Daria

Playphone - Smartphone social gaming network

The social gaming network startup, Playphone has created a free app that runs on  different platforms. With the new app, players can play multiplayer games using devices with different OS.

The app runs on iOS, Android, HTML5, windows phone 7 and Flash.

The new mobile social gaming platform allows players to chat, invite friends, buy, gift and see what games their friends are playing. It has more than 3 million users worldwide.

From Playphone platform, players can access itunes and Android store.

 

The company was founded 2003 and is based in San Jose, CA and offers downloadable mobile entertainment content and games. The company has presence in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Miso - Changing the way people watch TV

One year old social TV startup Miso (founded March 2010) believes that there is a better way to watch TV and that is on a second screen using Miso. Miso is on iphon, ipad, Android and web.

The Company funded $4 million recently and currently has 100K users.

Users can log in and start watching TV shows, movies and other TV contents available on Miso’s library.

Users can comment on the shows, reply, exchange ideas about the content, share articles and follow each other to see what friends are watching on real time.

Everytime users add comments, check-in to watch a content or share, they earn points and can compete with their friends to see who has the most points and becomes the biggest fan.

Lately the company has been looking into synchronizing content from 1^st screen (TV) to 2^nd screen (mobile phone).
What happens is that the mobile device synchronizes with STB, allowing mobile device to know what are you watching and where are you on the show and you can use your mobile phone to share comments about the content you are watching or to read about the stars on the show. Here is a video about it:

 

There are plenty other social TV applications out there: GetGlue, Tunerfish and IntoNow to mention a few.

Spotify, a platform for apps

Spotify has announced today that it will add applications to its music streaming service. This is a beginning for Spotify to become a platform for everything around music.

Today’s launch consists of 12 applications from third party partners.
Apps such as Tunewiki app that allows people to sing along while listening to a song by synchronizing song with lyrics or Songkick app which searches at user’s music libraries and suggests local events and concerts that might match the user’s music taste.

The apps are results of Spotify partnerships with 13 partners and to mention a couple:

Rolling stone magazine has developed an app for Spotify platform. The app creates new playlists of new music everyday and has articles and reviews about music.
Billboard apps creates playlists of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts.

For now apps are free for all Spotify subscribers.

It looks like following to partnership with Facebook, Spotify wants to follow Facebook path on opening its service to third party developers.

Today Spotify has 10 million active users and 2.5 million paying customers. It has 15 million records available and adding 20,000 records to it music library everyday.

The company funded $100 million in Jun 2011 and the company was valued $1 billion. The company had $99 million revenue in 2010.

Latest on LTE

3G developments were much faster than 2G developments and now LTE is even faster.

Today 35 operators in 21 countries have commercially launched LTE and totally 248 operators in 87 countries are investing in LTE which is more than three times the number in the first quarter. According to GSA, more than 100 LTE networks will be launched by end of 2012.

Up to now there are only two TDD launched networks in the world, both in Saudi Arabia.

Number of LTE (TDD +FDD) devices available in the market is also increasing rapidly. In the past three months, number of LTE smartphones has tripled according to GSA and totally 197 LTE user devices are available in the market.

 

LTE is available commercially in the following countries:
Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, UAE, USA, and Uzbekistan.

Swedish 1800 band auction completed

The five days long 1800 band auction completed on October 17^th.

There were three bidders in stage one: TeliaSonera, Net4Mobility and Hi3G. After stage one, both TeliaSonera and Net4Mobility owned 2x35MHz of the 1800 band each. Net4Mobility is a joint venture of Telenor Sweden and Tele2 Sweden, there each owns half of the joined company.

The total auction revenue was SEK 1,35 billion.

 

Time-shifted video interviews

The startup OVIA founded in 2010 wants to change the traditional way of recruitment.

The goal is to replace the first step of recruitment process, the phone interviews with time shifted video interviews, and maybe even the first in-person interviews.

The company just funded $2.5 million in its first round from DCM.

Here is how it works:
The recruiter sends an interview invitation to all the candidates she or he would like to know more about. Once the candidate receives the invitation, she or he can click on a link that takes him/her to OVIA platform. Then the candidate will be able to see questions that the interviewer has listed and can start to answer each question within a certain amount of time with no chance for do-overs. The
last step is to send the recorded video to the recruiter.

Advantages of a video interview compare to phone interview is that the recruiter will be able to see the candidate’s communication skills and get a better understanding of his/her personality and a general feel for the candidate’s fit in the organization.

Some of OVIA’s customers are DHL, BestBuy and Manpower group.

According to OVIA, companies can see time and cost saving up to 80% against traditional phone interviews.

Another startup with competing solution is Sonru (founded in 2009) based in Ireland. The company funded €1 million in 2010. Johnson & Johnson, Volvo and CERN in Geneva are some of the clients.

Well, everything else is moving towards digitized communication, why not job interviews??

Swedish 1800 band auction

Yesterday, October 11^th, PST (Swedish Post and Telecom Agency) has started 1800 MHz spectrum auction. The estimated time for auction is between 2 to 10 days.

The auction includes two stages. In stage 1, bidders (new ones and the existing license holders in 1800 band) can participate with no limitation on the amount of spectrum they can buy. In stage 2, PST will decide for placement of the winners’ spectrum in the band.

So far there have been 13 rounds and price per frequency block has come up to SEK 86 million. As there are totally 7 frequency blocks, the total bid sum has reached SEK 602 million so far.

The total of 2x35 MHz in 1800 MHz frequency band will be split between the bidders. Existing license holders within 1800 band are TeliaSonera, Telenor and Tele2. Together they hold a total of 2x35MHz.

PST has announced that winners have no obligation to use the spectrum for LTE services.

Licenses are valid from January 1^st 2013 with a term of 25 years.

PST will publish the name of bidders at the end of stage 1.

Social gaming - Lolapps

Lolapps is another social gaming startup based in California. Founded in 2008 the company has successfully integrated its games on Facebook.

Some of the games developed by Lolapps are Ravenwood Fair, Ravenstone Mine and soon coming Ravenskye City.

 In July 2011, Hong Kong based company, 6waves and Lolapps merged together to create a larger network of social gaming applications on the web and Facebook.

6waves is a gaming application publisher with many games on Facebook platform.

The combined company will be branded as 6Waves Lolapps however the two companies will function independently.

Lolapps is one of the gaming developers that has focused on the better graphic on social games and as a result, the company has required Sean Cooper Games recently.

Sean Cooper has developed Fliso graphics engine which allows designers to create games on Adobe’s Flash. Flash is a slow medium for games and Fliso improves its ability and makes it possible to develop advanced games.

By acquiring Sean Cooper Games, Lolapps enters licensing business and licenses Lolapps Fliso to other companies.

 

Get social with your customers, Get Satisfaction!

Get Satisfaction is a customer community SW platform that helps companies with Social Media ROI. The company was found in 2007.

According to Get Satisfaction, more than 50k companies use their SW to improve their customer’s support experience.

Companies can create communities on their website or through their Facebook page there they can have real-time conversations with their customers. Customers can ask a question, report a problem, share an idea or give a positive feedback. There is a free Get Satisfaction application for iPhone as well.

The SW helps to improve customer satisfaction, product marketing, product quality and trouble shooting.

The SW has benefits for both customers and companies. Below is a short review of some.

What does it offer to customers?

- Very happy customers, who want to express themselves, can easily leave a positive comment.

- A customer who has a question that has been asked by someone else earlier and been answered, can access the answer easily and quickly.

- Customers have access to community 24/7 and can report a problem or ask a question at any time, convenient for them.

- Everyone can read the conversations. This is a good research tool for potential customers who are interested of purchasing the product.

- Customers can communicate which each other through the community answer a question if they know the answer or share their experience.

What does it offer to companies?

- The very best is the opportunity to receive suggestions and innovative ideas from customers for free.

- A list positive feedback from satisfied customers is a good tool to attract potential customers.

- Conversations can be monitored by any one. So customers with similar questions and issues don’t need to contact customer support individually.

However for larger companies, I wonder if this SW will radically reduce the customer support costs or it is more to improve customer satisfaction and as a result increase the product sale.

Once the number of customers and products increases, the amount of questions and problem reports increases as well and to catch up, a company has to add dedicated resources.

I have seen larger companies with backlogs. However for small companies, it is different.

iOS 5

Apple has again brought many innovative applications and trends to the mobile device world.

iOS5 is expected to be launched on October 4^th. Phones are expected in the stores shortly after. So far there have not been accurate information about what features and applications the new iOS will support.

Here is a brief of what 9to5mac has published today which however has not officially been confirmed by Apple.

The new iOS has a killer application named “Assistant”.
It is like a real assistant but inside the phone! Assistant is a voice control system that is improved dramatically compare to Voice Control application in iPhone 3GS.

It also supports Speech-to-Text feature. That means the mobile user doesn’t need to type his/her message to send a text. The user can speak to the Phone and it will send the message as a text to the receiver. This is a brilliant application as many car drivers do text while driving (even though it is illegal). With this feature, sending a text will be less time consuming and distractive.

Assistant can also book meetings like a real assistant and reminds about things to be done.

iOS5 has another interesting application that is called “Find my Friends”, which can find locations of contacts. Also it has Wolfram Alpha which is a knowledge engine that can answer to many questions such as health related questions, geography, weather, GDP, unit conversions, financial
computations and many others.

iOS 5 can camp on GSM and CDMA networks as well.