GameSpasm

I knew something good was happening when I saw the rectangles.

This week I did something that I hadn’t done for five months and 12 days: I went to Flickr on my laptop, accessed some photos on my hard drive, uploaded them, named them, tagged them, and organized them in a set.

The magic of the Internet happened before my eyes, and they joined the other rectangular images on the venerable photo-sharing site. And finally, for the first time in almost half a year, I had something beside square pics on my Flickr photostream.

Yahoo announced its massive revamp of the Flickr service with three missing Es, calling the updated site Biggr, Spectaculr, and Wherevr. But really, the update boils down to two massive changes: Dropping freemium and making an old and tired user interface awesome.

Since I was just wondering about reupping my Pro account, the first is really significant.

Yahoo’s giving each Flickr user a full terabyte of space for images for free, which essentially means you don’t need to be a Pro user anymore. You still can, for an ad-free account, or to add even more space … but I don’t mind a few ads, and I’m only using 0.8 percent of my freely available terabyte anyways.

But the best and most important is the incredible new look.

There’s varied response to the new look, to say the least, and the official forum thread on the new layout has a staggering 241 pages of user comments: 24,102 in total so far. The vast majority of them are negative, and most of those appear to be from long-time users who liked the site the way it was and are asking Flickr to change it back.

Good luck.

Flickr as it was was turning into a byway, a leftover, and an also-ran. Which is why most of the pics on my photostream and home page were square: They were exports, shares from Instagram photos. In other words, Flickr was changing from the place where you went to share photos from, to the place where you shared photos to. That may be a small change in the English language, but it’s a massive change in user engagement.

And it had huge effects on Flickr’s traffic, which dropped about 40 percent in the last year alone:

The new look is gorgeous and photo-centric, giving photos — the raison d’etre of Flickr — center stage.

Sure, it’s Pinterest-ic and Tumblr-y. But if you love images and imagery, the new Flickr displays photos immeasurably better that the previous iteration. In a funny modern way, your digital photostream now resembles an old-fashioned photography album, without any cheesy in-your-face design elements attempting to highlight the fact.

In addition, the new layout options gave Yahoo the option of displaying images with much more creativity while honoring the photographer’s shot selection — such as Flickr displaying panorama shots across the entire page:

I’m sold. Flickr, I’m back.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

I agree. And so does one of the more famous photographers on Flickr, Thomas Hawk:

despite all of the naysayers about the new @flickr, my page has never had more engagement than it has there in the last 3 days.

— Thomas Hawk (@thomashawk) May 23, 2013

Image credits: John Koetsier

Last week VentureBeat ran an article on the nationwide unveiling of Collegefeed’s early career marketplace. The company aims to help college students present themselves professionally online, explore career options, and connect with employers. In order to test how well they accomplish these goals, I recruited a current college senior to help me out.

Meet Max

Max is a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University. This June he’ll be graduating and is currently searching for a job in Silicon Valley. I asked him to test Collegefeed’s services to see how useful he found it and what his general thoughts on the site were as someone who is the company’s target market.

How easy is Collegefeed’s sign-up process?

When registering for the site, new users are promised “3 steps, 1 minute, and Collegefeed will be personalized just for you.” Max listed the top three companies he would like to work for, then he listed three areas of interest, and finally he filled out basic information on himself, though he was able to pull most of this automatically off of LinkedIn through the site. He said he found the registration straightforward and very easy.

After completing his registration, he worked on filling out his profile. Here he felt that some of the information asked of him was a little specific or odd. For example, the site asks for users to upload work samples. Not sure what to include and hesitant to go searching through old binders and folders, he opted just to skip this step.

As part of filling out his profile, he was asked to create a personal statement, something which he equated to the first question in a real job interview. He thought it would be a good way for employers to quickly get an idea about him. Overall, he thought his profile was a simple but effective way of conveying information about himself and what he values.

With his profile (mostly) completed, he started to navigate around the site. You have three areas outside of your profile to explore: “companies,” “jobs,” and “peer assistance.”

He first clicked on “jobs” and found that the “jobs for me” section was the most helpful. Here the site recommended positions and companies that were similar to the companies and areas of interest he named when registering. The rest of the “jobs” section he found less effective, namely due to being forced to search for companies or keywords rather than just browse. He said this made it difficult to find jobs he was interested in, but once he did find something interesting, it was just a click of a link to be taken to the application page for the position.

Next he navigated to the “companies” section.

“The companies tab is pretty cool, actually. Search by name and then you can click on one and it will give you an overview of the company. The company page has sections for overview, products, jobs, and competition. Although, they don’t always have as much info as I would like, they still have a ways to go to improve the size of their database,” he said.

The “peer assistance” section was where he spent most of his time. In this section other users posted accounts of interviews with different companies and the questions asked. He mentioned that although he found it potentially very useful, the fact that there were not many companies represented diminished its effectiveness.

Overall, Max thought that the site had some kinks to work out but that he found it very useful. Only a user for a few days, he says he plans on using it in the future to find jobs and that once the small issues and limited content issues get fixed, it will be even more helpful of a tool.

How Collegefeed goes about addressing these small issues and lack of content will determine how the company, whose site had a limited launch in March and a nationwide release ten days ago, succeeds in the future.

Collegefeed’s plans for the future

In a phone interview, Sanjeev Agrawal, Collegefeed’s chief executive, revealed that the number of current users was only in the thousands. He would not reveal a more specific number than that. Following up on this point though, he said that the company is not pursuing a large user base at the moment, instead focusing on developing the social network.

According to Agrawal, Collegefeed is currently “like Facebook when it was only likes and pokes.”

Planned for the near future are more conversations between recruiters and users using Google+ Hangouts. The capability to connect with other users is also planned for the near future, though the company is trying to make sure connections are used as a tool to be leveraged, rather than just another metric for the site to boast.

“We don’t want to be social just for the sake of being social,” Agrawal said.

In a landscape with competition such as LinkedIn and ReadyForce, Collegefeed is hoping to attract both new users and companies. The company is currently speaking with investors regarding raising a first round of funding and this capital could be used to attract the users and companies the site needs to truly thrive.

Photo credit: Collegefeed

Last week VentureBeat ran an article on the nationwide unveiling of Collegefeed’s early career marketplace. The company aims to help college students present themselves professionally online, explore career options, and connect with employers. In order to test how well they accomplish these goals, I recruited a current college senior to help me out.

Meet Max

Max is a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University. This June he’ll be graduating and is currently searching for a job in Silicon Valley. I asked him to test Collegefeed’s services to see how useful he found it and what his general thoughts on the site were as someone who is the company’s target market.

How easy is Collegefeed’s sign-up process?

When registering for the site, new users are promised “3 steps, 1 minute, and Collegefeed will be personalized just for you.” Max listed the top three companies he would like to work for, then he listed three areas of interest, and finally he filled out basic information on himself, though he was able to pull most of this automatically off of LinkedIn through the site. He said he found the registration straightforward and very easy.

After completing his registration, he worked on filling out his profile. Here he felt that some of the information asked of him was a little specific or odd. For example, the site asks for users to upload work samples. Not sure what to include and hesitant to go searching through old binders and folders, he opted just to skip this step.

As part of filling out his profile, he was asked to create a personal statement, something which he equated to the first question in a real job interview. He thought it would be a good way for employers to quickly get an idea about him. Overall, he thought his profile was a simple but effective way of conveying information about himself and what he values.

With his profile (mostly) completed, he started to navigate around the site. You have three areas outside of your profile to explore: “companies,” “jobs,” and “peer assistance.”

He first clicked on “jobs” and found that the “jobs for me” section was the most helpful. Here the site recommended positions and companies that were similar to the companies and areas of interest he named when registering. The rest of the “jobs” section he found less effective, namely due to being forced to search for companies or keywords rather than just browse. He said this made it difficult to find jobs he was interested in, but once he did find something interesting, it was just a click of a link to be taken to the application page for the position.

Next he navigated to the “companies” section.

“The companies tab is pretty cool, actually. Search by name and then you can click on one and it will give you an overview of the company. The company page has sections for overview, products, jobs, and competition. Although, they don’t always have as much info as I would like, they still have a ways to go to improve the size of their database,” he said.

The “peer assistance” section was where he spent most of his time. In this section other users posted accounts of interviews with different companies and the questions asked. He mentioned that although he found it potentially very useful, the fact that there were not many companies represented diminished its effectiveness.

Overall, Max thought that the site had some kinks to work out but that he found it very useful. Only a user for a few days, he says he plans on using it in the future to find jobs and that once the small issues and limited content issues get fixed, it will be even more helpful of a tool.

How Collegefeed goes about addressing these small issues and lack of content will determine how the company, whose site had a limited launch in March and a nationwide release ten days ago, succeeds in the future.

Collegefeed’s plans for the future

In a phone interview, Sanjeev Agrawal, Collegefeed’s chief executive, revealed that the number of current users was only in the thousands. He would not reveal a more specific number than that. Following up on this point though, he said that the company is not pursuing a large user base at the moment, instead focusing on developing the social network.

According to Agrawal, Collegefeed is currently “like Facebook when it was only likes and pokes.”

Planned for the near future are more conversations between recruiters and users using Google+ Hangouts. The capability to connect with other users is also planned for the near future, though the company is trying to make sure connections are used as a tool to be leveraged, rather than just another metric for the site to boast.

“We don’t want to be social just for the sake of being social,” Agrawal said.

In a landscape with competition such as LinkedIn and ReadyForce, Collegefeed is hoping to attract both new users and companies. The company is currently speaking with investors regarding raising a first round of funding and this capital could be used to attract the users and companies the site needs to truly thrive.

Photo credit: Collegefeed

Last week VentureBeat ran an article on the nationwide unveiling of Collegefeed’s early career marketplace. The company aims to help college students present themselves professionally online, explore career options, and connect with employers. In order to test how well they accomplish these goals, I recruited a current college senior to help me out.

Meet Max

Max is a mechanical engineering student at Santa Clara University. This June he’ll be graduating and is currently searching for a job in Silicon Valley. I asked him to test Collegefeed’s services to see how useful he found it and what his general thoughts on the site were as someone who is the company’s target market.

How easy is Collegefeed’s sign-up process?

When registering for the site, new users are promised “3 steps, 1 minute, and Collegefeed will be personalized just for you.” Max listed the top three companies he would like to work for, then he listed three areas of interest, and finally he filled out basic information on himself, though he was able to pull most of this automatically off of LinkedIn through the site. He said he found the registration straightforward and very easy.

After completing his registration, he worked on filling out his profile. Here he felt that some of the information asked of him was a little specific or odd. For example, the site asks for users to upload work samples. Not sure what to include and hesitant to go searching through old binders and folders, he opted just to skip this step.

As part of filling out his profile, he was asked to create a personal statement, something which he equated to the first question in a real job interview. He thought it would be a good way for employers to quickly get an idea about him. Overall, he thought his profile was a simple but effective way of conveying information about himself and what he values.

With his profile (mostly) completed, he started to navigate around the site. You have three areas outside of your profile to explore: “companies,” “jobs,” and “peer assistance.”

He first clicked on “jobs” and found that the “jobs for me” section was the most helpful. Here the site recommended positions and companies that were similar to the companies and areas of interest he named when registering. The rest of the “jobs” section he found less effective, namely due to being forced to search for companies or keywords rather than just browse. He said this made it difficult to find jobs he was interested in, but once he did find something interesting, it was just a click of a link to be taken to the application page for the position.

Next he navigated to the “companies” section.

“The companies tab is pretty cool, actually. Search by name and then you can click on one and it will give you an overview of the company. The company page has sections for overview, products, jobs, and competition. Although, they don’t always have as much info as I would like, they still have a ways to go to improve the size of their database,” he said.

The “peer assistance” section was where he spent most of his time. In this section other users posted accounts of interviews with different companies and the questions asked. He mentioned that although he found it potentially very useful, the fact that there were not many companies represented diminished its effectiveness.

Overall, Max thought that the site had some kinks to work out but that he found it very useful. Only a user for a few days, he says he plans on using it in the future to find jobs and that once the small issues and limited content issues get fixed, it will be even more helpful of a tool.

How Collegefeed goes about addressing these small issues and lack of content will determine how the company, whose site had a limited launch in March and a nationwide release ten days ago, succeeds in the future.

Collegefeed’s plans for the future

In a phone interview, Sanjeev Agrawal, Collegefeed’s chief executive, revealed that the number of current users was only in the thousands. He would not reveal a more specific number than that. Following up on this point though, he said that the company is not pursuing a large user base at the moment, instead focusing on developing the social network.

According to Agrawal, Collegefeed is currently “like Facebook when it was only likes and pokes.”

Planned for the near future are more conversations between recruiters and users using Google+ Hangouts. The capability to connect with other users is also planned for the near future, though the company is trying to make sure connections are used as a tool to be leveraged, rather than just another metric for the site to boast.

“We don’t want to be social just for the sake of being social,” Agrawal said.

In a landscape with competition such as LinkedIn and ReadyForce, Collegefeed is hoping to attract both new users and companies. The company is currently speaking with investors regarding raising a first round of funding and this capital could be used to attract the users and companies the site needs to truly thrive.

Photo credit: Collegefeed

Foursquare and Gnip have entered into a partnership to fork over your checkin data to developers and big brands. Gnip will get access to Foursquare’s full firehose — every checkin, everywhere, everyone, and in real time.

Of course, the companies tell us all the data will be totally anonymized. And we have no reason not to believe that’s the case. After all, from a business point of view, it’s very expensive and not too profitable to spy on inidividuals; it may be vastly profitable to be able to predict crowd behavior, define mass trends, and measure what kinds of location-based offers have historically performed well.

“Location is one of the most interesting ways to view data and no one understands the power of location like Foursquare,” writes Gnip product manager Steve Perella on the company blog.

“With more than 35 million registered users, nearly 4 billion total check-ins, and over 75 million API calls a day, Foursquare is the location layer for the Internet, helping to connect people with places around the world.”

Realtime firehose access will give Gnip data about every checkin that happens on Foursquare. Gnip, which bundles and re-sells the data (mostly to big brands), will get the checkin information only (time, date, location); no user data (username, name) will be provided.

So, for example, Red Lobster could use Gnip’s Foursquare firehose to find out how many checkins happen at Red Lobster locations in San Francisco during Lobsterfest, but they couldn’t see who exactly was checking in. (This is so sadly hypothetical, if only because there are no Red Lobster locations in San Francisco. We oughta have a petition. Those biscuits, man.)

Foursquare data scientist Blake Shaw said in a statement, “We are capturing this amazing signal about what millions of people are doing in the real world at every moment of the day in cities all around the globe. We have seen that when we aggregate checkin patterns across many individuals, we can measure features of cities at a higher resolution than was ever possible before. I think this data can act almost like a microscope for cities.”

Image credit: jswaby/Flickr

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Foursquare and Gnip have entered into a partnership to fork over your checkin data to developers and big brands. Gnip will get access to Foursquare’s full firehose — every checkin, everywhere, everyone, and in real time.

Of course, the companies tell us all the data will be totally anonymized. And we have no reason not to believe that’s the case. After all, from a business point of view, it’s very expensive and not too profitable to spy on inidividuals; it may be vastly profitable to be able to predict crowd behavior, define mass trends, and measure what kinds of location-based offers have historically performed well.

“Location is one of the most interesting ways to view data and no one understands the power of location like Foursquare,” writes Gnip product manager Steve Perella on the company blog.

“With more than 35 million registered users, nearly 4 billion total check-ins, and over 75 million API calls a day, Foursquare is the location layer for the Internet, helping to connect people with places around the world.”

Realtime firehose access will give Gnip data about every checkin that happens on Foursquare. Gnip, which bundles and re-sells the data (mostly to big brands), will get the checkin information only (time, date, location); no user data (username, name) will be provided.

So, for example, Red Lobster could use Gnip’s Foursquare firehose to find out how many checkins happen at Red Lobster locations in San Francisco during Lobsterfest, but they couldn’t see who exactly was checking in. (This is so sadly hypothetical, if only because there are no Red Lobster locations in San Francisco. We oughta have a petition. Those biscuits, man.)

Foursquare data scientist Blake Shaw said in a statement, “We are capturing this amazing signal about what millions of people are doing in the real world at every moment of the day in cities all around the globe. We have seen that when we aggregate checkin patterns across many individuals, we can measure features of cities at a higher resolution than was ever possible before. I think this data can act almost like a microscope for cities.”

Image credit: jswaby/Flickr

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Social driving app Waze is attracting its fair share of suitors. Google is reportedly in talks to acquire the company for more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports, following a report from a few weeks ago that Facebook was eyeing Waze.

It sounds like Waze could be setting itself up for a bidding war between the two companies, and it likely sees itself as more valuable than the $1 billion Facebook paid for photo-sharing app Instagram last year. Other suitors may also join in — Microsoft has reportedly invested in Waze, and the driving app would be a good addition to its Bing Maps.

Waze lets drivers crowdsource driving conditions and other data with its mobile apps, which often give drivers better insight into traffic conditions than other systems. The company may also choose to stay independent and raise another round of funding, Bloomberg notes. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Waze has raised $67 million so far from Kleiner Perkins, BluerRun Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and others.

If it does come down to a Facebook vs. Google buyout, I’m rooting for Google.

Facebook has no experience with mapping yet, which means it could be some time before it fully taps into Waze’s potential. While snapping up the driving app would be a good way for Facebook to kick-start its mapping ambitions (and it would also work well to support Facebook’s recent local search focus), for Waze it could actually be a step back.

Google, on the other hand, has years of mapping experience — expertise that became clear when Apple tried its hand at maps in iOS 6 with disastrous results. Waze would fit nicely into Google Maps’ mobile turn-by-turn directions, but there’s also a huge amount of potential for the company in Google’s moonshot projects. Imagine Google’s self-driving cars autonomously reporting driving conditions, or Waze integration with Google Glass to give pedestrians the ability to contribute to Waze’s data as well.

Waze’s social elements may seem better suited to Facebook right now, but that’s an area Google is getting better in too. If Waze wants to continue down the road of becoming an essential mapping solution, Google seems like the ideal mate.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

The social driving app Waze is collecting its fair share of suitors. Google is reportedly in talks to acquire the company for more than $1 billion, Bloomberg reports, following a report from a few weeks ago that Facebook was eyeing Waze.

It sounds like Waze could be setting itself up for a bidding war between the two companies, especially since it likely sees itself more valuable than Instagram’s $1 billion purchase price. Other suitors may also join in — Microsoft has reportedly invested in Waze, and the driving app would be a good addition to its Bing Maps.

Waze lets drivers crowdsource driving conditions and other data with its mobile apps, which can often give a better indication of traffic than other systems. The company may also choose to stay independent and raise another round of funding, Bloomberg notes. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Waze has raised $67 million so far from Kleiner Perkins, BluerRun Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and others.

For now, though, the two main contenders for Waze seem to be  Facebook and Google. I’m rooting for Google.

Facebook has no experience with mapping yet, which means it could be some time before it fully taps into Waze’s potential. While snapping up the driving app would be a good way for Facebook to kick-start its mapping ambitions (and it would also work well on top of Facebook’s recent local search focus), for Waze it could actually be a step back in terms of its overall focus.

Google, on the other hand, has years of mapping experience — expertise that became clear when Apple tried its hand at maps in iOS 6 with disastrous results. Waze would fit nicely into Google Maps’ mobile turn-by-turn directions, but there’s also a huge amount of potential for the company in Google’s moonshot projects. Imagine Google’s self-driving cars autonomously reporting driving conditions, or Waze integration with Google Glass to give pedestrians the ability to contribute to Waze’s data as well.

Waze’s social elements may seem better suited to Facebook right now, but that’s something Google is getting better at as well. If Waze wants to continue down the road of becoming an essential mapping solution, Google seems like the ideal mate.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nextdoor is going mobile. Today, the ‘private social network for neighborhoods’ released an iOS application so people can be connected to what’s going on in their community anytime, anywhere.

Nextdoor raised $40 million in Februrary 2013 to accommodate its rapid growth. In less than a year, it has gone from 3,600 neighborhoods to 12,000 and has a presence in all 50 states. Thirty percent of all visits to the site come through mobile browsers, and there was clearly high demand for a dedicated iPhone app.

Founder Nirav Tolia built Nextdoor after hearing some startling statistics about the state of the American community. Thirty percent of Americans do not know their neighbors by name and yet strong communities are linked to the overall wellbeing of its inhabitants and weak communities make people more vulnerable to safety and security threats.

“There are trends enabled by the intersection of social media and local content,” Tolia said in an interview earlier this year. “People want to come together to create safer neighborhoods, whether it is to track down a lost dog or warn neighbors against suspicious activity. We are helping neighbors help themselves when it comes to crime and safety. Everyone lives in a neighborhood and wants it to be stronger.”

Nextdoor is an online place for real-world neighbors to connect. People post personal profiles and there are discussion forums and news feeds where they can engage with their neighbors. The site’s most recent update focused on crime and safety and added in features like urgent alerts pushed to mobile devices and integration with police and fire departments. Users clearly wanted access to this “lifeline” while they are away from their computer. Now, they can warn neighbors about road construction, share photos of lost pets, report keys found on the sidewalk, or organize people around real-time issues.

David Sze of Greylock Partners, one of Nextdoor’s investors, said the mobile app brings “immediacy and context” to the platform and will help Nextdoor on its mission to “bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood.” Going mobile is an important step for most startups these days, particularly consumer-facing ones, and for a company that specifically deals with the real-world and real-time events, it is crucial.

Nextdoor has raised over $40 million and is based in San Francisco.  There are 48 employees.

Photo Credit: Screenshot 

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nextdoor is going mobile. Today, the ‘private social network for neighborhoods’ released an iOS application so people can be connected to what’s going on in their community anytime, anywhere.

Nextdoor raised $40 million in Februrary 2013 to accommodate its rapid growth. In less than a year, it has gone from 3,600 neighborhoods to 12,000 and has a presence in all 50 states. Thirty percent of all visits to the site come through mobile browsers, and there was clearly high demand for a dedicated iPhone app.

Founder Nirav Tolia built Nextdoor after hearing some startling statistics about the state of the American community. Thirty percent of Americans do not know their neighbors by name and yet strong communities are linked to the overall wellbeing of its inhabitants and weak communities make people more vulnerable to safety and security threats.

“There are trends enabled by the intersection of social media and local content,” Tolia said in an interview earlier this year. “People want to come together to create safer neighborhoods, whether it is to track down a lost dog or warn neighbors against suspicious activity. We are helping neighbors help themselves when it comes to crime and safety. Everyone lives in a neighborhood and wants it to be stronger.”

Nextdoor is an online place for real-world neighbors to connect. People post personal profiles and there are discussion forums and news feeds where they can engage with their neighbors. The site’s most recent update focused on crime and safety and added in features like urgent alerts pushed to mobile devices and integration with police and fire departments. Users clearly wanted access to this “lifeline” while they are away from their computer. Now, they can warn neighbors about road construction, share photos of lost pets, report keys found on the sidewalk, or organize people around real-time issues.

David Sze of Greylock Partners, one of Nextdoor’s investors, said the mobile app brings “immediacy and context” to the platform and will help Nextdoor on its mission to “bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood.” Going mobile is an important step for most startups these days, particularly consumer-facing ones, and for a company that specifically deals with the real-world and real-time events, it is crucial.

Nextdoor has raised over $40 million and is based in San Francisco.  There are 48 employees.

Photo Credit: Screenshot