Categorie: mobile

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: $180M OMGPOP Acquisition Was A “Rare Instance”

apps, Gaming, mobile, social, TC, Zynga

mark-pincusStepping back from remarks a few weeks ago that suggested that Zynga was about to go on a shopping spree, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said the $180 million acquisition of Draw Something-maker OMGPOP was a “rare instance.”

Although OMGPOP was certainly a step up from anything Zynga has ever done before, Pincus said it didn’t represent a change in strategy from last year. He said Zynga will continue to be “prudent and bottom line-oriented” in its decisions today during the first-quarter earnings call. That’s a change in tone from an interview with Bloomberg a few weeks ago when he said that he expected to do “a few” OMGPOP-sized deals in the next three to five years. His remarks helped send shares tumbling 13.9 percent from the day the story appeared.

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OnSports Raises $2M Led By Floodgate To Be The Mobile Watercooler For Sports Fanatics

apps, hitpost, mobile, onsports, social, sports, TC

onsports-appleIn both sports and the tech industry, you win some and you lose some. Even though OnSports chief executive Aaron Krane got a nasty black eye this week in a pick-up basketball game, his company just closed a $2 million round led by Mike Maples’ Floodgate fund.

The company, also known as Hitpost, makes this mobile app OnSports which has live discussions, polls and news about sports. It’s aiming to be the destination where sports fans can chatter or rage about their most-loved or hated teams and players. The app has more than 1 million downloads on Google Play and something less than that on iOS. While Krane didn’t share stats on active usage, he did say that there are “tens of thousands” of discussions and votes per day.

Krane, who used to work at the social gaming company that Google acquired called Slide, says there is an unexploited sweet spot in between freemium games like Zynga Poker and sports media. OnSports recently launched a better way for fans to create polls and stories about sports.

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With $3M In Hand, Gopogo Launches To Let You Create, Share & Discover Location-Based Stories

apps, geolocation, Gopogo, mobile, social, social networks, Startups, TC

Screen shot 2012-04-26 at 8.19.18 AMWith the rise of social networks, people are now sharing more information about themselves online than ever before. Sharing is happening at an unprecedented volume, with some calling it … “The Sharepocalypse”. Social feeds now disseminate content in realtime, but the problem of course is that a lot of this sharing gets lost in the noise — and with content piling up so quickly, stuff quickly gets lost. Want to find a tweet you wrote a year ago? Good luck.

A New York-based startup called Gopogo is launching in beta today to address this problem, with a geo-location platform for recording, sharing and discovering connected experiences.

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Facebook Makes Android Apps More Viral With Social Discovery

android, android apps, apps, facebook, mobile, native android, social, social channels

wpid-facebook_logoFacebook has been in the process of ramping up its effort to leverage its ever-growing platform to aid mobile developers to market their native and HTML5-based apps. In this attempt to extend its platform on mobile, Facebook brought its social channels and social app discovery to mobile web apps on Android and native apps on iOS. With a new update to Facebook for Android, the social network today announced that it is bringing social discovery to native Android apps.

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Facebook Makes Android Apps More Viral With Social Discovery

android, android apps, apps, facebook, mobile, native android, social, social channels, TC

wpid-facebook_logoFacebook has been in the process of ramping up its effort to leverage its ever-growing platform to aid mobile developers to market their native and HTML5-based apps. In this attempt to extend its platform on mobile, Facebook brought its social channels and social app discovery to mobile web apps on Android and native apps on iOS. With a new update to Facebook for Android, the social network today announced that it is bringing social discovery to native Android apps.

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Facebook Says It May Budge On 30% Revenue Share For Apps That Aren’t Games

apps, ecommerce, facebook, Gaming, mobile, social, TC

facebook creditsThere was a little gem that we almost missed yesterday in Facebook’s amended IPO filing. But it looks like Facebook acknowledged that it may have to move away from a 30 percent revenue share with app developers if it expands Credits, its virtual currency, and payments beyond gaming.

This is what it said in the filing yesterday: “We receive a fee of up to 30% when users make such purchases from our Platform developers using our Payments infrastructure. In the future, if we extend Payments outside of games, the percentage fee we receive from developers may vary.“

If Facebook cuts its 30 percent revenue share for other types of apps, the choice will set it apart from other platforms. Here’s how:

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Buffer Has Scheduled 10M Social Updates And Signed Up 180K Users

mobile, social, Startups, TC

buffer logoWhen we last covered Buffer, a service for scheduling your social media sharing, the startup had just raised $400,000, and its founders were relocating from San Francisco to Hong Kong due to expiring visas. It sounds like the immigration situation hasn’t been entirely resolved, and most of the team is still in Hong Kong — but on the bright side, Buffer’s growth has continued.

Buffer is designed for marketers and other folks who want to maintain an active social media presence without actually spending every second of their day on Facebook and Twitter. You can load the service up with content that you want to share, then it automatically gets posted throughout the day. Co-founder Leonhard Widrich tells me that on Monday, Buffer posted its 10 millionth update. The service is now posting one update every second.

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Andreessen Horowitz Made $78M Off $250,000 Investment in Instagram

apps, Fundings & Exits, Instagram, mobile, social, TC

instagram logoAndreessen Horowitz revealed that it made $78 million off its $250,000 seed investment in Instagram’s billion-dollar acquisition in a post that was meant to quell criticism that it “fumbled” its involvement with the company.

“Ordinarily, when someone criticizes me for only making 312 times my money, I let the logic of their statement speak for itself,” wrote general partner Ben Horowitz. “However, in this case, the narrative that some critics put forth has the nasty side effect of casting two outstanding entrepreneurs—Kevin and Dalton Caldwell—in an unfair light and glosses over an important ethical issue that we faced.”

While Andreessen Horowitz was one of Instagram’s very earlier investors, it said it didn’t follow-on because of a conflict of interest with another company it funded. The firm had supported Picplz, another photo-sharing concept that didn’t end up having as much momentum as Instagram. The company behind it eventually changed changed course and turned into App.net, which gives other mobile developers landing pages and other tools for acquiring users.

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Facebook Updates Android App: 1.9 Adds Photos, Message Sharing From Home Screen

android, apps, facebook, facebook messenger, mobile, social, TC

Android 1.9 Facebook messengerFacebook has released an update to its Android app today that should give users of the social network on Android devices a more integrated and instant experience — and takes Facebook another step closer to making its mobile app experience more like the one people have when using the social network on the web.

Specifically, the new version lets users share photos and messages direct from the home screen of their devices, and it includes several features that had been in the standalone Messenger app.

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Facebook Says “Yo Google and Apple, HTML5 Apps Will Suck Until Your Mobile Browsers Improve”

Apple, apps, facebook, Google, html5, mobile, social, TC

Facebook Google Apple HTML5Facebook has revealed that its HTML5 site has twice as many users as its iOS and Android apps combined. But that’s actually a problem, because Apple and Google’s mobile browsers don’t support photo uploads or high-performance animation for HTML5 — features that a crucial to getting Facebook mobile site users sharing more and convincing app developers to port to HTML5 where Facebook can tax payments.

To encourage mobile browser advancement, Facebook formed the W3C community group, but Apple and Google, the two partners it needs most, have refused to join. Since these oft-rivals to the social network own the dominant mobile browsers Safari and Chrome, Facebook’s efforts may have little impact, HTML5 apps and games will stay inferior, and both Facebook and the end user will miss out.

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