Have you played Dots yet? Chances are good that if you downloaded the new game from Betaworks, you’ve played a game or two, since users have now played more than 100 million games since the app launched. Read more »
Is the free game worth your time, or is it just a bare-bones experiment aimed to help Betaworks better its other products? Well, as it turns out, it can be both. Read more »
New media incubator and venture firm Betaworks is increasingly morphing into an operating company and it’s got a new rapid development launch approach that will deliver five social media products in five weeks. What’ll stick? Read more at paidContent »
The world is ending for traditional media companies, but new players who ignore the rules, and bet on mobile, will prevail, argues Huffington Post Co-Founder and Buzzfeed Chairman Kenneth Lerer. Read more at paidContent »
Mourning the demise of Google Reader? Digg announced Thursday that it’s already planning a revamped reader, and will speed up production in light of Google’s announced spring cleaning. Read more »
In his annual letter to shareholders of the seed-stage incubator Betaworks, founder and CEO John Borthwick argues that while closed platforms can be valuable in the short term, open systems and services will ultimately prevail. Read more »
Betaworks’ new Swirl iPhone app gathers hashtagged photos from on Instagram and Twitter to create photo albums. Users can see photos from the same event from their friends. Read more »
The folks at News.me closed their doors to future iOS downloads on Wednesday, saying they would no longer attempt to compete with Twitter in the curation space as the social network closes down on third-party requirements. In other words, another Twitter app bites the dust. Read more »
Betaworks’ Findings.com started out as a service to share passages from Kindle books, but with Amazon cracking down on that functionality, the company will now focus on clipping and sharing content from the web. Read more »
Digg, the social-news community that New York-based incubator Betaworks acquired part of last month, has been relaunched with a new look and new plumbing, but it doesn’t have anything like the kind of community Digg had — something that is hugely valuable and difficult to build. Read more »
Not that long ago, Digg was seen as one of the kingpins of the social web — BusinessWeek put founder Kevin Rose on the cover and said he was worth $60 million. Now, what’s left of Digg has been acquired by Betaworks for a reported $500,000. Read more »
Known to most for its link shortening service, bitly has raised another $15 million aimed at changing that perception. Bitly, a betaworks company, wants to be the “primary online service for sharing and discovering interesting content.” Look for a new round of hiring to follow. Read more »
Betaworks CEO John Borthwick urges publishers to think of what they produce as “information” — not “content” — during a Q&A with GigaOM founder Om Malik at paidContent 2012. Check the video for his take on that plus Google Play, Adobe, Apple and more. Read more at paidContent »
It’s all about the platform — except when it isn’t: Speakers at paidContent 2012 spoke about the opportunities, challenges and constraints of creating digital content. Read more at paidContent »
Chartbeat announced a $9.5-million round of funding and a series of new features aimed at giving websites and publishers better insight into how users are engaging with their content, something that has become increasingly important as Facebook becomes a major player in online advertising. Read more »
With its newly launched iPhone app, News.me wants to become a “purpose-built” social network for sharing — and discussing — the news. One of the big hurdles for the New York-based startup is that this is pretty much what Twitter wants to be as well. Read more »
News.me, the social news-curation app that was developed at the New York Times and then incubated by Betaworks, has been spun off as a separate company to sink or swim on its own. But can it compete with giants like Flipboard and other newer competitors? Read more »
Bit.ly figures if one link is great, why not a bundle? The popular URL shortening service has added a new feature that allows a user to collect multiple links, up to 100, on a single page that can be shared with users. Read more »
Chartbeat, which offers real-time website analytics, has closed a $3-million Series A round of financing from a group of VCs led by Index Ventures. This is the first external financing the startup has taken after being founded by betaworks, the venture group/incubator run by John Borthwick. Read more »
Yahoo and other web giants have been kicking the tires on New York-based URL shortening service Bit.ly, according to a people in the know. Like many others, Yahoo knows it needs to figure out a way to participate in the emergent real-time and location-aware web. Read more »
