you're using it the way Google wants you to use it, you're already piping all your voice calls and SMS through Google's tubes. And refining speech to text gives them a good idea of your interests and what you're talking about, allowing them to better serve up the relevant ads to you during calls.

Gmail: Having access to at least one end of everyone's email conversations, outside of business emails, gives Google the ability to be a gateway for most of your written communications. But that's not enough for Google, which is why they developed...

Google Wave: It's email, message boards, chat rooms and collaboration software all in one, except every participant needs a Google account. This closes that "openness" loophole that email has, and forces everyone into Google's biosphere. So this, and Gmail, should make sure that every medium-length communique passes through Google's maw for analysis. But what about shorter and longer forms? Update: Thanks commenters, for reminding me that Google made Wave open, so people can create their own Wave servers to talk to each other with the Wave protocol. The point still remains, that if you were going to use a service, wouldn't you rather use the service from the company that created the protocol, for performance and feature reasons?

• Google Docs: For longer documents.

• Google Talk: For short blasts of instant messaging, video chats and some audio chatting.

• Picasa and YouTube: Communication doesn't have to be all text-based, you putting your photos and videos online count too.

• Android and Chrome OS: By getting you down at the operating system level, Google can theoretically know every kind of communication you perform. It knows who you talk to, how you do it and when you do it. It can even shape the how by delivering the experience themselves.

• Everything else. There's Checkout, Finance, Maps, Reader, News and other apps, which fill in the other forms of communication or expression that aren't quite covered by the major products above. One major missing piece is social networking, where Google basically failed before with its Orkut service (except for Brazil), so this new Twitter/Gmail hybrid might be their next entrance into the space.

But why do they want these things? Why would Google want to be the middleman between you and the world? To sell you ads, of course. And don't think Google is going to stop at just helping you talk over the internet or over the phone, they're going to reach into meatspace as well. How? One step is making that speech-to-speech translation portable, so you can do a sort of near-field communication with someone else with the same device while at the same time being able to look them in the face. Then, blast you two with the appropriate ads on the billboard next to you.

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Publishers Tell Google and Their Ebook Plans to Get Bent [Rumor]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/-Q9eMDn9GbU/publishers-tell-google-and-their-ebook-plans-to-get-bent

The vision of ebooks Google has presented to publishers: allowing people to print copies, cut and paste portions, and paying publishers 63 percent of the revenue. The vision the publishers presented in return: Go eff yourself.

That's right, Google's finally getting around to opening an ebook store too—called Google Editions, and it's been in the works for a while—the idea being that people will be able to read the books on any internet-connected device.

What's incredible is how the Times says negotiations are now proceeding. Now that Apple and Amazon are fighting over publishers and their books—imagine how oh-so-hotly desired they must suddenly feel—publishers have real power to negotiate, and it comes with wondrous effects, like getting an information monolith like Google to actually back down. There will be no printing, no cutting and pasting. And 70 percent, like what Apple and Amazon are now offering, is apparently starting to sound dandier to Google. Another point Google gave in on, surprisingly, is search. Previously, they planned to make up to 20 percent of every book they sold through the store searchable, but that wasn't kosher with some of the publishing execs, so now they can choose to opt out of search.

Google finally jumping into selling ebooks, with the idea of being the ebook seller to everyone—or at least, everyone not toting a special reading device, just your average thing with a screen and internet access—could definitely shake things up even more than they already are. And you know, a Chrome OS tablet with an ebook store would be slightly more interesting as a cheaper iPad rival.

Publishers should enjoy the attention, and power, while it lasts. Because it won't. [NYT]

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Twins Discover Teenage Brother’s Death on Facebook

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/izr1U_FB6ho/

This isn’t the way you should learn about the death of your 17 year old brother.

According to Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, twins Angela and Maryanne Vourlis had just woken up on their 20th birthday. Like most young adults, they logged onto Facebook to check their walls and inboxes for birthday greetings.

Instead of finding happy birthday wishes, the two twins found messages of “RIP Bobby” (their brother) and “RIP Chris Naylor” (a friend of his) all across their Facebook news feeds. Completely shocked, baffled, and hurt, the two rang their brother’s phone in the hopes it was a mistake. It was to no avail.

Next, they rang their mother. While she didn’t receive any word from the police or others about Bobby or Chris Naylor, she did know that Bobby was with his friend that night. After a call to the police, they confirmed what they had learned on Facebook: that Bobby Vourlis was dead. He passed away along with Chris Naylor in a fatal car accident that also took the life of a third teenage passenger.

You can read the whole heartbreaking story over at the Daily Telegraph, but it’s clear that the real-time nature of the web spread information far faster than even the police or phone calls could. While we understand it takes time to identify victims and send an officer to a residence to inform family of the news, the process can simply take too long in today’s world.

We offer our condolences to both families for the tragedy they are enduring. We could not imagine learning about it the way they did.

[via CNET]

Tags: Brothers, death, facebook, Twins

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Music Ownership Beats Music Subscription in Reader Poll

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/pEHakxxUuVI/

In last week’s Faceoff Series we asked about music consumption models: Do Mashable readers prefer to own their entire music collections or do some of you gravitate toward subscription services?

One week later and the results are in: Ownership wins the day at a full 50% of the vote. Of all our past Faceoffs, though, this edition had one of the highest “tie” votes constituting people who really like both models. The music subscription model still came in second place behind ownership at 28% of the vote, but the “Tie: I like them both!” option was very close behind at 22%.

The results seem to indicate both a growing contingent of folks warming up to the idea of music subscription services, and the idea that there could be room in the market for both approaches to be sustainable business models. Which option got your vote in our poll, and why? Let us know in the comments!

Who would win in a fight: Music subscription, or music ownership?(poll)

Tags: music, polls, social media, subscription, web faceoff

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