Windows Blue will be called Windows 8.1 and will launch as a public preview on June 26, Microsoft revealed today. While the company remains mum about what exactly we can expect from Windows 8.1 (boot to desktop? the return of the Start menu?), Microsoft says that Windows 8.1 “will help [it] to deliver the next generation of PCs and tablets with our OEM partners and to deliver the experiences customers— both consumers and businesses alike —need and will just expect moving forward.” The update will be available for Windows 8 and the ARM-based Windows RT.

June 26 marks the start of Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco, so the date is obviously not all that much of a surprise, given that Microsoft will want to get its developer ecosystem to start working with Windows 8.1 as soon as possible. The update, Microsoft says, will be delivered through the Windows Store.

Microsoft, the company’s CFO Tami Reller said at the JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Boston today, wants to continually update Windows to create “a richer experience” for its customers.

Today’s announcement comes after a few days of build-up, including pieces by Microsoft’s corporate VP of communications Frank X. Shaw about how Windows 8 has been doing far better than the pundits make it seem. This also caps off months of speculation around when we would see the first preview of Windows, though the first day of Build always seemed like a reasonable date.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This is a guest post from Jed Singer, director of client engagement at Stuzo, a creative technology company and Preferred Marketing Developer with Pages and Apps badges.

The Facebook News Feed is becoming evermore critical to engagement on Facebook. When you design branded social solutions, they need to serve as conduits for storytelling. 100x more people are likely to see the stories that your social product or campaign pushes out than will ever actually experience the product or campaign.

This amplification through the Timeline and News Feed is inherently key to awareness and viral distribution of the brand’s message, but it’s even more important because those stories in the Timeline and News Feed are more accessible by mobile users (63 percent of Facebook users) than the solution, itself, today. This focus on the “story” can mean success or failure of the program as it relates to actual business outcomes — the metrics that matter.

There are also other ways to have consumers effectively story-tell through a branded social experience: Rich Media News Feed Experiences. This is an HTML5 experience on mobile and a Flash media unit that is the experience within a promoted page post, or pushed out of a custom experience on Facebook (by either a user or a page). Both can be activated and engaged with directly within the News Feed.

Even into Q2 of 2013, these are rare for brands, but they are extremely effective at engaging users. Some, like Dunkin Donuts, Rovio, and Lexus have leveraged such units in their social repertoire. At Stuzo, we make sure that clients are intimately aware of the possibilities; one of our most successful Rich News Feed Experiences was for People’s Choice Awards this past season, which enabled fans to explore all of the award categories and vote for their favorite nominee. This gives users the full voting functionality in-stream and exposes them to the main business metric for the People’s Choice Awards — votes — without having to leave their News Feed browsing experience.

Another example is AutoTrader’s social inventory search feature, Decide My Ride, which enables users to share out three cars that they’re interested in and have their friends then vote on which they believe the user should purchase. This voting is all done in in-stream in the News Feed, and below, we can see examples on both the desktop and via mobile. This is rich branded interaction and storytelling that is cross-device and directly in-stream.

When do you, as a brand, want to consider these Rich News Feed Experiences on Facebook? Here’s a simple list of questions to ask yourself. Do you have:

• A CRM conversion point, like an email sign-up?
• An engagement conversion, like a social vote or poll answer?
• An awareness conversion, like a social good campaign?
• An off-site traffic conversion with teaser content?
• A lightweight social game that users could preview in-stream?
• A product that could be interacted with via News Feed?
• An inventory that users could explore in-stream?
• A service that customers could reserve in the feed?

The list goes on, and the above should serve as thought-starters. There is an array of potential use cases for Rich News Feed Experiences on Facebook, and to maximize engagement and conversion of your audience, these mobile-accessible, mobile-optimized products are an extremely powerful solutions for your digital and social marketing toolbox.

Jed Singer has been studying, advising, and executing in social since 2006, and has worked with brands across verticals including the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Toys “R” Us, Coach, Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch InBev, MasterCard, CBS, ESPN, and HBO. As director of client engagement at Stuzo, one of the original five Facebook Preferred Marketing Developers, Jed specializes in social strategy, management, and application development.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

If Google is worried about Google Glass being too nerdy, they probably wouldn’t be sending people rockin’ the Glass into the heart of the most gloriously nerdy thing in the world, the Large Hadron Collider.

Fortunately, Google doesn’t seem to care (nor should they) if their amazing little experiment gets a few knocks along the way. As a result, we get videos like this one.

In a just released “Explorer Story” video, Google sends physics teacher/aspiring astronaut/really cool guy Andrew Vanden Heuvel some 500 feet below Switzerland for a Glass-ified tour of the world’s biggest particle accelerator.

As if a bit of first-person footie of the LHC wouldn’t be enough, Andrew got to pipe-in his brother’s physics class through a Google Hangout, allowing students a few thousand miles away to join in on the adventure.

Andrew dives a bit deeper into his experiences with Google Glass in a blog post here. While he mostly focuses on his personal experiences during the trip, he grazes an important topic: “It’s not about the technology, but what you can do with it.”

Look. I’ve used Google Glass. Quite a bit, actually. Would I pay $1500 for it? Probably not. But do I think that Google is doing something worthwhile here? Absolutely.

The criticisms that keep popping up as of late — that it’s a waste of Google’s time, that it’s too nerdy/dorky/whatever — are a depressing affront to a group that’s actually trying to do something new. We demand innovation, then mock an attempt at something novel… even when that attempt has been clearly labeled as an experiment since day one. Blyeck.

Hell, this is probably a post of its own worth writing. Lets just watch the video and enjoy our Friday.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

There’s something very thrilling about getting to play with something before everyone else does (that’s at least partially why I fell in love with tech journalism), but opportunities for that sort of early access can be hard to come by unless you’ve got an in. The folks at New York-based accelerator/app foundry betaworks are looking to change that, though. It announced a new initiative called Openbeta that will let average users play with their work-in-progress products.

The idea is simple. In exchange for early access, Openbeta users provide their benefactors with feedback about their experiences. The old adage about “design by committee” comes to mind here, but betaworks’ Nick Chirls assured me that the last thing they want is user-requested feature bloat infecting their projects.

“We’re looking to really solve the needs of the users,” he said. “But this is not meant to say that every single feature request is going into the product.” Instead, betaworks plans to lean on some eager testers to act as “design partners” that will help shape the product in its early stages. betaworks is no stranger to exposing nascent products to early scrutiny — Chirls pointed out that previous Openbeta sessions have connected products like Chartbeat with the New York Times (an investor in betaworks), which led to changes that ultimately wound up in the finished product.

Of course, if we’re talking about betaworks and public feedback, Digg is the most recent, most prominent example. As you’ll recall, betaworks acquired the ailing social news site in July 2012, gave it some major plastic surgery over the course of six weeks, and pushed the redesigned beast back online. From there, user feedback prompted the team to tweak and modify the new-old site even further. All that noodling around seems to have worked: as of January, Digg’s userbase had doubled since it had been taken over by betaworks, so the general fondness for accepting and building off of users’ responses is understandable.

Just like the products that are due to be publicly evaluated, this expansion of the Openbeta initiative is still in its early stages. There’s no firm word yet on the mechanics of the program. Users can throw their hats into the ring by signing up here, but nitty-gritty details like tester group sizes are still up in the air. For now, the Openbeta model is only meant for products and projects that betaworks is working on directly (and Chirls assured me that there were plenty in the pipeline) but that may not be the case forever. The betaworks team has apparently also thought about extending Openbeta to its portfolio companies, as well.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

MessageMe, an app that launched last week and raced up the charts to the #2 spot in social networking in the U.S., is confronting Facebook’s touchiness around access to its social graph.

The app’s integration with Facebook stopped functioning earlier today (see left), the result of the company’s decision to cut MessageMe off from its “Find Friends” functionality, according to sources familiar with decision. MessageMe CEO Arjun Sethi declined to comment in this story and Facebook didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The move resembles Facebook’s decision last month to shut off Voxer’s access to the graph, even though Voxer connected to Facebook for well over a year. Voxer is another communications app that supports calling and voice chat. Facebook cut the app off around the same time that it launched competing functionality with free voice calling to other users.

In that decision, Facebook cited Section 10 of its platform policy (which is the same one it’s using in MessageMe’s case):

Reciprocity and Replicating core functionality: (a) Reciprocity: Facebook Platform enables developers to build personalized, social experiences via the Graph API and related APIs. If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook. (b) Replicating core functionality: You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission.

MessageMe apparently replicates too much of Facebook Messenger’s functionality for the company to be comfortable with it. Facebook has long been touchy about providing access to the biggest of its strategic competitors like Google and Twitter. Back in 2010, Twitter’s then-CEO Ev Williams griped about the company’s unwillingness to let Twitter users look up their Facebook friends on the service or to send Facebook updates to Twitter. In the same year, Google and Facebook had a back-and-forth over Facebook’s access to Gmail’s contact importer because the social network wouldn’t send data the other way.

But it’s only in the last year that the company has really stepped up enforcement against other startups. After cutting off Voxer last month, Facebook clarified its policy, saying that apps needed to share content back to Facebook and couldn’t replicate too much of Facebook’s core functionality. It cited the same policy in cutting off Twitter’s Vine hours after launch and Russian search engine Yandex’s app Wonder, because it replicated too much of graph search.

In MessageMe’s case, asking the company to share data back is kind of silly considering that people wouldn’t want to reveal who they message with or what they privately say.

But the effect might not be too bad on the company. Vine has thrived over the last two months and still holds the #1 social networking spot in the U.S. on the iOS app store. Voxer’s active usage appears to have stayed level in the month after Facebook cut them off.

Plus, MessageMe actually doesn’t rely on Facebook for most of its growth. It instead uses the address book, which is the same method that other big messaging apps like WhatsApp and Line have used.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook hasn’t had a major, announcement-filled developer conference since September 2011′s f8, and won’t for the forseeable future. The Mobile DevCons it just announced won’t have huge news, I hear, but will let developers meet Facebook staff and partners in New York, London, and Seoul at one-day gatherings this spring.

Mobile DevCon will take place in New York on April 18th, London on May 2nd, Seoul on May 7th and pre-registration for the free events is open at those links. The DevCons’ goal is to help developers better understand its platform so they feel confident investing resources into building apps connected to Facebook.

Chatter from the company indicates there may be some more minor developer-focused updates discussed, but nothing like the launch of Timeline and the Open Graph platform we saw at f8. The changes relayed at the events could be a big deal to developers, including modifications to virality and the data they can access. But the general public probably won’t have a ton to drool over.

The DevCons seem more akin to Facebook’s previous Developer Garage events than say, Apple’s WWDC, where lots of new products are announced. The fact that there are three events over several weeks instead of one underlines that this is about building relationships with developers rather than wow’ing the world.

Facebook says the agenda of the Mobile DevCons will include:

• how to implement our iOS, Android and JS SDKs to drive installs and engagement
• how to best implement Facebook Login to bring trusted, cross-platform identity to your apps
• best practices for using Open Graph to share rich and engaging stories back to Facebook
• how to use Facebook to power engaging social, mobile games
• design tips and product best practices to increase user satisfaction
• the tools, libraries and techniques we at Facebook use to build our own iOS, Android and Mobile Web apps

And

• You’ll also get to meet like-minded mobile developers and hear first-hand from companies like Fab.com, GetGlue, Zeebox and EyeEm about their experiences building for mobile.

The speaker lineup is the same for each, and doesn’t include any of the heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Chris Cox, Boz, or Sam Lessin that Facebook usually trots out for big events. Doug Purdy, director of product for Facebook’s platform is the biggest name on the list.

Just because there won’t be a slew of huge product launches or execs on stage doesn’t mean these events aren’t important. On the surface, Facebook wants to redefine itself as a mobile-first company, and this posturing should help. Seriously, though, Facebook needs loyalty from third-party app developers now more than ever. Facebook just opened additional news feeds with its recent redesign, and has to find content to fill them.

If anything, it could use the conferences to dispel the common misconception that it’s trying to compete with iOS and Android. In reality, Facebook wants to be the social layer that ties friends together across all apps on all platforms and all devices. Mobile game payments aren’t Facebook’s cash cow. Ads are. If it can get more apps connected and actively sharing to the social network, it gains content to show ads next to and data to target them with.

Above all, though, Facebook wants to guide developers into building great social apps for mobile so people gain the value of their graph on the go.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Whales are big spenders, the ones that prop up casinos and social games. In music, whales are bands’ rabid fans. BandPage‘s new “Experiences“ feature lets artists sell them seats on stage, unique merch, or even a trip to the bowling alley with the band. The shift from MP3s to streaming means monetizing the long tail that earns musicians cents not dollars, but BandPage Experiences could keep them afloat.

Whether you’re a chart-topping artist or a garage band, somebody loves you, and they’re willing to pay a ton to get closer to you. BandPage Experiences creates a marketplace and an embeddable e-commerce widget where artists can offer less-scalable VIP access, meet-ups with band, and limited-edition merchandise.

It’s a smart new experiment from BandPage. Once known as RootMusic, BandPage lets artists set up a profile app on Facebook full of streaming music, tour dates and media. At one point it had 500,000 bands and 32 million monthly Facebook users. It made money on a cheap subscription to extra customization and virality options, and raised a total of $18.3 million.

But Facebook’s Timeline redesign a year ago hit it hard. Without the ability to be a band’s default landing page for non-fans, traffic plummeted to around 1 million users. Since then it’s tried to unshackle from Facebook with BandPage Everywhere and Connect, which lets musicians create synced websites and widgets so they can publish once but update all their online presences.

BandPage CEO J Sider explains that most artists are missing out on huge revenue by restricting themselves to standard touring, merch and music sales. “It’s like a coffee shop that’s only open two or three times a year. We want to open it up year-round. If they gave you more experiences, you’d be willing to spend more on the [artists] you really love. It’s for well-known acts down to bands that are just starting out [for who] earning a couple hundred extra bucks per show can make a big difference.”

Along with helping artists get richer, Experiences turns BandPage into an e-commerce company that will earn a 15 percent cut of what bands earn by offering special treatment through Experiences. By definition, artists can’t sell too many of these unique opportunities. BandPage has to hope the idea of hyper-monetizing the short head rather than focusing on the long tail catches on.

Sider likens this new chapter in BandPage’s evolution to aggregating what fans waste time wishing and searching for. “There are fan clubs across the Internet, but as fans it can be hard to reach them. We can create a marketplace the way Airbnb and Kickstarter did. We see a huge potential for musicians to make a living off of it.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The big enterprise companies are starting to put pressure on the startups in the growing field of data analytics. But the pressure is not as much related to innovation as it is to using their marketing muscle to build software stacks they can sell to retain existing customers.

Drawn to Scale Co-Founder Bradford Stephens sees this in his experiences, especially compared to last year when there were maybe three different companies marketing a Hadoop distribution. But just this week alone, EMC, Intel and HP all announced their own distributions.

Out of all this, we are hearing a lot of talk about why one comapny’s Hadoop distribution is so much better than a competitor’s. In our conversation, Stephens talks about the competition, the growing pressure on startups to do more than innovate and start bringing in business in face of the larger threats from the legacy vendors.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The technology industry has gone barking mad. Last week I got pitched by a dog named Mitzi. “We are Europe’s BarkBox“, yapped the excitable dachshund, before explaining that UK-based Fings For Fido is a subscription service where each month dog owners are sent a box of “canine goodies”, such as dog treats, toys, and grooming products. Alternatively, the startup offers one-off boxes as a way to sample the service or marketed around a particular calendar event, such as a Christmas box or one for Valentine’s Day (yes, even our four-legged friends adhere to Cupid’s timetable, apparently).

The concept isn’t new, of course. Along with BarkBox in the U.S., there’s BestFriendBox, while Fings For Fido has a direct competitor this side of the pond in the form of the recently launched PoochPack. However, it’s the type of products that end up in each box and the community feel of the site that Fings For Fido claims sets it apart from the competition.

“Our edge on the other UK markets is our approach”, yaps Mitzi, no doubt wagging his tail. “We are not just looking at getting cheap product delivered to the customer via a subscription. With our dog behaviourist we want to make sure that what we are sending our customers is actually better for your pet.”

The dog behaviourist — whatever that is — that Mitzi refers to is actually one of Fings For Fido’s co-founders. “She gives us key guidance on what is beneficial to a dog and what is just a marketing gimmick.”

In addition, curated content, such as free articles offering pet advice and an active social media presence, plays an important supporting role. “We are really trying to create a real community around our brand and give passionate dog owners a place to discuss and share their experiences with dogs”, yaps Mitzi.

And, in an effort to “give back”, the company has aligned with the organisation “Hounds for Hero’s” in the UK by promising to donate a portion of its profit to the charity from each Fings For Fido box sold.

Bootstrapped and soft launched last November, Fings For Fido began by purchasing the contents of each box from suppliers as would any retailer. However, with the subscription model catching on in the UK and raising awareness amongst the pet industry, the company says it’s now being approached by suppliers, such as independent pet bakeries and various other dog products who want in on the action and see it as a good marketing opportunity.

Fings For Fido’s tech (what little there is) is bespoke, too, shunning an off-the-shelf e-commerce solution to enable it to add additional features such as QR codes on each box that link directly to a feedback page, essentially creating a 360 degree loop that circles online to offline and back again, and helps suppliers and Fings For Fido itself learn more about what works and what doesn’t. The company has also been experimenting with “flash sales” on its Facebook page, with some success.

“The pet and specifically the dog market is a highly emotional and passionate space, people love their dogs and like to spend money on them,” adds Mitzi, sounding less and less like a real dog.

“In the UK and Europe getting new and exciting products has predominately been left to the pet owners in that they had to search for and find new products, and make a decision about how good the product is for their pets. We want to solve that by offering new and exciting products to these owners via a monthly goodie box, so they get the latest, most nutritional product delivered directly to their doors,” he says.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Eric Feng, former Kleiner Perkins partner and Hulu CTO, is joining social magazine app Flipboard’s executive team as CTO, running engineering and strategy.

Most recently, Feng was at Airtime, after the company acquired his former startup Erly, the Kleiner Perkins-backed app aimed at letting people create social experiences around their experiences.

Prior to founding Erly, Feng was a partner at Kleiner Perkins investing in greentech and was also a tech advisor to former Vice President Al Gore. And he was previously the founding CTO of Hulu

Another Erly team member Hulu engineering team member, Eugene Wei, is also joining Flipboard, according to founder Mike McCue in this Fox Business video.

There’s no doubt that Feng is a big talent win for Flipboard, which is also backed by Kleiner Perkins. Flipboard has been growing fast, and is adding one new user every second now. As of last August, Flipboard had 20 million users, but that number is likely much higher.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch