Category Archives: Social Networking
T-Mobile says British holiday-makers are a nation of ‘Smoasters’
Rating: That’s Social Media Boasters
Six out of ten Brits can’t live without ‘Smoasting’ (Social Media Boasting) whilst on holiday, according to research from T-Mobile UK. It also found that:- four in ten Brits log-on to Facebook and Twitter at least once a day whilst abroad; and almost half of Brits (45 per cent) will only tag themselves on a holiday photo if the location is glamorous and it will make them look good. Naturally this research has been timed to neatly coincide with T-Mobile’s Internet and Broadband Travel Boosters launch. When a traveller wants to ‘Smoast’, the network will automatically re-direct them to a page where they will be prompted to buy a booster. Wonder whose software’s behind this, then? Continue reading
Video ad friendly Overblog platform launches into UK
Rating: Gives bloggers the chance to monetise their content
Claiming to be the Number One blogging platform in Europe, Overblog, has now launch of its new platform into the UK. The idea behind Overblog is that it brings together the fragmented social postings of bloggers into a single live stream. Significantly, there are many aspects of Overblog that are entirely mobile friendly. For example, Overblog supports live video streaming from your mobile phone. The major incentive for bloggers to migrate to the Overblog platform, however, seems to be the chance to monetise their content. This facility has been made pssible by a merger between Overblog and Ebuzzing – a leader in social video advertising back in 2010. Continue reading
Youngsters want SMS integrated into social networks
Rating: Survey for tyntec shows strong potentilal for OTT services, too
A Pan-Atlantic survey carried out for mobile interaction specialist, tyntec, has found that UK youngsters embrace mobile social networking more than US counterparts. The survey -conducted by YouGov – reveals that 66 per cent percent of UK mobile users aged between 16-24 check Facebook and Twitter on the go daily, as opposed to just 37 per cent percent of Americans. The poll of 2,000 UK/US smartphone users show the so-called ‘millenial’ demographic in the UK is more advanced when it comes to using emerging cloud-based mobile services. Continue reading
GREE helps take Moshi Monsters brand mobile
Rating: Combined user base of almost 300 million
Mobile social gaming specialist, GREE, is bringing the power of mobile to famed online brand – Moshi Monsters, created by Mind Candy. This move will bring together 60 million globally registered Moshi Monsters users and GREE’s 230 million worldwide users. The partnership will kick off with the launch of two new Moshi Monsters mobile games on the GREE Platform, set for release in Q4 2012. The pair will deliver fully localised mobile games in multiple languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. Continue reading
Facebook shuts down Glancee
Rating: As it’s acquired the management & development team
Hot on the heels of its acquisition of the photo sharing site, Instagram, Glancee has admitted to being bought by social networking giant, Facebook. The management and development team have already revealed that it is off to join Facebook at Menlo Park and “to build great products for over 900 million Facebook users.” And the service is no more. The announcement leaked out last week [May 4th 2012] but already the Glancee app has disappeared from the Apple iTunes App Store, for example. If you visit the Glancee web site now, you’ll see a link for former users. This takes you to the relevant page on Facebook from which you can download all of your Glancee messages – if you were a member in the first place, of course. Hopefully, Glancee won’t go the way of the Zyb service. Continue reading
Googles AR glasses outed in San Francisco
Rating: Could this lead to augmented reality bling?
Google’s decision to unveil a pair of augmented reality (AR) glasses via a Google Circles’ posting caused something of a stir within the industry. Especially since the news was almost immediately followed by reports (and photographs) of Google own co-founder Sergey Brin out in San Francisco wearing them. The first picture was courtesy of blogger Robert Scoble on Twitter here. However, Brin appears to have confirmed that the Google Glasses were still very much at prototype stage. The glasses are actually the result of researchers working on something called Project Glass and the chief culprits appear to be Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thrun. You can view their Circles posting here. GoMobile News was intrigued to get a reaction to the news from Christian Lindholm, CIO was design house – Fjord. Continue reading
Operators have love/hate relationship with Facebook
Rating: Facebook could turn operators into digital drug mules
Ever since Evan Williams, Twitter’s CEO, gave a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress 2011, we’ve always though that mobile network operators have an ambivalent attitude towards ‘disruptive’ technologies. Surely ‘tweets’ displace SMS traffic? Now Facebook is coming increasingly under the spotlight. According to its pre-IPO filing, Facebook now has more than 400 million users accessing the service on mobile devices, which is up from 70 million three years ago. These figures confirm that Facebook is now the dominant social networking ecosystem on the move as well as on the desktop. But what are the network operators getting out of this? Facebook’s ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) business model is creating significant strategic and revenue risks for mobile operators, according to Magister Advisors. Yet research carried out by Socialbakers shows that brands like Vodafone are benefitting significantly from interaction with users on Facebook. Continue reading
PingMe for W7 Mango on its way
Rating: App comes to most mobile OS in 6 months
RadiumOne, the firm behind the PingMe Messenger app, has revealed that it hopes to unveil a version PingMe for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) next week [April 2012]. Following an overhaul of its existing BlackBerry application, the company claims that in just six months, PingMe has [...]
Spanish speakers hit by fake Android banking apps
Rating: Just exactly is this malware escaping into the wild?
It seems a number of players in the mobile security sector are getting hot under the collar thanks to the discovery of ‘fake’ mobile banking Android apps. At present, it seems to GoMobile News that these attacks are targeting Spanish speakers – particularly as the banks in question are Banesto, BBVA and Santander. What’s really worrying the security experts is that they are not quite sure how these Android malware apps are escaping into the wild. However, at least one security software provider, ESET, is confident that its Android security app will pick up these nasty example of malware ‘heuristically’ as a variant of the Android Trojan – SMS Stealer C. The issue has been highlighted by The Hacker News here which in turn spotted mention of the outbreak on McAfee blog post here. Continue reading
iPhone app makes social network sharing easier
Rating: Via.me shows intriguing potential
OK. Hands up those who don’t need an app that enables you to manage all your social media content in one place? Thought so. With Via.me from RadiumOne Labs userscan create, filter and share pictures, videos, audio content and text across all their social networks. As RadiumOne has correctly observed, most people possess multiple social media accounts. Hence, an ability to publish all types of content from a single tool is extremely useful. Continue reading
GREE announces its global ambitions
Rating: Mobile social networking aiming for 1 billion users
Talk about ambitious targets. GoMo News has just been chatting with Japan’s GREE. The company is aiming to attract one billion users and in doing so will go head to head with the likes of Facebook. The best bit is that the company is absolutely confident of succeeding. GREE founder and CEO, Yoshikazu Tanaka told GoMo News he expects to reach the target within three to five years. He is basing his calculations on the success of Facebook which presently has 800 million users and is adding100 million a year. What is GREE’s secret weapon? The answer is games. Continue reading
#SMW Nokia launches ‘Social Visualiser’
Nokia has announced the launch of Agora – ‘The Social Visualiser’, a real-time dashboard that brings together conversation, insight and consumer device activity, in a real-time and easily digestible format. Continue reading
Shazam adds new features for iOS device owners
Rating: Shazam Player supports a whole host of new stuff
It seems that the popular music recognition app, Shazam, has now been improved for those with an iOS device in the USA or UK. This new version is known as Shazam Player and offers considerable new features. These include the ability to see streaming lyrics and watch YouTube videos of your favourite tracks and artists. Plus Shazam Player provides one of the best ways to order your own music collection. Continue reading
EyeEm builds on it visual social network for smartphones
Rating: Version 2.0 for iOS & Android is apparently even better
It’s one of those things. Either you ‘get’ what an app like EyeEm does or it sails straight over you head. GoMo News isn’t committing itself but apparently, Germany’s EyeEm has produced an even better version of its ‘visual social network’ app which runs on the two major mobile OS platforms – Android and iOS. The whole point about his app is that registered users can share their audio-visual experiences with like minded people in the near vicinity. Basically, the company has researched the weird and wonderful things that its user community has been doing with the app and upgraded the bits they want fixing. Continue reading
BMW launches Qype for iDrive
Qype, a European consumer reviews site, has struck a deal with car giant BMW to bring Qype‘s app to BMW drivers across the UK.
Qype allows consumers access to over two million reviews across 166,000 cities worldwide, covering everything from bars and beauticians to plumbers and primary schools. Continue reading
