A wide variety of angel investors participated in the round, possibly emphasizing the “social good” concept Stone hinted at in his intial launch post. Stone, who co-founded Twitter, has only described Jelly as a company with an eye for “social good” that takes advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices.

The investors include fellow Twitter co-founder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey, U2 musician and activist Bono, Greylock’s Reid Hoffman, former Vice President Al Gore, and Emmy-winning director Greg Yaitanes, among several others.

“They work in divergent fields,” Stone wrote. “Knowledge diversity is something we prize highly and is also something that will be represented in our product.”

Stone has been building up a good deal of ex-Twitter talent at the company, and the funding announcement noted that they would use the addition funding for hiring as they continue protyping a product before launch. Earlier this month, Stone announced that he added a COO in Kevin Thau, the Twitter executive who launched Twitter #music, and a co-founder and CTO in Ben Finkel, formerly engineering manager at Twitter in charge of user growth.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Social networks will displace business processes, not socialize them

It started off with a modest card reader, turned into a little app and now the company has developed and launched Square Stand, a point of sale system that reinvents the idea of cash register with help from Apple’s iPad and Square’s software, allowing the San Francisco-based company to further spread its wings in the payments business. And if there were any doubts that the company was going after payments incumbents such as NCR and Verifone, Square Stand puts it to an end.

The company announced the Square Stand at an event in a coffee shop near its offices this morning. Square Stand, simply put, is a point of sale system that allows merchants (big and small) to plug in their iPads (2 or 3, but not the 4th generation) into a stand that comes with a swivel base (so they can turn it around for you to sign for your purchase), a credit card reader and a USB hub that can in turn allow merchants to plug in everything from a scanner to a printer (for printing receipts), a cash register (the Square Stand doesn’t hold cash, just works with other devices) and even the backend ordering system into the stand. In February this year, Square introduced its Business-in-a-Box package, but this is a much simpler and is targeted at larger establishments including restaurants.

When asked why the company was making the initial device with support for only the iPad 2 and iPad 3, Dorsey pointed out that a majority of their customers were using these two devices and as a result they had to make sure they provided the biggest support. The support for iPad 4 (the newest model available, sold as just “iPad”) will come in subsequent models. The company had launched Square Register for iPad app in March 2012 and has made subsequent upgrades to the app.

Sexy cash registers?

“We have taken something that is ugly and mechanical and made it look like a consumer product that is very sexy,” said Dorsey, chief executive of the four-year-old Square, which is based in San Francisco and has raised $340 million in funding from the likes of Khosla Ventures, Citi Ventures, Starbucks, Visa and Chase. The company is part of a growing number of players including eBay and GroupOn that are looking to reinvent the offline retail business.

Square showed off its grander ambitions when it hinted at its desire to take on the likes of Foursquare and Yelp. Square said that as of today it is processing over $15 billion in payments on an annualized basis, excluding Starbucks, up from processing $5 billion on annualized basis a year ago.

Weighing in at about five pounds, the stunningly beautiful device is pristine white and is made of moulded plastic. The USB and other accessories (called the Toolkit) are perfectly matched to the stand. It will used by 13 merchants in 30 locations. The package is going to cost $299 and and is available for pre-order.

When I first saw the Square Stand, it elicited an involuntary gasp. From packaging to the final product, it is something one would expect from the Apple dream factory; but in saying so, I don’t do justice to Dorsey and his design team. While there are many companies who are following the Apple aesthetic, to me Square Stand represents a perfect harmony of hardware, software and service. (For more on beautiful design of connected devices make sure to check out our RoadMap event in November in San Francisco; to get early access to tickets that will go on sale this Summer go here).

Digital receipts and mobile payments are the way of the future, but Square also recognizes that people pay with cash and credit cards, the company said at the press conference Tuesday morning. The support for third party peripherals will make this into an ecosystem. It will be on sale in July at Best Buy and other retailers.

Do small merchants care enought about how their point-of-sale devices look and will they spend money to replace their existing systems? “More important than how it looks is how it works. It is about making it work simply,” Dorsey said Tuesday.

Completing the sale

The Stand has been under development at Square for quite sometime. Dorsey said that reinventing the register and rethinking the whole retail experience has been part of company’s thinking from its earliest days. If the Square’s original card reader made it possible for mom-and-pop businesses to access the credit card payment infrastructure, with the launch of this device, Square can start to look at tapping into the big brick-and-mortar commerce ecosystem.

“Whenever people got Square (Register) on iPad, the first thing they needed was a stand. So we made one, and one that works seamlessly in a way that allows merchants to move people through the queue really quickly,” Dorsey said. “We wanted to build hardware that was high quality.” The speed of processing payments has been a key driving force behind the design of this device, Dorsey explained.

Square is one of the handful of companies that understands that there is a lot of money to be made in building this new kind of retail system. And it might have started out small, but now it doesn’t have much choice to get real big, real fast. After all it has to live up to is massive $3.25 billion valuation.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

“I think we can do something a lot better” than those other apps, Ajit Varma, Square’s director of discovery, said in the interview.

While Foursquare has recently confirmed its intentions to move away from check-ins and mayorships and toward local commerce, hoping to solve the problem of finding the best businesses near you — that you’ll actually like — hasn’t been completely solved. Not enough people are checking into places on Facebook yet to make the company’s service all that useful, and while Yelp is the established favorite, reading reviews there is a little like shopping on Amazon — you need to know what you’re looking for when you go in. Google’s search offerings and Google Now app have strong possibilities for local commerce, but haven’t yet captured the mobile market.

While Square is still a relatively young company, having launched in 2010, it’s already inked a deal with Starbucks and has millions of local merchants connected to its payments service, and as we wrote, the company had a particularly strong year in 2012. It makes sense that as the company expands further and more merchants allow customers to pay through Square, it will acquire a vast amount of data about your purchasing habits — data that both Foursquare and Yelp lack.

Square has your credit card on file, knows where you typically shop, how much you spend, and how much you tip, even, which could allow the company to make much smarter recommendations than its competitors. For instance, if I go to Starbucks every day to purchase a bagel, Square might know to recommend bagel shops to me instead of coffee shops. Or if I leave better tips at one restaurant over another, Square might be able to determine how much I really liked those two restaurants relative to each other.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• How consumer media will change in 2013
• Social third-quarter 2012: analysis and outlook

But for Instagram and its users themselves? Things haven’t actually changed all that much — so far.

One year ago on April 9, 2012, Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook wall (where else?) that the not-yet-public Facebook would acquire Instagram. Founded in 2010 as a pivot from a location-based app called Burbn, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger’s Instagram turned into a scrappy mobile startup that seemed like the antithesis of Facebook’s ubiquitous web platform. It seemed like an odd match, and the even if the sale was a defensive move to keep Instagram out of Twitter’s hands, Zuckerberg explained why the duo still made sense:

“This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.”

The fears that came with the purchase

I wasn’t yet a tech reporter when I heard about the Facebook acquisition, but I remember having an instant sense of fear when I heard the news. Instagram was one of the first apps I eagerly downloaded when I got my first smartphone in August 2011. In the 20 months since then, I’ve shared more than 700 photos on the service, or on average, more than a photo a day. When I heard the news, my immediate worry was that Facebook would kill the app I’d grown to love, a tool that I have used to document my favorite memories over the past year.

And needless to say, I wasn’t alone in this fear. A quick Google search for “Will Facebook ruin Instagram” brings up at least five articles by that title on the first page of results. To say that people were aprehensive is putting it mildly.

What’s stayed the same

But now a year after the deal was announced, the essential core of Instagram — being able to quickly take and share mobile photos that look good, upload instantly, and generate positive social feedback from friends — hasn’t really changed. Sure, there have been signs that Instagram is under new ownership, such as the terms of service debacle in December. But the threats of quitting Instagram seemed overblown, and for now, my feelings about the app I first downloaded remain the same. Instagram still feels like a fast, efficient, and creative world within the app.

Mobilize 2012: Om Malik – Founder and Senior Writer, GigaOM Mike Krieger – Co-Founder, Instagram

Before the Facebook acquisition, Systrom said the company was aiming to hit 100 million users, and the app went ahead and met that benchmark in February of this year. The acquisition didn’t slow user growth, but it didn’t triple the predictions either — presumably once you start reaching large enough numbers, it’s hard to keep growing at earlier paces. But the app continued to do well, likely strongly influenced by the jump to Android just days before the acquisition that turbocharged usage and the increased support from Facebook’s servers to handle increased capacity.

So far, we haven’t seen a designated Instagram tab appear on Facebook profiles. And aside from larger photos on the revamped timeline (for all photos, not just those from Instagram), and integrated likes on photos, there hasn’t been much in the way of preferential treatment for the photo app, as Zuckerberg noted in March. Of course this could, and probably will, change over time. But for now, we haven’t seen anything too radical.

What’s changed

However, we have seen some changes to the platform over the past year. They might not be ones that casual users would notice, or changes that alter the core experience of Instagram. But they do hint where the company could be headed, and how the two companies are interacting so far:

1. It set off the battles among the web giants. Over the past year we’ve seen the launch of apps and products like Twitter’s photo filters, Twitter’s video service Vine, Flickr’s re-launched mobile app, and the rise of Snapchat. The Instagram acquisition came as Facebook realized it didn’t have a lock on how people shared photos, or as Om wrote, “Facebook was scared shitless and knew that for first time in its life it arguably had a competitor that could not only eat its lunch, but also destroy its future prospects.” But the acquisition didn’t slow down Facebook’s competitors, and suddenly Instagram was pulled into the ongoing struggles between Twitter and Tumblr and Apple and Facebook. Instagram had previously been friendly in allowing users to cross-post content to a variety of sites like Tumblr and Twitter, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey was an early investor in Instagram. But with reports that Twitter failed at acquiring Instagram just before Zuckerberg succeeded, relations between the companies deteriorated later in the year.
2. Instagram has to play by Facebook’s rules now. Until December, we hadn’t seen many consequences from Instagram’s new owners, but when Instagram updated its terms of service and people thought their Instagram photos of their kids could end up on billboards, they freaked out. Intentionally or not, Instagram had gone down Facebook’s “do it now, ask permission later” path, and as it has with Facebook, it got Instagram in trouble. While it seems people’s proclamations of swearing off Instagram didn’t really last, it served to remind causal users of the app that the acquisition had really taken place.
3. Say hello to the web. Prior to the deal, Instagram’s founders had said repeatedly that they had no interest in moving Instagram to the desktop, but the company did launch desktop profiles in November and photo-viewing and feeds in February. It’s hard to tell if those additions have changed the service much, but as we wrote before it’s the ability to upload photos via desktop that would change the alter the experience more dramatically — that so far, the founders have said they’re not interested in adding.

Looking forward to the next year of Facebook + Instagram

So what will happen to Instagram over the upcoming year? Facebook has been through some serious changes since the acquisition – there was the botched IPO, the dramatic improvement of the speed and user experience on mobile, the launch of e-commerce products with the Karma acquisition and Gifts, the launch of Graph Search, the revamp of Newsfeed and tweaks to Timeline, and a new Home on Android.

Post-IPO, the company is building up its service as an advertising network, and doubling down on ways to make money. It seems like Instagram could be the next target for that. Emily White, Sheryl Sandberg’s protege at both Google and then Facebook where she worked on AdWords and then Facebook’s mobile partnerships, just announced last week that she’s joining Instagram’s team to be director of operations for the group. White’s joining Instagram could do for the group what Sandberg’s arrival did for Facebook: hello, monetization and advertising. We’ve already seen celebrities using their large followings on Instagram for brand endorsements.

But if users flipped out over terms of service (that a lot of people don’t even read anyway), it’s easy to imagine the outrage that would come if and when mobile ads started appearing in the Instagram feed. That could be the tipping point for many users who haven’t seen big changes over the past year. But it also could be the way for Facebook to start making up the billion dollars it spent on those photos of yours.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• The fourth quarter of 2012 in mobile
• Readers weigh in: future prospects for Twitter

A friend and a long time reader emailed earlier this morning, offering his observation regarding Google Glass. His prognosis – it was a hands-free camera. Laughs aside, it is an easy deduction to make from the new video shared by the Google Glass team. Sure, the video focused on ballerinas, balloon rides and bubbles, but Google was trying to get maximum oohs-and-aahs from as wide a set of people as possible.

That said, I have been intrigued by Google glasses from the very beginning, mostly because despite being nerdy and in a very early stage, it represents a bit of the old Google. As I previously wrote: “It represents the kind of things the company needs to do in order to leap over its rivals.”

So, if you focus on just the video, I guess, the shrug of shoulder is an appropriate response. However, when I watched that video, I saw three things that were possible.

• A new way to interact with information Google indexes: Google’s original premise was to make sense of all the messy data on the web. The mess has become bigger and finding information has become more difficult. We have to start looking at information we need in context of where we are, who we are and to what purpose we need that information. While it is easy to provide the “where” and “who” information, nothing adds “purpose” than what the eye is seeing. So, from that perspective, this is the right evolution of Google’s basic utility.
• A decent working voice-based user interface: Siri is cute. Siri is helpful … sometimes. But Siri is still not the answer. However, the Google Glass UI seems to have found the answer to the age old voice-based UI question. And with increased usage, the UI will get smarter and better. (Well, that is what I hope.)
• And lastly, it gives us the ability to add more contextual information to the real world around us: With Google glasses, everything becomes searchable. I think this is the most underrated part of Google Glass. So far, we have restricted “information lookup” to the computers.

That said, this is just a video. And as a cynic I am going to withhold final judgment on the glasses and what changes they might unleash until I can get my hands on the actual devices. That said, the video released today definitely makes me even more keen on trying them on.

Google is working to get developers to sign-up and develop apps for this new class of anywhere, anytime computers. And we don’t know just yet, what the creative minds might do and what impact their efforts might have on how we live, create and consume.

iPad, the slate for disruption

Three years ago, when everyone saw a bigger the iPhone, I first saw the iPad and my initial response was that it was a slate “to reinvent pretty much how we think of media, information and in fact the whole user experience.” I saw a blank slate that was ready, for lack of better words, for creation and disruption. It is just that no one knew how it would disrupt and who it would disrupt. I was reminded of that today when I saw this news release from Jack Dorsey’s Square, a San Francisco-based payments company.

Business in a Box: all the hardware you need to run Square Register on your counter: Historically, business owners were forced to piece together multiple hardware components from various manufacturers, manage complicated contracts and pricing structures, and pay for expensive software licensing and service plans. Now, they can be up and running with Square Register in minutes.

Three years ago, it wasn’t clear if the iPad was going to clean VeriFone’s clock or give an underclass of merchants a chance to participate in the mobile and electronic economy. It certainly wasn’t clear that it would become the engine for the people-to-people economy I often talk about. The sharp decline in the fortunes of laptops is another disruption.

The fact is that when you combine software with connectivity and use data to create new experiences, you end up disrupting old industries and building new fortunes.

When I look at Google Glass today, I see a big similarity between them and Tesla — the electric car, not the company. Both are a bit nerdy, both are a bit cool and both are showing us the way to the future.

Elon Musk would like us to believe that he is building the new Toyota — and I for one am glad that he is — but the real impact of his car is on the business of transportation. Tesla for me is the marriage of electronics with data, software and connectivity.

The Big IF

“The big if” for both Tesla and Google Glass is going to be how they think about the interaction of humans and the machine. If they keep using data without an emotional quotient, then they are going to get nowhere fast. If they don’t build systems that constantly learn, evolve and become smarter with usage — much like human brain — they are not going to go anywhere. They should take a cue from IBM and its Watson effort: that’s where some of the answers lie for them.

And as for disruption, as the title says, it moves in mysterious ways.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• The state of cross-platform media measurement
• Analyzing the wearable computing market

According to AllThingsD, and supported by statements from Square and Rabois himself, the investor and executive has decided to part ways with a company that’s considered one of the brighter stars in the Silicon Valley constellation. Led by Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder, Square has captivated small businesses with an easy-to-use credit-card payments system, and Rabois has been one of the more vocal proponents of Square’s approach to mobile payments.

It’s not entirely clear at this point what Rabois might have planned for the future, but AllThingsD points to “disagreements” between Rabois and Dorsey over the future of Square.

Rabois spoke at our Mobilize conference last year, and a video of that session follows below.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• NFC will be driven by marketing and loyalty, not payments
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

In many ways, Peek is the opposite of the travel guidebooks you might be used to. You won’t find long lists of restaurants, or a comprehensive guide to all kid-friendly activities within a single place. Instead, the site, which launched in October, goes under the assumption that people are overwhelmed with choices when it comes to travel, and they just want to be given a few high-quality options to choose from.

The site is optimized for mobile browsing but has no native apps, an odd choice in an industry that clearly hinges on searching and planning on the go. But Peek, which has the backing of an impressive list of investors including Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt, SV Angel and Khosla Ventures, started out with a short list of curated city guides in California and Hawaii, as well as “Perfect Days” designed by celebrities including Piers Morgan (he likes the hot air balloons in San Diego), Tory Burch (she has tips for catching some Hawaiian music in Oahu), and Jack Dorsey (he likes the roasted chicken at San Francisco’s Zuni.) Changes coming to the site on Tuesday will allow anyone to contribute ideas as well.

At first, the ability to create “perfect days” was limited the famous and relatively famous, but Bashir said they had so many requests from people who wanted to post their own “perfect days” that they decided to create a separate version of the site where anyone can post their suggestions for a city. This new version debuts on Tuesday.

“The average person spends an hour planning a trip, and goes to up to 20 different websites,” said founder Ruzwana Bashir, the British CEO and founder of Peek. “In the end, you create a long list of things you want to do and you don’t know where to start.”

The suggestion page looks very much like Pinterest, and users can “re-plan” (like re-pin) suggestions from other people, creating their own “perfect day” as a compilation of other people’s suggestions. Even if you’re not currently planning a trip, it’s fun to browse the suggestions and photos, which can be organized by location around the globe.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Social networks will displace business processes, not socialize them

Last year we talked about how connectedness changes everything. We thought it would be a good idea for us to rewind and share some of the conversations from the 2011 event as we work on the 2012 edition.

Jack Dorsey, Square & Twitter

Tony Fadell, Nest

Drew Houston, Dropbox

Brian Chesky, AirBnB

Matt Mullenweg, Automattic/Wordpress

The complete archives from GigaOM RoadMap 2011.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Seconds after Dorsey and Zuckerberg put up their news, it was picked up by casual readers who shared it and tweeted it. Technology media (including blogs) also picked up the news and published it as classic news posts. Some of us added analysis, but in the end both casual observers and publications were doing the same job — they were amplifying the news, spreading it across various mediums. There is a blurring of the line between what is news and what is a tweet, photo or a blog post. In other words, it is a kind of mosh pit of data and information — and that means the role of media is changing.

A reporter’s job for the longest time has been to find information and report it. This is what we have called news. Sitting in the media box at the baseball stadium and reporting scores and providing updates for a wire service was as much “news” as reporting on the Watergate scandal. And up until the end of the 20th century, the sources of distribution were pretty limited — radio, newspapers, magazines and television.

That in turn meant that newsmakers had to go to media outlets in order to share their message and get it amplified and reach those they wanted to reach — call them constituents or the target audience. With the rise of the social web, that has changed. Blogs, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other such platforms have made it easy for news makers to go direct to their constituents. So what is the role of today’s media person? In addition to reporting news, I think picking things to amplify is also important. Back in the day, news people made choice by deciding which stories to write. Today, we have to adopt a similar rigor about what we choose to share and amplify. In sharing (on Twitter or even re-blogging) we are sending the same message as doing an original news report. The easy thing is to share or reblog everything, but by being deliberate about it, we are essentially “editing” and telling the world: “this is how I see the world/this particular beat.”

One of the few people who has it figured out is John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who essentially has a very Gruberesque-view of the Apple economy. Similarly Jason Hirschhorn (formerly of SlingBox, MySpace and MTV), who operates the MediaReDefined email newsletter and a Flipboard channel, presents a very nuanced view of media industry by sharing what he thinks is relevant. They are not classical media people, but they are probably more prototypical of the “future media.”

Andrew Sullivan, a career journalist, is one media person whose link sharing, blogging and actual writings are pretty consistent with his world view and what he considers is important news. When Sullivan writes a longer report or a deeper analysis, you know it is important and worth paying attention. When Gruber has gone deeper, it has more than likely been worth paying attention to, whether you agree or disagree with them.

I am not saying we all have to be like them, but it is important to remember that in the future when Dorsey, Zuckerberg and Hastings are no longer an anomaly, the media person’s role is no longer just reporting news. Reporting through sharing and curation are going to be vital roles for us to play in the future.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• How social discovery is transforming entertainment
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1

Dorsey returned to the company in March 2011 to help guide product development, arriving with Costolo after being forced out by co-founder Evan Williams back in 2008. Dorsey signaled his delight to return to Twitter, but an extensive profile of Costolo published in The New York Times this weekend reported that Dorsey has now scaled back that role, with fellow employees complaining he was difficult to work with.

Mr. Dorsey’s role has since been reduced after employees complained that he was difficult to work with and repeatedly changed his mind about product directions. He no longer has anyone directly reporting to him, although he is still involved in strategic decisions.

Dorsey confirmed that his role became more limited in January of this year and that he’s returned his attention to Square, although he made no mention of disagreements with co-workers:

In Spring of 2011, Dick asked me to take an operational role overseeing product, design, and brand. Our shared goal was to get those organizations back under him as soon as possible, simply because it was the right thing to do for the company. We moved all of my reports back under him in January of this year after leadership was firmly in place. This allowed me to focus on refining our brand and logo, to work more with Dick and the leadership team on our direction forward, and ultimately return the majority of my time to Square, where I’m CEO.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Themes for a connected world: GigaOM RoadMap review
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013