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Make It Social: VEVO Sees 600% Increase In Facebook Traffic After Redesign

bestcbstore — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:01:19 +0000

In March, VEVO launched a bold new redesign that provided TV-like viewing, with instantaneous and continuous playback. But the biggest addition to the platform, other than a beautiful new full-screen player, was a new social sharing feature that takes advantage of Facebook Open Graph. Not surprisingly, VEVO seen a dramatic increase in the number of videos that are watched and shared on the social network since then. VEVO has seen a 600 percent increase in Facebook-published or -watched videos when compared to February, to 4.5 million. It’s also signed up half a million new users via Facebook, which represents a 142 percent increase over the previous month. And the total number of impressions on Facebook grew to 171 million, which is a 181 percent change from February. A caveat: VEVO isn’t the only video provider to see a jump in sharing and usage immediately after integrating with Facebook Open Graph. Video applications like Viddy and Socialcam had seen huge increases in the amount of viewership and registrations after adding seamless sharing. But Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away — and VEVO can’t count on that tremendous growth to continue indefinitely. That said, it’s not just viewership from Facebook that is increasing. VEVO is also showing an uptick in engagement from users, who are watching more videos longer. Viewers watched an average of 4.3 videos in March, compared to 3.8 videos viewed in February. And they spent 15.2 minutes on the site, compared to 13.1 minutes during the prior month. Facebook also isn’t the only place where viewers are tuning in to watch music videos on VEVO. The video service is also seeing huge amounts of viewership on mobile devices. In the first three months of the year, VEVO saw 254 million worldwide streams on mobile devices and connected TV apps, which is up 32 percent from the previous quarter. It also saw active users for iPhone grow 28 percent and iPad grow 22 percent during the time period.

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Make It Social: VEVO Sees 600% Increase In Facebook Traffic After Redesign

And The Winner Of The Third Annual TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Is UberConference

jos — Thu, 24 May 2012 04:17:15 +0000

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days here in New York, as our expert judges watched earnest startups pitch their hearts out onstage at the third annual TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Thirty startups presented in the first two days, to be whittled down to six after much judge deliberation and founder bated breath: gTar , OpenGarden , UberConference , Ark, Babelverse and Sunglass . Those six had to come back today to present again, this time in front of super-hardcore finals judges Fred Wilson, Roelof Botha, Marissa Mayer, Mike Arrington, Chris Dixon, Eric Eldon and Chi-Hua Chien, who dug deep into everything from customer acquisition strategy and revenue models to actual acquisition strategy in the cases of both UberConference and Ark. Then the judges retired for an hour and a half of deliberation, and as always, had a hard time deciding on a winner because each of the final six had a compelling draw. We finally got down to two, gTar and UberConference, and, after more deliberation, decided that this year’s winner of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC is UberConference, a service that hopes to change the way you and I make conference calls by setting up the call around a visual interface. gTar, a guitar app that attached to an actual hardware guitar to help you learn how to play, put on an impressive showing and is the official runner-up. But UberConference, founded by Google Voice creator Craig Walker, eliminates unwieldly PINs and the confusion surrounding not knowing who is who on a call by providing a slickly designed dashboard for conference calling. If you don’t think this is a problem, just ask our new COO Ned Desmond how he felt when we confused him for someone else on a conference call. Thank you to partners Sequoia Captial, AT&T, Credit Suisse, Getaround, Google, Hatch, Outbid, Quotidian Ventures, About.me, AllStateBanners.com, CityGrid, Domain.com, .ME, IBM, Launchpad Ignition, Mobli, popchips, Smith & Keats Music, OpenTok from TokBox, twake, Udemy, Whit.li, Caraquri, Freshdesk, Connect by Getty Images, Mashery, ooVoo, Sedan Magic, Skookum Digital Works, SponsorHub, Thefuture.fm, Tremendous Theming by Themendous, TouchTunes, Worry Free Labs and Rent The Runway, Gilt and Warby Parker for providing wardrobe. And if you want to learn how to pitch, check out UberConference’s winning presentation:

New York Hardware Buffs Weigh In On China, Embracing Niches, And How To Start Making Things

admin2 — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:58:13 +0000

Earlier this morning, our own John Biggs was joined on stage by a handful of New York-based makers who have made a name for themselves by building physical things (or in one case, building something that builds other things). Biggs kicked off the panel with a simple question: — can we bring manufacturing back? Bre Pettis, CEO of Makerbot Industries , has two shifts of workers putting together all of his Makerbots in Brooklyn, and had a bit of advice for hardware creators looking to shift production to China. He recommended that until makers need to produce runs of 50,000-100,000 units, they’re much better off keeping the production process in the United States. It helps to keep makers intimate with their tech, not to mention makes it easier for them to handle any unexpected issues faster. The process of launching a product was tackled too — interestingly enough, Amol Sarva of Peek fame revealed that if he had to take his email gadget to market now instead of a few years ago, he would’ve gone a completely different route. Instead of going big and pushing to get his devices on store shelves around the country, he instead would have gone with the grassroots approach — making a few devices and trying to build buzz around them. Another recurring theme of the panel was the notion that makers should embrace niches. “There may not be mass market ideas, and that’s OK,” said Peter Semmelhack of Bug Labs . He noted that people can put hardware and devices together that aren’t meant to reach millions and millions of people (they could even use a Makerbot if the production run size was modest enough), and these small markets were still worth going after. Plus, you can never really tell just how niche some niches are. Duncan Frazier of Bit Banger Labs knows that all too well — he and his team developed a sleep mask that aims to help its users lucid dream, and put together a Kickstarter campaign for it. They expected they would have to make a few hundred units at most, but the niche was much bigger than they thought. By the time their campaign was over, they had exceeded their $35,000 funding request by orders of magnitude. The discussion then turned to the question of whether or not we could build something akin to a sprawling Foxconn campus in somewhere like Iowa . “Here in the U.S., as a culture, we’re not really focused on [manufacturing],” Pettis noted. “Our children are the only priority lower than manufacturing.” There was little question that using Chinese facilities for manufacturing has its advantages — namely sheer output — but some were curious as to how long that would remain the case. Pettis pointed out that wages in China have doubled over the last year, a trend that (if continued) may eventually lead to a shift away from relying on China. The panel ended on a slightly more inspirational note, with each of makers chiming in with advice for young upstarts who want to start making things. On this, everyone seemed to agree — the best approach is to just go out there and start going it. Ayah Bdeir, CEO of littleBits , specifically pointed out that a young person who had $50 and an Internet connection had no shortage of places to turn for inspiration — Instructables and Hack A Day, for instance. “You learn by making,” she said. Pettis recommended that wannabe makers should just “jump in” to the process, and if they eventually decide to go the Kickstarter route, Frazier emphasized the importance of a solid video because that’s the only place the product exists as far as the users are concerned.

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New York Hardware Buffs Weigh In On China, Embracing Niches, And How To Start Making Things

Amazon Partners With Paramount, Brings Hundreds More Movies To Prime Instant Video Service

admin2 — Wed, 23 May 2012 20:35:37 +0000

Amazon is continuing to grow its collection of streaming video titles at Amazon Prime Instant Video, and is today announcing another new agreement with Paramount Pictures bringing “hundreds” of new movies to the service. This deal isn’t as large as March’s partnership with Discovery , which saw some 3,000 new titles added, but it does introduce what are arguably more big-name movies. Included in the deal are titles like Mission: Impossible 3, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Mean Girls, Nacho Libre and Clueless , to name a few, and Amazon says more will be added “soon.” With the new deal in place, Amazon Instant Video now offers over 17,000 movies and TV episodes for unlimited streaming by Amazon Prime customers who can watch online or on their Amazon Kindle Fire. For what it’s worth, “17,000+” is the same number that Amazon was touting earlier this year, so the increase via the Paramount deal didn’t include enough of a selection to warrant a new “milestone” announcement on the company’s part. Prior to the Discovery deal, Amazon signed a similar deal with Viacom in February , which then brought the number of titles up to 15,000. And in December, the count was 13,000 . So yes, the service is growing, and relatively quickly. Other popular movies you’ll know from Paramount which are now online include Star Trek, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Top Gun, The Italian Job, and The Truman Show. In total, the service offers 120,000 titles which Amazon Prime customers can either rent or buy. The videos will be available at no extra charge to Amazon Prime customers who pay the $79/year for the service, which also includes free two-day shipping and access to the Kindle Lending Library.

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Amazon Partners With Paramount, Brings Hundreds More Movies To Prime Instant Video Service

The 15 Startups That Launched At Disrupt NYC Day 2. Who’s Your Favorite?

kram412 — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:37:32 +0000

Disrupt NYC day two has just wrapped up. During the conference today, Michael Arrington demanded to know from Ron Conway when he was going to run for Mayor of San Francisco (he kept saying he would “never” ), our very own Josh Constine grilled Tim Armstrong with questions about AOL, layoffs, which publication he likes more: Huffington Post or TechCrunch (he said “both”), and we watched 15 more amazing startups battle it out for the ultimate Disrupt prize — the Disrupt Cup and $50,000. Starting tomorrow at 3:30pm ET we will have our Startup Battlefield Disrupt finals. Yesterday, we wrote detailed articles with pictures and pitches from all of the startups who presented . Below are the ones who were featured today. Out of these 30 companies, both from yesterday and today, five will be chosen to fight it out for the ultimate prize. We will have an all-star panel of judges tomorrow for the finals and things will probably get intense; people always get a little crazy at the finals, but as you can imagine, it’s a blast to watch. So, take your time in reviewing all of the stellar startups below. Compared to the brilliant ones yesterday , which startup do you think will make it to the finals? Going further, any guesses on who you think will win it all? Tune in tomorrow for the results! Session 4: Disrupting Local SpotlessCity SpotlessCity helps local dry cleaners connect with customers in a brand new way and lets people finally get their clothes cleaned in the same convenient way they already handle all of their other chores – online. Mirth Mirth is a principled objection to the frenzy of details. It’s a card-linked loyalty experience for the regulars of business with character. SnipSnap SnipSnap is the first mobile application to let you scan, save, and redeem printed coupons on your smartphone. It was featured by Apple on the App Store front page and rose to a top-50 ranking after going live. Centzy Compare services in your area by price, rating, hours, and more. We use paid crowdsourcing to gather comprehensive data from every local business, including the 75% of them that don’t post their information anywhere else online. Cardify Unlock VIP rewards and perks at your favorite places when you pay with a credit card that’s connected to Cardify…. throw away your punch cards and keep that phone in your pocket. Session 5: Disrupting Collaboration Vinlymint Vinlymint is a real-time creation web application that easily fits into your existing production methods, allows you to store and manage projects from a single place and collaborate with anyone, anytime and anywhere. Postwire Postwire enables you to make a private webpage for each client. You can collect videos, photos, web links, and documents and share them on each client’s private page. Sunglass Sunglass is a cloud-based platform that enables designers to collaboratively build tomorrow’s products, buildings and cities, democratizing access to 3D content across formats. Talkdesk Talkdesk allows any company to create a call center in 5 minutes – all in the browser. Apptegic Apptegic helps online businesses keep and up-sell their existing customers. Use Apptegic’s online service to understand each of your customer’s visit patterns, actions, and business metrics and to respond appropriately in real-time. Session 6: Disrupting Identity Networks Hmmm Hmmm empowers you to express and share your life without inhibitions. You can tailor your online-identity like you do in the real-world, as you interact and selectively share with people from every walk of life. Social Stock Social Stock is a stock market of places and people, where every place and person has a stock price based on their social interactions and enables trading social shares in places and people. About Last Night About Last Night is your social network for nightlife. It’s about the party last night, the concert last night, or the date last night. Do you want to know where the hot party is happening, where your friends are, or what is happening at your favorite hangout? Do you want to know who is performing at your favorite club, or learn about special deals and offers? Are you visiting from out-of-town and want to know where to go? About Last Night is for you. Hownow Hownow is a mobile app that allows users to post geo-fenced messages in order to have semi-anonymous, locally relevant conversations. Buyou (Startup Alley Audience Choice Winner) Buyou is a free online mall that aggregates various brands into one beautiful, easy to use interface. And while it’s great that the app begins learning your taste through your likes and dislikes, it’s even better that it relays that information back to its brand partners. This means that a retailer like Express will begin to learn the clothes you like and more asily target clothing you may enjoy to you. All in all, it was a very fun day. And will be even more fun tomorrow. See you then.

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The 15 Startups That Launched At Disrupt NYC Day 2. Who’s Your Favorite?

Ron Conway Will “Never” Run For Mayor Of San Francisco

vertical8 — Wed, 23 May 2012 02:50:05 +0000

In case you were wondering: Ron Conway says he will not be running for mayor of San Francisco. Apparently that was on Mike Arrington’s mind when he interviewed Conway and SV Angel partner David Lee on-stage at Disrupt today. He said he heard from more than one source that Conway is considering a run “somewhere down the line,” and asked flat-out if that’s true. “That’s a rumor I can assure you is false,” Conway replied. “There’s an old saying: ‘Never say never.’ I actually believe in that saying, but I will never run for mayor of San Francisco.” Had he explored it at all? “Not for a nanosecond.” The idea isn’t quite as out-of-left-field as it sounds. Conway has been visibly involved in civic issues recently — apparently he met with Senator Chuck Schumer recently to discuss SOPA/PIPA and immigration issues, and along with current Mayor Ed Lee and former TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde, he recently helped launch a program called sfCITI aimed at helping the tech industry and the city work together. (In fact, Conway’s relationship with Mayor Lee seemed close enough to prompt a largely critical Bay Citizen article printed in The New York Times .) When grilled about how much of his time he’s “throwing away on government work” (Arrington’s words), Conway estimated that it was 20 percent. On the mayoral question, Conway’s response might seem pretty definitive, but Arrington wasn’t satisfied. He asked if Conway might be lying. (Conway: “I would never lie to you about this.”) Later, he asked again Conway was running. “Last time I checked 10 minutes ago, I was not running for mayor,” Conway said.

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Ron Conway Will “Never” Run For Mayor Of San Francisco

Key Details Of The Kleiner Perkins Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

kram412 — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:55:09 +0000

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has been sued by Ellen Pao, one of its investment partners, for sexual harassment and gender discrimination that she has allegedly encountered during her seven years at the firm. Before we get further into this, we need to note that we are only going to present the available information on the case. The story is breaking. Right now, the majority of the information is provided by the plaintiff. The following statement is what we have received from Kleiner: In response to a discrimination complaint filed in the Superior Court of San Francisco by Ellen Pao, Christina Lee, a Kleiner Perkins spokesperson, stated the Firm regrets that the situation is being litigated publicly and had hoped the two parties could have reached resolution, particularly given Pao’s 7-year history with the firm. Following a thorough independent investigation of the facts, the firm believes the lawsuit is without merit and intends to vigorously defend the matter. The Firm has been a diversity pioneer in its industry and was one of the first venture capital firms to hire women as partners. The number of women partners at the firm is one of the highest within the venture capital arena and the firm has actively supported women in all respects. We’ve uploaded the 19-page lawsuit in its entirety here at the very bottom of this post, and below we’ve excerpted some of the key allegations: In February 2006, about six months into her employment with Kleiner Perkins, Pao, then a junior partner, went on a business trip to Germany with another then-junior partner, Ajit Nazre. During that time, Nazre allegedly made “inappropriate sexual advances” toward Pao, which she allegedly “rebuffed” at the start. In the following months, however, Pao “eventually succumbed to Mr. Nazre’s insistence on sexual relations on two or three occasions.” According to the complaint, Nazre, who was married at the time, had “falsely told [Pao] that his wife had left him. In October 2006, Pao allegedly informed Nazre that their personal relationship was over. It was then that she alleges “Nazre started a consistent pattern of retaliation against her” that she says lasted more than five years and included him excluding her from business meetings, removing her from email discussions, failing to share information she needed for her job, blocking her from interviewing new employees, and more. According to the suit, Nazre was not the only one who made advances to Pao. Several months after Pao allegedly ended her relationship with Nazre, this allegedly happened: “For Valentine’s Day 2007 Senior Partner Randy Komisar came into [Pao's] office and gave her a book entitled ‘The Book of Longing’ by Leonard Cohen, inscribed with a handwritten note from Mr. Komisar to Plaintiff. The book contains many sexual drawings and poems with strong sexual content. At about the same time, Mr. Komisar asked [Pao] out to a Saturday night dinner, telling Plaintiff that his wife would be out of town.” Pao did not accept the invitation, the suit says. When Pao reported the situation, the suit says, “she was told that it was unfair, that it would never have happened to a male partner, but that she should just accept it.” Pao also claims she was not alone in being the victim of unwanted advances at work. According to the suit, “at least three administrative assistants complained that they were being harassed or discriminated against by KPCB partners in May 2007.” Kleiner Perkins allegedly hired an outside investigator to look into those claims. When Pao talked to an outside human resources consultant in August 2009, she was allegedly told that “she would not be successful at KPCB because she complained and that going forward she should drop her complaints, because no one would do anything about them.” Ray Lane, a senior Kleiner partner, allegedly asked Pao to let go of her complaints and encouraged her to have a romantic relationship with Nazre after all. The suit reads: “Ray Lane pressured [Pao] to drop the matter because of Mr. Lane’s close ties with and mentorship of Mr. Nazre. Though Plaintiff had formally complained about Mr. Nazre’s behavior, Mr. Lane encouraged [Pao] to engage in a personal relationship with Mr. Nazre and even to marry him. Mr. Lane said, however, that in such case, either Plaintiff or Mr. Nazre would have to leave the firm because two spouses could not work together at KPCB.” Firm-wide gender discrimination is also alleged in the suit, which says that women at Kleiner are regularly excluded from events. Here are a couple of recent alleged instances of this detailed in the claim: “In early 2011, KPCB partners led by Chi-Hua Chien organized a dinner event at the San Francisco home of one of the partners. The dinner was for select KPCB partners and leading executives at KPCB-funded companies, as well as leading executives of other companies KPCB thought were influential. Only male KPCB partners and male executives were invited and attended. Mr. Chien deliberately excluded all KPCB women from the event solely on the basis of their gender. Mr. Chien organized a second all-male dinner at the same partner’s home in August 2011. Women were excluded for the same reason. At a weekly Digital Group partner meeting partner’s complaint, Mr. Chien replied that women were not invited because they would ‘kill the buzz’.” Also in the complaint: “In December 2011, Randy Komisar, a Senior Partner, told [Pao] that the personalities of women do not lead to success at KPCB, because women are quiet.” Here is the suit in its entirety: View this document on Scribd

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Key Details Of The Kleiner Perkins Gender Discrimination Lawsuit

To Capture New Users, Socialcam Redesigns Its Website And Introduces A Leaderboard

bestcbstore — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:30:23 +0000

Social mobile video startup Socialcam is rolling out a new website today, which is designed to create more engagement for users that might not have the mobile app installed. The company has also introduced a leaderboard to help highlight users to celebrities, brands and top producers on the Socialcam platform. For Socialcam, the new release is all about community , according to CEO Michael Seibel. In the website’s left column, Socialcam shows off all the videos from users that you follow, as well as likes and comments that follow. And in the right column, Socialcam hopes to introduce you to new users that you don’t yet follow, as well as showing your activity and what your friends are up to. The idea is to replicate a lot of the features that are available in Socialcam’s mobile app on the web. In addition, Socialcam is hoping to highlight some of its most popular users by releasing a leaderboard . Doing so will show off some of the celebrities and non-celebrities who have developed followings through the platform. Not surprisingly, Britney Spears is the #1 user on the platform, but she’s only produced one video. MC Hammer , Floyd Mayweather , and Lupe Fiasco are among other celebs with huge followings. A lot of people like to call Socialcam the “Instagram for Video,” but Seibel hates the comparison. “The two companies have very different challenges,” he wrote in an email. Also, he believes that social video apps are all about getting people out of the mindset that video is only for consumption, and “creating a new media creation trend by unlocking the video camera on your phone.” The average video length is about 60-80 seconds, compared with the maximum 15 seconds allowable through competitor Viddy — and the 2-5 minutes that is standard for user-generated YouTube videos. Users also spend a lot of time playing with filters and effects before uploading videos onto the platform. On average, they check out eight different effects on each video before publishing. In addition to the major revamp being released today, Socialcam has also rolled out a series of changes to the way its social tools work, mainly to ensure that users are aware of what they are sharing through the site and the app’s Open Graph integration. “We want people to understand exactly what it means to have social mode on and exactly what it does, so you always know what’s going on,” Seibel told me by phone. That addition comes after both Socialcam and Viddy have received some criticism for being “spammy” in users’ news feeds on Facebook. Thanks to Open Graph integration, Socialcam has added a ton of new users , but some of them might have inadvertently been added as a result of watching videos from services like YouTube that were ingested into Socialcam’s platform, rather than user-submitted videos from the startup’s mobile app.

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To Capture New Users, Socialcam Redesigns Its Website And Introduces A Leaderboard

Disrupt NYC Day 1: Your Startup Battlefield Companies

bestcbstore — Tue, 22 May 2012 04:12:19 +0000

Our very first day of Disrupt NYC is over and the conference started off with a bang. We had memorable chats, dove into fashion for a bit, hung out with the Startup Alley companies and witnessed 15 startups launch their products in our first day of the Startup Battlefield. Even though we will have brand new companies launching tomorrow while fighting for the ultimate prize of $50,000 and the Disrupt Cup, we wanted to take a moment to highlight all that we saw today. There were some brilliant companies, so be sure to check all of them out below. The Internet was buzzing with positive words about each. This is going to be a tough battle. Which company was your favorite? Session 1: Disrupting Learning and Decision Making SpokenLayer Read the web with your ears. SpokenLayer delivers the written web as audio. Instantly. Read by authors, real people and really smart robots. In your pocket, on your time. Answer Factory Cyfeon invented Answer Factory to improve how businesses made decisions and understand their data. Answer Factory immediately operationalizes any data source, regardless of its format, size or location, resulting in improved answer quality. Ark Ark is a search engine for people. With Ark, you can search for new people, old classmates, new business contacts, and even search your friends across multiple social networks. Koemei Koemei is a self-service cloud-platform and API for automated transcription and captioning of video content at large scale. Incident (gTar) Incodent is a consumer electronics company aiming to make creating and interacting with music as enjoyable and casual as listening to it. Session 2: Disrupting Processes UberConference UberConference is a simple, free and visual conferencing tool. BroadPeak Partners Broadpeak Partners brings you K3, an interface harness that standardizes interfaces without the complexity of EAI/ESB. CallApp CallApp was founded in 2011 by a group of passionate industry experts, well funded VCs and angels. CallApp makes each call more fun and productive. Powered by a Universal Crowdsourced Contact-Genome, CallApp provides the Ultimate Calling Experience via its Social Phone CRM & Interaction Platform. Open Garden Open Garden lets you share your mobile Internet among all your devices. KurbKarma KurbKarma delivers a social network for parking that connects people with killer parking to people seeking parking. This mobile app facilitates a peer-to-peer exchange and rewards both parties – parking karma at your fingertips. Session 3: Disrupting Media Punch! Punch’s interactive publishing platform radically reduces the cost, time and risk of creating apps for tablets by removing the need to code. It also enables Punch’s orginal entertainment iPad app, the “Punch! Culture Shelf”. StyleSaint Designer goods for under $100. An online eTailer where the community sets the trends. Stevie Stevie turns online video and social graphs into a broadcast-like TV experience, creating entertainment that is personal and social across platforms. TagBrand TagBrand is the service for people who love brands. Babelverse (Startup Alley Audience Choice Winner) Babelverse won the opportunity to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt from the Startup Alley and with little notice ended up giving a slick pitch. Essentially this is a solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters: it means anyone can be an interpreter.

Imgur Partners With Brisk And “Scumbag Steve” For Meme-ified Ads

ACMAir — Mon, 21 May 2012 21:04:54 +0000

Imgur has built a massive audience for the sometimes amusing, sometimes adorable images and memes that it hosts. Now it faces another challenge: Making money. With 2 billion monthly page views , advertising seems like an obvious business plan. The problem, says CEO Alan Schaaf, is that “the Imgur audience has always hated ads.” So yes, the company runs a banner ad on each page, but the audience probably sees it as a necessary evil. They probably won’t be happy with a second ad, Schaaf says, so a different approach was needed. That was the impetus for a new ad that’s running today, prepared by creative agency Mekanism for Brisk iced tea. Instead of just running another ad, Mekanism and Brisk created an image that borrows from the Scumbag Steve meme . It looks pretty similar to other Scumbag Steve images, with a photo of Steve accompanied by a dick-ish message — except this time, the message is promoting Brisk (you can see the ad above). Mekanism even got approval from the “real” Scumbag Steve (i.e., Blake Boston, the guy in the photo) to use the picture. This is going to be Imgur’s first experiment with a new Promoted Image ad unit, where the Brisk ad will be featured in Imgur’s image gallery. The hope is to run campaigns that don’t feel like ads to the Imgur community, but rather just other pieces of content. And even though it may look like a whipped together image, Mekanism Brendan Gahan’s says the look and message was carefully considered, going through round after round of revisions. The edginess of user-generated content sites can sometimes scare brand advertisers away, but Chris Oates, who manages the Brisk brand for owner PepsiCo, says this kind of ad made sense, since meme-style content seems to resonate with Brisk fans. Schaff admits that there’s some controversial or offensive content on the site, but he says Imgur works hard to make sure that the images featured in the gallery are advertiser-friendly. “Most viral content is not offensive content, it’s not pornography,” he says. “It’s really good, quality content.” Brisk plans to follow the Scumbag Steve ad with another ad, with a new meme, in a few weeks.