Max Levchin on Slide’s big virtual goods bet, scams and — mating
Slide, which started in photo-sharing, moved into Facebook widgets and then raised funding at a reported $550 million valuation last year, shifted gears this year and went aggressively into virtual goods. The company’s looking to become a mainstream version of Second Life, where there’s a virtual economy at work of real people buying and selling goods.
Instead of churning out new apps like many of its competitors, the company has focused its existing ones — including… Continue Reading
Slide cuts staff, refocuses on premium ad deals
Slide, maker of popular social networking applications like Super Poke and Top Friends, is changing its revenue strategy, placing new emphasis on premium advertising, such as brand sponsorship of apps. Due to this shift, the San Francisco company cut most of its ad sales force yesterday.
GigaOm first reported the news last night, after obtaining a copy of the email chief executive Max Levchin sent to the team and confirming the news with Levchin. The PayPal… Continue Reading
Katalyst and Slide tap into video-sharing on Facebook
Videos haven’t been a prominent part of Facebook for most of its five year history — the tools for sharing videos haven’t been obvious, and people have already been busy using the site for things like sharing photos. But Facebook and outside companies have been working on some fruitful ways of improving video-sharing on the site.
Lately, application developer Slide, along with Ashton Kutcher-led digital content company Katalyst, have been experimenting with a way of making… Continue Reading
Roundup: Ashton’s new show, Woz’s new company and more
Here’s the latest action:
Pansonic lays off 15,000: The consumer electronics giant shed 5 percent of its work force. It joins NEC, Sony, Hitachi and other Japanese companies in announcing major layoffs.
Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Media teams up with Slide on new series — The show, called KatalystHQ, is the first sponsored web series to premiere on Facebook.
Steve Wozniak takes a job at storage startup Fusion-io — The Apple co-founder already sat on the Salt Lake City company’s advisory… Continue Reading
The plight of branded apps and the future of social marketing
[Editor's note: So it turns out branded apps are a bust -- even if you're Nike or Coca-Cola. Below, Keith Rabois, vice president of strategy and business development at app maker Slide, explains why and gives big-name advertisers some much-needed advice.]
Procter & Gamble spent $2.4 billion on television advertising last year — but they didn’t spend it on the “I Love Pringles” show. When it comes to TV, brands understand that it’s smarter to integrate… Continue Reading
Scribd raises $9 million, hires new president for social publishing
Social publishing firm Scribd is announcing today that it has raised $9 million in a second round of funding and has hired George Consagra, former chief operating officer of Bebo, as its president.
The San Francisco-based company lets people share and publish original writings on its web site. It has more than 50 million readers each month, and more than 50,000 new writings and documents are uploaded daily.
This round of financing was led by Charles River… Continue Reading
Domo arigato, Mr. Animoto, for adding text to videos
Forget those awful photo montage videos on YouTube that teenage fans make for TV shows like “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill.” Animoto, the company that allows anyone to become a music video producer by syncing up photos with tunes, now lets users add text to their videos. Text that more closely resembles sleek, movie-esque sequences, not static captions or titles. Combined with the motion graphics, effects and transitions that are the signature of an… Continue Reading
Sarah Lacy claims New York Times book review unfairly slammed her Web 2.0 book, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good”
A while back, I finished reading Sarah Lacy’s book on Web 2.0’s rise in Silicon Valley, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.” I let my thoughts percolate on it until I saw the New York Times review of the book by tech journalist Katie Hafner. The NY Times reviewer was critical and Lacy herself feels like it was more like a review of herself than her book. Some of the criticism of the book is… Continue Reading
Content aggregator Spleak adds 3 new online news channels
Spleak Media Network, a content aggregation platform, has added new themes to its portfolio of content communities on the web in partnership with major content publishers.
The company takes news from partnering publishers, such as gossip about Lindsay Lohan, and publishes it across a broad set of internet venues such as instant messaging platforms, social networks, destination web sites and mobile phones. Publishers use the service to expand the reach of their publications to online readers.
The… Continue Reading
Facebook removes Slide’s Top Friends application due to security hole
Updated with a response from Facebook
Slide is one of the largest third-party application developers on leading social network Facebook, and both share an investor in venture firm the Founders Fund. But all that apparently wasn’t enough to stop Facebook from at least temporarily removing one of Slide’s most popular Facebook applications, Top Friends.
Top Friends let you pick and choose who among your many Facebook friends are your favorites, including a box on your profile page… Continue Reading
Yes! Turkish users get Funwall back as the country uncensors Slide
Slide, the widget-maker that among other things let you create slideshows and share them with your friends on social networks, is now un-banned from Turkey. It was banned in March for “harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk [pictured], the founder of modern Turkey,” as we wrote then.
Its hardly uncommon for social networks to be banned by governments that censor things their citizens happen to share. Many companies are currently… Continue Reading
A roundup of scenery from the Web 2.0 Expo: an annotated photo gallery
I spent four days this week at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Here is a summary of the scene, including photos and my impressions of the show.
I attended the RockYou/Clearspring/Mixercast reception on Tuesday night at Bong Su, a trendy new Vietnamese restaurant. Three companies sponsored the party and so it made the Web 2.0 froth seem a little less excessive, since they can split the bill. There… Continue Reading
Live blogging: Max Levchin of Slide opens the Web 2.0 Expo keynotes
(Note: So begins our live blogging efforts at the Web 2.0 Expo. Please check back for early looks at significant news from the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco as we cover the various talks. I’ll be updating this post as the keynote unfolds).
Max Levchin, the founder of widget maker Slide, has kicked off the conference. He is being interviewed by Forrester Research’s Charlene Li on stage now. Slide is a social entertainment company… Continue Reading
Slide protests ban in Turkey
The government of Turkey has banned widget maker Slide. The reason: harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
In response, a Slide spokeswoman issued this statement: “We’ve contacted the government of Turkey in an effort to resolve the situation but have not received a response so far. What’s worse is that some bloggers and reporters writing reactions criticizing such government blockings are being jailed.
We pledge to… Continue Reading
Myspace: A place for successful Facebook app developers to get rich, maybe
Starting this Tuesday, MySpace is giving all developers the chance to start building their own applications for the site using its developer platform. Then, in a month, the company will let users start adding any of these creations.
MySpace is the largest social network in the world, with more than 110 million unique visitors a month, so the platform could quickly rival Facebook’s, which itself has spawned thousands of applications that are used by millions.
Because of… Continue Reading
Roundup: FM hires bank, Tesla, Akamai’s growth and more
1. Tesla to begin production of the Roadster on March 17
2. Blog ad network FM turns down $100M offer?
3. CDN Akamai sees record traffic from social networks
4. Newspaper traffic up; old media on the rise?
5. Creating popular social networks, apps
6. Gazprom-Media reportedly acquiring RuTube
7. WSJ will stay subscription based, says Murdoch
8. Recording industry to start going after ISPs
9. World Wide Packets sells for $280 million
Tesla to begin production of the Roadster on March 17 — All safety… Continue Reading
Widget companies are growing, helped by Facebook
Update
Companies that make widgets grew quickly last year. The largest four — Slide, Myspace, Clearspring and Rockyou — each reached more than 100 million people around the world last November, according to web analytics company Comscore. [Update: Some widgets companies are taking issue with Comscore's numbers. See below for more.]
Given the recent surge of interest in widgets from advertisers, these numbers help explain why Slide was recently able to raise $50 million at a valuation… Continue Reading
Widget-maker Slide raises $50 million at $550 million valuation
Updated
Widget-maker Slide has raised nearly $50 million at a $550 million valuation from two private equity funds, Fidelity and T-Rowe Price, according to the New York Times, with the two firms buying a total of around a nine percent stake in the company.
San Francisco-based Slide has more than 144 million users of its widgets on Myspace and other social networks, and another more than 50 million total (not necessarily active) users of its Facebook applications,… Continue Reading
Clearspring launches widgets for Madison Avenue
In the latest evolution of this fast-paced but not yet lucrative world of widgets, Clearspring, a leading widget company, has launched an ad network for widgets (sample widget left).
It comes at a time when advertising agencies on Madison Avenue are finally getting comfortable with the idea of buying ads in widgets to get their client companies in front of social network users. A market for widget ads is forming, although its still unclear which forms… Continue Reading
Slide adding one million new Flash widgets daily
Slide, the most popular widget maker in the world, says users are adding one million new Flash widgets daily across all non-Facebook social networks, such as Myspace and hi5.
The San Francisco company says it now has more than 134 million unique viewers of its widgets per month (up from 117 million in March), giving it a lead over its rival widget-makers that Comscore’s data has backed up. Growth has slowed from spring, but continues.
Slide provides… Continue Reading