GigaOM » Discovery

Distort puts a new twist on slow-mo, and on Revision3′s production

Liz Shannon Miller — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:00:22 +0000

Capturing epic events in slow-motion has been a YouTube staple for years and years, especially as video quality improved and the visual of a water balloon exploding or an egg shattering became something beautiful to behold. But it was never something you’d imagine working in a narrative sense — which is why the Revision3-distributed series Distort, produced and hosted by David Prager and Mauricio Balvanera promises to be intriguing.

Launching on Thursday, Distort combines slow-motion photography — capturing everything from bike tricks to champagne bottles popping open at 400 to 7,500 frames per second — with unique personalities behind the slow-motion, as well as the science behind it. In two episodes made available for preview, San Francisco artist Doctor Popular demonstrates his award-winning yo-yo skills, and Olympic gold medalist Jonny Moseley explains the physics behind his aerial moves.

The emphasis on personality is deliberate, according to Prager via phone, who compared it to “the YouTube formula of authentic personality.”

“Structurally, we want to talk to people who are experts in a field — make it more about them than the slow-motion itself,” Balvanera said. “Slow-mo is the eye candy, but hopefully the core of the episode is the personal story of the people who are on the show.”

That eye candy, however, is a major selling point for the series. Using a variety of cameras including the Phantom Flex, Prager and Balvanera were able to shoot high-resolution video at extremely high frame rates. “At 2,500 frames per second, that’s where the magic of the Phantom Plex really happens,” Balvanera said. “Things that happen in the fraction of a second can stretch out to two minutes — that’s the point where we can really play with time.”

Another fun element of Distort is that thanks to its title, the show is not limited to just slow-motion. “What I like about choosing the name Distort is that we don’t always have to use high-speed cameras. We could zoom in on something you wouldn’t normally be able to see because it’s too small, or show something in time-lapse,” Prager said.

It’s no coincidence that Revision3 will be distributing Distort through its wide array of channels, as both Prager and Balvanera used to work there until recently — Prager, in fact, was a co-founder who worked there for seven years. “I was having a great time at Revision3, but the Discovery sale was good catalyst to take a step back and figure out what I wanted to do next,” he said.

Most Revision3 shows are either produced in-house or by third-party companies, but Distort has a unique relationship with the distributor — while Prager put up the funding for the original pilot, going forward Distort will be a co-production between Rev3/Discovery and Prager and Balvanera. This means that both sides are, in Prager’s words, “incentivized” to make the show the best it can be.

“We could have released this independently, but it made sense to partner with an existing machine. Stepping away from Revision3 means we get to flex our creative muscles and leave the distribution side to them,” Balvanera added.

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Ness updates its iOS app, a personalized dining guide for you

Erica Ogg — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 02:00:03 +0000

A restaurant that has four stars on Yelp might be a big hit with a lot of people, but there’s no guarantee that you in particular will like it. What if you can’t stand Cuban-Japanese fusion? For you, that restaurant should be ranked zero stars. That’s the premise of personalized dining recommendation app called Ness that’s debuting a new version of its app on Wednesday.

Ness first came out with its free iOS app in 2011, but has gone back and improved the ability to predict what users will like. The app is a slick, beautifully designed way of helping you determine where to eat by asking you a few questions to get an idea of what you like and don’t like. It then adapts and learns from how you continue to use the app. Think of it like Pandora or Zite, but for eating out.

The subject happens to be dining , but what Ness is up to is really about maximizing the accuracy of personalization. With its own algorithmic models that use machine learning technology, Ness takes the user’s location, time of day, stated preferences and behaviors within the app (ignoring things, dismissing things) to basically build a dining guide for you. Its determination of how much you’ll enjoy the place or the cuisine is represented by a percentage grade out of 100.

Time of day is an example of a key indicator for the new Ness: if it’s mid-day the app will automatically search for good lunch places. If it’s nighttime, it looks for dinner spots.

It also detects your location to determine how far you’d have to go for food. If you’re in a densely packed metro area during the work week, you’re probably just looking to grab something close by, so Ness will search within a few-block radius for food options. If you’re in an office park in a suburb, Ness knows you’re going to have to drive a couple miles to find lunch, and will recommend places accordingly.

Ideally, this is supposed to happen automatically, without the user having to constantly remind the app of these search constraints.

What you don’t do is also important for Ness’s algorithm: if you search for coffee but never click on Starbucks when the option surfaces always opting instead for a local coffee bar, Ness will start to assume you don’t like chain coffeeshops in general and stop showing you them.

Using that approach to personalization, said Ness Computing founder and CEO Corey Reese, “takes longer to pick up that signal, but the benefit is you [the user] don’t have to do any thinking to make it work.”

Like recommendation services in other genres, like music or news content, the idea of Ness’s more personalized approach is not to keep you in a bubble of your established tastes only. It wants to understand what you like and point you toward places that you’ll enjoy, but not the same places all the time.

“We’re focused more on the moment of delight: ‘Oh, here is a place I had not known about,’” said Reese. “It’s less about making sure you don’t have a crappy meal.” In his mind, that’s more of what Yelp is for — ensuring a minimum level of quality.

“We’re really trying to find those hidden gems that you may not know about.”

The release of the 2.0 version of the app on Wednesday is just one step, he tells me. After the service understands what you like, the next step is for Ness to understand what it is about a place that makes you like it — the ambience, the food, the location, the staff, etc. But you’ll have to wait for improvements in that area in future updates.

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Content personalization still has a long way to go

Erica Ogg — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:30:25 +0000

Two companies who are leading the way on personalized digital magazines agree that we haven’t yet come close to unlocking the power of true personalized content yet.

At paidContent Live 2013 Wednesday, Prismatic co-founder and CTO Aria Haghighi said those in the business of helping readers discover new content can’t even agree on a definition yet. “We don’t all agree on what personalization means. I agree (that it means pointing you to) stuff you care about … some people think it’s only getting signal from noise,” he said. “I think we’re really early. I don’t think we’ve matured to point where we (the industry) have philosophical differences yet.”

Mark Johnson, who is CEO of competing product Zite, agreed that there’s so much more to do. “We’re good at finding stuff, but we can be so much better. We haven’t had that Google moment yet that’s, ‘Aha! That’s what personalization is.’” He compared it to when AltaVista users turned to early Google search and said, “So that’s what search is!”

That point of personalizing reading content for users is also the challenge: everyone’s feed will always be different because no one likes the same stuff. Improving that capability will depend on big factors that haven’t quite been figured out yet either: the social aspect and helping people understand why content is recommended to them.

Both Prismatic and Zite agree that helping users understand why you’re showing them content is key: “Even if you do world’s best job recommending an article or content to people, if they don’t have an explanation of why, people feel uneasy,” said Haghighi. “You have surface parts of the system to give information to people. That’s where user response intersects with AI.”

Part of recommendation is social — what your friends or people with your same interests liked — but no one has done a good job of that in their industry yet, Johnson thinks. Social “sharing is the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “There’s something deeper you can do in these applications that no one has nailed yet.”

Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:

A transcription of the video follows on the next page

Go to page 2 (of 2) on GigaOM .

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We asked the experts: How do you do YouTube?

Liz Shannon Miller — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 19:27:52 +0000

Everyone uses YouTube – but how, exactly, are people engaging with the site? I’ve been wanting to ask a random assortment of users — from creators to mothers to execs to kids — how they consume YouTube since I read the following quote in a New York Times piece about a recent site redesign:

It also said that last year’s redesign would make subscriptions more meaningful, but has since found out that average users still don’t know what subscribing actually does.

I wanted to see how that actually stacked up in the real world. So I asked both established online video experts like Zadi Diaz, YouTube stars like Amy Pham and average users: How exactly do you do YouTube?

Annette Brown, 47, business owner and mother

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

I watch YouTube videos when I’m on Facebook, but other than that I probably go directly to YouTube once a week or so.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

To search for a new video. During the election if I found a video on Facebook and went to YouTube to watch it, I would usually see similar videos and keep watching but usually I go to a specific video, rate it if I liked it or not and then leave YouTube.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

No. I thought YouTube was a channel by itself.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

N/A

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find them through Facebook or email.

Matt McLernon, 29, YouTube communications manager

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

About every 5 minutes, by choice. When I’m not on YouTube.com, you can probably find me on the Android app or using the send to TV feature to send videos from my phone to my Google TV.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

It’s both. At work, I do a ton of searching for videos and channels to look for the awesome people making videos for fun or for a living. At home, I’ll flip through my channel guide and watch anything from folks like Vice, The Gregory Brothers, DevinSupertramp and others on YouTube.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

About 50. When I first started paying attention to my subscriptions, I found I had a ton that I never watched (hundreds), so I removed a bunch and channels became much more useful. I have a mix based on what I like and how frequent they post – some folks post a lot like NASA or The Laugh Factory, some post about weekly like BadLipReading, and some run in seasons like Video Game High School.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

I flipped through my Watch History and I think it’s Red Bull. They do some of the craziest, most inspiring stuff all within a few minutes, and they’re always trying to push the limit with their next video. I know I’m in for a surprise every time from them, from their Kluge video to their Enduro Chronicles series.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

These days it’s through the Social Feed on my guide. It’s a feed just of what my friends are sharing on social networks (G+, Facebook, Twitter). It’s like replacing all those “gotta watch this video” emails you get from friends and parents, with a feed you can easily flip through.

Christina Boland, 24, Director of Operations at Grind Spaces and casual user

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Probably daily.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

To search for a video or theme that I’m thinking of already.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

No.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Not sure of any channels — I watch a lot of animal videos and a lot of music videos.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Through word of mouth or Facebook.

Zadi Diaz, Head of Content Development, Disney Interactive Entertainment

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Seems like I’ve had YouTube on an open browser tab since 2005. I check videos several times a day because it’s an important part of my job and because I’m obsessed with this form of entertainment. It’s what I’ve been doing for the past nine years.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Both. I do a lot of search through video. YouTube has in many ways taken the place of Google text search when it comes to finding and collecting specific topics of discussion. When I’m on YouTube, I do end up browsing through my subscriptions, especially if the thumbnail and title look engaging.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

I’m currently subscribed to 157 channels.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Besides the Disney network of YouTube channels (my favorite is DisneyShows), there are three channels that I keep coming back to: iamOTHER, SoulPancake, and THNKR. I love their smart, positive vibe.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find videos through sites like Reddit, Buzzfeed, Tubefilter, NewMediaRockStars, and even Kickstarter. I’ll also find new videos through my social feeds on Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, and Twitter. I have a wide network of online friends and colleagues who produce, direct, write, or perform in web shows, so I’ll find new videos through them. And sometimes, I’ll even get a video that I haven’t seen from my mother-in-law via email!

Kristina, 12, student (and my second cousin)

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

At least every day.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

I normally search for a video.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes, I do subscribe to many people.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Um I probably watch Shane Dawson more than anything.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find out through what YouTube recommends actually.

Mickey Meyer, 28, EVP of YouTube network Jash

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Too Much. Daily if not hourly.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

A little of column A, a little of column B. It’s fun to develop a subscription feed. Most people don’t even know what that means, so it’s cool to just be exploring how it could work, which it seems like no one, YouTube included, knows right now.

When I don’t see anything appealing in my feed, I tend to go to my most top pages, and see if they uploaded something I missed. If not, then I’ll just comb the most popular videos of the day. YouTube’s unfortunately made that harder to do in an effort to prove itself in the realm of original/consistent programming.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Too many. Again, it’s really just fun to watch how it’s evolving. I subscribe to some I don’t regularly watch just to keep tabs on them.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

I’ve watched every Epic Rap Battles of History, but I’m a little biased as I used to work on them. I’ve been watching Dead Kevin a lot lately. When Fatal Farm releases new content, I’ll watch any and all of that too.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Friends. I watch what people whose taste I trust, post. Outside of that, Facebook in general is a good barometer of what’s actually worth watching. If three people post the same thing, I’ll check it out. Two, it better have a good thumbnail.

Rebecca Lando, 30, Network Director, Nerdist Channel and Creator, Working Class Foodies

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

At least twice daily.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Both.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes; about 25.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

MinutePhysics.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

Word of mouth/friend recommendations and links; search; memes.

Sam Louderback, 13, student (and son of Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback)

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Every day after I finish my homework, for about 3 hours.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

Since I have been using YouTube for so long, I have so many YouTubers that I am subscribed to, so I just browse through my subscriptions.

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes. I am currently subscribed to 64 YouTube channels.

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

Right now I mostly watch two different YouTubers: Ijevin and vintagebeef.

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

I find new YouTubers through collaborations and dual commentaries.

YouTuber Amy Pham, Host of The Platform’s “The Fashion Statement”

How often do you go to YouTube.com?

Weekly, I check in every week to see what’s going on in the YouTube world and the type of feedback we get on our content. I try to keep up with what’s working and what the viewers are responding to, in addition to what isn’t.

When you go to YouTube.com, is it to search for a new video, or is it to browse through your video options?

I usually go to Youtube to browse through any new videos that pop up on my radar; sometimes thought I do find myself searching when I’m on the hunt for a specific music video or tutorial!

Do you subscribe to any YouTube channels?

Yes! The Platform of course, Andreaschoice, MakeupbyCamila, Beautycrush, Essiebutton, Pixiwoo, ClothesEncounters, etc. All the lovely beauty and fashion channels whom I’ve come to respect and become huge fans of!

What is the one YouTube channel you watch more than any other?

The Platform! Although I might be biased in that regard (I check the channel constantly to see what’s working with our audience, and to see if there’s anything I can do to help improve my show).

What’s the most common way you find new online video (on YouTube or elsewhere)?

YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. If you’re looking for new online videos, why go elsewhere but the source?

Final Thoughts

The big thing I observed from doing this survey: The responses from these folk, civilians and industry pros alike, show that social is still a huge part of discovery, even the people who understand the intricacies of the YouTube channel and subscription system.

However, the people actively using YouTube’s advanced features and finding new content through strategies like collaboration aren’t just the YouTube savvy — the youth of today are highly engaged with these methods. The question now becomes for YouTube: Is there a way to get everyone using the site behaving like a 12-year-old?

Want to add your own answers to the survey? Feel free to do so in the comments!

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Amazon execs set to testify in price-fixing case against Apple

Jeff John Roberts — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:54:43 +0000

As the federal government presses its antitrust case against Apple, Amazon is taking on a central role in determining whether a court will conclude that the iPad maker illegally colluded with five publishers to fix the price of ebooks.

According to a new court filing, Apple is demanding more access to Amazon’s top ebook executives — Russ Grandinetti and David Naggar, who both have the title VP of Kindle content — because the executives have said they “will likely testify at trial on the government’s behalf.” Meanwhile, a filing by Amazon said the company sought legal advice in early 2010 in response to what it perceived as the “the existence of an illegal (possibly criminal) price-fixing conspiracy by the five publishers and one or more retailers.”

A trial in the case is possible because Apple, unlike the five publishers that agreed to settle with the Justice Department, continues to hold out. The DOJ accuses it of acting as the hub of an illegal price-fixing scheme in early 2010. The alleged scheme involved Apple offering its new tablet reading device, the iPad, as a way for publishers to introduce agency pricing and shut out Amazon unless the latter agreed to the new prices.

The latest court filings, which came to light last week, are part of a procedural dispute in which Apple insisted it had a right to obtain more testimony and documents from Amazon executives. Amazon, in response, invoked a shield known as attorney-client privilege, which allows parties to withhold information that was obtained while seeking legal advice. Last week, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote sided with Amazon in the dispute and ruled that the information was privileged.

Court filings also reveal that the dispute in question turns on two meetings between senior Amazon executives in early January 2011; one of the meetings took place at a “boathouse” at the Seattle residence of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

The Amazon executives claim the reason for those meetings was to get legal advice “to avoid the very liability that the publisher Defendants and Apple are facing now.” Apple unsuccessfully argued that the meetings shouldn’t be privileged because Amazon was actually plotting business strategy and that it is now using the presence of its lawyers as a pretext to hold back information. Apple also claims its legal discovery of Amazon has already “exposed a glaring hole in the government’s case.”

A big part of the underlying case turns on “most favored nation” clauses and the publishers’ decision to impose so-called “agency pricing,” which saw retailers like Amazon and Apple take a commission from a price set by the publishers. The agency system, which publishers say was necessary to stop Amazon selling their books at a loss, was modified due to Department of Justice settlements with the publishers. Publishers can still set the prices for their ebooks, but most favored nation clauses are forbidden and retailers have broad discounting powers for ebooks.

Judge Cote, in her order denying Apple’s challenge to Amazon’s attorney-client privilege, also ordered executives from publishing house Penguin to participate in the proceedings. You can read Apple’s earlier letter to Judge Cote below.

This post was updated at 12:30 p.m. ET to clarify that a modified form of agency pricing, as described above, is still in effect.

Apple Letter Re Amazon Discovery by

(Image by Getty Images / Spencer Platt)

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With $1.4M, Qloo finds films, fashion, food and more that match your taste

Ki Mae Heussner — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 12:15:54 +0000

If you’re looking for recommendations online, Netflix can customize movie picks, Pandora can personalize music and Foursquare can suggest restaurants and other places you might like. But Qloo, a New York-based startup, wants to be your one-stop shop for discovering all kinds of cultural things and places.

The company launched in private Alpha in April and on Thursday is announcing that it’s launching with $1.4 million in funding. Kindler Capital led the round, which also included actors Cedric the Entertainer and Danny Masterson. The startup’s advisory board includes entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis and men’s clothing maker Duncan Quinn.

On the site, users select one thing across eight categories (film, TV, music, fashion, nightlife, books, travel and dining) that best reflects their taste in that category. Then Qloo (pronounced “clue”) generates suggestions in each of those categories based on the selections provided by other users with similar taste. But instead of just receiving suggestions from those who share their taste in a specific category, the site lets people select the aspects of their taste that they want to inform each new search.

“It first evolved from the idea that there are relationships between taste in different areas of culture,” said Alex Elias, who co-founded the company along with Jay Alger. “So someone’s taste in music might implicate where they might enjoy having a drink or their fashion sensibilities. Or your taste in literature might implicate the films you’d want to watch or where you might want to travel.”

In a sense, its approach is similar to Hunch’s notion of the taste graph, which uses a disparate selection of a person’s preferences to guide discovery. But while Hunch now helps eBay personalize shopping online, Qloo wants to personalize cultural recommendations.

Given the trend toward personalization, Qloo provides an interesting value proposition, but I will be curious to see if people want a cross-cultural experience when they can already receive personalized suggestions on vertical-specific platforms.

Even though Facebook, Foursquare and other social platforms may offer social data that could reveal users’ cultural preferences, Elias said Qloo chose not to integrate them (beyond letting users sign-in with Facebook) because they felt it was too noisy.

“People might like things on Facebook for different reasons,” he said. “We want to know what five restaurants really represent you.”

Qloo is invite-only but people can request an invitation on its site.

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Pinterest competitor Fancy hauls in $26.4M

Ryan Kim — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:42:39 +0000

Fancy, the Pinterest rival that lets people buy directly from its website, is gearing up for some big business with a new $26.4 million fundraising round, according to an SEC filing Monday. It’s unclear who is exactly participating in the round, though American Express vice chairman Ed Gilligan is listed as new board member.

Fancy has had no shortage of big-name backers, including Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and French luxury conglomerate PPR. And, if American Express is on board, it would be mean even more momentum for the social shopping and discovery site. Michael Silverman, COO of Thing Daemon, the company behind Fancy, declined to comment, saying CEO and founder Joe Einhorn was in an evacuation zone because of Hurricane Sandy.

Fancy launched in February, giving people the ability to “fancy” items that they like, similar to the way people pin products on Pinterest. But Fancy’s special sauce is its trove of product data, which it matches to fancied items. Fancy then lets users buy many of the products directly through its website.

The site has been rumored to be a possible acquisition target for Apple. Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg also became a user in June. But with the new funding, it looks like Fancy is set on staying independent at least for the near future. The company raised $10 million last year and previously raised $6 million in 2010.

Here’s a video we did with Einhorn when Fancy launched in February:

Watch this video for free on GigaOM

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Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Little Bird wants to be your new “robot librarian”

Laura Hazard Owen — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:00:14 +0000

Throughout Marshall Kirkpatrick’s career as a journalist — first as a writer at TechCrunch, then as an editor at ReadWriteWeb — his preferred method of finding stories and sources was not “shoe leather down in the Valley,” but data. With his year-old startup, which launches in private beta today and gets a new name, Little Bird (it was formerly called Plexus Engine), Kirkpatrick hopes to automate discovery and vetting of experts and influencers so that journalists, marketers and PR reps can find reputable sources more easily.

The Portland-based company, which is being demoed at PIE [Portland Incubator Experiment] Demo Day this morning, is also announcing a $1 million angel funding round today. Mark Cuban’s Radical Investments led the round, with participation from Howard Lindzon’s Social Leverage Group, Hubspot cofounder Dharmesh Shah and former Twitter engineer Blaine Cook. MetaFilter founder Matt Haughey, Accel’s Jonathan Siegel, Blogads’ Henry Copeland and social media expert Jay Baer also invested.

Little Bird determines which people are most influential on any given topic based on their personal connections, rather than on the content they create. “Unlike almost every other service out there, we are not doing content analysis for discovery of influencers,” Kirkpatrick told me. “We are looking at the specialists that other specialists are paying attention to…I think of it almost as a robot librarian. Whatever topic I’m interested in, I have the ability to snap my fingers and say, ‘Bring me the world’s most trusted neuroscientist.’”

Little Bird’s algorithm works by crawling the social graph of Twitter accounts and reducing them down to the “most trusted specialists” on a topic. (So you won’t necessarily be finding the world’s most trusted neuroscientist, but you might be finding the most trusted neuroscientist who’s also active on Twitter.) “The only way to climb up the ranks is to win the respect of your peers,” Kirkpatrick said. Though Little Bird is only crawling Twitter and blogs for now, the company plans to add LinkedIn and Google+ accounts soon. “We have reason to believe there are some serious professionals out there using Google+,” Kirkpatrick said, but “nobody knows who they are now.”

While Little Bird sounds somewhat similar to Klout, Kirkpatrick stressed that it’s “almost the opposite of a black box” in that it’s designed to be transparent and rational. He also says it’s a better discovery tool. “If you’ve already got someone in mind, Klout can tell you what their general popularity across the web is. But if you need to do discovery and what you’re really looking for is influence among other specialists, that’s something we provide better than Klout or anybody else.” Even so, he said, Klout data could eventually be added to Little Bird’s algorithm: “Sorting by Klout score would be an interesting way to display the data we’ve discovered.”

Along with person discovery, Little Bird offers various content discovery options. A “hot content” tab shows the links being shared the most around a given subject. “It’s like Techmeme for any topic,” Kirkpatrick said. A “top blogs” feature ranks blogs based on the number of inbound links, and a custom search engine lets users search inside “a whitelist of trusted domain experts” rather than across the web at large. Finally, if you’re in the mood for navel-gazing — and of course you are — “scorecard” lets you compare any Twitter account to other influencers on a topic.

So how well does it work?

I tested Little Bird and had pretty good results. I tried searching for two topics, “book publishing” and “ebooks,” figuring that I’d be most familiar with the results and would be able to gauge how good they were. My search for “book publishing” mostly turned up publisher accounts (for Simon & Schuster and Sterling, for instance) rather than individuals. Kirkpatrick admits that “in some sectors, companies do dominate,” but users can filter their results to show only individuals. When I did that, my results were much better.

My search for “ebooks” turned up a mixture of people I know and would actually consider influential, but also a number of marketing, company or promotional accounts that people probably primarily follow in order to get freebies. There were also many users speaking in foreign languages (though you can confine your search to a geographic area).

My search for “hot content” around ebooks revealed basically useless results: Two separate tweets about Catalonian independence (from the same user), two duplicate tweets from an editor and one tweet about Mitt Romney’s education policy.

These results may improve when Little Bird starts pulling in sources beyond Twitter. And the service also might be better for broader topics. A search for “broadband” pulled up our own Stacey Higginbotham, while “journalism” found people like Clay Shirky and Tim O’Reilly.

What it costs

Today you can view a few reports for free. Then Little Bird is rolling out free previews and subscription access in waves to individuals, small businesses and large businesses, with general availability expected in the next year. Individual accounts are $50 a month, and business accounts range from $250 for companies with three or fewer employees to $1,000 a month for companies with 26 to 500 employees (larger companies can get in touch for custom pricing). “It’s a little less expensive than [social media monitoring tool] Radian6 and more expensive than Meltwater,” Kirkpatrick said. “It’s a lot less expensive than hiring a consultant or agency to go out and do this research.”

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Social-TV apps and consumer behavior

Nicole — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 06:55:18 +0000

A new category of digital media has emerged in the living room: social TV. This relatively new concept can be defined as any application, website or software that allows viewers to interact with television programming and share that interaction with others. Currently social TV occurs in three ways: organically, as pure play or through TV- or set-top-enabled communication. This report will focus on the pure-play aspect of social TV as it relates to content providers, television networks and advertisers. It answers key questions relating to the segment’s growth potential, important companies, their competitors and likely business models for the future.

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Fancy teams up with Zaarly to turn craftiness into currency

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 23:38:33 +0000

Martha Stewart-style crafts and cooking projects generate a ton of “likes” and “pins” online, but they might also be able to generate some cash. Social discovery and commerce site Fancy and peer-to-peer marketplace Zaarly announced Monday they are partnering to make DIY items shared on The Fancy available for users to purchase.

Until now, members of Pinterest rival Fancy have been able to share photos and “fancy” all kinds of items on the site — from Marc Jacobs bags to cupcakes frosted to look like Cookie Monster — but they’ve only been able to actually purchase traditional merchandise made by particular companies and brands. With the new partnership, Fancy users can use the Zaarly marketplace to find someone who will make a DIY item for a price of their choosing.

For example, if a Fancy member sees a Cookie Monster cupcake (or any other random whimsical item) on the site, in addition to featuring it on her profile, adding to a list or indicating that she owns it, she can now click a Zaarly button that asks someone to “Make it for me.” Through a Zaarly-powered feature, she can then specify the price she’s willing to pay, as well as include her location and any other details or modifications. (The buyer sets the price, but the two parties can negotiate through the site.)

“It’s productivity as currency,” Fancy founder and CEO Joe Einhorn told me.

When people browse Fancy, they want to be able to actually acquire the things they find, he said. The Zaarly integration not only gives buyers the ability to purchase (or perhaps, commission) products that they wouldn’t have time to make, it creates a new revenue opportunity for the sellers. The revenue gains may not be huge, but Einhorn likened it to the kind of revenue people can earn through Airbnb, which lets users rent their spare rooms and empty apartments to people looking for a temporary place to stay.

It’s also similar to Airbnb in that it gives people a way to use untapped inventory. In this case, the inventory is a person’s labor and time; in the case of Airbnb, it’s physical space. (Hunch co-founder and investor Chris Dixon explored this idea earlier this year in a post about “maximizing capacity utlilization as a startup premise” that included Uber and TaskRabbit.)

While I think the overall idea of creating a DIY marketplace is compelling, I did ask Einhorn about the risk that people would simply post handmade items from elsewhere on the Web (like Etsy, for example) and try to find people to make similar items for less. Einhorn said it’s not always straightforward to identify the originator of an idea when it comes to crafts but that, when possible, Fancy will try to give preference to the originator and, as they roll out the Zaarly feature over the next 30 days, they will be mindful of supporting a culture that doesn’t encourage knockoffs.

Since allowing consumers to buy items through the site, Fancy said it earns more than $50,000 a week in merchandise and travel purchases and has attracted thousands of merchants who offer deals on their items and destinations. It’s hard to imagine that individual DIY items will come with big price tags (especially since it’s the buyer who gets to set the price on Zaarly), but by bringing commerce to a new class of products, Fancy could boost its value as a shopping utility.

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