Social network paradox

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Editor’s Note: Nina Khosla is a designer and founder of Teethie, a social blogging startup focused on building interest-based communities. You can follow her @ninakix.

Over the years, there’s been a radical change in the way we interact with our networks of friends online. It used to be that we had a few of our friends (online or offline friends) on a service, allowing us to connect to friends through the Internet and see what their activities were. Where the Internet used to be a somewhat scary world full of strangers, we suddenly had friendly anchors to explore that world with. Sure, most of our friends weren’t online, or at least not using the same services, but the familiarity was comforting and the ability to see what a few of our friends were doing allowed us to find new content and new friends.

We fell in love with sites that made us feel like there are people out there who are similar to us, who we are talking to and having common experiences with. But then, some of these networks — Facebook and Twitter in particular — began to grow explosively. Facebook facilitated a cultural norm of using its service to “friend” everyone we knew. All of a sudden we had tons of our friends everywhere we went. With the experiences gained sharing online spaces with a few friends, logic would dictate that having more of our friends online would make this experience richer. But that isn’t what happened.

Instead, there is a new trend happening: We’re not really paying attention to our friends we’re connected to online. Take Twitter, for example. Twitter used to be a great place for many early adopters to talk tech. It wasn’t so long ago that there were few enough people on Twitter that you could read every single tweet in your stream.

But as the network began to become more dense, and people found more people they knew and liked on Twitter, they began following hundreds of people, and reading all those tweets became impossible. This is such a fact of life that entire companies are based on the premise that you have too many friends on Facebook and Twitter to really pay attention to what they’re saying.

For example, Flipboard, among others, highlights its abilities to share with you the best of your friends’ Twitter and Facebook posts. These companies, and even Facebook’s news feed intelligence, are helping us deal with the disconnect we have with our friends because of our connectedness—they’re sorting through the deluge of information this expanded network created for us.

Therein lies the paradox of the social network that no one wants to admit: as the size of the network increases, our ability to be social decreases.

Like anything else, networks and the information flowing through them follow the laws of supply and demand. As the number of bits, photos and links coming over these networks grew, each of those invisibly began to decrease in worth.

Perhaps that explains the excitement over new products. When a smaller crew of people are using a tool, such as Foursquare, we can keep track of our friends’ locations and whereabouts. At a smaller scale, knowing this information and being able to expect that others have also seen it let us all in on a little secret, it made early use of Twitter feel somewhat magical. But as the number of friends begins to increase—particularly over that magic Dunbar number of 150—the spell begins to wear off. At this scale, we simply can’t easily keep track of it all. When our number of connections rises above 150 everything becomes simply comments, as real conversations tax our already limited ability to interface with the network.

What used to be a small community of web explorers and renegades had turned into nothing more than a large party of somewhat meaningless Foursquare checkins and an excessive use of hashtags. That mythical thing, social connection, doesn’t flow over these networks; information flows over these networks. The only reason the network ever felt meaningful was because, at small scale, the network operated like a community. But that breaks apart at large scale.

Which leads us to communities: Communities, the kind with clearly demarcated lines of membership, have always existed within the context of larger networks, and always broke off in bits and pieces to make them feel familiar. Communities, and the spaces that are given to them to form in, are the only way we are able to work with the network of the physical world. Our soccer team, our school, our workplace, our street, our town, all have their own communities. And I suspect that these are the only things that will make the digital world similarly manageable.

Communities give us an audience and a perspective. We know who we’re talking to. This doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it’s the glue that holds our communication together. It’s the difference between shouting out into the void, and having a conversation with someone standing in front of you.

What’s the difference between live tweeting a sports game or participating in an SB Nation game thread? A tweet is not an experience, it’s the broadcasting of an individuals’ experience to a vague and undefined audience. When I think about the kinds of things I tweet, they’re things like “I just read a cool article, check it out,” or “About to get on a plane,” or “GOALLLL!” if my team (the San Jose Sharks) has just scored.

The thing about all these is that they’re not a shared experience—they are my experiences, which I am sharing with you, but you probably cannot experience with me—my thoughts or fascination with the article I just posted, the feeling of getting on that plane, or the thrill of watching the Sharks tie the game. Perhaps you can compare your notes of your own experience of these things; that’s what most Twitter conversation seems to be, to me, but the experiences are not shared.

This differs from a discussion in a community, such as the type that occurs on SB Nation game day threads. The conversation does not center around any one individual’s experience, but rather the collective condition of the community. The conversation is the experience. Each comment is driven with the purpose of evoking and expressing the emotions that the community experiences, and particularly the ones they hold in common.

This habit of evoking and expressing common emotions is what drives inside jokes and their internet incarnation, memes. Sure, there are disagreements and differences in communities, but the magic is in the similarities: Knowing that everyone on there is also a Sharks fan and just swore at the TV over that goal is emotional and valuable. That’s what expands the sense of belonging and membership that people in a  community feel, and becomes a basis for the entirety of the rest of the discussion (even, especially, differences).

SB Nation is in real-time, but it doesn’t have to be: communities have sprung up for years on traditional, slow PHP bulletin boards. Lost fans populated message boards and blogs, uniting over their common love of Lost, and the way the show antagonized them—what is in that hatch?!

If the pattern of all our networks is to grow larger, as Facebook has pushed others around it to become, consumers will hit these limits on the meaningfulness of these networks. If we are creating social products, we need to create products that do allow people to be social, really social.

We need to build products that don’t just allow users to write and publish, we need to create products that encourage discussion, experiences, and lasting, meaningful relationships. These are the things that create real benefits for users and the products that inspire them. And thus, the future of the social web is no longer on a network, it’s within communities.

Teethie is stealth startup currently building a social blogging tool focused on building communities of like-minded individuals.

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Nina Khosla is a 22-year-old designer and entrepreneur that went Stanford and learned about Product Design. She’s a high school drop out, a ski racer, and is currently working...

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Seesmic is focused on social enterprise; Android, iPad Debuts Apps for Salesforce CRM

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

Social application developer Seesmic makes a big step in social enterprise and debuting dedicated Android app and iPad app for Salesforce CRM product (Windows phone 7 will also be added soon), called Seesmic CRM. Android app will be published tomorrow morning at Salesforce at the annual Conference, Dreamforce and Seesmic launches iPad app within a few weeks.

For the background of Seesmic, which was founded by a French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur, allows you to monitor and follow up the social web. Seesmic desktop, Internet and mobile clients integrate with Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Bonus using an application like Seesmic is the ability to combine your streams from a variety of social Web services such as YouTube, Foursquare, Techmeme, LinkedIn, and others.

But lately, Seesmic dabbling in the enterprise and launch more focused business functions. Last fall, Seesmic has deep integration with Salesforce enterprise social network chatter. And then earlier this year, Salesforce 4 million Australian dollars round in Seesmic.

Mostly Seesmic Android and iPad apps CRM lead all the functionality of Salesforce CRM for mobile phones. Users can search their Salesforce.com account from native applications; Search for leads, contacts, accounts, related activities and sets of chatter on the move; Creating and updating leads, contacts, tasks, and activities; Log calls and emails after meetings; and much more. And applications use mobile OS; to map users to their respective leads to their current location; upload photos and more. While prices had not been announced yet, Seesmic may charge a fee of $ 10 per month per user for the application.

Le Meur tells us that he does not compete with Salesforce CRM giant, because currently does not offer in-depth Android and iPad apps. In fact, Seesmic is working "hand in hand" with Salesforce mobile group to develop these native apps. And Salesforce particularly bullish on social enterprise at the end — "Welcome to the social enterprise» is the theme of the Dreamforce this year. As Le Meur said: "we are working with Salesforce, not compete with the company."

Of course it's interesting that Twitter's developer platform is shifting focus from building consumer and focusing on the enterprise. In March, Twitter basically told developers avoid compete with them on their own customers. It's not that Twitter doesn't want developers to build off their platform, they simply do not want developers to create clients that simulate Twitter's own services.

Thus Seesmic found new user base in the area of business. Le Meur explains that the use of mobile and social enterprise of the future for Seesmic. While the startup will not relinquish their Web and mobile applications (Android app company has more than one million users); all efforts of Seesmic now completely focused on attracting social for business users, "said Le million euros.

Seesmic BlackBerry app shuttered a few months ago. You can watch Le million euros in a recent conversation with TechCrunch TV Andrew Kina here.

(Disclosure: TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington was an early investor in Seesmic.)

Seesmic is a powerful set of social media and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. WITH ...

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Russian giant Yandex search gets social news startup Tweeted times»

Robin Wauters is currently staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. In addition to its activities, professional blogging, he is an entrepreneur, the organizer of the event, from time to time the Council consultant and an angel investor, but most importantly champion full launch. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found from his home or ... ? Read More

Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired a startup enterprise "Times" Tweeted that lets people create custom online "newspaper" of their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but ESPN Sports said it aims to continue to offer social news service and that the whole team "Times" Tweeted to join search engine company.

Tweeted once co-founded Maxim Grinev and Maria Grineva, computer scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland and others.

Its users include celebrities like Snoop Dogg Alyssa Milano and Lance Weiler.

Yandex, which became public in May and is currently estimated at just shy of 10 billion dollars, plans to use the technology acquired from The Times, Tweeted to increase its search and content services with information from social networks.

This is the third Company Yandex acquired in the past nine months – his most recent purchases include single sign-on plugin maker Loginza and WebVisor in technology of analysis of behaviors and commands.

Tweeted once, formerly called the Twitter times competes with social news curation service Paper.li, which itself has raised more than $ 2 million in funding.

Another company operating in this space — Summify.

Yandex is an Internet technology company that operates in Russia and CIS countries. This is the largest Russian and seventh largest in the world of Internet searching. "Yandex" is an acronym for. ..

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Sending Turntable.fm ShortForm demonstrates VJ video participants (with Custom TechCrunch social)

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

Turntable.FM is so hot right now. In fact when it comes to tweets, synchronous social music platform can even be more Klout than Pandora or Spotify. With the growing popularity of gramophone records, it is quite natural that the video curation platforms will be ready to take a cue from the site by dance music and bring the disco video.

Two weeks ago, we reviewed starts cold, which is almost a direct analogue of the concept Turntable.fm for video, except that in the case of the chill, there's "Salons" as opposed to a DJ turntable rooms. Stretch, I know. Of course when it comes to social video experience, there is Socialcam and Google + that allows you to watch videos with your friends online, but there are a lot more potential here for interactivity, as shown on the turntables.

ShortForm, a year and half old start running help video fanatics create personalized channels of Web video content also recently adopted the synchronous, social video experience, as he recently started his Live video of participants of integration, which allows video jockeys for broadcasting video content to a live audience.

When we first told ShortForm back in March, running only crossed the million visitors milestone and continues as ShortForm Director Nader Ghaffari told me that in July alone, run attracted 1 million unique visitors.

This is a key leg up for ShortForm entering hot space, its new feature video party was built on the basis of thousands already curated video feeds from sources such as YouTube, Vimeo and almost every other video platforms out there.

As ShortForm had already begun to make it easy for their VJs mix video with these platforms in their own personalized channels, broadcast back-to-back format as the TV viewing experience. Thus ShortForm VJs can play their own curated video channels for their audience or choose from thousands of other VJ channels from the Channel Guide to run.

Of course, until now, the launch VJs were viewing video content asynchronously, but with the beginning of the video, ShortFormers can now view curated video content simultaneously with hundreds of other friends and communicate with other visitors, while they watch, both turntables.

The neat thing about ShortForm in approach is spotlights profile photos of all viewers in live video party lead in this additional level of social interactivity between spectators and VJs. of course when it comes to playing what video, VJ host controls the party and shown. However, the host may, at any point transfer "deleted", so to speak, any spectator, making it the viewer in a new VJ. If the original node is not like what they see, they can always snatch the remote back from violator VJ and regain control over play what cat video.

"Big vision I see here," Ghaffari said: "this is the first wave of stars in the online video content creators. Now with so much content is produced daily, it is possible to create a new generation of stars. These stars are VJs, anyone can curate this content in feeds that tell amazing stories and share these links with friends and spectators around the world. Live video of the parties to give these VJs social and interactive way to tell their stories. "

Live video Party really have the potential to be exciting and interesting experiences, especially via live chat, as viewers can discuss in real time what they see or take-off and start their own party. The fact that users are able to pass the baton around too and give power VJing to other users, goes a long way to building a truly interactive video platform.

To give readers a taste of the TC party video experience, ShortForm created custom instalment focuses on the TechCrunch brand experience, in this case specifically Chris Dickson "founder stories." Viewers can join each other, as well as ShortForm staff to watch an interview with concurrent flow Dixon. Of course the host usually can take remote control for other spectators, but in this case, this is the founder of the history, all the time. This is a good example of how you will be able to customize their pages and their video experience to grab the eye views and maybe even $ VJs, brands, etc.

Check stories founder party here.

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

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

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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Social commerce site Zlio joins the Deadpool

Zlio, a site that allows users to create online stores where they sell goods from other e-commerce services, joins the deadpool. 6-year-getting going out of business and will be officially closes its doors on 11 September. The company is accusing Google algorithms for its demise, amazing, Zlio in the concept, or business model.

In an e-mail to users to inform them of an impending shutdown service fingers were pointed out all around, not only on Google, but also on an SEO company to improve website ranking in Google search results.

Oddly, Amazon aStore by Amazon service that allows Associates to build their own stores, not mentioned as a contribution to the service. The product was not a professional Web store Amazon. Or the dozens of DIY online shops filled with user-created content, such as Cafepress, Zazzle or Spreadshirt, for example.

Oh no, it's all Google's fault.

Full email is below.

Six years after its launch, we regret to announce that we are going out of business.

The service officially expires 11 September!

Zlio was a fantastic start, getting capital from one of Europe's largest venture capital funds, mangrove capital. In addition, we have advanced m & amp; talks with Google, which unfortunately is not at the last minute.

Our strong initial growth was interrupted on 27 September 2007, when most shops Zlio, which as a rule very well occupy, saw their Google ranking fall sharply, the Elimination of 65 per cent of our movement.

Despite our best efforts, as well as opening of 380 000 shops have so far failed to restore our previous rankings on Google, except in exceptional cases.

When we founded the Zlio, we thought that you, the members of the Zlio successfully will promote your shops among your community. We do not believe that links to Google is so important. Unfortunately, it was necessary.

Among the measures taken to improve our Google ranking, we came to the SEO company who claimed that they were able to resolve our problem.

Due to their poor performance, we evaluated that this company has not fulfilled its obligations. Thus we have entered into a dispute with him, resulting in a court case, whose sentence was passed on 26 July 2011. This decision is available on the Web site of the Paris commercial court (Tribunal de commerce de Paris).

This solution offers us to pay the entire service, which we continue to believe that was not provided and to pay compensation for the publication of our view Referencement on Twitter. The last part of the sentence has already drawn attention in the French media.

This phrase means that we cannot go. Service losing money for several years (which have forced us to gradually reduce our employees), and the amounts to pay today we sentenced to no longer allow us to fulfil our obligations.

Zlio allows users to create their own store and sell goods from other e-commerce services. Users can Stock shop products over three million and earn ...

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Battery Ventures and Nea back social App Umami TV

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

More cash flows in social TV application. Cautious company Umami attracted $ 1.65 million in seed funding from battery ventures, NEA and other Angels companion, social TV platform.

Although information about Umami is limited, we know an application free of charge the iPad its launch is currently in closed beta with the television networks and is set to launch in the fall of 2011 TV season. Like apps like miso and GetGlue, Umami provides viewers with a second screen experience for the content of television programmes. Umami adds additional contextual content around programme viewers are watching, as well as provides a platform for the network to interact with consumers.

Umami was founded by Rovi former Vice President of advanced advertising Scott Rosenberg and Brian Slavin, who held positions in technology and product Lightningcast (acquired by AOL), leap wireless and Broadsoft. The Lightningcast, he helped launch broadband video advertising products and solutions with the television networks and built a launch online video ad network.

Faced with competition from startup GetGlue, miso, TV Tune-in and other.

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Empire Avenue raises $ 1.2 million to transform social influence in virtual stock market

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Edmonton-based Empire Avenue, the stock market for social impact, announced today that it raised $ 1.2 million in series a seed funding. Round headed VC San Francisco firm, Crosslink Capital, iNovia capital, TriplePoint capital (which are incubated Empire Avenue in Silicon Valley), as well as BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka dogah and Greg Zeschuk, among others.

According to launch press release "instead of buying a fancy zeppelin or, say, full of diamonds clad singing shark", the team plans to use the new infusion of capital to ramp up hiring and expand its platform, with an emphasis on increased sales of virtual goods and currency. This is all well and good, but we were all in the tech community really pulling for singing sharks. Or at least the monkey Butlers. (There is always a serie b).

Empire Avenue, which started in early 2010, is the so-called "social stock market", where users to assume the role of companies and their product cost is determined by the level of your online activities and networks, one creates during daily webernets surfings. Essentially run wants to encourage Web users to jump start their own personal brands and maximize the results from the interaction of social networks (and have a little fun while doing it).

Like Klout with the added advantage of buying and selling virtual shares personal brand real, living people, Cork Empire Avenue in a range of sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr to show users the importance of their impact and reach on popular social networks.

Users can also include the value of their Web contributions to actual revenue through advertising platform used at the start to deliver relevant and targeted ads, while buying and selling virtual shares in any other user is free. Very stylish.

To the personal account user: impact of tens is equivalent to the price of shares of the individual in the Empire, which is based on the extent to which brand is traded on the site of helminthes in the course of the day, as well as to user their own blogs, websites, networks, social media, etc.

Shareholders can make an assessment of these interactions, the vote for the quality of the contributions that affect the cost of inventories, while shareholders are also rewarded with virtual currency for successful investments.

In addition to scoring some new investment loot, the Canadian startup also announced today the addition of Foursquare and Instagram as sources for further metrics used to calculate the user impact and value of stocks. Not to mention the fact that it now has users in more than 190 countries.

This is an awesome service, so take it for a test drive and let us know what you think.

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Lockerz launches social network for trade and Exchange-signs with EMI

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

Social commerce network Lockerz opens it up to the site for non-members. As you probably know, with the support of Kleiner Perkins Lockerz just raised another $ 36 million from Live Nation, Dag ventures, Kleiner and freedom of the media; revolves around the idea that influencers in social networks can become supporters of brand and content and affect the behavior of their friends.

Lockerz is primarily targeted at men and women ages 13-30 and trying to create a community of fashion and tastemakers who love to shop, play and connect on the Internet. Users can earn points and discounts on brands, sharing content on the site. The company wants to be the primary go-to trade for teens and young adults.

Now for the first time, Lockerz is open to non-members for exploration (users previously had to create a profile for the site). Visitors can check out the section "dealz", which includes thousands of daily special offers on everything from fashion brand, restaurant and sports events.

Clients continue to join Lockerz to earn virtual currency PTZ network, which can be redeemed for shopping discounts. Lockerz members earning PTZ almost everything they do on the site, including login, upload photos, watch videos and buy goods.

Lockerz said he has witnessed 45 million unique monthly visitors (Google Analytics), while comScore reported 13.5 million unique monthly visitors worldwide in June. However, all reports data from the perspective of visitors grows Lockerz.

Opening of the site is certainly a way to increase traffic. The company also received a photo sharing app Plixi as a way to enlarge photo sharing on the platform back in January. Lockerz also recently bought a social platform for the exchange of AddToAny last month.

In addition to the opening of the site, Lockerz homepage also went through a redesign, and the company announced a partnership with EMI Music, in which the video recording artists from the record label are available at Lockerz. Any user can view the video, but only members will earn the DOME for viewing. In view of the fact that live nation has just joined the Lockerz as an investor, it should be interesting to see if the network you can build traction around sharing music (and possibly replace MySpace in this category?).

Lockerz is a social business, whose mission for men and women aged 13-30, build a community of more than 19 million members.

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Kontagent Analytics Platform now track users 150 m; $ 1 of every $ 4 spent in social gaming

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

It seems that every day, another company in the tech industry hits milestone, but today reached Kontagent, social analytics platform for app developers is pretty impressive. FbFund winner now keeps track of over 150 million monthly active users (Maus) and handles over 1 billion messages per day. Broken down, it's 15000 + messages per second, or more than twice the number of tweets than Twitter processed at its peak during the women's World Cup finals.

Starting with February Kontagent tracking added another 50 million users and has more than doubled the number of message processing. Come to mind the words "aggressive scale.

This scaling, probably due to the fact that in the past month, the launch went beyond simply tracking Analytics for developers on Facebook and added tracking for Web and mobile applications (not on FB) also. The new platform, called kSuite is based on the earlier launch functionality, giving developers a new and improved ways to track and optimize your advertising efforts, virality, mechanics in app, virtual goods and currency monetization.

All say Kontagent now has more than 1100 active social and mobile applications, using its on-demand enterprise software including Ubisoft, Time Warner, A&E, EA and Tencent, to name a few. Since many of the major customers from the start to invest in social gaming (EA today acquired Bight games and acquired by PopCap last month), the company is currently tracking one in every four dollars spent social gamers.

Some recent major steps 4 year run certainly seems to be paying off, but we'll see how smoothly Kontagent scales, continuing hoovering new users and customers. And although the company more than $ 5 million to date, I wouldn't be surprised if they are on their way to start a new round in the not too distant future. But this is just speculation, don't quote me on that.

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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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After Klout adds Foursquare, blogger, Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr and last.FM social measures affect

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

Klout, launch, which measures the impact on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and, most recently, Foursquare, adds more services today, for a total of 10 different ways to measure your social influence on the Internet. Klout adds five new networks — blogger, Tumblr, Flickr, last.FM and Instagram, allowing users to add their influence Klout on these networks their Klout score.

The background for the conduct of users with Klout ranking algorithms are complex and semantic content analysis to measure the impact of individuals, on social networks. On Twitter score influence Klout is based on the user's ability to drive action through Tweets, Retweets, and more. On Facebook, Klout will be regarded as conversations and content to generate interest and participation, through the likes, comments and more, out of almost 700 million Internet users.

While the Klout did not give specific aspects such as factoring these new services to your account, you can make assumptions based on each individual network. For LinkedIn Klout could evaluate your number of connections and are updated on the site. And probably immodestly Klout is based on how often you check in, how much you have earned the mayors ' offices, and much more.

For Instagram measurements may be how much love you have for your photos. You can also use the same Flickr metric. Last.FM is an interesting addition, given its first music service added Klout. Spotify integration will become Kun?

Users can connect their accounts to their Klout in their profile. Klout says that the connection account wil never downgrade your account, but it can improve conversion rate.

And remember, you should add Google + Klout as a metric measure soon.

Klout interventions in the social network. Klout allows users to monitor the impact of their views, references and recommendations through your social graph. The collection of data about the content ...

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DuoDater wants to make online dating more social and less uncomfortable (offers here)

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

Last month, Nick Paumgarten penned a lengthy article for The New Yorker detailing the growth of online dating and the impact it had on Web culture. Among other things Paumgarten implies some eye-opening statistics on the industry, including the fact that paid dating sites have become collectively, billion-dollar industry that "one of the six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating site", and that online dating is now the third most common way for people to meet.

While most early blush (or stamp) around using an online platform for continuing relations wear, some friction, which has always been there still exist: from awkwardness in online networks, the potential risk of meeting eStranger, relying on algorithms to find your "compliant", etc. and more ironic for the interaction between intermediaries, most online dating sites to connect users with new people, while remaining detached from their actual social life. As Paumgarten, online dating is still remains inherently isolated.

Michael wig and Andrew Flachner, founders of the new dating site called DuoDater, agree that there are still some very fundamental problems with the current approaches to online dating (and, well, dating in General). The creation of an online dating profile can be difficult; It's hard to find the correct thing to say about yourself that will help site, either algorithmically or not, will help to pick the right person said the co-sponsors. Not to mention the facts that messaging stranger may be somewhat arduous process, and meet them in person without much background, awkward and sometimes unsafe.

Thus, the San Francisco startup offers a platform that aims to be a bit more social and less intimidating, that model championed by current dating sites: double date. DuoDater is aimed at men and women in their 20s and 30s who want to communicate and meet new people with the co-pilot. The co-founders, think that by allowing users to have a friend with their parties on the date, the interaction may be more natural and (we hope) a less awkward way to communicate and make friends.

DuoDater also built in such a way as to make a dating profile less nerve-racking process. The site offers "profile", the Duo only requires users to write a few sentences about myself individually, to the main attraction is included for creating joint description of steam daters can work together to fill. Flachner said that, so far, DuoDater in users find this less problematic and easy approach to dating profiles.

The founders also think their model provides a higher level of accountability than is generally characteristic of Individual dating, as users are less inclined to use a trick photo corners and exaggerated or romanticized descriptions of when they know, a close friend will see it and can call them on it.

DuoDater also adds a "featured Topic" idea, so new users can get up and running more easily and get out there and test the model.

When I asked whether they had considered the founders dating option group, they said that their market research and due diligence have shown that users prefer double dating with the latter because it still provides a level of intimacy that makes the experience feel like a real date, not the packages (PA) with handle, social gathering.

The founders said that, although there are several successful group, dating sites, profile group to take attention away from individuals and organizations access to a large group of people can be a hassle is that many are familiar with.

Of course the inherent risk to DuoDater in the model is one of the major players in the online dating space, like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony, OK Cupid, you can create your own double-dating service and quickly have run to beat in terms of user base. But Flachner said that he thinks DuoDater is well positioned as an alternative, because it focuses on the casual atmosphere of double dating and centered around the events and experiences, instead of relying on algorithmic models (potentially less "human" approach) to connect to specific people.

DuoDater offers an interesting spin on traditional dating model and, indeed, it is surprising that this model is not something that is done on a large scale. Of course, this may be justified; without a paid model this is hard to learn to make money and double dating organically bring their own problems. DuoDater is currently free to use, and start the initialization of at this point, it will draw on its beta version to test the waters of whether this approach truly viable and scalable. Fee-based premium service may be at its future road map, too.

For readers who want to do some early test double dating platform click over to DuoDater.com and enter code "techcrunch" invite for access.

Let us know what you think.

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LocalResponse buys social advertising on TV and in Philo platform

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

Local response, the recently launched social advertising platform that enables local businesses to respond to the check-in to marketing campaigns, makes its first acquisition today. Start (formerly Buzzd) acquires Philo, social TV-registration and advertising platform, with the support of partners, a venture North Bridge, DFJ Gotham, Eniac enterprises and others. The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but we said the deal all stocks.

Like miso and GetGlue, Philo running social-registration for TV shows. Using Philo, users can have a second screen experience with TV content, being able to see who is watching the show, awards for watching the show and return and much more.

But Nihal Mehta LocalResponse founder says that Philo flattening in the past year, the advertising model, called Reach. Basically the company allows the TV and movie studios to track when people Tweeting about the show or movie, and then send these messages and @ replies with promotions, announcements, and much more. This pivot that drew the attention of the Mehta (not to mention the meta is a partner at Philo in investor Eniac enterprises)

Of course LocalResponse has a similar model. Running aggregates real-time social media check-ins-from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local entrepreneurs to respond directly to their most influential and valuable customers. LocalResponse forcing makes it analyzes massive amounts of data in addition to returns from Twitter firehose Exchange sites and more, to find other forms of checkins photos. This could put a picture on a Instagram dish from a restaurant or Tweeting that you visit a particular bar.

LocalResponse on patented technology collects and prioritizes social data explicitly (i.e. checkins on Foursquare) and indirectly (through the analysis of natural language on Facebook, Twitter, etc., for example "I headed down to ShakeShack"). Mehta said most refunds are many social media platforms, serving up to helping businesses track refunds and implicit skip this key data. Allowing brands to focus on connecting with customers on this implicit data exchange of views and mention of the content (i.e., TV shows and movies), LocalResponse will add another dimension to its platform of social advertising.

Philo also adds another way to work with LocalResponse for major brands such as content properties and entertainment companies. Mehta adds that Fili also brings an experienced engineering team LocalResponse and Filo's Technical Director, Jessica Lowe will be the new CTO LocalResponse.

Since its launch a few months ago the company grows. LocalResponse recently signed his 25 major advertisers for their brand platform. In July some results showed his LocalResponse first major brands, campaigns, performing in 100 times better than traditional online media buys, including repayment rate of 60%.

LocalResponse relies on Verizon, metamorphic ventures, Venture partners, Charles River Ventures, Enterprise BOLDstart, Jim Pallotta, Greycroft partners and others. Mehta said the company aims to raise another round, but also received a number of proposals for acquisition. In fact, it had considered a number of term sheets and offers at the moment. It was unclear how will go Mehta, but this is of course the LocalResponse something when it comes to attracting advertising in social networks for small businesses and brands.

LocalResponse is a platform of social advertising, which brings together public posts and "checkins" across multiple platforms to help brands and companies reach their customers. Brands and agencies use LocalResponse on his shoulder ...

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Philo making TV social (again), allowing you to get in touch with your friends and watch, chat, points and earn awards and loans together. You can browse around television show ...

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