Daily Archives: July 15, 2009

WIN plc, a leading provider of interactive mobile entertainment and information services, today announced that its Enterprise Platform is the first to offer text message to ‘Tweet’ conversion.

Organisations using the WIN platform will now be able to offer customers the choice of texting a ‘Tweet’. This ‘Tweet’ which will be automatically posted to one or more Twitter feeds in addition to other mediums of choice. The Twitter feed will therefore provide a point of interaction for all customers presenting the organisation with a single customer view.

The service has been used extremely successfully at a number of recent mashup* events where a ‘video wall’ displays questions and observations received directly from the audience (both inside the room and those following on the web) live to the debate and discussion. Questions posed by event attendees and the online audience, by text are sent to a specific number which converts the text to a ‘Tweet’ which is then posted to the event Twitter feed and the video wall. Twitter users can post to the same video wall using a designated # tag.

Announcing the service, WIN CEO Graham Rivers said: “Twitter is a global phenomenon. With an estimated 10 million users world wide it is the fastest growing social network and one of the best ways for organisations to interact with specific audiences. The service, which integrates seamlessly with existing systems, provides a new and exciting channel for organisations to interact with its customers.”

Rivers continues: “This latest addition to our Enterprise Platform is part of our ongoing efforts to help organisations to effortlessly communicate and ultimately interact with customers across a variety of different mediums.”

Tony Fish Co-founder of mashup* says “WIN have been a long term supporter of mashup* with the provision of their enterprise SMS service. Incorporating Twitter is a fantastic addition to the overall WIN offering for enterprise customers.

Businesses now have a uniquely powerful marketing platform available to them thanks to today’s announcement that Alterian (LSE: ALN) a leading international integrated marketing platform provider, has acquired Techrigy Inc., a global leader in social media monitoring and analytics software. This acquisition follows another successful year for Alterian, with a 73% increase in revenue reported for the financial year to 31 March 2009.

Alterian’s acquisition of Techrigy enables a fundamental shift from mass marketing to marketing based on engagement and conversation with the individual. The augmentation of Alterian’s existing technology portfolio with the robust Techrigy social media monitoring and analytics solution means marketers can now, for the first time, get a full view of their marketing landscape by listening to their consumers online. From understanding consumers’ reactions to all marketing campaigns irrespective of channel, through to monitoring brand reputation, influencer identification, competitive analysis, and market research, marketers now have an unprecedented ability to understand and measure the mood of their market. Marketers are empowered to fully utilize social media dialogue with the consumer to make informed, intelligent and insightful decisions around their entire marketing programmes, whether online or offline, and therefore create a more in depth profile of their existing and potential customers.

Social media, the creation of online content, and the voice of the consumer are now integral parts of how a brand is perceived by customers and partners. Jeremiah K. Owyang, author of “Social Media Playtime is Over”, an independent report by Forrester Research, Inc., (March 2009), notes that marketers must now make, “…social applications a permanent part of marketing, measuring and demonstrating their value, and integrating them into marketing efforts.” This makes social media monitoring and analytics an imperative area that marketers need to use as a standard part of their marketing programmes – not just for online monitoring or experimentation. By integrating Techrigy’s leading products with the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform, Alterian is leading the way in bringing social media into mainstream marketing.

To bring marketers up to speed in this space, Alterian is making available a free evaluation version of the Techrigy SM2 system, ‘Freemium’, to its 1,100+ existing customers and 150 business partners, as well as any new organisations that are planning to explore the powerful insights available to them through social media monitoring. This version can be upgraded to the full version which is a subscription-based product.

“Social media monitoring and analytics are a complex challenge. Social media and Web 2.0 applications are developing and changing so rapidly that only those companies that can combine an understanding of social media with a solid history in marketing analytics will succeed in this fast emerging space,” said David Eldridge, Chief Executive Officer of Alterian. “By combining Alterian’s platform with Techrigy’s SM2 technology, marketers now have a complete, easy and practical solution to understand the complete view of their customers and take action to use this to build brand equity and generate opportunity.”
Eldridge continues, “Marketing is currently going through a revolution. The days of mass marketing, untargeted mailings, email blasts and generic brochure-ware websites are numbered. Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. The addition of Techrigy to the Alterian platform further strengthens our ability to give marketers an holistic view of social media which can be applied to their entire marketing mix, and a set of tools to help strengthen the relationship their company has with its customers.”

Aaron Newman, Founder and President of Techrigy Inc., adds, “Today’s announcement marks a great step in the SM2 story and for social media monitoring. We don’t see this as the end of the Techrigy story but the start of something bigger. Through the backing of the Alterian brand and integration with the Alterian Integrated Marketing Platform, SM2 now becomes an integral part of the marketer’s arsenal and social media monitoring and analytics takes a giant leap forward in becoming a key driver of marketing activity. We are excited to be part of the online marketing revolution and delighted to be joining the Alterian team.”

Yotify.com, the leading personal web scout service that enables you to track anything on the Internet, today opens the public beta of its Twitter application YoTwits at www.YoTwits.com.
YoTwits enables users to boost their Twitter personality and in turn add followers by integrating automated content feeds that reflect their interests, directly into their Twitter stream.

Users follow three simple steps to use YoTwits:

Step 1. Users select and filter the feed they want to broadcast — YoTwits has over 1000+ feeds available for broadcast, organized into the following categories:

*Auctions: the latest eBay auctions of electronics, computers, cameras, jewelry/watches, and collectibles

*Sports News: complete news coverage of sports teams in the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB

*Stocks: breaking news for companies in the Dow 30 and Nasdaq 100

*Deals: up to the minute deals on computers, electronics, video games, clothing, travel

*Blogs: posts from the best bloggers on the web in tech, entertainment, business, shopping, cooking

*YouTube: latest videos in all of the major categories including entertainment, comedy, autos, sports

*Jobs: most recent postings for full-time, part-time, freelance, seasonal and internship positions

*News: local and global breaking headlines, sports news, entertainment news, technology news

*Classifieds: Craigslist postings for kid’s stuff, autos, computers, furniture and sporting goods

*Tickets: latest eBay ticket auctions for your favorite concerts, sporting events and theater shows

*Music Videos: all the latest videos in rock, pop, rap, R&B, punk, hiphop, country

*Housing: Craigslist postings for apartment rentals, real estate sales, rooms/shares, sublets

*Crime: most recent crime in your area — keep your followers abreast of the latest.

*Horoscope: daily horoscope readings for all the signs of the zodiac

*Twitterers: auto-retweet your favorite Twitter personalities in entertainment, news, politics, technology

Users also create custom feeds with two unique categories:

*Add Your Own Feed: users can bring any RSS feed to YoTwits, broadcasted reliably to their followers

*ReTweet Anyone: users can auto-retweet any other Twitterers’ tweets

Step 2. Users select the number and frequency of tweets to be added to their Twitter stream.

Users select the number (1-5 tweets) and frequency (every hour — 24 hours) of tweets to broadcast in their Twitter streams. This feature provides the user with maximum control of their Twitter personality.

Step 3. Users enter their Twitter username and password.

Registration at YoTwits is simple, employing the user’s existing Twitter username and password.

“We are proud to offer the first ever automated content feeds solution for Twitter streams,” said Ron Bouganim, Co-Founder and CEO, Yotify.com which powers YoTwits.com. “YoTwits came together as a result of our users asking us to create a Yotify.com experience in the Twitter context. We are proud of the resulting YoTwits.com product and thrilled to enable users to enrich what they are already tweeting about with our 1000+ feed library of content that reflects their interests. Our initial YoTwits users have also seen their follower bases increase significantly, which is an added benefit of YoTwits and a reflection that our product was something the Twittersphere was looking for.”

YoTwits is committed to maintaining the account integrity and true personality of its users’ original Twitter streams; users are always in control. As such, YoTwits offers a robust filtering tool that enables users to parse feeds by keyword(s) to ensure broadcasts to their followers are truly a reflection of their Twitter personality. Moreover, YoTwits has a simple-to-use account management tool that enables users to turn their automated feeds on and off as well as modify the number and frequency of tweets at anytime.

About the company

branchnext, inc. (www.branchnext.com) is developing the next paradigm for how users will acquire relevant information on the Internet. branchnext’s portfolio of products includes Yotify.com — a consumer-facing website at www.yotify.com that offers consumers a user-defined, contextual and social way to track anything that matters to them on the Internet. Yotify.com powers an automated content feeds solution for Twitter streams at www.YoTwits.com. For web publishers, branchnext has made its core tracking platform — LetMeKnow — available as the first ever alerts-as-a-service API offering thus bridging the divide between the real-time web and post-visit user engagement.

The company has secured venture funding from experienced investors Naval Ravikant, General Partner, The HitForge, LP and co-founder of Epinions (Shopping.com); Novel TMT Ventures Limited; Richard Chen, Former Founder and CEO of OptoMail and Former Senior Business Product Manager of Google; and Auren Hoffman, CEO, Rapleaf. Among its distinguished advisors are Kevin Hartz, Co-founder, Xoom, Eventbrite and ConnectGroup; and Peter Read, who has worked with various corporate investors and top tier VC funds including Accel, Benchmark, TAG and Walden and advised/invested in companies including 4Info, Nielsen, Skype, Slingshot and TipMobile.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the first two in a new initiative to develop software widgets for a wide variety of business needs. New Lotus Notes software widgets for travel management and professional social networking are now available. TripIt and LinkedIn applications can each now be opened via single sign-on right from the familiar Lotus Notes desktop screen, enabling and simplifying the management of travel and business networking for millions of workers worldwide.

“Notes is the first open collaboration software to be able to provide users with desktop direct access by both LinkedIn and TripIt. This demonstrates the versatility of Lotus Notes in Web collaboration,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president, Messaging and Collaboration, IBM Software. “Whatever Lotus customers need, there’s a widget for that.”

With today’s myriad travel Web sites, even the most experienced business traveler may find managing trip details a daunting task. TripIt organizes trip details into one master online itinerary, even if arrangements are booked at multiple travel sites. It automatically includes maps, directions and weather into a master itinerary and gives travelers the option to add restaurants, theater tickets and other activities for the trip.

Travelers can safely access travel plans online, share them, check-in for flights or print an itinerary. The service makes it easy for travelers to share and collaborate on travel plans and to see when their plans overlap so they can meet-up with people from their professional network.

“I travel all the time and have found TripIt to be a fantastic tool for staying organized with hotel and airline bookings. With Lotus Notes 8.5 the new iCalendar feature made it very simple to add TripIt calendar entries. All I do when I make a booking is email TripIt and everything is added automatically to my Notes calendar. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new TripIt widget to see how much better it can get,” said Adam Brown, Director at ISW, an IBM business partner based in Australia.

“TripIt is used by business travelers around the world to manage travel information and increase productivity while on the road,” said Scott Hintz, vice president, Business Development, and co-founder, TripIt. “Bringing TripIt directly to the Lotus Notes desktop now makes it easier than ever for millions of business travelers to keep their travel in synch with the rest of their professional lives.”

LinkedIn is an online network of more than 43 million business professionals in more than 200 countries. With the new LinkedIn micromashup software capability for Lotus Notes, users can access the world’s most popular professional network directly from their desktops. Features include a stream of LinkedIn network updates, people search with one-click, and access to view LinkedIn Professional profiles right within Notes.

“LinkedIn was created so that professionals could more effectively stay in touch with their trusted contacts, and learn more about new people they work with,” said Ellen Levy, vice president, Corporate Development and Strategy, LinkedIn. “Now that LinkedIn is an integral part of the professional’s daily work flow in Lotus Notes, we anticipate that our users will get even more value from frequent, useful interactions with their professional networks.”

Lotus Notes and Domino are supported by over 10,000 IBM Business Partners worldwide, with thousands of offerings built on the platform. Lotus Notes 8.5 transforms the traditional “in-box” into an integrated workspace with Web 2.0 customization, assembling email, calendar, instant messaging, office productivity tools and custom applications in a single-screen view. Lotus Notes Traveler software extends Lotus Notes mail to a variety of mobile devices.

To obtain the LinkedIn plug-in for Lotus Notes, visit www.linkedin.com/lotus. For the TripIt widget for Lotus Notes, visit www.tripit.com/lotus.

Social network firm, Embarkons, Inc., today announced the launch of Embarkons, a social utility for ideas, projects and innovation ventures.

“We created the Embarkons social network to allow entrepreneurs to connect ideas with people so that new ventures can be created with the speed and efficiency that social networks allow,” says Embarkons, Inc., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Trevor Cornwell. “We call this ‘project-ing,’ or working on a project and socializing it online. These tools have been available for fun — and now with Embarkons people can take their ideas and make them into ventures using the same concepts. Embarkons is about connecting people through ideas. Embarkons is a new way for small business innovation to go from idea to venture with the power of social networking.”

A user starts by posting their idea. They are then able to invite people to join the idea or project. Collaborators can contribute to the discussion of the project. The more activity the project generates, the more momentum the project earns. Once a project has generated interest, it can be entered into Embarkons Marketplace where people can sell, buy or partner their ventures. Marketplace users can also create challenges where they can state a need for a service or a product and entrepreneurs can respond with their venture.

Through Corporate Challenges, organizations and brands may leverage the Embarkons social network to engage with their markets through pay-per-use project challenges.

Most of these social network features are available without charge to anyone who visits Embarkons. The Innovation Marketplace, which allows users to communicate privately with interested parties and to respond to Marketplace Challenges, costs $15 per month.

Embarkons will also offer a fee-based, enterprise-only version of its service for private, secure information exchange and collaboration within an organization to provide the benefits of social networking to small business innovation.

For more information: http://www.embarkons.com/

About Embarkons

Embarkons is a social network to discuss, share and build ideas. Developed, owned and operated by Embarkons, Inc., a privately-held social networking company headquartered in Silicon Valley, the Embarkons platform was officially launched July 15, 2009.

Red 5 Games, an Austin-based casual games developer, today announced the launch of Tweet2Play for Twitter(TM). Tweet2Play, a free text-based slot machine, is the first casino game to launch on the popular social networking site. Tweet2Play has all of the excitement of a casino slot machine, including the chance to win big prizes. To celebrate the launch of the Twitter game, Tweet2Play is giving away $10,000 in cash and many other valuable prizes. Among the prizes are several unique items, including Michael Jackson’s autographed Malibu Grand Prix driver’s license from 1982 and a replica of Captain Kirk’s command chair from Star Trek.

“We love bringing great games to emerging markets,” stated Monty Kerr, CEO of Red 5 Games. “Our new Tweet2Play prize game is a huge step toward bringing fun and irresistibly addictive games to Twitter.”

Tweet2Play is a classic three-reel slot machine that plays in the 140 character, text-based world of Twitter. Twitter users earn free spins by mentioning Tweet2Play in their updates. The more followers they have, the more free spins they get. Every win in the game gives players a chance to win valuable prizes.

About Red 5 Games
Red 5 Games is a leading developer in the casual and skill game industries, making fun, quick-to-learn and irresistible computer games that appeal to all ages. Based in Austin, Texas, Red 5 Games was founded in 2007. Its casual games, including TriviaMania.com, have been enjoyed by millions of players worldwide.

Tweet2Play is the trademark of Red 5 Games, Inc. and may be registered in some countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners and are used for the benefit of those owners. If you’d like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Mr. Kerr, please contact him via e-mail at [email protected] or at [email protected].

eWorld Companies, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: EWRC) announced today that it has officially launched its eWorldMix Online Social Network. eWorldMix, which has been in prelaunch since March, is a free Social Network catering to anyone involved in or interested in the entertainment industry, including both industry insiders as well as casual and avid entertainment fans. eWorldMix will provide private and open forums for musicians, actors, producers, writers, film makers, distributors and other insiders, plus additional forums for movie fans, music lovers, fan clubs, and entertainment & celebrity news. There is no cost of any kind to join eWorldMix, which also provides easy access to eWorld’s Boomerang Media Station®, which is also free and which includes a large and growing number of features including the PlayTV Online Television Network and the ability for each user to post his or her own personal profile, messages, photos, video, etc. to their personal Boomerang downloads and social networks. Users may also post their own professional quality videos and list them for pending approval for system-wide viewing in PlayTV’s main library. And unlike other social network programs, eWorld automatically pays users a 10% referral fees on all advertising revenues generated by all direct referrals in their social networks.
ABOUT EWORLD COMPANIES, INC.

eWorld Companies, Inc. markets and distributes cutting edge Internet technologies through its International network of Affiliates, users and strategic partners. eWorld’s patent-pending Boomerang Media Station® features exclusive and third-party movies, music videos, webcasts and other streaming video content delivered via its unique state-of-the-art high-definition quality video player. Boomerang is a free software program that streams rich media within the actual application and remains ever-present as the user browses the Internet, offering the user one-click access to limitless entertainment experiences and convenience benefits. For more information visit www.eworldcompanies.com.