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Couch Swapping Comes To Facebook

Posted by Duncan Riley under Uncategorized

Social travel network TripUp has announced the launch of CouchSwap, a new social travel application developed specifically for Facebook.

CouchSwap gives Facebook users the ability to offer their couches to friends and other travellers, as well as being able to find available couches offered up by other members.

CouchSwap features include a ratings service that allows users to rate couches like a hotel room, and a credit system for swapping couches. Users must offer a couch in order to take advantage of other people’s couches; a Bartercard style system of sorts for cheap accommodation.

CouchSwap will compete directly with the Couch Surfing Project, a stand alone site that has over 270,000 members.

Counchswap’s parent company TripUp was acquired by Sidestep July 9.

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Find a Place to Crash with CouchSwap’s Facebook App

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

TripUp, the social travel network now owned by travel search company SideStep, has launched the CouchSwap Facebook application, for those of you that need to find friends with sofas to crash on.

So what can you do with CouchSwap? Offer up your couch to friends and travelers or find someone else’s place to sleep. You can search for lodging on a world map, rate how comfy your friends’ couches are, and request locations where you’d like to sleep. You’ll need to first offer up your own couch to fully participate in this sofa exchange application. This is the first product launched by TripUp since it was acquired by Sidestep Inc. Sidestep is really tapping into the college networks on Facebook, and was among the first to launch a travel search engine application at the f8 event.

In addition to the launching of CouchSwap, SideStep is also partnering with Silverjet, the British airline, for some swanky new choices for travelers. Additional flight options will be given to those booking flights from London Luton to New York (and vice versa), such as a private jet experience on an all-business-class airline. This partnership builds on SideStep’s existing relationship with PrivateJetSpecialist to offer more travel options for those wanting top services. Other options within mainstream carriers and budget airlines will be offered as well.

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Taptap Social Contest Site Optimized for iPhone

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

Taptap, the mobile and web-based contest community, has released its version of its service that’s been optimized for use on the iPhone. The site only recently launched last month with $2.5 million in venture capital.

Being a media-centric site, browsing capabilities and rapid voting and viewing of photos has been a key focus for the iPhone version of taptap. Direct upload options have been added to this version, enabling users to take photos with their iPhone and submit them straight to taptap to participate in contests. Messaging and site participation has been enhanced for use on the iPhone, taking the touch screen keyboard into consideration as well.

To help launch the iPhone version, taptap is holding an “I Wanna Win an iPhone” contest, where users can submit artwork showing why they should get an iPhone. The most popular entry wins. The contest ends on August 15, 2007. Bejeweled has also released an iPhone-optimized game.

Recommended: Hi5 Stuff at Mashcodes!

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ePerks Launches Business-focused Consumer Site

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

ePerks is a site that offers consumers cash-back incentives, and businesses with a way to get their products in front of potential customers.

Launched by Ben Behrouzi, who also founded Reply.com, ePerks was funded with his own venture fund. Upon launch, ePerks offers deals for three categories: real estate agents, auto dealers, and home contractors. They’re all competing to give you the best deal. There are a few extra ways in which this can be achieved through ePerks–with the pricing model, a business can basically buy the rights to be the exclusive listing for a particular area. For ePerks, these areas are broken down by zip code. There are additional pricing options that offer different levels of exclusivity.

As a member, you can also post questions and get answers from other members or those businesses that are also on the site. The obvious conflict of interest is the fact that businesses can essentially buy their way to the top of your search results listings. There are ratings for each business, and comments as well, and hopefully this helps you make an educated decision within the ePerks system.

Reevoo, ExpoTV, Viewpoints and friend2friend (formerly Starnum) are a few consumer-driven sites that have less focus on pilfering businesses to vie for exclusive listings rights.

[via]

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PayScale Gets $10.3M in Series C Round of Funding

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

PayScale is an online service that lets you know how you compare to others that do the same job as you. It’s just raised another $1.5 million in a Series C round of funding, led by SAP Ventures. This closes the round at $10.3 million. Previous investors include Allen & Co., Corporate Executive Board, Trinity Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Fluke Venture Partners and Buerk Dale Victor.

Enter in the details of your job, from your salary to your perks, commute time, who you report to and where you went to college. PayScale will take all this information (and so much more) into account in order to provide you with a respective measure of your industry and where you fit in. You’ll also get data on median salaries, anonymous profiles of others that have the same job as you, and some basic job/salary data from people that went to your college.

If you’re willing to pay, then you can get far more detailed information regarding the pay and benefits of jobs you’re researching. This service is best used by people getting ready to negotiate a promotion, or for those looking for a job. Employers and headhunters can also benefit largely from PayScale’s service.

See also: 40+ Resources for Managing Your Money Online

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Social Networking Goes Global - Especially in North American Region

Posted by Richard MacManus under Uncategorized

With the attention-grabbing headling Social Networking Goes Global, comScore has released its latest stats on the large social network sites. According to comScore, MySpace is over twice as large as its nearest rival, Facebook. Both Facebook and Bebo have had extraordinary growth over the past year (270% and 172% respectively):

These are interesting stats which show that a) MySpace is still King; and b) Facebook is worthy of the attention it's getting.

The fineprint on the above table revealed that comScore only selected sites "from among those with at least 10 million visitors worldwide, 50 percent growth during the past year, and of particular significance to the North American region" (emphasis ours). On the latter point I can understand why, because comScore states that "both MySpace.com (62 percent) and Facebook.com (68 percent) attract approximately two-thirds of their respective audiences from North America."

Even so, what I'm more interested in seeing is stats on the top social networks in all the major countries, e.g. China, UK, Germany, etc - whether or not they are significant to the North American region.

For example, I asked Gang Lu (an occasional R/WW writer) what is the number 1 social network in China. He wasn't certain, but told me that QQ would have the largest numbers - although it's not exactly like MySpace or Facebook. QQ is a top 10 web property in Alexa and is the leading provider of Internet, mobile & telecommunications value-added services in China. Gang Lu wrote a post for Read/WriteWeb in Feburary about QQ, noting that is has half a billion registered users.

MySpace also has a Chinese version, which incidentally has a much cleaner design than its english language equivalent!

Anyone have some more details on what the top social networks are all over the world?

TalkBean Launches Language Tutor Site without a Community

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

TalkBean is a new site that lets tutors teach language online.

All lessons are performed live, using webcams. As a tutor, you can set your schedule to show times when you are available. Students can set up an appointment with you, or they will see when you are online if you choose to go live, making yourself immediately available to teach. If you have any additional lesson material, this can be uploaded to TalkBean from your computer, during the lesson only. There’s also other ways in which students can leave memos for you or notes on your message board.

There are a few drawbacks to the site: the registration process is rather cumbersome, and you’ll need to sign on as a tutor, which requires a 4-page sign up as well as your Paypal information. There’s also no good system to find other users, students, or tutors, so I’m at a loss as to how students and tutors can best network with each other. Adding a search bar, a ratings system and other checks to ensure that the tutors on the site are reliable and helpful, as well as the ability to upload lesson material independently of live webcam lessons, would bring a lot of value to TalkBean.

Similar services include Grockit, LessonBites, Tutorom and xLingo.

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Postful: Email Meets Snail Mail

Posted by Josh Catone under Uncategorized

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a company that lets you send snail mail from the web for free by completely a bunch of spammy offers. At the end of that post I concluded that if someone "offered a service that stored my address book online so I didn't have to constantly retype the recipient's address, and allowed me to pay the postage and not have to bother with all the offer mumbo jumbo, that is actually one I would probably use."

Shortly after the post was published I heard from Postful, an email-to-snail mail service that does exactly the things I was asking for. I finally got a chance this week to give the service a whirl and a proper review.

How It Works

Postful literally makes sending messages as easy as sending an email. Once you've signed up at Postful, you simply send an email to 'quickletter@postful.com' with the name and address of your recipient in the subject field, and your message in the body of your email. After you've sent your missive, Postful creates a PDF mockup of your letter that you can check via your account on the website. The PDF creation process only takes a few moments and Postful emails you when the mockup is ready.

You don't actually have to do anything to approve the letter, but if you want to make changes, you can cancel the order before it it sent. Postful letters support rich text formatting (fonts, colors, etc.) as well as photos and attachments -- that is, you can attach a Word document or PDF file, for example, and have them printed and sent with the letter.

Letters cost $0.99 for the first page, and $0.25 for each additional page in the US -- which covers printing and first class postage ($1.49/$0.39 for letters sent internationally), and funds can be added to your account by credit card, Google Checkout, and PayPal.

Mailboxes

Postful allows users to create mailboxes for frequently used addresses. So I could create an 'auntsue@postful.com' mailbox, and by mailing it Postful would automatically address my letter to my Aunt Sue. I wouldn't have to remember Sue's mailing address at all, and could just add that email address to my email client's address book.

Mailboxes are public, though not published. Meaning if I wanted to, I could share my Aunt Sue address with other members of my family and they could use it at as well. (Note: I don't really have an Aunt Sue.)

Conclusion

So is Postful useful? I think so. I'm a child of the digital age, and for me, writing email is a lot more natural than writing a real letter. I plan to use Postful to keep in touch with my grandfather, who refuses to buy a computer. Being able to fire off an email and have it turned into a paper letter that can be mailed to anyone I'd like is a great way for me to bridge the generational divide and keep in better touch with my older relatives. Plus, who doesn't enjoy getting a good piece of mail?

Because Postful supports rich text formatting and images, it could theoretically be used to send letters on your business letterhead (just add it to the top of the page as an image -- and even insert your signature as one, as well). Further, Postful is working on an API to allow developers access to their service.

New Study: Top 50k blogs had $50 million in 2006 Revenue

Posted by Michael Arrington under Uncategorized

A new study being published by the University of Texas and Chitika says that the top 50,000 blogs may have generated around $50 million in aggregate 2006 revenue. The data behind the study is rather thin - They are looking at the Chitika blog advertising network, which includes 12,000 blogs, and estimating that most blogs would have three distinct revenue sources. Blog rankings are determined by Technorati rank.

The study results are embedded below. An interesting conclusion is that blog revenue may defy the “80/20 rule”, with even more revenue going to top blogs than usual, with 20% of total revenue going to the top 1% of blogs. “Upon closer observation, it was found that model tends to overestimate the revenue at less popular blogs, but underestimates it at more popular ones” the study says. And:

Summary of Findings: Ad revenue in a blog is more sensitive to the rank of the blog than what one would expect in a typical Zipf Law 80/20 curve situation. One reason for this may be the social value of advertising in a blog. If online advertising is like advertising in a mall, advertising in the blogosphere is like advertising in a country club.

• The top 1% accounted for approximately 20% of the total revenue.
• The top 5% accounted for approximately 50% of the total revenue.
• The top 10% accounted for approximately 80% of the total revenue.
• The top 15% accounted for approximately 90% of the total revenue.

Again, the data behind the study is very thin, and using Technorati to determine the top 50,000 blogs may not be a perfect indicator either.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Xcellery Excel Collaboration Tool For Sale on eBay

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

Xcellery, the web-based service that allows you to collaborate on Excel files, has been put up for sale on eBay. The reserve price has not been disclosed, and the current bid is at $10,000, equaling to about $1 per customer.

This is not a sign of the site being shut down, however, as reports indicate that the Xcellery team no longer has time for the site, and is ready to focus on new projects. The site’s creator, Reto Lammler, has been noted to say that he and his co-founder Heng-yi hope to remain on the team in the event of the site actually being sold. Considering that Xcellery boasts paying customers that are included in its 10,000 member user base, the current bid price doesn’t reflect the best price to user ratio just yet.

Along with users, the site also has some good integration tools, such as Paypal, to enable spreadsheet creation and management along with payment tools for multi-user efforts. Should someone decide to purchase Xcellery, further integration with additional social components and other forms of document creation could be a good path to take.

See also: Work Together: 60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups

[via]

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Illegal Music Downloading at an All Time High

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

According to the 2007 Digital Media Survey, conducted by Entertainment Media Research in conjunction with media lawyers from Olswang, illegal music downloads have reached an all time high.

This has been correlated with the growth of online social networking shifting towards music and away from traditional music companies, noting the placement of music embeds on social networking profiles. These social networks are recognized in the report as aiding in the democratization of the music industry, offering new ways to share music amongst friends. As sharing on social networks increases, the number of authorized music downloads goes down. High prices of legal downloads has been named as the primary reason for this observed behavior.

There’s no doubt that social networks have had a large impact on the way in which information is disseminated on the web and through existing groups of friends, but it is a bit of a stretch to blame social networks and embeddable widgets as facilitating illegal downloads. There’s also a seeming exclusion of other social networking components and theories at work, such as the fact that web-based applications limit the necessity of purchased or downloaded content (as we’re also seeing with software).

No matter which way you slice it, there’s no denying the fact that the music industry is in need of a better business model. In related news, Eminem is suing Apple over distribution rights.

[via]

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Reevoo Officially Launches Consumer Reviews Site

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

Reevoo, the user-generated product review site, has officially launched its service, complete with a new design and a handful of other new features.

Included in the new feature roundup is the ability to view aggregated content and articles on specific products. The reevoo algorithm has been added in order to rank the best products, and there are now product summary pages to highlight an items pros and cons.

The site aims to provide the most informative reviews and has a system installed to allow site visitors to vote on the usefulness of individuals’ reviews, in addition to the fact that reviews are ensured to come from consumers that have owned and used the products. The UK-based reevoo is also planning its own global expansion, and has indicated hopes to be useful in the US market, among other places.

In related news, ExpoTV has received funding for its video review site, and Ciao has launched a Top 10 feature for its price comparison shopping resource network.

[via]

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StyleMob: For Women Who Like Clothes

Posted by Duncan Riley under Uncategorized

“Street style community” StyleMob will go public Thursday with a product that is part Hot or Not, part fashion magazine and part MySpace.

Like Hot or Not, StyleMob encourages users to upload photos to be scored by other users. The concept is that users share their fashions with other users, be that store clothing, created clothing or a combination therein.

StyleMob also takes on aspects of social networking sites such as MySpace. Users have profiles, comment walls and friends. StyleMob members can post advice questions (examples provided include “Should I keep plucking my eyebrows?” or “What should I wear to my interview?”) to their own personal “StyleCouncil”, a team of personal stylists made up of friends and Specialists they find on StyleMob.

Co-founder Sasha Cagen describes StyleMob in a way that I can’t possibly do as a man, “Our early members tell us StyleMob is more than a website, it’s a mindset and a way of life. StyleMob is about injecting creativity into getting dressed every morning. It’s about getting inspiration from other people whose taste and budgets match their own.”

See our previous coverage of other sites in this space here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

A Missed Connection at TechCrunch 9

Posted by Michael Arrington under Uncategorized

Anybody know who the guy in the blue shirt with blond hair is below (looking left, back to camera)? Someone saw him at TechCrunch 9 and wants to meet him. See Scott Beale’s post and the related “missed connection” post on Craigslist.

hi! this is crazy. thought you’re cute. you’re the tall blond guy with your back to the camera, wearing glasses, 3rd or 4th person from the left, in picture number 11? on laughingsquid. wish i’d talked to you.

I’m seriously thinking that we need to launch some sort of dating site.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

comScore Report Shows Global Growth of Social Networks

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

comScore has released the results of a study regarding the global reach of major social networks, indicating that these networks have had substantial growth in the past year.

MySpace tops the charts with over 114 million global visitors age 15+ in June, 2007. This is a 72% increase from last year. Facebook had more growth than MySpace, with a 270% increase, going up to 52.2 million visitors. Bebo is up 172% reaching 18.2 million while Tagged has seen the highest growth factor, up 774%, gaining 13.2 million visitors. comScore notes that this global growth means that online social networking is not a fad, but a larger expression of global Internet culture that’s becoming more integrated every year.

The report also highlights a trend we’ve already been alerted to–Bebo dominating in Europe while MySpace and Facebook hold the top spots in North America. Also noted in this report is the trend that major social networks appeal to certain groups, allowing them to become popular in different regions. This shows, on a geographical scale, the correlation between physical communities and online networks.

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MyDamnChannel Launches Promotional Network for Videos

Posted by Kristen Nicole under Uncategorized

MyDamnChannel is a new project launched by Rob Barnett, former MTV executive. Harry Shearer and David Wain have been brought on to provide a good dose of starter content for the site.

The project aims to provide a place for content creators to promote their work with their own channel. Content will be promoted on the homepage, as well as other online video-sharing networks. MyDamnChannel has already gotten a YouTube branded channel set up towards this effort. Right now it looks like there’s all professionally produced content on the site, indicating that artists that are promoted through this service are hand-picked. In this sense, MyDamnChannel is looking to act as a video distributor of sorts, helping artists distribute and monetize online content.

Revenue is split 50-50 with participating artists. As a registered member, users can leave comments and participate in forums. Videos can be embedded in other sites, such as MySpace, hi5 and Piczo, as well.

Similar networks include RoofTop Comedy, Black20 and NationalBanana.

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