Monthly Archives: July 2009

Vocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: VOCS) the market leader in online software for corporate communications, today announced it will host a free Webinar on “Monitoring the Social Media Conversation: From Twitter to Facebook.” The event will feature Jenni Lloyd, Social Media Strategist at the social media agency Nixon McInnes and Neil Stinchcombe, Managing Director, Eskenzi PR.

The one-hour Webinar, aimed at a European audience, will be held on Tuesday, 21 July, 2009 beginning at 2:00 p.m. BST and the featured speakers will discuss strategies for effective social media monitoring. Specifically they will cover the following topics:

Monitoring your online reputation – and that of your competitors
How to positively impact your company’s online reputation
Uncovering potential sales opportunities

“Social media and the conversations that take place within social media are dynamic and ever changing,” said David Parker, Commercial Director at Vocus. “Whether you are an expert in social media or just beginning to learn about it — this Webinar will offer you some of the best tips for effectively monitoring online conversations in order to protect or advance your brand’s reputation.”
In addition to the Webinar, Vocus also offers a whitepaper on the same topic that is available for a free download by clicking here. Additional information and registration information for this Webinar can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/lsc24j

About Vocus, Inc.
VOCUS, Vocus, Inc. (NASDAQ: VOCS) is a leading provider of on-demand software for public relations management, helping organisations of all sizes fundamentally change the way they communicate with the media and the public, optimise their public relations efforts and measure their impact. The web-based software addresses the critical functions of public relations including media relations, news distribution and news monitoring, and provides the critical capability to monitor and analyse social media conversations from virtually any source and track results compared to key competitors. Vocus is used by more than 3,500 organisations worldwide and is available in seven languages. Vocus is based in London, UK with offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.vocus.co.uk

A new study released today from Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group confirms that deep engagement with consumers through social media channels correlates to better financial performance. The ENGAGEMENTdb study (www.engagementdb.com) showed significant positive financial results for the companies who measured as having the greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement. These “Social Media Mavens” on average grew company revenues by 18 percent over the last 12 months, while the least engaged companies saw revenues sink 6 percent on average over the same time period.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study reviewed more than 10 discrete social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums for each of the 100 most valuable brands as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking. Activity in each channel was ranked for depth of interaction on measures that corresponded to that specific channel. Scores for overall brand engagement ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

Starbucks (127)
Dell (123)
eBay (115)
Google (105)
Microsoft (103)
Thomson Reuters (101)
Nike (100)
Amazon (88)
SAP (86)
Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)
Qualities of Success

Companies that scored well in the study generally have dedicated teams, however small, active in the social media channels they utilize. The study found that the most successful teams evangelize social media across the entire organization to pull in a broad range of stakeholders. These companies view social media as an indispensable tool to help them achieve results, and their approach is conversational. This mode of operation differs from the approach of traditional communications and early corporate blog experimentation, which emphasizes messaging and talking points.

“This is the first study of this depth on the top global brands and we think the results provide a good guide for corporations and brand marketers in every industry,” said Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group. “The success stories we have uncovered provide a blueprint for companies making decisions about how to best apply their marketing and consumer relations resources.”

“The ENGAGEMENTdb study goes a long way towards validating the importance of social media for business,” said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. “The closer any company is to its customers, the better, and it’s hard to argue with the ability for social media to create such proximity. In this day and age, companies should feel much more comfortable investing in social media — the correlation to results is so clear.”

Four Quadrants of Engagement

While each company in the study received a quantitative score, the ENGAGEMENTdb study revealed that companies fell into four specific categories in terms of their breadth and depth of investment in social media channels — Mavens, Butterflies, Selectives, and Wallflowers.

Mavens — brands that have made social media a core part of their go-to-market strategies and are very active in many channels; usually driven by dedicated teams assisted by company-wide awareness and participation.
Butterflies — brands that recognize the need to be in many channels but have only met with real success in a subset of their activities; these companies are usually spread a bit too thin.
Selectives — brands that focus on just a few channels and excel in those; these efforts are usually initiated by an internal evangelist.
Wallflowers — brands present in only a few channels and very lightly in those; these brands are sitting on the sidelines and are wary of the risks. They are still trying to figure out the best next steps and investments in social media.
Rank Your Company Against the ENGAGEMENTdb Top 100

Launching today, the ENGAGEMENTdb website (www.engagementdb.com) makes it possible for companies and brand managers to quickly find out how their social media efforts rank as compared to those of the world’s most valuable brands. After taking a quick survey, respondents will receive an email evaluation of their social media efforts compared to the companies in the ENGAGEMENTdb report. Additionally, companies can detail their social media efforts for inclusion in the ENGAGEMENTdb through the website. This data will be used in future research and study of the benefits of social media.

The Wetpaint/Altimeter ENGAGEMENTdb Report can be found at www.ENGAGEMENTdb.com

About Wetpaint

Wetpaint provides the leading platform for fans and brands to easily create and participate in online communities around the topics they care about most. Wetpaint offers businesses a turnkey solution for creating and fostering passionate communities that drive traffic and increase loyalty. Consumers flock to http://www.wetpaint.com to create sites around topics they love. For more company information, visit http://press.wetpaint.com

About Altimeter Group

Altimeter Group provides advice and consulting on digital strategies, with a focus on how organizations can leverage social and emerging technologies to achieve results. It is led by Charlene Li, the co-author of the best selling book, “Groundswell”. For more information, please visit http://www.altimetergroup.com.

GeoSentric Oyj (NASDAQ OMX: GEO1V), developers of the award-winning GyPSii mobile social networking application (www.gypsii.com), today announced its partnership with China Unicom’s Shanghai Unicom, to become the premier mobile social network solution for its new consumer 3G SNS Service, UniSpace.

From today, more than 5 million Shanghai Unicom customers are able to download the GyPSii client directly on to their mobile device from the UniSpace website, http://space.uni-play.net. This roll out will expand to 130 + million subscribers in China. As part of the GyPSii community, UniSpace members can immediately start to create “geotagged” content for sharing in “real-time” with friends, family and the growing global community of GyPSii members.

The content that UniSpace members create becomes true Internet-searchable destinations and experiences, available for all GyPSii friends and communities across the globe to immediately find, share and comment on.

“GyPSii’s ability to deliver an all-in-one, location-aware mobile social networking experience is proving extremely popular in China, with people using the application to create and share content, as well as connect with each other across a range of networks and devices,” said Mr. Lu Dongliang, Deputy General Manager of Shanghai Unicom. “With its fast-growing community and unique, intuitive user experience, GyPSii was the natural choice as a mobile social networking partner. We expect the new UniSpace offering to play an important role in driving the success of our 3G Value Added Service.”

GyPSii uses various handset location technologies – including GPS, A-GPS and cell ID – to allow Shanghai Unicom customers to automatically tag their location with photos, video, status updates and other information, for sharing their experiences in real-time.
GyPSii is available for UniSpace customers to use on a wide range of mobile devices, including Java, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones. Further mobile platforms will follow shortly.

“After GyPSii and Shanghai Unicom’s success working together during the Olympics in 2008, we are delighted to deepen this important relationship and open up GyPSii to the wider community of Unicom’s millions of subscribers,” said Dan Harple, Executive Chairman of GyPSii. “Our goal is to have GyPSii on the world’s most popular networks and devices, for mobile consumers worldwide to use and enjoy in all the world’s most popular regions. Shanghai Unicom is an important and valued partner. Their 3G leadership in China, coupled with GyPSii’s seamless “create, share, connect” model, provides a valuable new mode of communicating for Shanghai Unicom users. Our partnership truly enables Shanghai Unicom customers to create a new “people powered index” using GyPSii on their powerful 3G network. We look forward to welcoming UniSpace customers as new GyPSii users, who will use the application to connect and share their mobile lives with others. This, in turn, will help Shanghai Unicom to acquire new 3G customers, retain existing subscribers and importantly boost revenues.”

The GyPSii application is already available worldwide on a wide range of devices, including the Apple iPhone, Samsung, Nokia, LG and BlackBerry Smartphones. New users can download the application directly at www.gypsii.com/m and http://www.gypsii.com.cn/m

Cooliris, Inc. (www.cooliris.com) today announced the Cooliris Publisher Network, a brand new way of online advertising that launched in conjunction with the Infiniti G Convertible ad campaign. The campaign is being run across multiple sites including Yahoo! News, Golf.com, the New York Magazine, and Style.com.

Teaming up with OMD, media giant and agency of record for Infiniti, Cooliris has created an innovative solution that allows publishers to present rich media advertising on a streaming, infinite 3D Wall of content. Compared to traditional HTML interfaces, the Cooliris solution boasts a 4-fold increase in content selection and up to 12.5 times increase in overall content consumption.

“The partnership between Infiniti and Cooliris has helped bring about a new media paradigm, in which creative and media teams partner with publisher and technology teams to bring about a new, better user experience for the digital space using the most advanced display technology currently available,” said Ben Poore, Vice President, Infiniti. “We are excited that this collaboration creates targeted and engaging solutions for delivering Infiniti’s brand messaging to consumers.”

The Publisher Network leverages the Cooliris Embed Wall, an embeddable Adobe Flash-based version the popular Cooliris browser plugin that provides a faster way to browse photos and videos by displaying content on an infinitely scrollable 3D Wall. Premium publishers can now post the Cooliris experience directly into their websites, drive more views and engagement of their content, while also gaining supplemental revenue opportunities with well-known brands.

OMD accelerates the adoption of this cutting-edge technology among key publishers with its Infiniti advertising campaign, where their ads are displayed unobtrusively across a block of up to nine stunning image tiles within the Cooliris 3D Wall embedded across multiple publisher sites and the Cooliris browser application.

Publishers such as the Wall Street Journal website have used the Embed Wall to showcase large galleries of photos. The Regis & Kelly website has also leveraged this technology to run contests and programs. Now, through participation in the Cooliris Publisher Network, publishers are combining the interactivity of a 3D Wall of their media content with brand advertising.

Over 8000 websites now embed the Cooliris 3D Wall http://developer.cooliris.com). Only those brands and agencies participating in the Cooliris Publisher Network are able to place ads in the Embed Wall.

Cooliris, Inc. (www.cooliris.com) advances visual navigation for Web on desktop and mobile platforms. The company’s flagship product is the Cooliris 3D Wall, which allows for faster and more intuitive navigation across photos, videos, and media. Cooliris is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

PopSoc is the creation of Alan Sherin, a digital marketer since 1995 who has witnessed the online explosion of social networks and realized there may be an audience out there who wants to take advantage of getting the exposure out in the social web, but either were leery, did not understand how to do it, or did not have the time to join and manage an online profile, yet still wanted to reach the millions of eyeballs participating in these networks daily.

Enter PopSoc Social Media Classified Ads. “We realized that there was an untapped need to utilize the social networks by building the first Social Media Classified Ads platform. By design, these ads would not be listed on the Craigslists, and free classified ad sites, but to seed the web with ads designed as posts on blogs, and status updates that all lead back to the posters ad on PopSoc.” said Alan Sherin, PopSoc CEO and Principle.

But what does PopSoc mean? Sherin says “It is a hybrid word derived from two words “popular” and “social” it was important to convey what it is we do in a single word.”

Anyone familiar with Social Media and Social Networks knows that while extremely powerful, it may take several hours to join, log-in, fill out a user profile and update your social media memberships. Who has that kind of time? Well apparently PopSoc.com does.

While in beta, PopSoc is currently free. In the future as the service grows to include more than 100 social networks, a fee structure will be devised for premium services. PopSoc says that they aubmit each listing to all the major search engines and within seconds of the post it can be found there. PopSoc also syndicates the listings via RSS feed and ofcourse Twitter, Facebook, and the usual suspects.

To join the public beta, visit http://popsoc.com and create your free account.

For more information on PopSoc Social Media Classified Ads, please visit http://popsoc.com.

About PopSoc
Launched in July 2009, PopSoc POPSOC.com is the first viral social media classified advertising site. The company was started by Alan Sherin in an effort to make social media marketing available to the masses without the hassle of managing multiple online profiles. The companies expertise in digital marketing spans 15 years and includes the creation of 100s of websites, digital marketing services, and social media marketing consultations.

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.