Posted by Tattletech on Jan 3, 2012 in
Security,
social media 
It’s official, spammers and other cyber thieves are targeting Facebook. Well not really abusing, more like capitalizing on people and their need for free, amazing, out of the ordinary stuff. CommTouch today released some great data onhow scammers get access to your data on Facebook, or try to anyway.
Their recent January 2012 Internet Threats Trend is a comprehensive analysis of scores of malicious Facebook activities during the past year. Ready, set, don’t like that must have app already!
Tags: CommTouch, Facebook, Internet Threats
Posted by Tattletech on Oct 18, 2011 in
ink Communications,
social media ink Communications, the team that brings you Tattletech, has a new Facebook page where you can try to keep up with all their international doings.
To celebrate the launch of the page, they have put together a contest based on their popular TRUE/ink Drinks Manual (which you can flip through below), a mixological must full of cocktails from the team, their friends, clients, lovers and enemies.
The contest? Submit your own cocktail worthy of the book and win the ingredients to make it, the actual Drinks Manual and two Baccarat Crystal Vega martini glasses! Been sitting on a gilded lobster, diamond-laced martini recipe? Now’s the time to break it out!
To Enter:
1.) Go to www.facebook.com/theinkstudio and like ink Communications.
2.) Post a cocktail suggestion on the wall. Be sure not to double up on what is already in the book and keep it in the style of the other recipes. Be sure to leave your name, affiliation and Twitter handle.
3.) Three Winners will be chosen on November 30, 2011.
4.) The new TRUE/ink cocktail books will be printed and you can get one at our next event or we will mail it to you via that good old fashioned snail mail!
Tags: Beverages, Cocktail, Collections and Indexes, contests, Drink, Facebook, Home, ink Communications, Twitter
Posted by Tattletech on Aug 3, 2011 in
Apps,
Content,
Hep Guest Blogger,
IPTV,
Internet TV,
Mobile,
Mobile apps,
New things,
TV,
TattleTweet 
This weekend I eagerly downloaded the new, international iPlayer app from the BBC. In the back of mind, I was wondering if this would be the first real challenge to my cable subscription.
I live in Holland, where, albeit an hour out, I can watch BBC1 and BBC2 via cable. I can listen to all BBC radio stations over the Internet and even watch the one minute news updates and video via their website. All good stuff, however, the iPlayer led me to believe I would have it all in one place, all in my control. No such luck.
As the surprise wore off, the reality dawned that there is absolutely no news on the BBC international iPlayer. I looked and looked again, thinking it must be there someone, but it wasn’t. But it makes no sense not to stream the BBC News channel! Not only would it get me using the app more but it would bring the experience more in line with my expectations.
Working with operators in the chaos of going OTT, I appreciate the complexity surrounding programming rights and creating services for multiple platforms, devices and markets, and I think the BEEB have done a fantastic job with the iPlayer UX. Their catalogue is impressive and the price point reasonable, however, I remain baffled as to why there is no news.
Boasting record profits (The company’s 2010/2011 annual review shows a double-digit rise in headline profit – up 10.3% to US$255 million), the company is bound to reap rewards from taking such classics such as Absolutely Fabulous, or top properties like Top Gear and Doctor Who (with more than 11.8 million fans on Facebook) online, and I for one will be watching to see where they go with their multi-screen strategy. However, something is still missing, so I will be watching, and waiting for news.
- Vanessa Vigar
You can follow Vanessa on Twitter @Vigarv
Tags: Absolutely Fabulous, BBC, BBC iPlayer, BEEB, Doctor Who, Facebook, Holland, iPlayer, iPlayer UX, OTT, Top Gear
The new social music website turntable.fm has seen a rapid increase in popularity this summer thanks to its signature blend of DJing, music sharing and weird avatars. The website lets you sit in on themed rooms, each of which has spots for five DJs who alternate picking songs from a growing database of material to keep the party going, and keep weird avatar heads bobbing. When a spot opens up, your avatar can jump on stage and join the fun, spinning your own selections. Play what the crowd likes and get points. If the crowd doesn’t like your selections, they can vote down your choice and skip it.
Turntable.fm can seem daunting at first, but I’ve DJed about 20 times now and here are a few lessons I have learned that can help you get started.
- Nobody has any idea what “the kids” are listening to. I don’t care how old you are, everybody younger than you has access to a whole world of culture you can only guess at. So, don’t try and guess. If there are younger people in the room, you will not recognize a single thing they play. Try to find a room with only older people and stump them with your hip new swagger.
- Hip hop is dead. Maybe it’s just bad luck on my part (and certainly my sample size could use growth) but across the board, in every room not specifically tailored to hip hop, rap performed poorly. New school, old school, it didn’t matter. Nobody wanted to listen to rap.
- Chat it up. People respond better to talkative DJs. Compliment other DJs’ songs enough and you might even be able to slip in some rap and not have it get voted down immediately.
- Play “Peaches” by Presidents of the United States of America. I swear, that song has come on and cleaned up in every room I’ve been in.
- 90′s night always plays. Perhaps it’s more telling of the current user base than anything else, but I’ve found it very easy to push a room into playing nothing but 90′s music. Bring flannel.
Now that you are ready to jump in and DJ, here comes the bad news. Turntable.fm recently restricted service to exclude everybody outside the US, as it was getting a bit jittery about licensing rights. No word on when it will open back up to the rest of the world, but one would suspect it is top priority given the global popularity the website was enjoying.
In the meantime, for our American readers (and hopefully soon for all of you) if you ever come across Q.E.D. in one of the rooms, that would be me. And if you wait around for seven minutes, you will most likely hear “Peaches.”
- Jason Oberholtzer
Tags: Arts, Disc jockey, Facebook, Hip-Hop, iTunes, Music, Spotify, turntable, turntable.fm, United States
By all accounts, Ali Ahmed is an ambitious man, further, the type of man to whom the word ambitious does credit. Ahmed gets things done, thinks big picture and stands by his ideas. It is good then, for those interested in the success of Lutebox, the entertainment service Ahmed founded, that he remains the driving force behind the service, because Lutebox is among the more ambitious (certainly the more broad) ideas you are likely to encounter. Whether its scope keeps Lutebox from reaching its potential or sets it firmly above competing entertainment services remains to be seen, however it is clear that Lutebox lacks in neither ambition nor leadership.
The idea behind Lutebox is to create a service which makes available to users a variety of mainstream content (e.g. movies, TV shows, sports, music videos) while building a social community around that content. The community allows users to keep tabs on the viewing patterns of their network and to schedule group screenings wherein they can watch content simultaneously with friends while on a group video conference. The idea sounds great — premium content plus the means to enjoy it with your friends — but presents a few challenges when it comes to execution.
For one, building any social network from scratch is difficult, and Ahmed seems set against incorporating external social networks. Another challenge involves obtaining the wide range of rights required for the many categories of content promised. Finally, there is the technical challenge of making sure the videoconferences don’t interfere with the content screening; Lutebox plans to offer six-way video conferencing while in your scheduled group viewing which can put a strain on most computers.
Here is where the ambitious nature of Lutebox is most apparent. A very small segment of the population has the processor power available to them to stream HD content while maintaining a video conference, let alone eight, but when the technology catches up, or Lutebox finds a way to gracefully address the problem, this kind of simultaneous viewing is precisely the entertainment experience users will demand. And if anybody can find a way to get it to them, it’s probably Ali Ahmed.
You can register for an early alpha invite to Lutebox here.
Tags: Business, Business Services, Entertainment, Facebook, Social network, Television program, Videoconferencing, YouTube
I want to root against Google+ so badly I can almost taste it. A failure here would make my life so much easier! This isn’t like Google Wave where I saw something that could potentially be useful, helpful and game-changing for how I could communicate with people. This is just more of the same stuff we already have.
Google+ is just sharing things with a mixture of friends, acquaintances and strangers. That’s it. Just sharing and following. The content isn’t any different than I can get from these people anywhere else; it’s the same kitty video I see on Facebook, now with a whiter background design.
So, I want to root against this new, redundant time suck. I don’t need it and I certainly don’t need more social networks to keep tabs on.
That said, I am now on Google+.
It’s research only, I swear! Strangely addicting research…but anyway, the point is that I am on Google+ despite my desire to watch it fail. I still hope it amounts to nothing, but in the mean time, I might as well check out what these circles are all about, and spruce up my profile, and well…I have to come clean. I’m hooked.
Maybe we are now hardwired to enjoy novelty in any form, but every time I sign on to Google+ it feels like getting into a new car. All I want to do is take it for a spin and see what kind of power it has. I am enjoying every bit of minutiae, every second of exploration. I mean, not that I still don’t want it to fail and all, but it is kind of fun.
I went to one of the first colleges to get Facebook, and in the early years, it had a similar feel. Simple acts of navigation were novel and everything had a weird lawless and vaguely stalkerish feel about it.
It’s this fun with form (a new system to navigate!) and function (new people to stalk!) that Google+ has going for it. I don’t think we need Google+ at all, and I still wish it would go away, but I’m pretty sure I like it, against my better judgement. As Facebook would say, “it’s complicated.”
- Jason Oberholtzer
Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Buzz, Google Wave, New People, Search Engines, Searching, Social network, Twitter
Posted by Tattletech on Jul 13, 2011 in
Apps,
Cool stuff,
Innovation,
QR codes,
Technology 
The proliferation of QR codes has advanced, for the first time, onto the human body in a permanent fashion. Paris-based tattoo artist K.A.R.L. broke new ground by tattooing the first QR code meant to be read from human flesh, for the purpose of creating body art perpetually one smartphone away from being animated. QR codes have certainly come a long way from their warehouse origin as part trackers. Watch the video of his incredible tattoo here.
Though QR codes are now commonly seen in marketing and in some art, this is brand new frontier, and one that seems to hint at future QR cyborg potential, which frankly sounds really awesome!
Tags: art, Body art, Bodyart, Facebook, Paris, QR code, Tattoo, Tattoo artist
I’ve come to the disturbing realization that I am using Twitter to recreate my high school experience. I’m not sure if this means I’m stunted, the Internet is stunted, or the whole process of normative socialization is stunted, but I can no longer deny what I see. I am currently enrolled in Twitter High.
Let’s start with the institution. Organization and segmentation are the typical characteristics of a high school environment. Time is institutionally managed, activities regimented, and the day is broken into 47 minute work intervals with two and a half minutes for travel between classrooms. All this organization promotes compartmentalization. Math is studied for 47 minutes in this room, with these people; a bell rings and within three minutes, you change your work, your peers and your location. So goes the day. Each pursuit has its own setting.
My Internet life operates in similar compartments. I have folders of bookmarks for my different interests, times of the day where I work on different pursuits. I’ve even written myself a daily schedule that cuts my day into half-hour segments.
The activities of my day are vaguely connected by setting. Just like the high school building I took classes in didn’t change, regardless of the class, I am still on my computer, regardless of what I’m doing. And just like in high school, there is some overlap of work and peers; people of similar intelligence level or with similar interests tend to glom together. Communities form, but I’ll get back to that later.
When I open my laptop in the morning, my daily “productive purpose” plays out quite like a school day (though unfortunately, the day doesn’t end in the afternoon but rather continues until I close the laptop again for the night). I force myself to focus for periods and then let myself wander before switching gears. I haven’t bought a bell to ring when I need to change what I’m doing, but I haven’t yet ruled out the purchase.
More compelling than my general organization is my social life. Okay, it’s maybe not that much more compelling, but if I were in high school it would be! After all, that arena launched a million horrible movies, TV shows and best-selling vampire series. High school is all about socializing—trying to hang out with the cool kids and get the girls. Here is where we get to Twitter, the place the Internet goes to socialize.
In high school I hung out with a variety of different groups, which I think is a rather typical experience. I was into music, so I had my music friends. I played sports, so I had my athlete friends. I was good at English, so I had my smart friends and horrible at French, which I didn’t take seriously, so I had my slacker friends.
Here are the main groups I follow on Twitter: battle rappers, professional athletes, writers, bloggers, journalists and people in the media. It seems like I’ve filled my high school quota for cliques (though I won’t tip off which group is the “slacker friend”). I’ve managed to recreate the socialization patterns I had in high school on my Twitter stream, and in no way is that pathetic!
What is easy to miss in all the snark regarding high school is the importance of these categories when we socialize. A large reason Twitter is succeeding is the ease with which we can compartmentalize our interests and manufacture communities. I’m not a part of the world of professional sports, but I get to hang around that world. I’m no rapper, but I get to see battle rappers be creative and appreciate their process even though I’ve never battled (though if I were you, I wouldn’t test me—I got bars). However, I am a part of that loose group of introverts known as “writers, bloggers and journalists” and by participating in that clique, I get to feel some camaraderie. Twitter might benefit the writers most of all, as we wrestle with insomnia, self-doubt, and Vitamin D deficiency while staring at blank Word documents alone in our respective homes.
Basically, Twitter gave me back the ability to do what I love: hang out with people who are more interesting than I am, pick their brains, and be social in a broad sense. My days are more like high school because of it, but I don’t mind—47 minutes of work, then a few minutes of chatting in the hallway. So it goes.
- Jason Oberholtzer
Tags: Facebook, High school, LinkedIn, Online Communities, Social network, Student, Trending and Popularity, Twitter, United States
Posted by Tattletech on Jul 1, 2011 in
Content,
Cool stuff,
Deep thinking,
Internet Stuff,
Mobile,
Mobile apps,
Online ads,
Smart folks,
Wise philosophical words,
social media 
Analyst firm Canalys projects that mobile apps will generate $7.3 billion in revenue in 2011 from downloads, in-app payments and subscriptions. And they expect that number to double to $14.1 billion in 2012. As huge as these revenue numbers are, a big opportunity is being missed. With a little more thought and understanding of retail psychology, I believe those numbers could be considerably higher.
In a high tech mobile world it may seem a little dull to draw inspiration from the humble supermarket chain. But if such immensely successful examples of retail genius exist, wouldn’t it make sense to explore the various ways the same strategy could provide a monetization masterclass for mobile applications developers?
There are few companies better at selling physical goods and services than supermarket chains. They offer a vast array of products and services, creating an in-store shopping experience (with seemingly minimal effort) which sells massive volumes of both necessity and impulse purchases, generating billions of dollars in sales in the process. The customer experience has been refined to an art form—intelligent product placement and subtle but precise special offers cater to all demographic groups while still feeling targeted.
Personally, I am the world’s biggest sucker for such deals and frequently end up spending at least 10% more than I plan to when I do the weekly shopping. Over the course of 10 months this could increase my spend by over $1500! Surely it must be possible to replicate this success within mobile applications.
However, a majority of application developers seem to lack even the most basic understanding of retail psychology when they craft their monetization strategies. Limited availability of end user profiled data should not be an excuse for only using the most basic Freemium model.
Supermarkets don’t work that way; in-store sales are driven not by a static model, but by a fluid one—a combination of seasonal events, timed offers, demographic probability, and knowledge of what’s hot and what the competition is offering. Then, the customer journey is scrutinized and high margin products are placed in “sweet spots” which catch your attention from the time you enter the store to the time you leave.
This model stands in stark contrast to the “one size fits all” strategy of virtual goods and other services, propped up with a bit of blind network advertising that seems boring and grossly unsophisticated. The predictability of Freemium services can be annoying and has an adverse effect on the buying mindset. They are boring and often ignored. Perhaps, replicating some of these supermarket upsell techniques could enliven mobile app market.
Even high profile apps like Foursquare are massively short-changing themselves when it comes to monetizating end user eyeball time. They have a great brand persona, a slick and engaging experience, great social and reward hooks (with Mayorships, check-in leaderboards and badges) and now 10 million users, many of whom (like me) are very active. So where is the revenue source to justify the estimated $600m market CAP? Right now it’s via “special nearby” tabs, many of which are next-to-useless unless you happen to be Mayor. Why hold back? The potential to deliver multi-layer value to partners, brands and the user is immense. You have their eyes, now develop some “sweet spots.”
Incorporating the same sophisticated product placement and special offer techniques used by supermarkets, Foursquare could easily apply numerous special deal layers within the user journey, based not only on location but user profile. They could Optimize UI real estate in the same way supermarkets optimize shelf space to deliver a multitude of well-placed promotions based on the age/sex demographics of people who are likely to visit a location. They could even deliver a variety of promotions depending on what time of day a user checks in. The possibilities are endless and, if deployed in a slick and uncluttered fashion, they could have a significant impact on Foursquare’s earnings potential.
Foursquare is a great example, but I am convinced a more tactical approach to app-based monetization can be applied in varying degrees by most developers. By understanding the profile of the user, analyzing the user journey and deploying a smarter variable upsell strategy within the flow of the application (gaming credits, virtual goods, subscription services, special offers, etc.) there is much more profit to be found in the mobile app market.
You can follow Geoff Casely on Twitter @geoffcasely
Tags: Android, Business, Canalys, Facebook, Foursquare, INQ, Mobile application development, Product placement
Our own Jennifer Hicks, who recently started what promises to be a consistently entertaining and informative column at Forbes.com (Dante’s Soma), wrote a great article on the “Rise of the Knowledge Market” yesterday that profiles two new companies we absolutely love, Mancx and Acabiz. Together, these companies are helping to rewrite the way we think about knowledge.
“Fresh off their second investment round of $1.1 million from two prominent Swedish investors, Mancx is proving their concept of an online knowledge market to exchange personal information for money is a reality. They have set out to create a new set of standards in social search and global trade of knowledge…Think of it as Quora that you pay for, the mature Quora.”
“The idea behind Acabiz is brilliantly simple. They created a platform for academics, which they call knowledge holders, to connect with businesses, known as knowledge hunters, who are interested in their specific research expertise or knowledge. The Acabiz platform allows businesses to easily and directly tap into the knowledge network of thousands of academics worldwide who all have highly specialized knowledge in fields such as architecture, engineering, law, medicine, science, financial, economics, and others.”
Read more about these companies and the knowledge market in the rest of Jennifer’s fantastic article here.
Tags: Articles, Business and Companies, Charlie Cheever, Chris Dixon, Dante, dante alighieri, Facebook, Forbes, Jennifer Hicks, Knowledge, Knowledge Management, Knowledge market, Quora, Soma
