Archive | ideas

2011 Healthcare Preview — It’s Uhhh-gly

Jul 14th, 2010No Comments

If you’re excited about healthcare reform, you might want to slow down a little. Because in the short term, there’s going to be a lot of confusion as to how to implement it — or how to keep your small health plan from being subject to healthcare reform’s rules. For starters, a new study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers found premiums will likely go up 9 percent next year, on top of last year’s 15 percent hike .

An Inside Look at Competitors Backlinks with Open Site Explorer

Jul 13th, 2010No Comments

Posted by fabioricotta This post was originally in YOUmoz , and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Hi SEOmoz folks, Sometimes we begin a new SEO consulting job and do not to know where to start our Link Building. We have a lot of options but the first thing I really like to do is to analyze what my competitors are doing. As we know, one of the best ways to analyze backlinks is by using Open Site Explorer (OSE) . With this tool we can submit a domain and see which pages on the web are linking to it and some awesome metrics. We can use it to begin our analysis. The first thing you need to do is to create a competitor list. Then you need to go to OSE and insert your competitor(s) domain(s). Then you will filter by links from “External Pages Only” and “All Pages in the Root Domain”, as you can see below. With these filters, we guarantee that we will have an overall look at your competitors’ website backlinks. After the above steps, we need to export all this data by clicking on “Export to CSV”. After that, you will import this data to Excel: Next, you will remove the 6 first lines, as they are only comments. Then you need to select the first line, click on the Data Tab and select “Filter”. This will give you the ability to sort every column by some filters. Now we can begin our competitor analysis. For this part, I have chosen 9 commonly used link building strategies that you can use OSE and find what your competitors are doing. So, let’s take a look: Finding Directories As some SEOs know, using Directories as part of your link building strategy can provide a good value to your backlink profile. If your competitor is using any directory strategy, we can find it using OSE data, filtering the Title column by the text filter “directory” or you can filter the URL column with text “directory”. The good part of that is that you can see the Page Authority and Domain Authority of each directory page that your competitor is listed in and figure out to which one you should submit your website. A “bonus” filter you can use is filter by PA above 5 and DA above 20, so you will remove all the bad directories from your list. Niche Forums One thing that I really like are forums, maybe it’s because most of my knowledge came from there. Well, thinking about link building and SEO, when you find a niche directory, you find a community that talks about the same thing (or related) as you. If those members recommend your services you can get really good leads. So, one thing you can do is to investigate which forums your competitors were recommended in, so you can interact with those people. The idea here is to filter the Title column by the text filter “forum” or you can filter the URL column with text “forum”. Using it will retrieve all the forums that provide at least 1 link to your competitor. You can use the same tip here that I gave in the last topic. Powerful Profile Pages Sometimes when we do a link building strategy we use some profiles to post and interact with customers and people about our website. And sometimes, those platforms that we use for it provide ways to drop a link (eg. user website). Based on this idea, one cool idea is to check which social networks your competitor is working. You can do it easily by filtering the URL column or Title column by text filters “user” or “profile”. After identifying those profiles check how you competitor is working with it, like how is he interacting with the community, check if he is creating new content, check which keywords he is using on that new content. A good tip here is to check the backlinks to that profile page. We noticed that some competitors are buying links for that profile page, so they can get more juice and spread it to their content. I am not telling you to do the same, but maybe you can file a spam report. Tag Pages A common and cheap link building tactic is to submit your website to social bookmarking websites. Sometimes, social bookmarking does not provide a strong enough value, but many SEOs use it as a base for their link building strategy. So, you can find which social bookmarking websites your competitors are using. The good thing (tip) here is to find a niche social bookmarking website. Those kind of websites can provide you some good leads as they are related to your niche. So, be careful when checking this. To find the tag pages and then the social bookmarking websites, you can filter the Title column by text filters “tag” or “tagged”. Another filter you can use is “tag” in the URL column. Where They are Submitting Articles As Rand pointed in a previous Whiteboard Friday , if you create a good Article Submission strategy you can get some good links and traffic. For example, you can filter the URL column with some already known article directories (“ezinearticles.com”, “amazines.com”, “articlealley.com”, “articleindex.net”, “goarticles.com”, “articlesltd.net”, “365articles.com”, “articletrader.com”, “articlesbase.com”, “thebestarticles.com”, “mycontentbuilder.com”, “thinkarticle.com”, “articlerumble.com”, “gsarticles.com”, etc…). The idea here is to find where your competitors are gaining links and then find their profiles. After that, grab a list of all articles that they posted and run a OSE report for each link (you can do it using the SEOmoz API). Check which ones have a large number of backlinks. Then you need to check why they attracted so many links and just use that idea to create some new content. A bonus tip here is that some article directories enable comments with link… so, try to comment in your competitors’ best articles. Resource Pages as Good Backlink Sources Some years ago, one of the common things that webmasters did was to create pages listing some useful links as resources. Nowadays it’s not common but the point is that there are a lot of resource pages out there. So you can check if your competitor is listed in any resource page and then ask the webmaster to include your valuable website. It’s really easy, but don’t forget to be generous and really show that your website can help their visitors. To find the resources page, you can filter the URL column using the text filter “resources”. I’ve tried to filter the Title column but I didn’t like the results I found. Competitors Press Releases When we talk about press releases we need to be careful about our objectives. The first thing here is to identify which company your competitor is using to distribute their press releases. So you can filter the URL column by the common PR Distribution companies (“prweb”, “send2press”, “prnewswire”, etc…) and since those companies sometimes publish the press release inside their domain, you can find your competitor’s press releases. The second step is to grab a list of all press releases they published and do the same thing I told you about article directories’ profiles. Find which are the most linked press releases and why. This will give you some advantage in your next press release. Linkbait with InfoGraphics One of the latest link building tactics is to create amazing InfoGraphics . The cool thing for link building is that if you create a good infographic it can go viral and provide a lot of backlinks. So the point here is to see if your competitors are using infographics to get links. To check it, just filter the Title column by text filter “infographic” and you will find the list of infographics that give links to your competitors. The point here is that you can tell me “Hey, when I create an InfoGraphic I post it at my site, not in someone’s else blog”. You are right, but the point here is that some websites can’t use / post those kind of images inside their structure, so they need to publish it as guest post. A tip here is: if you find an infographic inside a blog, don’t forget to comment in the comments area. You can get some value there. Trusted links: Any .EDU or .GOV links? Most of the linkbuilders love .edu and .gov links. They are strong, they are trusted and they really rock. Based on that, you can check if your competitors have any link coming from any of those TLDs. You can find it filtering the URL column by text filter “.edu” or “.gov”. You need to check why your competitors have those links and then try to find a way to get them. Don’t forget to avoid those .edu crap networks. Wikipedia Links Worldwide known, Wikipedia is a great source of visitors and leads. We can’t count their backlinks because of nofollow, but they still provide value by sending you traffic. We made some Wikipedia strategies for some clients and those links are just growing our referral visitors. You can find the Wikipedia pages that link to your competitors by just filtering the URL column by text filter “wikipedia.org”. One thing to remember is that Wikipedia (moderators) does not like spam or commercial stuff. So the easy way we find to get a link from them is by adding some valuable content, specially when you adds notes about statistics that you published in your press release. This really rocks and in most cases they allow you to reference your data source (you). Conclusions We saw in this article that using a SEO tool such as Open Site Explorer could help you to find what our competitors are doing, providing us some insights on how to create our SEO strategy. It is important to highlight that I am not telling you to get the same backlinks that your competitors had, but I am trying to show you is that you can begin your strategy by getting the best of what your competitors did, and then, improve with your own ideas. Hope you liked this post! Fabio Ricotta is the Co-Founder of MestreSEO , a brazillian SEO company. Do you like this post? Yes No

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An Inside Look at Competitors Backlinks with Open Site Explorer

GE, Kleiner Perkins, Emerald, And More Launch $200 Million ‘Ecomagination Challenge’

Jul 13th, 2010No Comments

Today at a special ‘Ecomagination’ event in San Francisco, General Electric is announcing the launch of the $200 million GE ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid , an investment that’s meant to help spur advances in green grid technologies. The fund is launching in partnership with VC funds Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital. Wired Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson is also involved. GE says that it is looking for proposals in three categories: Renewables, Grid, and Eco Homes & Eco Buildings. Applicants can submit ideas on ecomagination.com over a ten week period. Entrants will be eligable for both “a potential future commercial relationship” with GE and one of five $100,000 awards that are meant to highlight submissions demonstrating “outstanding entrepreneurship and innovation”. Submission will open today, and will close on September 30. A short list of candidates will be announced on October 21, and the awards will be announced November 9. Entrants that stand to land a commercial relationship with GE will be judged by a committee made up of GE businesses and the participating VC firms. There wil also be a second committee (which includes Wired’s Anderson, GE execs, and academics) that will be weigh in on both the commercial relationship candidates and which will choose who wins the $100,000 awards. Full details on the challenge rules are at ecomagination.com/challenge . GE’s ecomagination initiative launched in 2005, and has invested $5 billion since its inception, with plans to invest another $10 billion in the next five years. During the event, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt discussed why the company believes the initiative is so important, detailing how it will help the company grow while also helping the environment. Today the company also announced the WattStation, a docking station for electric vehicles that looks more stylish than other chargers. GE is also announcing Nucleus . It’s a communications device that smart appliances/water heaters/etc, allowing consumers to track their energy usage directly from their laptop. Immelt says that internally the company has been talking about “digital energy” — changing the way energy is created, distributed across the grid, used, and monitored by the consumer. Immelt expects this market to grow by ten fold in the next two decades, projecting a jump from a ~$18 billion market in 2009 to a ~$110 billion market in 2030. Disclosure: GE will be sponsoring TechCrunch’s Green Tech section in the near future.

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GE, Kleiner Perkins, Emerald, And More Launch $200 Million ‘Ecomagination Challenge’

George Steinbrenner’s Contribution to the Business of Baseball

Jul 13th, 2010No Comments

Tonight at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, Derek Jeter of the New York Yankees will take the field as the starting shortstop for the American League in the 81st annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game. Jeter’s $22 million annual salary makes him one of the highest-paid players in the game, thanks in large part to his former boss, George Steinbrenner, who bought the entire team in 1973 for less than half that amount, and who died this morning at the age of 80. To say the least, Steinbrenner was a polarizing figure, loved by some for taking an also-ran franchise and restoring it to its former glory, and hated by others for bringing pure, unadulterated capitalism to baseball. But the simple fact remains: The team he bought for $10 million in 1973 (actually 8.8 million after he sold two parking lots thrown in as part of the deal) is now worth an estimated 1.6 billion, nearly $800 million more than the second-place Boston Red Sox, a fact The Boss would no doubt have enjoyed–as long as they weren’t ahead of the Yankees in the standings. You don’t get that level of success without being a tireless innovator, and Steinbrenner was, quite literally, a game-changing force in baseball. But having said that, he also mixed in a healthy dose of bedrock business sense. Love him or hate him, here are just a few things to appreciate. He spent money to make money. These days, you can’t throw a baseball in any direction without it hitting someone ready to complain about how overpaid the game’s players are. But just as Steinbrenner was taking over the Yankees, free agency was taking hold in baseball, and he took full advantage. In 1975, he made Catfish Hunter the highest-paid player in the history of the game with a $640,000 annual salary that was more than six times what he had been paid the previous year. After the 1980 season, he signed Dave Winfield to a 10-year, $23 million contract, which again became the highest salary ever paid to a player at the time. Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez now makes $10 million more than that–in one season. But in terms of percentages relative to what the owners are worth, players’ salaries are still well in line with the rest of the business world–and no one goes to the ballpark to watch the owners, a fact Steinbrenner was quick to recognize as part of the cost of winning. He had a distinct management style. Quite possibly the understatement of the century, but it’s something every true entrepreneur needs, and Steinbrenner had it in spades. He was famously hands-on as an owner, changing managers 20 times in his first 23 seasons as owner, including firing manager Billy Martin five different times. He publicly called out players–especially high-priced stars–when he wasn’t happy with their performance on or off the field. Then there’s the Yankees’ famous grooming policy, which to this day doesn’t allow facial hair other than a mustache, or hair below the collar. Since Steinbrenner took ownership of the team in 1973, only three employees have been continuously employed. He made the right deals with the right people at the right times. The ability to form profitable alliances was at the heart of Steinbrenner’s innovation–and of the team’s success and value. He was the first owner to sell cable TV rights, and when that relationship began to go south, he simply formed his own network. He also signed a 10-year, $97 million contract with Adidas in 1997, the first such contract at the time. Technically, Steinbrenner was just another MLB franchisee, so these sorts of deals often ruffled all the wrong feathers. But they also netted million for Steinbrenner, for the Yankees and, eventually, for all of baseball, and were quickly and widely imitated. He never took himself too seriously. Like many entrepreneurs, Steinbrenner was as much a brand as he was a businessman, and he never shied away from that brand. It started as early as the late ’70s, when he fired Martin as part of a Miller Lite beer commercial, to which Martin responded, “Not again.” After he publicly scolded Jeter in the press for partying too much, the two appeared in a Visa ad together club-hopping. He even hosted Saturday Night Live in 1990, dreaming of a Yankees team where he was not only the owner, but also served as the manager and played every position. Steinbrenner was larger than life in the world of baseball, but he was equally transcendent in the world of business. They say that if you’re not pissing someone off, you’re probably not very good at your job. So you can hate the Yankees if you want–plenty of baseball fans do–but The Boss deserves his due.

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George Steinbrenner’s Contribution to the Business of Baseball

Exports are Up — Here’s How to Get Your Share

Jul 12th, 2010No Comments

In case you missed it, earlier this year the president announced the National Export Initiative, which has a goal of doubling U.S. exports in five years. Just four months later comes the initial report on the plan, which pumped billions into new funding and support staff trained to help businesses start or expand their export efforts — especially small businesses. Already, exports are up 17 percent. Here’s how your business can ride the export wave to increased sales:

Google Conducting Focus Group Research Into Social Networking

Jul 12th, 2010No Comments

The blogosphere has been abuzz with word that Google may be developing a social network after Digg CEO Kevin Rose tweeted a few weeks ago that he’d heard a “huge rumor” that Google was planning to launch a Facebook competitor called “Google Me.” Adam D’Angelo, founder of Q&A service Quora, then claimed on his own that this is a real project for Google . And Google CEO Eric Schmidt hasn’t denied these reports. To add some more speculative fuel to the fire, Google is now conducting focus groups to gather information about consumers’ social habits. According to a tip we received and confirmed, Google is asking people to conduct a short survey to verify their eligibility for a “usability study” with Google. Out tipster’s study is to take place at Google’s office in Dublin, Ireland. According to the survey, the duration of the study is 60 minutes, with particpants receiving 60 Euros. Of course, participants need to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and allow Google to video record the session. The questions focus around social networking as it relates both to real life (offline) and online. Interestingly, this line of questioning also seems to reflect Google’s social strategy and analysis that was unveiled through a recent presentation from Paul Adams, Google’s lead user-experience researcher. Other questions in the survey ask which search engines the participant uses and how often, which instant messaging platforms they use, and which Google products they use. Online surveys to get feedback for current or future products isn’t new to Google, so it’s not particularly surprising that the search giant would conduct focus groups when evaluating the potential of a new product. While the survey doesn’t confirm the existence of “Google Me,” it certainly is another piece of evidence pointing in that direction. There’s no doubt that Google is serious about social networking and is evaluating where the gaps are in current offerings. Here’s a list of the most interesting questions asked in the survey: 10a. In the last week, which of the following have you done (if any)? * Please select all that apply 1. Met friends for coffee, food or drinks 2. Spent time with friends outside of the home 3. Watched or participated in sports or hobbies with others 2. None of the above 11. In the past 3 days, which of the following methods have you used outside of work to communicate with your friends and family (if any)? * Please select all that apply. 1. Phone call 2. Email 3. Instant Messaging 4. Text Message (SMS) 5. Social Networking Site e.g. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn 6. None of the above 12a. In the past 3 days, which of the following social networking websites have you visited MORE THAN ONCE (if any)? * Please select all that apply. 1. Facebook 2. Twitter 3. MySpace 4. LinkedIn 5. Friendster 6. Orkut 12b. In the last 2 weeks, how often have you accessed your “primary” social networking site (if any)? * 1. Less than once a week 2. About once a week 3. A few times a week 4. About once a day 5. Multiple times a day 6. I don’t use any social networking sites 13a. In the last week, which of the following websites have you posted content to (if any)? Please select all that apply. 1. Photo sharing sites (e.g. Flickr, Picasa, Facebook Photos) 2. Video sharing sites (e.g. Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion) 3. Social Networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) 4. Blogging sites (e.g. Blogger, WordPress) 5. Restaurant review sites (e.g. Yelp, CitySearch) 6. Product Review sites (e.g. Epinions, Consumer Reports) 14a. In the past 3 days, which of the following search engines have you used (if any)? * Please select all that apply. 1. Google 2. Yahoo 3. Bing 4. None of the above 14c. In the past 2 months, which of the following types of things have you searched for online (if any)? * Please check all that apply. 1. Another person 2. Yourself 3. A restaurant in the area 4. A product to purchase 5. Travel ideas 6. Health Information 7. News 16. Which of the following Instant Messaging (IM) program(s) do you use (if any)? * (e.g., Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Adium, Trillian, etc.) 1. Google Talk 2. AOL Instant Messenger 3. Yahoo Messenger 4. MSN Messenger / Live Messenger 5. Facebook IM 18c. Which of the following do you display on at least one of your profiles (if any)? * Please select all that apply. 1. Real name 2. Photo 3. Occupation 4. City/ town of residence 5. Hometown 6. Hobbies/ interests None of the above CrunchBase Information Google Information provided by CrunchBase

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Google Conducting Focus Group Research Into Social Networking

Boom! Foursquare Crosses 2 Million Users

Jul 10th, 2010No Comments

It appears that Foursquare has just crossed the 2 million users mark this morning. The location based social network has been growing fast, adding 100,000 users per week. Only three months ago, Foursquare passed one million users after taking a year to accumulate one million members. Over the past several months, Foursquare has had a number of impressive stats for a startup. Some of them involved SXSW , some involved overall check-ins numbers. And it seems to be growing faster than its main competitor, Gowalla. Of course, to expand upon this growth Foursquare has just raised $20 million in funding at a $95 million pre-money valuation, led Andreessen Horowitz with existing investors Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures participating. The new funding is going to be used to hire additional staff, for product development and a new office space. And we know that Foursquare has some interesting ideas to incorporate gaming with check-ins. It’s important to note that other competitors have already crossed this mark. MyTown, another location-based network hit that number in May, Brightkite hit 2 million users in February. And, Loopt just passed 4 million users. Congrats to Travis E for being Foursquare’s 2 millionth member. Hat Tip to Finbarr. CrunchBase Information Foursquare Information provided by CrunchBase

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Boom! Foursquare Crosses 2 Million Users

Entrepreneur: You’re No Steve Jobs, So Look Before You Leap

Jul 10th, 2010No Comments

I doubt that Steve Jobs has ever asked Apple customers what type of products they want , or that he cares about what they need . Jobs believed that if he developed a mobile phone that plays music and surfs the web, he could create both the want and need . He was right: his iPhone changed the industry and started a mini technology revolution. Most of the entrepreneurs I know fancy themselves to be like Jobs.  They think they know—better than their customers—what the customers want, and what they need. Or they believe, as in the movie Field of Dreams , that if you “build it, they will come”. But it just doesn’t work this way in real life. The vast majority of technology startups fail because no one buys or uses their products. Strategy consultant Sramana Mitra calls this failure “Infant Entrepreneur Mortality”. She says that in the hundreds of companies she has mentored, lack of customer validation is by far the biggest cause of failure. Startup guru Eric Ries says that “validated learning” about customers is even more important than revenue for a nascent startup. Revenue, by itself, doesn’t build traction for a business; it is only when you have products that are tested and proven, that customers are ready to buy, and that you can sell and deliver profitably that you have the right ingredients for a successful business. How do you determine what customers will buy (or, if you’re building a free web technology, what it is that they will invest the time and effort to use )?  Unfortunately, this isn’t a simple matter of asking. Your customers know what their problems are; they know what they like; and they know what they don’t need. They don’t know what you can uniquely develop for them that they will really want . This is what you need to figure out. Start by understanding what the customer’s problems are; use your experience and vision to conceive solutions; share this with potential customers in ways that they can understand; and learn. It is an iterative process. The best example I’ve seen of a startup looking before it leaps is Campfire Labs . The startup has spent 14 months prototyping products. It hasn’t even started developing its products yet. It could be that Campfire never gets off the ground, but if and when it does, it has a better than average chance of becoming a Zynga or Facebook. In the meantime, it has already lived at least three lives (but, fortunately, hasn’t had to die three painful deaths). Campfire was founded by former Yahoo! search technologist Naveen Koorakula and, former Youtube head of international strategy and product, Sakina Arsiwala. Their goal is to change the way people collaborate on line—to make it more meaningful and to better manage the many contexts in which they interact (work, home, school, etc.). Naveen and Sakina started by building a prototype of a personalized news/media site and sharing it with friends. But, while their techie friends would really get excited about algorithms, the others would scratch their heads trying to figure what the purpose of the product was. Next, they experimented with content sharing, interest graphs, and other technical concepts. They came with product ideas and asked their friends who were specialists in various disciplines to brainstorm with them. Once they thought they were on to something, they talked to random people on the street and workers in the mall next door. They went to university campuses and bought smoothies and sodas in order to get students to spend a few minutes with them. They carefully observed user reactions, read between the lines, and dug deeper to understand what the users were really saying.  They incorporated what they learned into the next iteration. Last time I met the Naveen and Sakina, they were still trying out new ideas. But they seemed to be getting closer and closer to having a product that users were eager to use. Getting back to Steve Jobs. Does he really have some secret powers or a divine vision that lets him build one earth-shattering technology after another? I don’t think so. My guess is that in his secret lab, Jobs has teams developing and testing hundreds of ideas. He just implements the best of them. Jobs is not afraid of abandoning failures, and when something does click, he rules like a tyrant and makes it happen. Eric Ries agrees with me and prescribes a five-step process that can help people become more like Jobs: Hold your team to high standards; don’t settle for products that don’t meet the vision; iterate, iterate, iterate. Be disciplined about which vision to pursue; choose products that have large markets. Discover what’s in customers’ heads, and tackle problems where design is a differentiator. Work on as few products as possible; keep resources in reserve for experimentation. Start over (change direction) if you find yourself with a product that’s not working. Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Information at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. You can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa and find his research at www.wadhwa.com .

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Entrepreneur: You’re No Steve Jobs, So Look Before You Leap

Loopt Hits 4 Million Users, Propelled By iOS 4 And Android

Jul 9th, 2010No Comments

“Foursquare gets all the hype.” It’s something I hear just about every day from just about every other location-based startup. And it’s true, though I would argue that it’s warranted — and investors seem to agree . But it’s also important to keep some perspective. While Foursquare is just shy of 2 million users, other services like MyTown have quickly surpassed that number . Same with Google Latitude, which is at 3 million . And you can put Loopt on that list as well, as today they’ve hit 4 million total users. Loopt was one of the first location-based services to get a lot of hype — even getting on stage at the Apple event first talking about the App Store way back when. But as we’ve noted numerous times, they started out at a disadvantage because the iPhone didn’t allow third-party apps to run in the background. And that was Loopt’s model, continuous location updates. But with iOS 4, the iPhone does finally allow for that functionality — and specially for background location. And Loopt is benefiting from it. Daily sessions are up 60% from just prior to iOS 4 being release, founder Sam Altman tells us. Both background location and the proximity alerts are pushing this growth — as well as the latest version of the app, 3.0 , in general. Altman says that daily active users is in the hundreds of thousands. Altman also credits Loopt’s usage surge to being featured in markets where Android phones are quickly gaining popularity. And the biggest surge is thanks to the fact that Loopt is now preloaded on almost all MetroPCS phones. “ We’re finally seeing real Android growth ,” Altman says. Loopt pivoted last year to allow for check-ins when it was clear that the model was taking off. But the latest version marries the two ideas. The latest iPhone version allows you to check-in at a venue and keep your live location active for up to 24 hours so that friends can see as you move on the Loopt map. For some people that’s extremely creepy. For others, it’s the future of location. You can find Loopt 3.0 in the App Store here as a free download . You can also search the Android Market for it. CrunchBase Information Loopt Information provided by CrunchBase

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Loopt Hits 4 Million Users, Propelled By iOS 4 And Android

T-shirted Zuckerberg Video Chats With British PM From… His Spare Room?

Jul 9th, 2010No Comments

In it’s seemingly never ending quest to slash public spending and bring down the deficit the UK government is resorting to increasingly bizarre stunts to whip the public up into a frenzy of “slash and burn”. One of the most recent was the YourFreedom campaign which is trying to get the public to suggest which “red tape” inducing laws they want slashed (we’d like the repeal of the badly drafted and rushed-through Digital Economy Act, thanks very much). The latest is a clearly staged video chat between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Prime Minister David Cameron, now released below, about what to do about deficit. Huh, Mark? Huh? Come on then, let’s hear your ideas… Quite why Mark chose to “meet” the PM in what looks like his spare bedroom in a T-shirt is something there will perhaps be PHDs written about. Or perhaps not.

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T-shirted Zuckerberg Video Chats With British PM From… His Spare Room?

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