Ignore Snapchat at your own peril. It’s a lot more than sexts and ephemeral photos. Today’s Chat 2.0 update makes Snapchat a competitor to your phone itself. What started as an app for horny high school kids has blossomed into the most vibrant communication platform on the market. Watch my video rant above to see why Snapchat suddenly got a lot more important, see a demo of the… Read More
It has never been worth it for celebrities to respond to their endless digital fan mail — until now. TipTalk lets them set a price for a private text, photo or video response. The idea is that in their downtime, they could forge deeper relationships with their audience while earning enough to warrant at least a few seconds of their attention. Considering how the public comment reels… Read More
Is that photo pretty enough? Is that tweet funny enough? If not, they might not be seen now that Instagram and Twitter are moving to algorithmically sorted feeds. That could spell big problems for marketers and cause our social media lives to be more stressful. To make their apps more consistently interesting, especially for people who don’t check them non-stop, Instagram and Titter… Read More
Spot, a startup that says it can help you find “the best places in the world,” is launching to the public. The company emerged from “startup studio” Expa. It’s also announcing today that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from Expa, SV Angel, Ram Shriram, Tim Ferriss, Fenwick & West and others. When I spoke to founder Luke Groesbeck last summer, he… Read More
Spot launches to help users share recommendations on local gems and travel tips
But these aren’t the crappy click-bait you see below lots of blog posts. “We’re being very choosy” Pocket founder Nate Weiner tells me. “We don’t want this to become the bottom of the barrel content.” If Pocket can convince users that these articles would be worthy of appearing in its app even if it wasn’t sponsored, it could become the home for… Read More