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Tape.tv Raises $6.2 Million To Begin An International Roll-Out

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:57:16 +0000

tape.tv has been around for a while – since July 2008 to be exact. It operates like a mix between an online version of MTV and Pandora. Just like the latter service, on Tape.tv users can skip, like or dislike the videos as they play, so the service starts to tailor itself to their tastes. I came across it in various visits to Berlin over the last couple of years but have been frustrated that this great service has only been aimed at the German market. However, I’m excited that it’s about to scale into new countries. The company has now raised €5 million ($6.2 million) in a Series B funding round. Participants include Atlantic Capital Partners GmbH , Dario Suter, Christoph Daniel and Marc Schmidhelny (DCM), prolific Berlin Angel investor Christophe Maire, alongside Investitionsbank Berlin and VC Kreativwirtschaft Berlin. The cash will be used to scale the business, appear on other platforms like smart TVs and launches into France and the UK in early autumn. The relaunch will also see the creation of an electronic program guide (EPG) for their own live shows and events. Its tape.tv’s catalogue of 45,000 videos has attracted around 3.5 million users in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, its main markets since it launched in July 2008. The company managed to navigate the tricky music licensing laws in Germany, which has seen YouTube hobbled in some areas. Founded by Conrad Fritzsch (CEO) and Stephanie Renner, Tape.tv plans to have an editorial team in each region it launches in, programming its sub channels, like Indie and Hip-Hop. Fritzsch says the company is now aiming at the convergence of Internet and TV towards SmartTV and hopes to extend to mobile as well. “The future of tape.tv will also be more social, based on user behaviour” he says. The company has 65 employees, many of them selling ads around the videos, and also has a real TV show on on the ZDFkultur channel in Germany. But it’s a lucrative business. It’s claiming to be running on €20 million in annual revenues. In Germany it has plenty of strategic partners, including ZDF.kultur, bild.de und spiegel.de and apps with Facebook, Spotify and Last.fm.

Hearst’s Latest Social Launch: A Redbook App For Father’s Day

admin — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:54:35 +0000

Hearst is best known as print publisher, but this year its digital arm has been making a big push into social media. Its latest effort is a Father’s Day themed Facebook app for Redbook magazine . In order to use the Father’s Day app, people need to “like” the Redbook Facebook page. Once you’ve done that, you can bring up a list of all the dads in your network. Then you can post a Father’s Day message to any of their Facebook Walls, and optionally, on yours too. I was a little surprised to see the app coming from Redbook, which targets young married women — not necessarily the first audience I’d think of when it comes to celebrating Father’s Day. However, Brian Madden, director of social at Hearst Digital Media, points out that the emphasis is on thanking not just your father, but all the dads you know, whether it’s your husband, your brother, your uncle, or whomever. He also says this is a way for Redbook to leverage its fans to get into “the feeds of other like-minded women.” While I was interested in hearing about the Redbook app, I also wanted to get an update on Hearst’s general social strategy. Apparently Madden’s team was just created in February, and it’s focusing on two main strategies — increasing social sharing from Hearst websites, while also creating social network-specific experiences to engage fans. “The philosophy right now is to make sure that we have social strategies that pay,” says VP of Digital Grant Whitmore. “And when I say pay, I don’t necessarily mean in a monetary sense. We know that our social strategy can’t just be about counts of fans and followers, but it has to be tied to some measurable engagement.” When it comes to measurable engagement Hearst says the numbers are going up. In the first quarter of the year, on-site sharing was up 74 percent, and in April, Facebook drove a record 2 million visits to Hearst site. During that month, the reach of Hearst publications’ Facebook posts and pages also increased 30 percent compared to March.

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Hearst’s Latest Social Launch: A Redbook App For Father’s Day

The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

vertical8 — Thu, 24 May 2012 01:02:35 +0000

This afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, our own Josh Constine sat down with David Kirkpatrick , author of “The Facebook Effect,” to discuss what they thought about the future of the newly IPO’ed social network. Specifically, the two focused on the potential for Facebook’s advertising platform, its competitive advantages over incumbents and competitors, and its potential acquisition targets which could help its platform expand. What’s Facebook’s Post-IPO Strategy? Josh started off by asking Kirkpatrick what he thought was the most important thing Facebook should do going forward. David responded that Facebook shouldn’t do anything differently, even going so far as to say that doing so would be the “most perilous mistake they could make.” However, in terms of how the IPO could potentially affect the company’s focus, and specifically CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s focus on product, was the fact that Zuckerberg now has to “sell a lot of ads.” As a public company, analysts will be making quarterly earnings projections, and Zuckerberg will have to waste a lot of time thinking about that, said Kirkpatrick. Whether Zuckerberg likes it or not, he will have to think about money now, Kirkpatrick lamented, a role that the CEO had historically dedicated to COO Sheryl Sandberg . However, Josh pointed out that shift may not be a bad thing — Zuckerberg hasn’t “applied his big brain to monetization yet,” he noted. Facebook’s Uber-Precise Ad Targeting The two then moved onto sharing their thoughts about the Facebook advertising platform, which had Josh asking what Kirkpatrick thought Facebook had done that was really special in ads. Responded the author, “to create an environment which can be so accurately targeted for advertising is an innovation in itself.” He added that it’s also effectively an unmonetized innovation at this time, and he’s confident that there’s a lot of revenue opportunity there in the future, too. Kirkpatrick said that he felt that even something as simple as putting an ad in your News Feed was an innovation. How Facebook Will Get To Be Worth More Than $100B In discussing new monetization streams for the network, the potential for an offsite ad network that could one day rival Google’s AdSense was huge. There are already 9 million businesses and advertisers on the Facebook ad platform today, said Kirkpatrick. But highly targeted ads – the kind you would see on Facebook itself – could potentially freak people out when they showed up on the wider Internet, Josh pointed out. Kirkpatrick agreed to a point, but said that most people, including the average Facebook user, don’t seem to really care. There’s a tidal wave of “anti-targeting mindset,” especially in Europe, said Kirkpatrick, but it seemed to be mostly among the press, the government, and the “influentials” (which he dubbed the “punditocracy”). “A lot don’t understand Facebook or advertising that well,” he said of this group, painting them with a rather large brush. Kirkpatrick also said that not only does the average Facebook user not care about ads, in some of Facebook’s largest markets, it’s not a concern at all. Indonesia, for example – Facebook’s fourth largest country – has no issue with Facebook’s advertising. Who Should Facebook Buy Finally, in terms of what companies Facebook should acquire next, both agreed that moving into physical payments would make sense for the company. As for the recent Instagram and Karma acquisitions, Kirkpatrick called them “unexpected and surprising,” saying that they’re really app related, which he thought was odd. “What’s really important for Facebook is being a platform,” he said. He thought the biggest investments would be to “augment their platform capabilities, not their app capabilities.” But he concluded that some things, like photos, may be so important to the platform that they felt they needed to spend a billion dollars on it. “Tumblr is an interesting company for Facebook to think about,” Kirkpatrick stated. He also thought that Facebook couldn’t help but be obsessing over Pinterest right now, but Josh vehemently disagreed. Instead, Josh’s picks were some sort of peer-to-peer payments company like Venmo, and an offsite ad network technology that would give Facebook the ability to scrape data from websites outside its walled garden to let Facebook serve relevant ads to visitors who aren’t logged in.

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The Facebook Effect Author David Kirkpatrick Talks Facebook’s Ad Network Potential, Future Acquisition Targets

Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications

blogger — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:25:08 +0000

This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar , a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the “Here-Now” social network. The app previously focused on providing relevant information to users about others around them based on connections via Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Twitter. Extremely useful for conferences like Disrupt, when you’re at a party or maybe even starting a new job. So what’s new? Aside from the usual under the hood tweaks, Sonar has crammed in Status, Sonar Presence, Notifications and Messaging. The status update serves as a hyperlocal broadcast tool for those within close proximity and even pushes out a notification to your friends when they’re close by. Sonar Presence runs in the background to let others know what you’re up to or when friends are nearby, pushing a notification to alert you to folks you are already connected to. Sonar says one way they’re set apart from other apps in the space is that they’re most interested in showing you real connections and people you actually care about. Like others in the space, battery issues remain because current devices aren’t optimized to use GPS properly. You can pause Sonar in the background, BTW. Notifications will only ping you when friends you actually know and are connected to are nearby. Messaging is pretty straight forward and lets you lob chats back and forth with other Sonar users. So if you’re heading into the office and Sonar notifies you that a co-worker is close by, you can send a message asking them to hold the elevator or ask if they need a coffee. Sonar also offers a replacement to the irritating “Where are you guys” texts that are a staple of meeting up at a concert or park. Brilliant, no? Oh, you think you’ve heard this before, have you? How useful is Highlight outside of the San Francisco tech circle? Because it’s pretty worthless in New York. There are folks working in every industry imaginable, not just tech. The connections that I’ve personally made with folks in fashion, entertainment and countless other industries are innumerable thanks to Sonar. And what about getting results anywhere outside of a tech hub? Sonar says they had users in 35 countries just within a week of their launch last year, and have seen usage in more than 65 countries total. If you don’t see the value in a service like Sonar, then you’re totally missing the point and drinking the kool-aid. Oddly enough, I’d heard this pitch before but it came at a time before the App Store was even a thing. Back in 2008, Mike declared that he’d seen the “ Future Of Social Networking .” He described it as such: A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting – quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar. Given the intimate connection we have with our mobile devices, who wouldn’t want this type of service at our fingertips? It’s not like we don’t immediately Google someone we’ve just met anyway. Mike never disclosed the name of the company and we never heard from them again. But it doesn’t matter. Sonar does just that and more. Sonar [App Store]

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Sonar Rolls Out “Here-Now” Mobile Social Network, Adds Status, Messaging, Notifications

The Verdict Is In: Google Did NOT Infringe On Oracle’s Patents

user — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:15:11 +0000

Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California dismissed the jury this afternoon after a unanimous decision that ruled in favor of Google’s mobile OS — declaring that Android did not in fact infringe on the Oracle patents in question. The decision follows an opposing verdict earlier this month , in which the jury in the long-running infringement case found that certain components of Android APIs had too close of a resemblance to code used in Oracle’s Java programming tools. However, the jury ended up splitting on the notion of whether or not Google could in fact claim fair use in its defense (which could have then led to a mistrial.) The jury’s decision was obviously a laborious one, following two years of a legal back-and-forth between the two tech giants. Oracle had initially filed the lawsuit back in August 2010, in which the company asserted that Android infringed on Java patents that Oracle acquired as a result of its purchase of Sun Microsystems. Google responded by saying that, at the time of development, it was not aware of Sun’s patents and that Android was in fact free to use. Of course, that decision was only the first act in the three-part deliberations, in which the copyright infringement issues were to be followed by consideration of Oracle’s patent infringement claims (the focus of today’s hearing) and, finally, the damages Google might be liable for were it found guilty. However, much of that speculation was rendered moot today, as a week of deliberation came to a close today at the U.S. District Court of Northern California, with the jury unanimously declaring that Google did not in fact infringe on the six claims set forth by Oracle in regard to U.S. Patent RE 38,104 as well as the two claims regarding U.S. Patent 6,061,520. Of course, this does not mean that the whole case has been decided; instead, the decision marks the end of the trial’s second phase, which, again, focused solely on Oracle’s claims of patent infringement. While the jury had previously found that Google was in violation of Oracle’s copyrights, as stated above, it could not come to a unanimous decision on the issue of fair use. Meaning that, although Oracle ostensibly “won” its copyright case, it effectively has a hold on its ability to collect on any of the $1 billion in copyright damages it is seeking from Google — a conclusion that was supported by the tweets of legal reporter Ginny LaRoe, who attended today’s hearing. And #Googacle The Trial is over. Judge Alsup dismissing jury. Since Oracle won virtually nothing, no damages phase at this point. — Ginny LaRoe (@GinnyLaRoe) May 23, 2012 On top of that, there are a number of other legal questions surrounding the copyright case on which Judge Aslup has yet to issue a final ruling, although he is expected to come to a decision next week. Updating

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The Verdict Is In: Google Did NOT Infringe On Oracle’s Patents

Marketo Wants To Add A Social Boost To Every Marketing Campaign

A D M I N — Wed, 23 May 2012 23:03:29 +0000

Last month, Marketo announced that it was acquiring social marketing startup Crowd Factory to add a social component to its marketing automation tools. Today the company is releasing its first products to come out of the deal. Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez says this represents the two companies’ technology “all put together into a single hybridized product.” Actually, Marketo is releasing two products, Marketo Social Boost and Marketo Social Promotions, as part of a new Marketo Social Marketing suite. “I think there’s a tremendous pent-up hunger to take social marketing out of the silo and to bring it into the mainstream,” Fernandez says. And by that, he means that these aren’t just tools for marketing on Facebook, but rather for adding a social element to a broad range of online campaigns. Sanjay Dholakia, formerly CEO of Crowd Factory and now Market’s senior vice president of product marketing and corporate development, says there are two big pieces to the suite. First, it helps you “put this word-of-mouth lift on everything you’re doing” by adding a social element to relatively traditional marketing and advertising. For example, he says you could direct your AdWords campaign to a Marketo landing page (that includes social sharing, so that each paid click that you get through the ad can multiply into many more visitors. Second, he says this will help companies reach their audience in new ways, like sweepstakes and flash deals. And of course there’s analytics data to help you see the measure of your campaigns. Fernandez announced the new suite today as part of the Marketo Summit 2012.

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Marketo Wants To Add A Social Boost To Every Marketing Campaign

Rovio’s FB App, Angry Birds Friends, Flies Out Of Beta With Tournament Mode, New Levels & More

admin — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:11:21 +0000

Well, well, well. As if you couldn’t get your fix of sling-shotting irascible fowl on every other mobile and social platform known to man, Rovio announced this morning that Angry Birds for Facebook (officially known as Angry Birds Friends ) has finally done flown the coop and left the warm nest of its beta. Avian double-speak aside, what does that mean exactly? It means that, having gone through the requisite user testing, tweaking, and multi-billion-dollar IPO-ing, Rovio’s Facebook app — with a handful of new features in tow — is finally ready for public consumption. As to those features, Angry Birds Friends brings a number of trendy social gaming features to Angry Birds, including tournament mode, new weekly levels, new ways to earn power-ups, rewards, and, of course, tons of social integration. As Angry Birds fanatics are well aware, Rovio launched Angry Birds Friends in beta earlier this year . On top of those things I mentioned earlier, the beta version of Angry Birds Friends has also been a testing ground for Rovio to test out new business models, like offering $1 power-ups beyond pay-to-download options or the infamous Mighty Eagle. The game’s port to Facebook likely had the social network excited, considering that Angry Birds has been a presence on Google+ and other Goog products for awhile now — not to mention the fact that massively popular games like Angry Birds could mean good things for Facebook’s revenue. But, as to Angry Birds Friends’ (what an awkward and clunky name to say aloud, by the way) new features, they’re pretty much self-explanatory, but its new tournaments feature allows user to compete with their friends on four different levels — from Monday to Sunday. The pig-popping user with the highest overall score earns a gold trophy, with silver going to second, etc, etc. And, thankfully, unlike crowns, users get to keep their trophies for ever. For. Ever. The “New Weekly Levels” refer, specifically, to those four new levels being offered in tournament mode, although Rovio hinted that it will be launching further levels every week. Third of all, there are those power-ups, which, on top of the daily rewards users can already collect, users can now earn power-ups in tournament mode. Earn three power-up bundles and you’ll receive a shiny gold trophy. As for context, in case it wasn’t already abundantly clear, Angry Birds is popular. More than five people use it. In fact, earlier this month Rovio announced that its coven of Angry Birds apps had amassed 1 billion downloads. To date, Rovio has released the original, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Rio, newer arrival Angry Birds Space, and now, what one might consider its newest arrival, Angry Birds Friends. If you’d asked me two years ago if Angry Birds merchandising would be extremely popular, and that an Angry Birds movie would be in the works, I would have laughed at you. But, considering I’m wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt right now, eating Angry Birds cereal, and that Rovio’s 2011 earnings were about 10-times its estimated revenues from the year prior, with 30 percent coming from merchandising, well clearly I didn’t get the last laugh. More on Angry Birds Friends in Rovio’s blog post here . Updating in realtime

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Rovio’s FB App, Angry Birds Friends, Flies Out Of Beta With Tournament Mode, New Levels & More

Qwiki Launches A Publishing Platform For ABC News And Others

Achilles — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:05:44 +0000

Qwiki , the startup that won Disrupt in San Francisco two years ago , is announcing a new platform today for bloggers and other online publishers. The company’s initial product basically assembled a multimedia “story” around Wikipedia articles, with images, videos, maps, and more. But the vision was bigger — to present a new kind of information experience. Now Qwiki is pitching its platform as a way for publishers to quickly and easily create short, interactive stories, which can be embedded on the publisher site and also featured in a “channel” on Qwiki. Initial partners include ABC News, which is embedding Qwikis throughout its website, and fashion publisher Stylecaster . You can watch some of the sample ABC News Qwikis here . In some ways, they look like regular news broadcasts, but presumably assembled with much less time and effort thanks to Qwiki’s technology, and with a layer of light interactivity (allowing viewers to drill down on individual topics). “What interested us in being the first media organization to use Qwiki’s innovative new video format is the ease with which reporters and producers can create informative and creative video content in almost no time,” says Maya Baratz, senior product manager at ABC News. “We plan to use Qwikis regularly on ABCNews.com and Goodmorningamerica.com on Yahoo!” Qwiki seemed to have a bumpy 2011. It raised $9 million from big-name investors including Lightbank (the investment fund of Groupon co-founders Brad Keywell and Eric Lefkofsky) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, then released an impressive iPad app that took off quickly . However, it also lost its famous co-founder Louis Monier (who founded search engine AltaVista) and other technical executives . This might look like a new direction, but a Qwiki spokesperson tells me, “This isn’t a pivot.” He says the startup will continue working on its consumer products, while also making this platform available to consumers soon. Qwiki will be demonstrating the platform at Disrupt this afternoon.

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Qwiki Launches A Publishing Platform For ABC News And Others

RocketFrog Wants To Build The Largest Social Casino On The Web, Myspace Tom Joins As Advisor

vertical8 — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:14:29 +0000

One of the hottest trends in gaming right now isn’t mobile, social, or massively multiplayer games, but online casinos. This may seem somewhat surprising considering that it was only a year ago that the Justice Department seized the domain names of some of the country’s largest online poker platforms, like PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, UB.com, and Absolute Poker, charging their founders with bank fraud, money laundering, illegal gambling, among other offenses. And five years prior, the Unlawful Gambling Act effectively putting a stop to online gambling in the U.S. and sending the market into a tailspin. However, in December, the Justice Department reversed its stance on many forms of online gambling, paving the way for what is becoming a revitalization of the social gambling market. Naturally, with activity in the space increasing, a number of startups have popped up to take advantage, like the rebranded Titan Gaming , for example. Today brings another entrant into the social gambling space with RocketFrog , which is setting out to bring casino entertainment to Facebook with the launch of a free-to-play online casino that offers players the chance to win real prizes. Traditionally, online casino players participate in the casino gaming experience recreationally, with the rewards being the opportunity to socialize with friends or earn a few virtual badges. So, RocketFrog wants to change this by leveraging the Facebook platform — where all of your friends are already — to create social tournaments, where players can interact and compete against their friends to win real prizes, not just accumulate points on leaderboards or vie for status increases. Each day, the startup will run poker, blackjack, and slot tournaments in small-ish fields of 80 to 300 players, with levels lasting two to five minutes. In a somewhat unusual business model, RocketFrog plans to recruit a different advertiser each day to sponsor a variety of prizes, including movie tickets, music, and good, with prizes obviously being related to whatever company happens to be paying for the ads. If it’s Pizza Hut, prizes will likely include coupons, meal offers, and probably some free pepperoni. The platform intends to accomodate gamers of all abilities, so that if a user is new to a game, for example, they can peruse through the startup’s suite of learning tutorials, game strategy articles, and expert tips. Its games also allow players to choose their stakes and limits in an effort to customize the overall gaming experience, while challenging friends, tracking their bank roll, sharing achievements, earning loyalty rewards, and comparing game stats and rankings. RocketFrog was founded in 2010 by Brett Calapp, Matthew Osborn, and Uri Kozai. Calapp is the former CEO and co-founder of Centaurus Games, a subscription-based gaming network that sold to PartyGaming in 2010. The startup’s leadership, along with the potential market opportunity, has attracted a familiar face in social networking. Tom Anderson, also known as the co-founder and former president of Myspace, has joined RocketFrog’s advisory board alongside reality TV star and celebrity poker player Brody Jenner. When asked what he sees as RocketFrog’s core value proposition, the former Myspace president said that few have “really pushed incentive-based gaming on the Facebook platform.” It’s as simple as the fact that millions of people play online poker for free, he says, so if they’re given an engaging platform and gaming experience, why wouldn’t they want to play for realworld prizes? What’s more, “RocketFrog is also giving advertisers what they always want but can’t seem to get — an immersive and deep experience that actually features their brand — banners alone aren’t enough.” CEO Brett Calapp says that, while legislation and regulations will take time to iron themselves out (legislation may not be put in place until next year, or 2014) and casino platforms are popping up by the minute, RocketFrog’s core strategy is to avoid making players feel inferior about their bankroll in order to drive sales of virtual currency, but instead to reward its players by offering them the ability to compete in tournaments for quality, realworld prizes. Rather than relying on a small, obsessive segment of addicted players, Calapp says that RocketFrog wants to expand its community to include new players, those not typically classified as gamblers, but who don’t want to just play for meaningless virtual rewards. RocketFrog has a steep uphill climb to track down the bigs in the space, like DoubleDown Casinos and Zynga’s Texas Hold ‘em, but with some influential advisors and a mission to bring social, tournament-style gamble-gaming to the masses, the startup may just be onto something. For more, check out RocketFrog at home here.

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RocketFrog Wants To Build The Largest Social Casino On The Web, Myspace Tom Joins As Advisor

Betaworks Acquires And Relaunches Hownow, The Semi-Anonymous Hyperlocal Social Network iPhone App

ACMAir — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:09:15 +0000

On one end of the spectrum, networks like Twitter and Facebook have acted as catalysts to organizing events like the Arab Spring or the riots of London. On the other end of that spectrum, networks like Yelp or Foursquare tee up user generated reviews, tips and public-facing profiles. Somewhere in between all that falls hownow, an iPhone app-based social network that lets users publish messages semi-anonymously at a hyperlocal level. At its core, the app allows all those who have downloaded the app to strike up semi-anonymous conversations with others at a “block” level, “Neighborhood” level, “City” level or “Worldwide” level. There is no sign-up process and though users have the option to post anonymously, they also have the option to create a pseudonym if that tickles their fancy. Betaworks says they may implement a “rules of the road” to help users take full advantage of the network at some point down the road. Messages can be left forever, for 30 days, a day or an hour at any level. (Don’t be surprised if you see local businesses take advantage of this.) Photos can also be shared via hownow and users do have the option of linking their Twitter accounts for cross-posting, too. Made popular during the peak of the Occupy Wall Street movement, NY-based Betaworks has since acquired hownow to help bolster and fast track the company’s vision for online identity “and the growing significance and opportunities with mobile services.” The app was refreshed and re-released to the App Store last week with tweaks made under the hood and the inclusion of Google Maps. There are no plans to expand to other platforms in the near future. If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what sort of user information is stored both locally and afar, right? According to Neil Wehrle, VP of user experience at Betaworks, the only data being stored on Betaworks end includes, “Date, Time, Location, Message Content, and an anonymous ID.” An “anonymous ID key” and a cache of the most recent messages is stored on the user’s device. hownow [App Store]

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Betaworks Acquires And Relaunches Hownow, The Semi-Anonymous Hyperlocal Social Network iPhone App