Fajoya Pushes Goodwill By Letting Friends Help Each Other
Since Facebook went public a year ago, it has started actively exploring possibilities for monetization and introduced many new features, which in fact seem to be pretty disruptive for users. This situation opens a lot of opportunities for Facebook-based application developers to improve users’ social media experience.
Espoo-based Fajoya builds a mobile app that allows Facebook users to help request, receive and reward favors from their friends. It aims to accomplish a social mission — to make the world a better place where helping others is something everyone wants to do.
ThingLink Releases Facebook Integration For Rich Images
Helsinki seems to have two major trends going at the moment. Gaming companies, and startups like Kiosked and Publishzer that are adding interactivity and engagement to images. But with this movement is ThingLink, a startup that adds interactivity to images to drive more engagement. Founded in 2010, they now boast over 130,000 publishers using the platform, including a number of giant newspaper and web publishing properties.
Now when publishers share ThingLinked images to Facebook, they're able the offer the same image tagging functionality right in the Facebook newsfeed. Uses need to click the images first to get the tags to pop up, but now publishers can drive Facebook users to more text information, videos, or links.
Gajatri Studios Receive Further Funding To Bring Yoga Retreat To Mobile Platforms
Gajatri Studios, a Helsinki based gaming company that made the game Yoga Retreat for Facebook announced earlier this month that they have raised a new seed round of funding. The round comes from Dreadnaught Finance OY and Leena Niemistö as a private investor.
Their first game - Yoga Retreat, allows you to build and manage your own little Yoga getaway. While at it, you will be taught many different Yoga poses as well other other aspects of Yoga. Gajatri Studios is trying to make games that are focused on well-being and inspire you to take better care of yourself and Yoga Retreat is the first game that they built with this attitude.
Microsoft Owes Denmark $1 Billion While Google, Facebook And Others Do Everything They Can To Avoid Taxes
In the recent news it was uncovered that Microsoft owes Denmark 5.8 billion Danish Crowns (Around $1.015 Billion) in back taxes as a result of Microsoft’s acquisition of Navision in 2002.
According to the Danish tax authorities, following the acquisition, the Navision’s money making assets were sold to Microsofts Irish subsidiary below market value. That company is in turn owned by companies in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands. Which is why Microsoft is often targeted by tax authorities worldwide, as their network of affiliated companies worldwide makes it extremely easy for them to channel profits into tax havens where the corporate tax is virtually non-existent.
Jobylon Bounty Crowdsources Headhunting Through A Facebook App
Are attitudes towards Facebook shifting where users will start using it more for job seeking? Stockholm-based social job board, Jobylon, has now put a major focus on their "Bounty" jobs where users can refer their facebook friends for jobs, and receive 'bounties' in return. The result is an interesting take on recruiting - sort of a crowdsourced headhunting Facebook app.
The way it works is pretty simple. Users log into Jobylon as a Facebook app, where their algorithm automatically matches their friends (and your friends' friends) to jobs, based on their studies or occupation on Facebook. If the matches look good, you can refer a friend to a job, which is sent as a private Facebook message. If they accept they can forward their details to the employer, and if your recommended candidates get hired, you get rewarded. Of course you can also apply to these jobs yourself, but the cool hook here is the reward system.
Opera Founder Sells Controlling Shares, Could Pave Way For Acquisition
Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv reports Opera co-founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has sold shares in the company valued between NOK 180 and 200 million (€24-27 million), as shown in recently released shareholders' statements. After the sale Tetzchner has 5.18% ownership stake in Opera, which is below the 10% limit where Von Tetzchner could have blocked acquisition deals.
Dagens Næringsliv reports on the history of Von Tetzchner's relationship with the publicly traded browser company:
Norwegian Soundrop Brings Listening Rooms To Facebook
More Scandinavian music news for today following our earlier news that Rdio is officially launching in the Nordics. Soundrop, the Norwegian social music platform made popular through their Spotify app, has brought its "listening rooms" to be embedded on Facebook.
It's a big deal for the company - they're now leveraging multiple sources for content while serving up simultaneous playback, making them less dependent on one licensing provider. Rather than Spotify serving the content, the music on Facebook is handled by VEVO and YouTube. The embedded rooms provide the same simultaneous voting, chatting, and playback experience as in the Spotify app.
Free Calls And Group Chat With All Your Facebook And Linkedin Connections Through Plingm
Yesterday, Plingm announced that it now allows Linkedin’s 151 million users to call each other for free and also supports chat/group chat. This was big news for the company, but we got in touch with a co-founder of Plingm, Pandelis Eliopoulos and he told us in an interview that this news is small in comparison to todays announcement.
As of today, Plingm also supports Facebook’s one billion users. “You can actually combine all three now, Plingm, Facebook and Linkedin” says Eliopoulos. So you can basically have a group chat with your Plingm contact, a co-worker on Linkedin and a high-school girlfriend from Facebook - all at the same time!
Web Of Trust Invited Into Facebook's AV Marketplace
Web Of Trust, the crowdsourced safe-surfing tool, has announced today that Facebook has invited the Helsinki-based service into it's Anti-Virus marketplace. Now Facebook users can download the browser add-on for free from the Facebook Security page.
Rather than preventing viruses from a purely technological analysis, Web Of Trust helps users stay safe online by using the crowd to rate the trustworthiness of the links they've clicked. Using this crowdsourced information, WOT displays traffic lights next to links that show the trustworthiness of the link, protecting users from questionable content, dubious online stores, unreliable vendors, and so on.
Mark Zuckerberg Visits Moscow, Tries Wooing Russian Programmers To California
While visiting Russia for the first time earlier this week, Facebook’s founder paid a visit to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev after meeting with unidentified IT businessmen and technical teams.
A high tech aficionado, Medvedev – who served as Russia’s President for four years before becoming Prime Minister last March – personifies the Russian government’s effort to develop innovation in the country. So far, however, Medvedev has failed to update his work status on his own Facebook account, where he still appears as President.
“The conversation was very good,” the Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted the Prime Minister’s spokesperson Natalya Timakova as saying. “[Mr Zuckerberg and the Prime Minister] discussed Facebook’s potential presence in Russia not only as a social network, but as a company that works on cutting-edge products.”
Jobylon Crowdsources Recruitment Through Finders Fees
Searching for a job or trying to fill a position has forever remained a slow and unrewarding process. But by mixing in crowdsourcing and social features, a Swedish startup, Jobylon, thinks they have the model to fix recruitment by putting a social application on top of Facebook and LinkedIn, and then using the crowd to find the best leads.
The company points out that their emphasis on referrals also manages to target the passive candidates that can be difficult to find. And for active job seekers, Jobylon provides value by putting together information on vacant jobs and employers all in one place.
How Are Rovio And Stardoll Doing On Facebook?
To answer that question we've been in touch with AppStats to analyze how these entertainment giants are doing. Stardoll of course is one of the more successful online networks aimed at teenage girls and Rovio has been huge on Facebook due to Angry Birds Friends. Angry Birds was "leaked" to Facebook on February 13th. Already in March the company passed 10 million MAUs (monthly active users).
Stay.com Goes Social And Offline With Its Travel Guides
Stay.com, the Norway based travel startup has come out with a new version of its travel app. Last October we had a detailed write up of the company and how it became to be. For this summer, the company has made its city guides social and user friendly with making them work offline. The applications work on Android and the iOS platforms.
The app features some 116 cities which users are able to download to their phones with a simple tap. Each city guide has numerous sites to visit, restaurants to eat at and places to go. Also, not to mention an offline map that works with the iPhone's positioning system showing how lost you might be. Going offline with the city guides helps with the horrendous data roaming costs one can churn overseas.
Will Facebook Buy Opera? Here's The Rundown Of The Rumors
Facebook has an ungodly amount of money burning in their pocket post-IPO, and the rumor mill has started grinding out stories that the social media giant will buy Opera, the Norwegian desktop and mobile browser company. I suppose it would be a logical move for Facebook. Getting into the browser game would give them a dominant position as the home base for the web, and Facebook has been rumored to be working on a mobile operating system, of which a solid mobile browser is a key component.
We haven't covered Opera much, even though they're probably the most well known Norwegian software company. Even though they haven't gained a sizable market share, by now they seem more like an institution as old as the web, rather than a startup. They've been around since 1995, they're listed on the Norwegian stock exchange, and the company boasts 750 employees around the world.
Whosin Plugs You In To Your Favorite Topics On Social Media
A Finland and US based company has put together a social discovery search engine for social media. That may sound like a mouthful, but the result, Whosin, is pretty cool for following the topics you like. Whosin allows you to drill down and save social media searches on your interests to find the most relevant and interesting results on your favorite topics. The service launched just three weeks ago and is still in early beta, but the concept is polished and accomplishes its goals.
Get Featured On Our Facebook Cover Image
With the recent change of the Facebook fan pages to support the timeline, all pages now also have a cover image at the top of the page. Since we're really in this to support the growing startup ecosystems in the Nordics and Baltics - what better way to help achieve that than giving the cover image back to our community on the ArcticStartup Facebook page. This means, each week we will be promoting one lucky startup with a pinned post at the top of the Facebook page as well as in the cover image.
Angry Birds Passes 10M MAU On Facebook
The title says it all, Rovio's Angry Birds game has reached over 10 million Monthly Active Users on Facebook's gaming platform. The game launched less than a month ago on Valentines day, meaning this Facebook metric currently tabs up the the number of unique users since its launch. As of this writing, the total number of uniques are around 10.2 million MAU, with another 1.1 million users added today according to the independent Facebook apps metrics webiste, App Data.
Angry Birds Leaked On Facebook - Available Now
It seems that Angry Birds is already available on Facebook. We stumbled upon the game a day early of their official release. A few weeks back Rovio announced on Facebook that they would hold the biggest Facebook event ever and invite everyone and your mom to participate. The day naturally coincides with Valentines Day - a great day to share a good game with your friends. We snatched a few screenshots from the game as we played it and they're available below.
Bemmu Sepponen on Fan Page Apps for Facebook
A big issue to consider with any ongoing Facebook marketing campaign is Edgerank-- the algorithm that determines what items pop up in the newsfeed. Facebook tries to show you items that are most relevant to your interests by only showing you status updates, links, and images from the friends and pages that you interact with the most. This provides a strong motivation for Page owners to engage their users and encourage liking, sharing, and commenting. Riding this trend is Bemmu Sepponen, who has created two Fan Page Apps for Facebook, Fan of the Week and Top Fans, where each application has broken the milestone of 1 million monthly active users.
Angry Birds Coming To Facebook February 14th
Rovio has announced that Angry Birds will expand to Facebook on February 14th. They did this in a very subtle way, by inviting people to an event on Facebook itself. Angry Birds has been anticipated to arrive on Facebook since last spring. At the time of writing this there are only a little over a thousand people invited to the event, but this will surely grow as the date gets closer.
Interview With Harry Nelis Of Accel Partners (Video)
We talked to Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel Partners, about startups, entrepreneurship and Europe as well as many other topics. When we shot the video, Nelis had just come down from the main stage at LeWeb where he participated in the traditional Money Panel. Accel has been able to discover and invest into some of the most successful startups out there. Some of their portfolio companies include Facebook, Groupon, Spotify and the list goes on.
Spotify Achieves Another Milestone, 2.5 Million Paying Subscribers And Growing
It appears to be a Spotify fest lately ever since the music streaming service announced their partnership with Facebook, bringing the service almost instantly to millions of Facebook users. Due to their reach in more countries, Spotify now announced they reached 2.5 million paying subscribers of the service.
While it would have been great if Spotify shared details on their user demographics, Spotify has kept this information in the shadows. What is more important here is that Spotify has managed to achieve this feat at a time where many listeners have been getting music for free from pirating. To have paying subscribers means that your users love the service and that they don’t mind paying a fee to avail more features, rather a “better user experience”.
Skype Brings Facebook-To-Facebook Calling To Its Client
There could be nothing better than to reach nearly a billion people through Facebook. The social network has become a target for tons of digital entities trying to leverage the social network. We will not talk about brands and business, rather online services and the most recent example is that of Spotify. Yesterday, Skype made a more social move by enabling Facebook to Facebook Calls via the Skype Client.
Skype already had Facebook integration in its clients. However the latest move follows the announcement Skype made back in July regarding powering the Facebook video chat feature. The platform is widely used and offers Facebook the perfect service to roll out or integrate video chat functionality within the social network’s ecosystem.
Spotify Brings Music Streaming To Windows Phone 7 Devices
Today, Spotify is trying to rapidly expand to every platform. The music streaming service has had things moving in the right direction, and the deal with Facebook seems to have supercharged its expansion. Last week Spotify announced the release of the Spotify app for the Windows Phone 7 devices. Big news and another platform to grow with, and there seems to be no stopping for the service.
The application is branded in the stylish WP7 Metro style, and is available for almost all the Windows Phone 7 devices. It has all the major features that every Spotify user would love, including:
Hiddenhint Takes A Cooler Approach To Find A Special Someone
Who doesn’t have a secret crush once in a lifetime? Unfortunately, many have trouble expressing the emotions to their crush. The reason being nobody wants the crush to crash their reputation by becoming public. True that, I would rather keep affection for someone to myself than to say it out loud putting my reputation at stake. If there is a secret way to express this, who wouldn’t want to make use of it? Hiddenhint does exactly that.
Now there are a lot of other traditional methods, such as tossing a random note on a girl's desk, putting a nice card in her bag, etc but in the age of social media and apps, gadgets, etc it sounds too old school. Hiddenhint makes a note of this and adds a bit more modern and anonymous touch to it. But how exactly does it work?
Welcome To The Arctic, Facebook!
In September we covered the news that Facebook might be looking to place their server farm in Luleå, Sweden. Tomorrow, it will be confirmed as Facebook's company representatives will be holding a press conference together with local city representatives. The confirmation ends months of debate and rumors which have been circulating since last summer.
GamesMadeMe Rides The HTML5 Wave With Dollar Isle (We Have Invites)
Run by Finns, from all over the world, GamesMadeMe is looking to ride the HTML5 tech wave all the way. Their first game, Dollar Isle, is now out. There's a lot more in the pipeline and we talked to Juha Paananen, one of the founders and also the CEO of the company, to learn more. Paananen himself lives in Singapore. He used to work there, but decided to start working with a startup as the chance came up. The company is relatively young, it was founded in May this year and it's registered to Finland. They've also raised a small seed round from Lifeline Ventures.
Gignal Amplifies Events By Presenting Social Media Buzz In One Place
If you've ever been to a conference you know how important the buzz around it is. You need to follow tweets to check what people around you are thinking or view check-ins to see who's actually attending. The same applies to a lot of events, be it concerts or sports events. The problem is, though, that there is a growing number of ways to interact with others around an event but no single platform that would combine all of that rich content. Gignal has an answer for that. Founded in Denmark by Natasha Friis Saxberg, the start-up offers a social media billboard for events that presents all social buzz around the happening in one place (check-ins, tweets, comments, pictures and videos).
Spotify Expands To Denmark
Spotify has just announced its expansion to Denmark. It's probably been one of the countries with a lot of anticipation for the Swedish company to announce its expansion there. While Denmark isn't a huge market place, it's definitely a step Spotify needed to take - it needs to work in all markets to make it a consumer favorite.
MySellr Transforms Your Facebook Page Into An Online Store
We have long lived with the word e-commerce and it won’t be wrong to request for a change in the naming convention, especially regarding social networks. Probably something like social commerce would do the trick. This is largely owing to Facebook, the network that has made brands more social. MySellr, is an Indonesian startup with Swedes on board, that tends to make the connection more important.
The startup provides an application within the largest social network, enabling anyone to start a fully functional e-commerce website from their fan pages on Facebook. This basically takes the challenge of distribution out of the question as you're around a lot of people. 800 million to be exact.
