Mobile messaging service WhatsApp has announced record user numbers, after revealing that the service just processed 27 billion messages over a 24 hour period. That’s significantly up on its previous best of 18 billion from the final day of 2012. Breaking the figures down in more detail, that 27 billion consists of 10 billion inbound messages from WhatsApp users and 17 billion messages received. The reason that these do figures don’t match is that they include group messages;  “sending one message into group chat of 10 people is 1:10 inbound:outbound,” the company explains. The messaging app allows users to send free text and multimedia messages to individuals or groups. It is available for a range of devices and platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Asha, Symbian and more. The company is notoriously discrete with communicating its milestones, and the latest figures were (once again) distributed via its Twitter account. new daily record: 10B+ msgs sent (inbound) and 17B+ msgs received (outbound) by our users = 27 Billion msgs handled in just 24 hours! — WhatsApp Inc. (@WhatsApp) June 12, 2013   The fact that WhatsApp has beaten its previous best — which was set during a period when messaging very often peaks — is telling. Twitter, Facebook and others don’t outgrow their stats from New Year’s eve within six months; WhatsApp is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate.   WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum recently revealed that the company has more than 200 million active monthly users (the total number of registered users is unknown). That makes it larger than Twitter and it’s fair to say it is leading the mobile messaging industry at this point. The company has signed deals with operators across the world and has partnered handset makers — including Nokia, which built a physical WhatsApp button on the Asha 210 – in a bid to widen its base to make the service useful for increasing numbers of people. BlackBerry, which once dominated the space, says its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service has 60 million users who send and receive some 10 billion messages each day. The Canadian company claims that is “nearly twice as many messages per user per day as compared to other mobile messaging apps”, however, as analyst Benedict Evans points out, the firm initially counted 10 billion sent and 10 billion received separately but the correct figure is 10 billion sent and received. Even with the wrong data, WhatsApp is some way ahead. Looking at other major players, Korea’s KakaoTalk this week confirmed with TNW that it has 96 million registered users who send 5.2 billion messages per day. Asia’s other messaging giants — WeChat from China, Line from Japan and India’s Nimbuzz – do not reveal message volumes, but have built impressive user bases of more than 300  million, 150 million and 150  million respectively (Tencent-owned WeChat is actually right behind WhatsApp with 195 million monthly active users.) WhatsApp has powered ahead on user numbers but many of its rivals are adopting different monetization models to WhatsApp’s subscription-based model — which charges users $0.99 per year for unlimited use. KakaoTalk and Line make impressive amounts of money through games and virtual content — Line booked $58 million in Q1 2013 — and last week US-based video messaging specialist Tango launched a similar gaming platform for its 120 million users. Canada’s Kik – which has 50 million users — has also shown its intention to follow suit using an HTML5 content platform which will be opening to developers soon. There have been whispers that WhatsApp might turn its hand to content but, for now, that leaves us in an interesting position where the market leader is the only one not currently chasing the red hot business model. Time will tell whether that decision is a wise one. Headline image via abulhussain / Flickr
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Samsung has taken us behind the scenes of how it tests the ‘reliability’ of the Galaxy S4 and, we presume, the rest of its smartphone product line at its Korea headquarters. In the video below — which is in Korean with some English subs — the phone-maker puts the flagship S4 through a range of tests. After each one, the handset must be in full working order in order to pass; though Samsung doesn’t reveal its pass/fail rate. The series of ordeals ranges from hundreds of drops and falls, to attempts to shatter the front glass, a dip into a sink of water and — the interestingly worded — temperature and humidity torture test (aka an oven session followed by a salt water sauna). The result of all of this — it says — is a smartphone that is ”strong enough for the wear and tear of daily life”. Naturally the company advises its customer to refrain from copying its test lab fun and games on their own devices: “these tests are run by trained professionals”. Samsung came under some pressure over its phones of late after a Reddit user alleged that his Galaxy S3, the forerunner to the S4, caught fire in the middle of the night while charging on his bed. Samsung promptly investigated the issue — might the release of this video be related to proving its devices are reliable? Flaming devices aren’t just limited to Samsung and the S4, of course, the iPhone 5 is also said to have ‘exploded’ in the hands of some users before. Headline image via Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
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Mobile back-end platform service Parse revealed today that it powers more than 100,000 mobile applications. That figure is a 25 percent increase on its last reported usage tally in which the company stated it powered 80,000 apps. This fresh milestone comes a single month after the company was swallowed by Facebook. Parse is a service that caters to developers who are looking for faster ways to build out their applications, similar to Stackmob. It enables features like push notifications, social media, and data storage across all platforms. Developers can quickly leverage technology platforms like Box, Twilio, Crowdflower, SendGrid, Stripe, and New Relic from one service instead of having to manage it from multiple locations. Perhaps noteworthy, Parse says that the increase of 20,000 apps is more than it’s seen in its first year of existence. Company CEO Ilya Sukhar says: The momentum we’ve seen over the past month is exciting, but it’s not surprising. More and more developers are realizing that their time is better spent on creating beautiful and engaging user experiences rather than tinkering with servers and databases. Since joining the Facebook team, all of our metrics are up and we’ve grown more in one month than we did in our first year. Facebook gives us even more resources to continue serving the developer community and it’s going to be an exciting road ahead. This May, Facebook snatched up Parse for reportedly $85 million in a mix of cash and stock. Sukhar said recently that Parse would be focused on “business as usual” and has been releasing products relevant for all developers. A week after its acquisition, the platform unveiled a hosting product for apps and added support for the engine.js framework. Having 100,000 apps is a interesting statistic and shows that even under the Facebook brand, developers are not showing any signs of worry when it comes to the social networking company potentially disrupting the experience people have with Parse. Photo credit: Thinkstock
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Out of the ashes of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band craze, games that utilize real guitar controllers are cranking up the volume this fall with the arrival of Ubisoft’s Rocksmith 2014 Edition and a new challenger, BandFuse: Rock Legends. Rocksmith Ubisoft is showing off the new Session Mode in Rocksmith 2014 Edition at E3. Players will be able to customize AI bands that respond to and feed off of the users’ actions. We’ve heard this promise from music games before, but this time it does appear to be quite intelligent and musically-grounded. Players have a wealth of options, such as different tonal modes and genres. The 2014 edition, which we’ll forgive for coming out in October 2013, addresses several complaints from the original game, such as loading times and frustrating menus. It arrives on PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3 with songs from Alice in Chains, Aerosmith, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis and more. Rocksmith has done well since its initial release in 2011, selling over 1.5 million copies. Ubisoft touts the game as the “fastest way to learn guitar” according to a national study, noting that 95 percent of players say they’ve gotten better at the instrument after playing the game. BandFuse Also at E3, I went hands-on with BandFuse: Rock Legends. The game, which has attracted big name guitarists like Slash and Zakk Wylde, scrolls guitar tabulation in real-time and supports four players: two guitars, a bass and vocals. As an average guitarist and better-than-average Guitar Heroist, transitioning to the BandFuse interface was relatively seamless, though learning to move up and down the fretboard while keeping an eye on tabs will take some time. Like Rocksmith, BandFuse promises to teach beginning guitarists how to play, though the educational aspect isn’t being promoted as heavily. A $60 version of the game will come bundled with a proprietary cable, and kits including a Squier Stratocaster guitar will retail for under $200. BandFuse’s developers said that when they showed their work to Harmonix co-founder Alex Rigopulos, who helped develop both Guitar Hero and Rock Band, he said it was the game that Harmonix had originally wanted to make. Admittedly, real guitar gaming has a steep learning curve, but I’d argue it’s not noticeably steeper than that of a first-person shooter or real-time strategy game. The lack of building real guitar skills was one of the chief complaints about the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, and, arguably, one of the reasons for the demise of the cheap plastic guitar and its related games. The fact that both games work with just about any electric guitar or bass is a plus, as it eliminates the need for expensive single-use controllers. Existing guitarists will simply be able to use their own axes, and beginners would have had to purchase a guitar anyway if they were learning through more traditional methods. Judging by their E3 demos, Rocksmith and BandFuse are going to be a blast, so you can start looking forward to rocking out with your friends this fall when they hit the market. Related: Quincy Jones on technology, music and his Playground Sessions piano learning startup Image credit: iStockphoto
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The best ads never feel like advertisements. They engage you, make you think — perhaps even catch you by surprise. This is exactly the sort of ad Ogilvy created for IBM’s “People For Smarter Cities” campaign; instead of shoving information down your throat, the ads attempt to make city life a bit easier by serving dual purposes in clever ways. Watch the video below and tell me you don’t love it. Via: NOTCOT
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Google today updated its Gesture Search app for Android with support for over 40 languages. You can download the new app now directly from Google Play. For those who have never heard of it, Gesture Search lets you use your own handwriting and gestures to search your Android phone or tablet, instead of relying on an on-screen keyboard. Now that it can recognize a mix of over 40 languages, you can simply draw a number or letter to access contacts, apps, bookmarks, settings, music, and more by swiping your finger on the screen. Best of all, you can use transliteration (transcribing from one alphabet to another) across these languages. This includes Pinyin character support for Chinese, as well as less complex optoins (Google gives the example of swiping “Arhus” to write “Århus”). Google’s gesture-searching app first arrived on Android back in March 2010. It was never a full-featured offering, and still isn’t — the app only lets you search by writing the first letter of a query — but it’s quieter than voice search and handy when you don’t want to type. As we wrote when it first launched, Gesture Search is more of a “building block” for finding information on Android. Google clearly sees the app as a test for a different way to search on mobile, and we’re sure lots of findings are shared across its internal teams to improve the company’s handwriting technologies. Yet clearly the app isn’t good enough, or useful enough, for Google to just build it into Android. With all these new languages coming in, however, this update may just be the ticket. We’re not holding our breath: it’s still very much a gimmick. See also – Google Search for Android gets reminders, upcoming content, real-time public transit updates, and more and Google makes its stock Google Keyboard gesture-typing app available on the Play store Top Image Credit: Laura Glover
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Today Twitter’s Josh Brewer announced that he will leave Twitter to build something new, and spend time with his family. Fittingly, the move was broadcasted on Twitter by Brewer, who tweeted the following: I am sad/excited to announce that I am leaving Twitter/starting my own thing and taking some much needed time off w/ my family. #twitter4eva As Mike Issac at All Things D notes, Brewer’s LinkedIn profile self-describes his role as “[leading] the design of key initiatives across the Twitter product.” Twitter is a maturing company. As its looks to grow its revenues and reach for the public markets, employees that have logged years at the firm in senior positions and are vested will depart. That process will accelerate once (and if) Twitter publicly lists. Before Twitter, Brewer lists stints at The Designer Fund, and Socialcast. As far as what sort of service Brewer is building, perhaps his side projects provide a clue: 52 Weeks of UX, FFFALLBACK and Shares.
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Microsoft today announced it has added optional multi-factor verification to Windows Azure Active Directory identities, allowing enterprises to secure employee, partner, and customer access to cloud apps. The feature is another layer of protection when accessing Office 365, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, Dynamics CRM Online, and many other tools that are integrated with Windows Azure AD. For those who don’t know, multi-factor verification requires you to use more than one form of verification to access an account. In this case, Microsoft’s new service, codenamed Active Authentication, works by adding an extra step to the sign in process: after a user enters their username and password, they are required to also authenticate in one of three ways: using the Active Authentication app on their mobile device, via an automated phone call, or via an automated text message (SMS). Microsoft says Active Authentication is built on the technology from authentication vendor PhoneFactor, which the company acquired in October. The service offers the following: Rapid Set Up: Simply add the service to your Windows Azure AD tenant and turn it on for your users, or add the service to your custom applications using just a few lines of code. Automated Enrollment: Windows Azure AD users enroll their own phone numbers and set authentication preferences during the standard sign in process. There are no tokens to provision and ship, so you can quickly enable the service for users around the globe. Scalable: The reliable, scalable service supports high-volume, mission critical applications and large-scale employee, partner, and customer deployments. This doesn’t end at companies. Developers can also use the Active Authentication SDK to build multi-factor authentication into their custom applications and directories. Unfortunately, all of this will cost you: pricing details are here. The only upside is that Microsoft is offering flexible billing options, letting you choose between per user, per month (pay by the number of users you enable for multi-factor authentication each month) and per authentication (pay by total number of authentications used each month). Currently the scheme seems to be $1.00 per user per month or $1.00 for every 10 authentications, but Microsoft plans to double that when it deems the service ready for general availability. See also – Microsoft’s Azure passes $1B in annual revenue, as subscriptions grow 48% in 6 months Top Image Credit: Robert Scoble
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While Apple’s App Store sprung from humble beginnings — many of the most popular apps early on centered around virtual beer and other novelties — today it houses apps from some of the most innovative developers alive. As such, Apple has created a new ad to showcase how meaningful apps can be. As you can see in the nearly ten minute spot below, Apple is highlighting everything from apps that control smart prosthetics to language preservation and the democratization of health care resources. In case you’d like to know more, the companies featured include Skyscape, Orthocare Innovations, Thornton Media and Assistiveware.
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If you caught Apple’s iOS 7 presentation on Monday or have followed any of the numerous bits of coverage, then you know that the home screen icons have quickly become a point of contention. They’re certainly a radical departure from the deep and allegory-heavy icons of iOS 6 and they contribute to an overall lighter, brighter and more youthful aesthetic this time around. In fact, the designs are so different that you might even have been surprised that they came out of the same teams that were behind the home screen on iOS 6. Well, you’d be right. We’ve been talking to people all week about the new designs of iOS and multiple sources have given us a better picture of how it went down inside Apple in the last few months. First of all, many of the new icons were primarily designed by members of Apple’s marketing and communications department, not the app design teams. From what we’ve heard, SVP of Design Jony Ive (also now Apple’s head of Human Interaction) brought the print and web marketing design team in to set the look and color palette of the stock app icons. They then handed those off to the app design teams who did their own work on the ‘interiors’, with those palettes as a guide. We’ve also been hearing that there wasn’t a whole lot of communication between the various teams behind say, Mail and Safari. And that there were multiple teams inside each group that were competing with various designs, leading to what some see as inconsistencies in icon design. Those may well be hammered out in days ahead. The thought process appears relatively easy to divine here. Apple needed a stylistic and psychological break with the design language of its past, and Ive used ‘new’ blood to create that break. The result is a strikingly different, if divisive, take on a new set of iconography for iOS 7. Though the designs of the apps are also very important, the icons are iOS 7’s first impression and calling card. That’s why it was important to have them trend downward in age and upwards in vibrance. It’s also clear from what we’ve seen and heard that what we’re seeing of iOS 7 right now is a ‘mid stride’ snapshot. The work on design and development is still going full tilt, and what was presented this week is firmly a ‘work in progress’. We’re told, for instance, that some builds of iOS used onstage at the conference by presenters are already newer than the ones pushed out on Monday. Of the various aspects of iOS 7, the design of its icons and other visual cues are the most in flux at the moment. There are still refinements and conversations going on around them. I don’t know but would expect there to be a lot of fixes for the inconsistency we’re seeing in things like gradients and design language on the home screen. Also, there seems to be a good chance that the confusing up arrow on the lock screen — which has tricked everyone I’ve seen try it into swiping up to unlock, rather than to the right — will be ‘fixed’ (removed?) before iOS ships in the (probably) fall. I don’t know any of the following for sure, obviously, but I get the feeling that we’ll be seeing more changes in the iOS 7 beta period than in any previous. Which makes a lot of sense, given that it’s the biggest change in iOS, well, ever. Just to pull some completely random numbers out of the air to illustrate this: If iOS 6 beta 1 through the release version of iOS 6 saw a (totally made up) 15% change in function and design, I’d expect iOS 7 to see maybe a 35-40% change. Mostly in visual design though. The trick now is for Ive to leaven the work of the new design talent (which we’ve heard may include a recent acquisition) with the experience and depth of understanding of its established interaction designers. Marrying the fresh take of these new voices with the sure hand and user empathy of the stalwarts could create a fresh new voice for Apple that’s perfect to take it forward into its new era.
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Today at a hearing on Capitol Hill, the director of the NSA made a new claim that will alter the debate concerning pervasive collection of phone call metadata, and PRISM, a program to track Internet usage. The director stated that the two previously secret programs have, as Reuters reports, “helped to prevent ‘dozens’ of potential terrorist events.” Before, President Obama had indicated that a terrorist attack had been thwarted by PRISM. That attack, it came out, was a 2009 plot in New York in which PRISM played a role. However, others have stated that PRISM’s role in that incident was superfluous, making the argument specious. It was without publicly claimed success that PRISM has endured withering public criticism in recent days. Thus, the claim that scores of potential attacks have been stopped by PRISM and the phone record program that has kept records on every phone call placed in the United States for years, will provide ammunition to those that say the privacy issues raised by the programs are simply part of the cost of safety. It does feel a bit out of left field; why wouldn’t the President have made this point before, when he claimed but a single event? The new claim will need backing. It isn’t enough to state that a program works, and in the estimation of the director, quite well, without context; what constitutes an event, and if several of the halted events are part of a single plot are key details that need to be uncovered. There is a broad, existential discussion between privacy and security playing out in the United States, as war and espionage and attack shift, partially, from the physical to digital realms. There are essentially three takes on the situation: Hawks ready to ascribe to the President’s take that we cannot have 100% security and 100% privacy, and thus must sacrifice some of our privacy to bolster our security; the apathetic public that doesn’t know enough to form an informed opinion; and those less willing to absolve large tracts of their privacy for promised security. I land in the last camp. As I wrote earlier: [The] President is asking us, with Congress as his active curb, to trust the government to know when to dilute our privacy and other civil rights for our own protection and good. To be frank I do not want to cede the privileges that make this a peculiar country to the hands of our executive to shift about at their whim. That’s antithetical to a written constitution. It’s better to stand for both liberty and justice for every American and realize that we won’t catch everyone who wants to harm us, than to decide that we’ll have to erode our foundational pillars of freedom to perhaps prevent the occasional idiot from bringing a bit of violence on our heads. That perspective is now slightly dated, given the claim of “dozens” of halted events; the choice might not be between increased privacy, and sporadic violence, but instead between lowered privacy, or pervasive explosions. We cannot parse our position until the NSA better explains its claim. For now, however, the discussion has shifted. Top Image Credit: Zoe Rudisill
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Yahoo today announced that on July 15, the company will be offering “short, sweet, and memorable” Yahoo IDs up for grabs. It is doing this by freeing up Yahoo IDs like emil@yahoo.com that have been inactive for at least 12 months so users like thisismythrowawayaccount@yahoo.com can finally get a useful email address. The plan is to reset the IDs in mid-July and let Yahoo users “have a shot at scoring” the Yahoo ID they want. Then, in mid-August (we assume August 15, but no exact date was given), Yahoo users who staked a claim on certain IDs will be told “which one they got.” That implies you’ll be able to attempt to claim multiple IDs, but you’ll only be able to switch to one. Spammers and other criminals will likely want to take advantage of this little contest, and Yahoo will presumably be working hard to stop them. For those who haven’t used their Yahoo account in ages, the company reminds you that Yahoo IDs are not only for your email address. They also tie your customizations and preferences to other Yahoo properties, for looking up content such as sports information, weather, and news. If you happen to have a Yahoo ID that you want to keep, the company offers the following advice: What if you haven’t logged into Yahoo! for over a year, but want to keep your Yahoo! ID? It’s easy. All you have to do is log on to any Yahoo! product before July 15th. Frankly, this message reads like the spam you sometimes get informing you that Microsoft or Google will be shutting down inactive Hotmail or Gmail accounts. Yahoo will likely have to spend a lot of resources to convince users that this isn’t a scam. Clearly the goal here is to build up the Yahoo brand. Frankly, we think removing the exclamation mark from Yahoo! would probably be a better way to achieve this end. Top Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Streaming live on The Next Web, Watchtower founder Brennan White will answer questions from readers at 3 p.m. ET (12 p.m. PT) Thursday, June 13th. As part of the Young Entrepreneur Council’s #StartupLab initiative, a virtual mentorship program, Brennan will appear live via video chat broadcast on this site. Brennan White is the CEO and Founder of Watchtower, the social media intelligence software that automates the details so marketers can focus on engaging with the community and creating great content. Prior to Watchtower, Brennan oversaw six years of uninterrupted growth and profitability as the Founder and Managing Director of the international social media agency, Pandemic Labs. #StartupLab is a free virtual mentorship program created by The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of hundreds of America’s most successful young entrepreneurs. #StartupLab takes YEC’s mission to help more people start successful businesses to the next level by offering millions of entrepreneurs direct access to YEC members through interactive video chats, email lessons and a library of how-to articles, videos and eBooks. Whether you’re just starting up, a current business owner, or you run an organization that supports entrepreneurs, sign up for #StartupLab today for real-world advice from some of the coolest entrepreneurs on the planet. Check The Next Web tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. ET (12 p.m. PT), when Brennan answer questions from the audience live via video chat. Photo courtesy of Brennan White.
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You haven’t done anything this crazy, I can all but assure you. For fun, it would appear, and the adulation of YouTube viewers, Colin Furze built a jet bike. Or, it’s a bicycle, with a decidedly homebrew-esque jet propulsion system strapped to the back. Strapped might be generous. Perhaps ‘tacked’ would be more apt. It’s just as bonkers as you will expect. But it goes, and damn fast. The contraption can hit 50 miles per hour. The Washington Post calls Furze an inventor, and we agree. On his site, Furze has build details. It’s Wednesday, so take the break and watch this guy somehow not break his neck: Top Image Credit: Colin Furze / colinfurze.com
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Today after a one year period of closed beta, AirPR opened its pubic relations marketplace to the world, and expanded its industry verticals to include lifestyle, and consumer goods genres. Previously, AirPR focused on technology companies; technology firms remains part of its mix. Its model is simple to understand: AirPR works to link its pre-screened top PR talent to companies willing and able to pay for real talent. In an email to TNW, AirPR noted that some refer to it as the Match.com of PR. It’s an apt analogy. Companies onboard with AirPR, answering a number of questions to help the service sort and find PR professionals that might best fit their needs. Bids are then recorded, and companies looking for help can then compare the firms who have offered their services. Every PR individual is quite different, just as every company’s needs are distinct; thus, the more harmonious the fit, the likely better the end result. As someone on the other side of the PR-Media fence, I can say with complete honesty that there are a great number of truly amazing people in PR. Bright, dedicated, dilligent, honest, and always available, they make parts of my job far easier. On the flip side of that coin, some agencies are content to mass hire communications graduates and put them to work making my inbox a seething hell. If we could improve the overall yield, I’d be in favor of it. In a real way, I’m hoping that AirPR can at once deliver on its promises, and find market uptake so that my professional life eases slightly. AirPR curates, and matches PR pros to companies in need. To what end, is a decent question. The team at AirPR was nice enough to share several pieces of data that are worth parsing. First up, of the companies that went through the onboarding process, this is what they were looking for help with: Launch: 36% Fundraising: 25% Recruiting: 16% Growth: 84% Brand Awareness: 69% Exit: 15% Companies that onboard are asked about their funding, whether they are self-funded, have taken funds from an angel investor, or cash from a venture capitalist. Unsurprisingly, the amount of capital a company has correlates to how they use AirPR; no firms that were bootstrapped accepted a bid from a PR pro selected by AirPR. 19 percent of companies invested in by venture capitalists did, however. More money, more stuff. There has long been a divide in the PR world between small agencies, and the hulking behemoths, such as Waggener Edstrom. The bigger groups can have far greater access to resources of all sorts, and the quality of their work is sometimes reflected in their scale; of course, there are big, terrible PR companies as well. It’s early days for AirPR, but their model appears solid. Let’s see how the market reacts. Top Image Credit: FaceMePLS
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Facebook today announced that it is bringing hashtags to its service, letting users add context to a post, indicate that it is part of a larger discussion, as well as discover shared interests. The company says hashtags have become “a vital part of popular culture” and since it has seen users using them on the social network organically, it has decided to actually implement the feature. While you could always technically create a hashtag on Facebook (just put a # before any word), they will now be clickable, taking you to a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic. On hashtag pages, you will naturally only be able to see the posts that you would normally see elsewhere on the social network: those that your friends have shared with you as well as those shared as Public. The new feature means Facebook users can now: Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #Wimbledon2013, #FathersDay or #Wedding. Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram. Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results. In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. Facebook mentions other services that use hashtags, putting Instagram first on its list, and then noting competitors Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest, but notably excluding Google+. Although Twitter does not own the concept of the hashtag, the company has popularized it to the point most people associate the phrase with the social network – nowadays it’s difficult to find a Twitter feed without multiple hashtags, and many tweets have arguably too many. Facebook and Twitter regularly grab features from each other as use cases for the two social networks continue to overlap. Many users nowadays have both Facebook and Twitter accounts, although the former service is still significantly larger than the latter. Recently, Facebook changed the name of its “Subscribe” button to “Follow” and also renamed subscribers to followers. This tweak came after Facebook built its own button similar to Twitter’s Follow button. A rumor suggesting Facebook could soon be adding hashtag support first surfaced in March. Given that Facebook last year acquired Instagram, which uses hashtags mainly to let users sort through photos, we noted at the time that hashtags could be a way for the company to bring the two services closer together, but right now that doesn’t appear to be the case. Facebook is presumably adopting the hashtag for the same reasons as Twitter: to let its users organize and filter messages around a single topic or theme. This offers yet another way to browse the social network, in addition to manually going to people’s Timeline profiles and of course visiting the News Feed. In fact, the company hints that hashtags “are just the first step” in a series of features that will bring conversations about public events, people, and topics on the social network to “the forefront of people’s Facebook experience.” Some of these include trending hashtags and deeper insights, slated to arrive “in the coming weeks and months,” but Facebook wouldn’t share more. Top Image Credit: AFP / Getty Images
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Google today launched a new Chrome Experiment called Cube Slam that let you play face-to-face version of pong against your friends regardless of where they are in the world. The real goal here is to demonstrate the company’s browser implementation of WebRTC. For those who don’t know, WebRTC is an open source project that lets developers integrate Real-Time Communications (RTC) across the Web, whether on websites or across mobile web apps. Google and Mozilla have already shown off the technology for conducting a live video chat between Chrome and Firefox, no plugins required. Unsurprisingly, Google has made a YouTube trailer for Cube Slam, which takes video chat into the game world: Cube Slam’s graphics are rendered in WebGL and CSS 3D, while its custom soundtrack is delivered dynamically through Web Audio. Since WebRTC isn’t yet available on the mobile version of Chrome (Google says it should be later this year though) you can only play the game against the computer (Bob the Bear) on your phone or tablet, as opposed to another friend. More technical details are available here and here. Winning at Cube Slam consists of hitting the cube against your friend’s or Bob the Bear’s screen three times to make the screen explode. Shields, obstacles, and gravity fields change with every new level, and you can unlock power-ups including fireballs, lasers, multi-balls, mirrored controls, bulletproof shields, fog, ghost balls, time bombs, resized paddles, extra lives, and death balls. More to follow.
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Microsoft and Sony are lined up head-to-head at E3 working to win over gamers to side with their respective next-gen consoles. After sitting through both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 press conferences and getting some hands-on time with the two systems, here’s our breakdown of what we think of the two. Price Sony learned its lesson from the previous generation of consoles and managed to come in below Microsoft’s price point. A $100 difference is a serious advantage for the PS4, and Microsoft’s going to have to work overtime to convince gamers that its system is worth the extra cash. However, it’s worth noting that Microsoft is billing its next-gen console as an “all-in-one entertainment system”. When paired with SmartGlass, the Xbox One is meant to be a fully-featured media device for the living room. I know it’s a bit like comparing different kinds of fruit, but you could think of the Microsoft’s media add-ons as roughly equivalent to an Apple TV. Seen in that light, I’m sure some consumers would still opt for the PS4, but I can see how mainstream users could get enough value out of the Xbox One’s extra entertainment features. Exclusives Sony says it has 100 PS4 games coming in the first year, 40 of which will have experiences unique to the platform. Microsoft showed off 13 exclusive titles at its press conference, and Microsoft Studios plans to publish 15 exclusive titles during the console’s first year. Corporate marketing spin is in full force, though, and the impact of the word “exclusive” is becoming diluted. Lots of Sony’s “unique” experiences sound like minor in-game content like an extra mission or oufit. Meanwhile, Microsoft has negotiated some timed exclusive deals with titles like Battlefield 4 to get downloadable content for the Xbox One first. While Final Fantasy XV was originally supposed to be a PS3 exclusive (back when it was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII), Square Enix revealed at E3 that the game will arrive on the Xbox One. That’s a pretty big feather to fall out of Sony’s cap. Personally, I’m more excited for the games coming to Xbox One. Dead Rising 3 looks really fun and Ryse is suitably epic. On the Sony side, inFamous Second Son has potential, but the hands-off demo was all superpower without any balance. Consumer perception It’s hard to overstate the hole that Microsoft is currently digging with its digital licensing policy for Xbox One games. Sony really laid into Microsoft at its press conference on Monday, and the zingers that it managed to get in were the talk of the E3 show floor yesterday. When Sony announced that it would support used games and offline play, the crowd gave it a standing ovation. That’s a victory that Microsoft practically handed to them. Sony got in several digs at Microsoft at its E3 press conference. As we move toward the cloud and new forms of digital and online distribution, companies clearly need to do more to communicate with customers about what kind of ownership they’ll have over their purchases. That’s true not just for consoles, too, as it’s an issue for industries like music and publishing. Microsoft’s 24-hour offline policy is just mystifyingly bad, but the firm has also done a poor job communicating about it. Progress So far it looks like Microsoft is ahead of Sony in terms of launch timing. The Xbox One is scheduled for a November release, while the PS4 is coming “this holiday season”. While it’s entirely possible that the PS4 could manage to sneak onto shelves before the Xbox, Sony’s vagueness is cause for concern. If the PS4 launch slips into December, the company will miss the Black Friday bonanza in the US. Based on my rough impression of the two companies’ press conferences, Xbox One development seems to be further along than that of the PS4. Sony had several embarrassing game demos during its keynote where play was extremely stuttery and choppy. Microsoft had a few audio troubles and a couple hiccups at its event, but overall things went smoother. Also, Sony’s cloud gaming service for the PS4 isn’t due out until next year.  Technically, Sony was a year behind Microsoft in its development cycle since the PS3 came out a year after the Xbox 360. While Sony managed to catch up enough to release its hardware in the same season as Microsoft, the PS4 platform will need the better part of 2014 to mature. Developers also seem to need some extra time to put together their blockbuster PS4 titles. inFamous Second Son, for instance, isn’t due out until Q1 2014 at the earliest. Design E3 brought us our first view of the PS4 design, while Microsoft showed off the Xbox last month. There’s not much to say here. The two consoles look very similar with their dark, angular designs. The Xbox One does appear noticeably larger than the PS4, possibly almost twice the size. However, I’d expect the size issue to only be a dealbreaker for a few customers. Conclusion Sony has managed to come back from its rambling launch in February to outmaneuver Microsoft at E3. Between the lower price and the rhetoric around used games, the PS4 has the upper hand at the show. It’s still early, though, and the biggest battle is going to be fought by developers working on exclusive launch titles. The E3 demos of these games gave only an inkling of how things will turn out. Microsoft could gain back some ground with a simple price cut, and it would build a lot of goodwill if it toned down its policies about offline and used gaming. It’s not easy to admit a misstep, but it’s better to do so early on before too much damage has been done.
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With the launch of its second popup shop in New York, women’s accessories startup Bauble Bar teamed up with design and development firm Gin Lane to explore a new challenge faced by modern retailers: given the impact the Internet has made on how we shop, how can the digital world augment a traditional in-store experience? Most in-store displays today act like smart banners; they either exist for branding purposes only or function as interactive ads. But recently, it’s become increasingly common for stores to experiment with everything from giant, Windows-powered touch displays to the all-familiar iPad. The goal of this experimenting isn’t to look ultra modern or to blindly throw around cash, however. Bringing digital experiences into physical spaces has a certain allure to it. The promise of increasing engagement and empowering customers makes it a very attractive idea, and even if it’s tough to implement, in-store shoppers are worth targeting. Now, back to Bauble Bar. If you’re unfamiliar with Bauble Bar, it’s a fashion ecommerce startup focused on women’s accessories. Like Warby Parker, Birchbox and Bonobos, Bauble Bar plays a dual role in the fashion and tech scenes. For Bauble Bar’s 4,000-square-foot Soho shop, Gin Lane stuck with the iPad and built a native app specifically designed for in-store use. iPads tend to feel like an afterthought in retail experiences… Sitting in Bauble Bar’s custom jewelry section, the app lets users customize the design, colors, materials and size of various accessories, including necklaces and rings. As you explore different designs, a preview of your jewelry is generated on the fly. To build it, Gin Lane tapped OpenGL for 3D rendering, Stripe for payments, Linea InfineaTabs for card reading, and SpreeCommerce for product management. We made a Gif (below) to show the Web GL animations in action. iPads tend to feel like an afterthought in retail experiences — like they’ve been tacked-on arbitrarily — but Bauble Bar manages to pull it off. This is in part because the startup sells both pre-designed and custom jewelry, and the latter couldn’t fully exist offline. In other words, the secret to successfully integrating touch computing into a physical space may just be that stores need a reason to do so in the first place. Additionally, because Bauble Bar’s offerings are primarily online anyway, digital fits right at shop. On the challenge of creating digital in-store experiences, Gin Lane’s Dan Kenger says it’s important for interactive displays to be considered early on in the planning process: “Ensuring that the digital product is thought about holistically from the beginning allows for it to not feel out of place but instead a part of the retail space.” Kenger says most of the problems he’s encountered are logistical. “You really have to take into account the environment the iPad resides in and ensure the physical UX is conducive to a great customer experience. There is a lot of variables outside of “software” with in-store installations, all which have to be addressed.” For Gin Lane’s implementation, we consider it a job well done, but there’s an overwhelming feeling that this sort of interactive experience is still in its early stages. A lot more that can be done to blend together the digital and the physical, and as technologies emerge (and prices drop), shoppers should expect to encounter new ways of displaying and interacting with products in a physical store. The growth of digitally-conscious brands will only drive this further — companies that realize how to take advantage of interaction design, without letting it get in the way.
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Research firms App Annie and the International Data Corporation (IDC) have co-published a new report for E3 today looking at the growing popularity and consumer spend for video games available on smartphones and tablets. Not surprisingly, the duo is predicting that Android and iOS will extend their lead as the prominent platforms in the mobile and portable gaming space. This should be expected given that dedicated devices such as the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita are bought almost solely for playing games. Smartphones and tablets, meanwhile, have multiple uses which extend beyond video games, making them a popular choice with a much broader range of consumers. Nevertheless, IDC and App Annie suggest that Android will gain an extra 10 percent market share by 2014, residing just below the 60 percent mark for the total install base. Apple’s iOS platform will take a smaller 2 percent rise, while other mobile operating systems will drop a single and solitary percentage point. Handheld consoles, for comparison, will drop 11 percentage points and fall behind iOS for the first time. The growth in mobile gaming has also overthrown the traditional model for selling content to players. The $60 boxed product still exists, but the introduction of 99 cent games in the App Store – as well as the growing success of free-to-play models – has forced Nintendo and Sony to rethink their digital strategy. The new report from App Annie and IDC estimates that 44 percent of software sales will still come from prepaid game purchases this year. That figure includes physical cartridges and discs sold in-store, as well as the initial price set in the App Store, Google Play store or Nintendo eShop. Microtransactions, the money-maker for nearly all free-to-play titles, will rise to 51 percent of total revenue in 2013. The strategy of pulling people in with a non-existent entry fee – take Real Racing 3, published by EA – and then offering them additional content or fast-track power-ups has proven incredibly popular. The most poignant example is the recently unveiled Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time, which is abandoning the original’s prepaid model for a more lucrative free-to-play setup. Given the popularity in microtransactions, you would be forgiven for thinking that the average consumer spends considerably more money on apps than they do full retail games. Not so, according to IDC data: The up-tick in average revenue per user (ARPU) for software available on handheld gaming consoles suggests that full price releases will continue to be successful moving forward. As Nintendo and Sony continue to experiment with their own digital offerings – Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move is a suitable example – perhaps both companies will adopt the free-to-play model too. The rest of report covers the top five grossing genres for smartphones, tablets and handheld consoles, as well as the split in revenue between the App Store and Google Play marketplace in fourth quarter of 2013 and first quarter of 2013. An analysis of the latter can be found in our previous coverage, but it highlights that although dedicated consoles still have a role in the market, the smartphone and tablet userbase is continuing to grow much faster. Image Credit: YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images
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Over the last three or four years manufacturers have been pushing 3D TV sets as the next big hardware innovation. The technology hasn’t taken off though and as a result, ESPN announced today that it will be closing its ESPN 3D channel. Katina Arnold, Vice President for Communications at ESPN announced the decision on Twitter (as noted by The Verge) earlier today. A spokesperson for the company has also confirmed the move to Gizmodo. “ESPN 3D was great at home but due to low adoption of 3D to home, we are discontinuing to focus on other products for fans and affiliates,” she said. Arnold later added that ESPN’s 3D content is “unmatched” at the moment and that the company would continue to look at new technologies such as UHDTV moving forward. ESPN 3D was launched in June 2010 and now broadcasts sporting events from around the globe, 24 hours a day. A quick glance at its schedule for today shows a football (or soccer, depending on your preference) World Cup Qualifier between France and Spain, as well as ongoing coverage from the 2013 X Games in Aspen. With a restrictive amount of live 3D broadcasting and 3D Blu-ray movies, it’s perhaps not surprising that 3D TV sets as a whole have never taken off. Three-dimensional content as a whole has often been controversial – take the initial concerns for the Nintendo 3DS – and the jury is still out on whether 3D movies shown in the theater add anything but an upgraded ticket price to the overall experience. Regardless, sports was arguably one of the most compelling and suitable types of content for 3D broadcasting. If one of the largest TV content producers is ducking out, it doesn’t bode well for the technology as a whole. Oh well. There’s always 4K content to look forward to eh? Image Credit: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
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The video discovery app Vodio is now available to download on Android for the first time, following its iOS debut last year. In addition to releasing the Android version of its app, Vodio also said it successfully secured $800k of bridge financing led by New York seed fund RSL Venture Partners and BTG Pactual, as well as other angel investors. Vodio said the cash would be used to “expand its algorithm team and continue to grow its consumer base”. The video platform first launched on the iPad at the start of 2012, before making its way across to the iPhone in August last year, but from today is available on Android devices (running Honeycomb, version 3.2, or newer) for the first time. The company said that since it launched last year, Vodio users have watched more than one million hours of content spread across more than 30 million videos. Essentially, the service aggregates videos from news outlets, as well as YouTube channels you’re subscribed to and organises them into channels within the app, and staying true to its predecessors on Apple’s platform the Android version offers very similar functionality. On first load the app pre-populates your feeds with content from a number of news sources, with ‘Highlights’ (above) showing a round up. In addition to the pre-loaded  feeds, you can also add your own – such as including The Next Web in your listings. Clicking through will show you your selected video. While the video is playing you can turn your screen from vertical to horizontal to switch into full-screen mode. It also pulls in any text information about the video and displays it below. In addition, there are on-screen controls for things like teaching the app the videos you like, and the ones you don’t, using the ‘thumbs up/thumbs down’ icons. The sharing icon allows you to (can you guess?) share a link or share it to other apps you have installed on your phone, like Facebook, Twitter, SkyDrive, Pinterest, etc. Naturally, there’s also the option of integrating social media accounts directly within the app – there’s also an option to automatically post every watched video to Twitter and Facebook if you do link your accounts. Navigation is simple, to move between different channels you simply swipe left or right and to see more videos you just swipe up or down and if you spot something you want to watch but don’t have enough time, simply tap the little on-screen clock icon to add it to your ‘Watch Later’ list. Hitting the options button on the top left (shown above the word ‘tech’ in the previous image), unsurprisingly, brings up the option to do things like link your social accounts, rate the app, check any messages or notifications you might have received or look up some help – generally, a one-stop shop for an overview of the app. The app’s arrival on Android will provide a new opportunity for the company to expand its reach and Vodio fans that have been jealous of i-owners since last year can finally get in on the action. In our testing, the app seemed to work well, with no real sign of lag when opening the app or perfoming actions. However, it did force close when trying to resume after switching away to another app. While the Android version available to download today only works on Honeycomb or newer, a version compatible with Android 2.3 and above will be available in the very near future, Vodio said. ➤ | Android | iPhone | iPad
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Back in May, I had the chance to tell you about a slick and beautiful email client for the iPad called Evomail. At the time, I remember thinking to myself that its navigation and gestures would translate well to mobile phones, so I was glad to get a notification a few weeks ago that the team was already working on an iPhone release. Today, that release goes live in a universal binary, bringing Evomail’s take to email into your pocket. The basics of Evomail for the iPhone are the same. It’s still Gmail-only (for now, more on that later), with full access to your folders. Gestures still navigate you around and you can still share the contents of your email via SMS, Twitter or by copying and pasting it. What you’re left with is something like this: Evomail’s approach is generally straightforward. It’s an email client, and it gives you access to your Gmail folders. But the big changes are quite notable, and the largest of these being that Evomail is going freemium as of today. Developer Jonathan George tells me that their money will come from added features, some of which will be launching in the next few weeks. While he didn’t go into a lot of detail, and I can’t share everything with you, I can tell you that some of these features are ones that we’ve not yet seen in email clients, and they can be game-changers. But George did let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, on a few important notes that I can share with you: Evomail is coming to Android in the next 2 months Support for IMAP and other providers is coming within 30 days Support for Yahoo and iCloud email accounts is coming soon The team is working on speed improvements, as well as polish and focus Evomail’s clean layout is a nice change of pace from what I’ve seen in other clients. Though I’m a big fan, and user, of Mailbox’s task management functions I prefer Evomail’s approach to everything else. The UX of Evomail truly sets it apart from anything else that I’ve tried, and I have a lot of respect for a team that’s boostrapping a product instead of focusing on an acquisition. Take a flip through the screenshots, then download a copy of Evomail for yourself. When a great product goes free, there’s really nothing that should hold you back.
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Facebook today announced it has opened up its newest data center in Luleå, Sweden, a small town at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, which is just 100km south of the Arctic Circle. This is the company’s first data center outside the US, and one of the largest of its kind in Europe. Facebook chose Luleå for at least three big reasons. First, it’s a prime location to take advantage of outside cooling (which reduces the overall company’s carbon footprint): the temperature has not been above 30°C (86°F) for more than 24 hours since 1961 and the average temperature is around 2°C (36°F). Next, dams on the Luleå river generate so much renewable electricity that half can be exported. Lastly, Sweden has a dense fiber-optic network, so data can flow reliably to the rest of Europe, and beyond. Rumors that Facebook was to open its first non-US datacenter in Sweden first started in May 2011, but were only confirmed by the company in October 2011. At the time, Tom Furlong, Facebook’s director of site operations, made the following statement: “We concluded Luleå offered the best package of resources, including a suitable climate for environmental cooling, clean power resources, available land, talented regional workforce and supportive business and corporate environment.” The Luleå Data Center naturally has its own Facebook Page, with over 9,400 Likes. Facebook used the Page to announce the data center is now handling live traffic from around the world and to remind everyone how efficient the data center really is: All the equipment inside is powered by locally generated hydro-electric energy. Not only is it 100% renewable, but the supply is also so reliable that we have been able to reduce the number of backup generators required at the site by more than 70 percent. In addition to harnessing the power of water, we are using the chilly Nordic air to cool the thousands of servers that store your photos, videos, comments, and Likes. Any excess heat that is produced is used to keep our office warm. This is the company’s third data center after Prineville, Oregon and Forest City, North Carolina. Facebook already has plans for a fourth data center in Altoona, Iowa, slated to start serving user traffic in 2014. More to follow.
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Today Belly, a Chicago-based company that provides consumer rewards services for small businesses in the United States announces a number of new features that will bolster its growth, and help its customers better connect with consumers — both digitally activated and not. The company has a simple vision. Logan LaHive, founder and CEO, tells TNW after a lengthy discussion that Belly’s goal is simple: the firm wants to “take the traditional offline experience in local businesses and bring it more online.” That’s a grokkable goal, but not an easy task. The smaller the business, the more conservative the businessperson, as a rule. Before we delve into the granular feature side of Belly’s new today, it’s worth noting a few facts about the company. It now counts 6,000 customers as its economic base. The average price charged per company lands close to the $80 per month mark. That puts the firm on around a $6 million run rate – yearly – at the moment. Belly adds between 100 and 150 new customers per week, putting its growth rate between 6.6 and 10 percent per month. Now, to the news. Command Center Belly’s product isn’t hard to understand: the company offers small businesses a quick, easy to use customer loyalty solution. It deals with both physical cards, and mobile applications that track customer activity. The company has taken rewards out of the era of punch cards. But how can you keep track, even digitally, when you have a store to run? Belly’s new Command Center answers that question by bringing in-store analytics to the tablet devices it provides to its customers. The iPad Mini you were supplied with, in other words, will now be the place you go to see how the day went, and who showed up. Belly powers millions of consumer events per month for its customers. Knowing who has come is key for owners of small businesses. Command Center, while also providing analytics capabilities, also allows customers to “adjust loyalty points to a customer’s account as well as view customer history, data and demographics.” This is akin to Foursquare’s Mayor feature, but broader, and more flexible. Now, for the obligatory provided screenshot: Social In addition to Command Center, Belly is rolling out new social capabilities to its platform designed to help it drive more targeted social interaction, including the accumulation of Yelp reviews, and certain Facebook interactions. Yelp targeting, in Belly’s estimation, will help the company drive more reviews from happy customers to a customer’s Yelp page; more better reviews more better customers and higher top line. According to its early testing, this new Yelp capability has helped “select” – thus, take the stat with salt – customers pick up 10 Yelp reviews weekly. From the customers that dig them. That’s big volume for a small company. As the new feature additions to Belly’s platform will help companies accrue Yelp love, the upgrades will also allow customers pick up new Facebook Likes. This is no small currency in the social economy. Finally, Belly is expanding ‘Belly Bites,’ its sampling service. Bites helps companies dole out free samples to where they will be the most effective. Belly is a key Chicago success story. And it is rapidly expanding its product. Its customer growth in a way validates its model. The question now becomes something more interesting. Can Belly sustain sufficient customer growth to achieve the momentum it needs to catapult out of the private markets? At a 10 percent monthly growth rate, Belly is on course to pass $50 million in yearly revenue within 24 months, using the most conservative of calculations. Perhaps Chicago will be allowed a do-over of the somewhat painful Groupon slide? That Lightbank money has helped fuel Belly is therefore something of a beautiful irony. Headline image via Thinkstock
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