Joint brings group chat for Twitter

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About a month ago, Tom Anderson (Myspace Tom, if you prefer) wrote a post on his new favorite social network, Google +, offering a few bits of advice for Twitter. Although many of us enjoy good Twittering now and again, Anderson pointed out that there are several simple features, Twitter could consider if it wants to improve the overall quality of its users. The thrust that could improve social experience Twitter were company to add a "discussion" or chat feature that will, in Tom's conception, to give the Viewer provides a space for you to leave a comment and discuss easy tweets without flooding followers streams from one part of the conversation continues.

Well Tom may simply be interested in a new startup launching today, is called the joint. Okay, well this is not an exact copy of Myspace founder idea, but it attacked the same point the pain of long-discussed Twitter users: in desperate need of better platform to facilitate real-time, private and longer form conversations. Of course there are some differences among users over whether Twitter should be one offering this function, or whether it should remain simple, just like this.

Says joint founder Ethan Gahng (and I tend to agree) that Twitter is better served by staying simple in terms of its user interface and instead allows third party startups and developers to add additional social and chat features from the outside world. (And Twitter in the past few years seems to be largely in line with this philosophy).

To achieve this objective, the joint essentially turns any Twitter hashtag in IRC (Internet Relay channel)-as a chat room, which is integrated with real-time hashtag stream from Twitter. Check it out below. This combo box allows users to participate in a number of different social interactions, including front and center real-time Group chat, which fills with live hashtag channel in the right sidebar.

Users can pull hashtags directly in group chat, or invite people who posted tweets in group chat, right from the chat, or just go and enjoy the synchronous chat, watching as Twitter stream fills. Compared with Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and other third-party applications that let you track hashtags, being able to watch someone Tweet outside and bring them in and chat away this thin borders and differences by joint, what really makes a big difference.

If you're trying to engage in conversation with someone on Twitter, that goes beyond a few @ replies, "you either have to DM or the conversation of other countries. Sharing allows users to easily join group chat, and also to discussing major or popular hashtags. For example, in recent times "# irene" became used as hashtag as Hurricane Irene ready to hit the East Coast. The joint could be a very useful resource for those who want to easily gather and discuss the current situation, such as hurricanes, protests or events, live, from anywhere.

Another cool joint in the aspect that it should function as an informal conversation environment for Twitter users means that if I have a conversation with someone and a third person joins a chat room, they will not be able to see the current conversation. It says, is intended to ensure joint Gahng group chat more interaction in the real world.

That joint in cases of alleged use Gahng said that it is easy to connect to other people on Twitter, but it's hard to really get to know them, so that through the joint, you can meet someone on Twitter that you want to play Starcraft, with many of your followers do not wish to join in on the fun. Which is why open standards Warrior Chris Messina offers a hashtag in the first place, but certainly not so many people regularly follow hashtags in their day-to-day use of Twitter. Joint looks at this change, making it easy to search for different hashtags, discuss and follow them synchronously in real-time. As an example, check out Starcraft feed here.

Not to speak of the fact that, because tweeting with hashtags means that your tweets get archive and live eternally in search engines, etc., many people feel uncomfortable about the availability of public conversations (more private matters, especially) on Twitter. We've all had to delete a Tweet or two and often too late. Giving Twitter users who added benefit social flexibility, joint hopes to give yourself a leg up on other third-party Twitter apps.

And finally beyond just the ability to monitor the hashtag groups, joint also informs the user when a new user in chat room, offers search descriptions and enables users to view main catalogue or even start their own hashtag channel.

Joint solves major pain point, often faced by Twitter users and from my experience at chats and poking around the site, the user interface is simple and chat is a fast and easy to use. A multidisciplinary team of three people working on this since January and run the initialization at the moment, but if the platform can be scaled and continue to work in real-time without glitches, this seems like something that can definitely legs.

Joint and his team is not affiliated with Twitter in any way, but I wouldn't be surprised if social networks comes knocking at the door at some point down the road.

For more check the joint houses here.

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XYDO, Web social network for news, brings daily, custom sticky notes to your Inbox (invites)

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Where do you get your news (TechCrunch, of course)? Some of you may be familiar to the tactile experience of newsprint, ink on my fingers, but chances are that your news consumption is largely online — or on a mobile device. But thanks to content fire hose, which is the Internet, there are a lot of irrelevant junk floating around out there, and thus focus digital readers and content distributors has improved filters, aggregators and readers of this channel noise in the signal.

Whether your go to resource for real-time news will be Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, or TechMemes the world we all are looking for simple, curator, and social, way to use content from the sites we believe — as we would like to, but not so frequently visit.

XYDO, run, which began in May and raised $ 1.25 from EPIC ventures and many of the angels in June, hopped in the space of social news, user experience, which combines the best parts of sites like Digg, and Hacker News in an effort to serve you with relevant, curator and social news from top content houses.

XYDO met with early success (over 750000 unique visitors in August only) from this very idea: he wanted to be news, which effectively prioritizes content that really matters to you. Firstly, it does so through its Web platform. But what if we don't want to click over XYDO.com each time we want to get the latest news?

To expand its mission news personalization and try to hit the user with a virtual version of rolled up newspaper directly at home, launching today announces the launch of XYDO brief, which seeks to deliver a personalized and relevant news based on the user's social interactions, networks, and traces all email, place they may constitute at least once a day.

News by email? And this is nothing new, you might say. And you'd be wrong. But XYDO hopes to offer a value proposition and an opportunity to rethink that position, combing your social network to ensure a truly just and real-time Web method to get the news through the Inbox. A brief XYDO uses the same social, sourcing mixed with actual human curation techniques that it uses its flagship product.

Each piece of content that enters the system (from more than 100000 content sources) is scored based on the recommendations of its launch 2 million + contributors and curators. Using the secret sauce of social network aggregation and prioritization, mixed with crowdsourced Conservancy, XYDO serves its users in between personalized News 10-12 in each email is passed these guidelines have been tested to ensure social news you get in your Inbox you want to see news.

The default value for the XYDO a brief — one message per day, but users can navigate to and select the different categories of explosions (whether "technology" or "policy"), they would get, as well as how many of these notes they wish to receive, and what time of day. For those who live on the wire this seems very similar; This e-mail version widely available.

Thus, for those of us who in one way or another to spend all day in our mailboxes, being able to tinker with a simple service, which you configure in an attempt to provide a simple way to read news without having to go look for our social networks and favorite content sources — is of paramount importance.

Also note: XYDO provides readers with TechCrunch with 500 exclusive (and free) should check their new product. To test the service for yourself, click here. Then come on back and let us know what you think.

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Placecast brings location-based retail trade signals Smartphone applications

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

Placecast's ShopAlerts service that provides retail and commercial offers and discounts to consumers via their mobile phones, today announces the new functionality, integration with Mobile Smartphone apps.

As we wrote in the past, ShopAlerts is a white-label geofencing platform for businesses that want to deliver the GEO work offers to its customers on their mobile phones. Consumers can sign up to receive text messages in different ways — in-store, online, via text message, mobile Web sites, or on Facebook. Geofences virtual cause around physical location; When the user selected in the geofenced area, it receives a message from the business, including discount, sale, shop or other content.

With the new feature, retailers have deployed mobile applications can allow users to obtain from the nearest store, retailer or other appropriate location, location-based communication without the app being open in the same way as ShopAlerts programs work on any phone, this new feature works on any Smartphone platform.

Once a retailer integrates with ShopAlerts, clients (who are in receipt of alerts) will have location-based push notifications when they are in the area of geofenced. Retailers can also use the preferences expressed by the consumer, such as loyalty or past purchase data to improve the relevance of the message or transaction. Time of day and weather can also be taken into account for the creation of added value, and brands could also enable location-based notification when a particular product is available in a nearby store.

Placecast says that he will work directly with retailers to integrate ShopAlerts into their applications, helping them to develop a programme and a messaging strategy, choose the number and size of geofences and activate the field.

Integration with retail Smartphone applications makes a lot of sense for Placecast. With the increase in offline and online commerce Placecast gives retailers another way for consumers and offer relevant transactions and information. The aim is to bring the user in the repository, and messages sent via the Smartphone app can help do that.

Placecast is already used by a number of high-profile brands such as North face and even AT&T.

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Just in time for the new season of NFL Fantasy Football Mobile Taptu brings readers

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Since its founding in 2007, Taptu was run, which specialized in search and touch based interface for mobile devices, mobile search, real-time system, combined with the OneRiot back in 2009, for example. In November last year, however, made a smart decision to bring his knowledge of the mobile search market news reader, Flipboard as Android and iPhone apps that have interesting offers value to the growing market of mobile reader: users will be able to join more than 5000 mixed flows is paltry and not much more than the competition.

Taptu started in April with the iPad a sleek and clean design that, again, sought to differentiate itself from competitors like Flipboard, pulse, flood (and possibly Edition) through its proprietary mobile search tech on the aggregation of the thousands of news sources, rather than relying on those tired RSS feeds.

As some readers may know, the National Football League had been in the throes of a controversial block, which threaten the 2011 season. Owners and players have recently come to an agreement, ending on 25 July, the lock and allowing the show to go on pigskin. Seeing as how football is on time, not wanting to miss out on a great opportunity to expand their feature set, Taptu today entered a new domain Athletic running NFL Fantasy Football News flow for users of Taptu on Smartphones and tablets. New thread allows fans to get updates on each critical STAT and news in real time, allowing fantasy football players to field a competitive team each week.

As my colleague mg wrote last week, the sports world was significantly underrepresented at the pills and News readers, because ESPN (behemoth of sports content) mostly absent from space — at least in terms of partnerships with other developers and startups to syndicate their content. But last week dropped a bomb on the pulse of the tablet market news reader by declaring that he was the first player in the space to get injections of ESPN, along with the existing contents of the report, baseball, Yahoo Sports, and so on.

Although this was a big win for the momentum continues, the more coveted demographic niches that are still under-represented on the tablets, which would be none other than sports fantasy. Fantasy sports are now more than 27 million Americans; It is becoming increasingly popular pastime (money maker). And for those who are, or have friends who play fantasy sports in General, a rabid group.

Although it depends on the sport, in order to field the best team every week, fantasy sports players must consume a lot of information about who plays well, including what players are injured, or at run time, etc. of fantasy sports enthusiasts consume large amounts of statistics and news, they do their homework, as analysts or enterprising journalists is obviously different if you're a mobile startup.

Over the next 30 days, loads of football fans will be building their teams on their desktops and mobile devices in preparation for the commencement of the season. And now, thanks to Taptu, those fans no longer need to visit multiple websites to get the lowdown on trade or injury. In addition, Taptu in fantasy feature allows users to mix and match from football great publications and blogs in one thread, that is easy to read and look for the information.

And nose thumbing at the pulse, Taptu will present the latest news from ESPN, SB nation, Fox and CBS Sports, among others. To find the app fantasy football thread, users simply go to "thread shop" and locate the fantasy football icon, click the plus (+) button, and the thread will be added to the collection of user News. As before, Taptu is available for free at iOS (here), as well as Android phones and tablets (here).

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Groupchat. tv brings Google hangouts like the experience on Facebook

Groupchat. TV is a new Facebook application that brings Google hangouts such group video chat experience for Facebook. The application was created over the weekend, the HAPI hackathon in San Francisco, the same people who run ecommerce site TinyPay. me.

And here's the crazy part Groupchat. tv supports up to 50 video streams at the same time!

The App creators do not recommend that you click Groupchat. tv, quite that far, though. It should be noted, however, that there is such a tough limit 10 people on chat is over at Google, where "Hangouts" are one of the key selling points of the site.

For a video chat on Google + you run Crowd (session video chat) by clicking and then share it with a circle or circles, personal friends or among the general public, as you choose.

To use a Groupchat. tv, you must first authorize the use of Facebook, and then share with your friends a special link that it generates. The link can be found by using instant messaging, such as Facebook in their own chat in e-mail, for example, wall post, or however you choose. Groupchat .TV in the main interface provides you with Facebook status updates window, however, that makes the process relatively easy.

Your friend will also authorize Facebook application before being able to communicate with you. In the test group this morning, we ran into common problems Mac/Flash (it's not "just work", you must configure settings for Flash here) However, the application provides at least with a simple "how" a pop-up window that explains how to make the necessary changes.

Groupchat. TV that uses Tokbox in the opentok API has not been as smooth as Google hangouts or Facebook in Skype integration, of course. You can hear your voice echoing your friends PC speakers, for example. But if you die in a group chat with friends on Facebook, it's definitely worth a look.

According to the app developer, Melvin Tercan (also Tinypay .me founder and CEO), the verb is already tossing around ideas for new features, such as a public list of group chat, that anyone can join. But now, they just hope the app takes off and goes viral.

I think that can happen now?

Update: I said that this application sends a message to your Facebook wall when you start the chat session. Automatic wall posts it seems par for the course on Facebook, so I wasn't surprised or unpleasantly so. However, you can in various ways. Be warned!

Correction: this article originally gave credit Richard Straver, because Melvin Tercan sent to us using the e-mail address of Richard. Oops!

Tinypay .me is essentially the e-commerce platform that allows people to sell physical and digital products in the simplest way possible. The best example is that you can ...

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OpenFeint brings 60 new mobile social games to China through partnership with The9

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

Earlier this year, the mobile social gaming platform OpenFeint has teamed up with one of its investors, Chinese game company The9 for game developers for the Android platform. OpenFeint and The9 announced that he will use the $ 100 million Fund9, based on Chinese mobile Internet Development Fund, funding for game developers using the OpenFeint platform for Chinese games.

In just three months of work The9's, branded version of OpenFeint, game zone, already disseminates 60 live games through 30 App stores in China. OpenFeint and The9 also announced that they have chosen the first five recipients of funding from their Android porting initiative. With this funding, developers will be able to transfer these popular iOS games for Android and sell them at the global level. The9 then localize and publish games for the Chinese market.

Games were selected based on their quality, downloads and the ability to game developers. Some games include: Pix'n love rush, BulkyPix, Shift! 2 fishing Cactus, iSlash Deullo games, mini motor Racing binary factories and Babel, BulkyPix.

OpenFeint is not the only company in an attempt to cash in on the large potential of the Chinese gaming market. Zynga also develop its presence in China with a new partnership with Chinese Internet giant Tencent, launching a beta version of Zynga town, the new Chinese localized version of CityVille.

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KNO brings 100 000 books for Facebook adds QuizMe and magazine for iPad

Eric Schonfeld is currently working on TechCrunch as co-author. He joined in 2007 and based in New York. Schonfeld oversees the editorial content of the site, selects and edits guest posts, conference program helps Disrupt and CrunchUps, produces some TCTV shows and daily wrote in a blog post. He is also the father of three. ? Read More

"We are not trying to redefine the tutorial, CEO of Kno Osman Rashid tells me," we are trying to redefine how you learn. " Today Kno has made great steps to more social digital textbooks through the provision of 100 000 books College at its Web site and on Facebook. Textbooks for the Facebook application and site will be presented to the reader through the HTML5 book. So that the students who buy the book through Kno in the iPad app can now read them via the Internet or on Facebook. They can ask questions and comments to their news feeds, with an eye towards the establishment of full circles down the line.

KNO also adds new possibilities of research in its iPad application. In the video above, Vice President of marketing for Osama Haffara QuizMe demos and magazine. QuizMe is a test of any tagged digital chart tutorial. He blacks out tags and allows you to test multiple choice answers, which works well with biology or Anatomy Diagrams. The journal is a digital notebook as a stream.

IPad App lets you already KNO students take notes or highlight passages. He now collects all these notes in the magazine, which organizes all the notes for each tutorial in Evernote as a stream of music. Notes may include highlights, text notes, tutorials, images, audio notes, and even photos taken with the iPad. "To prepare for the exam, not a book, will use the magazine predicts Rashid. Although the history is a collection of private music at launch, Rashid suggests that, in the end, students will have the opportunity to share them with friends.

It's not too difficult to imagine how the flow of notes in the journal can be the basis for the study of flow in the Facebook application at some point down the line. The difficult part will be moving all that can be freely shared with a variety of DRM from all the various textbooks by publishers, but Rashid said that the industry will come to a consensus around how much of the tutorial. (In the end, it's free marketing.)

It was only in April when Kno finally gave up on their own tablet and supported iPad instead. The App was well received, with an average of four stars in iTunes via 205 ratings and only 3% of digital textbooks were Kno returned (service honors 15-day return policy for purchased books). Speaking with Rashid, he seems almost liberated. A focus on software only certainly appears to accelerate the pace of new introductions.

KNO developed a digital learning environment for students to read books, take notes and share content with friends and teachers. Students can access across multiple platforms and specially ...

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Facebook is the largest social network in the world, with more than 500 million users. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in February 2004, originally as an exclusive network for students at Harvard University. He ...

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CollegeBudget brings daily deals and group buying campuses

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

I think it's safe to say that Facebook is the leader when it comes to Collegiate and high school social networks. I hope not hurt anyone's feelings. When it comes to meeting people in College, the beer is always a good choice, or Facebook, or some might now prefer LikeALittle.

While social networking is important at any campus, there are also a few social networking tools can integrate a more useful resource for students. Take it from CampusBuddy, which offers students College social platform where they can also access the official record class and view comprehensive reviews of professors, classes, departments and campuses.

This is a great resource for high school students looking for a deeper dive in colleges, they plan to cooperate because they can use for data acquisition and real student reviews on prospective schools. Or, since CampusBuddy is the official record class for the classes (platform currently has more than 80 million marks from hundreds of institutions), students who wish to obtain more information about how hard certain classes, you can view trends data class by using a few mouse clicks. You can read our initial coverage CampusBuddy here and further coverage here.

And since its launch in 2008 was CampusBuddy to see some reliable grip on campuses in the United States is the founder and Executive Director Mike for this add-on to start telling me that, between its Web site and Facebook application, CampusBuddy more than 200 K monthly active users, with more than 1.5 million, and revenues have increased over the last year. Due to this growth CampusBuddy is launching a new initiative called CollegeBudget, which aims to provide daily deals and group buying campuses across the country. With the explosion in popularity of daily transactions said for this add-on, it was unable to miss. But, more importantly, he thinks that this is a great way for students to reduce the cost of their college experience.

In addition to student bargains, CollegeBudget expects to bring social buying every level of experience of the campus, including textbooks and student loans — and one day in the future, potentially learning. The company kicked off his official presentation with Palooza "back to school", which will be submitted to more than 100 merchants offering discount deals on 50 per cent (and above).

There are deals on admission books, posters, iPhone cases, etc. but this is only for students College; You must have a working e-mail address ".edu" to register.

Since its launch in private beta in March, CollegeBudget already has 600 K students from CampusBuddy platform and has already saved students more than $ 1 million collectively. For this add-on is telling me that he thinks that CollegeBudget will be attractive to brands looking to use the highly coveted College age demographic. The platform also invites brands social media marketing campaigns on a grant basis, prior to the signing of the advantageous offer merchants received a testimonial video student YouTube were a college student, as well as the social media explosion in the CollegeBudget-130 k plus Facebook fans and twitter followers.

CollegeBudget also clearly delivers a complete social media marketing campaign for merchants
no upfront costs. To get merchants sign up offer student transactions through CollegeBudget
Characterization of a YouTube video made by a real College, and the social media explosion in CollegeBudget
more than 130 thousand Facebook fans and twitter followers to 3000. The following is an example of a type of YouTube marketing, which is included in the platform.

This is a great resource for college students targeted discounts on things they need in school and for brands, they have a built-in access for students and CampusBuddy, which was first and foremost, make money through tutorial sales, subscriptions, and advertising, it will provide another source of income. From the perspective of the cut, which will take the CollegeBudget of transactions for this add-on is telling me that the site is trying to make the experience at dealers and will be flexible in its share in trying to accommodate a variety of industries. However, on average, it will offer merchants 60 per cent.

CampusBuddy fully initialized at this point, the founder of said and not in any hurry to raise as they "big believers in the loader. Which is a breath of fresh air. Yes, and in the Appendix: soon mobile applications CollegeBudget.

Merchants can sign up for discounts for students here.

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Zendesk brings SaaS to the enterprise customer service

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

Zendesk customer support starts going after enterprise customers with the launch of the new decision, taking into account the large organizations. Established in 2008, Zendesk offers Web, SaaS delivered advisory/support tickets application that gives companies an easy way to manage incoming requests support from end customers.

Zendesk in new enterprise-class features include unlimited internal use, so large customers can include company-wide insight into the operation of the service. The company has also established a specialized platform for parent companies with multiple brands, you can centralize their support groups, while maintaining the brand of the client before the support portal.

Organizations can also customize permission levels for a group of agents, allowing or restricting access to certain features in Zendesk, such as access to the private comments or
channels, or the ability to change the field ticket. And customer support interaction could be archived automatically.

To date, Zendesk has added more than 10 000 clients. The company claims that some of these clients are big companies, but this is the first time that Zendesk offers plan and platform that is specifically tailored to meet the needs of security and enterprise scale company. Prices for an enterprise plan starts at $ 99 for the agent.

Zendesk raises $ 26 million to date from Matrix partners, benchmark capital and Charles River Ventures.

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