Empedia Builds A Social Layer On Top Of Wikipedia
Wikipedia has become a staple of internet life, and has risen to the top due to its aim of giving readers the impartial truth. Wikipedia serves its purpose well, but it also misses out on the color of human experience that cannot be verified by a third party source. A new service out of Sweden, Empedia, launched today and builds off of the Wikipedia API to allow anyone to add their personal experiences or stories to world events, companies, places, and everything else. Empedia calls itself a social encyclopedia.
Pinevio: A New Look On Content Discovery
Information overload is a big problem online and there are many services that try to solve it: from good old RSS readers to various content discovery platforms like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon or Reddit to social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Two entrepreneurs from Lithuania, Daumantas Dvilinskas and Mindaugas Krisciunas, decided it's time to move content discovery from social to interest graph, making use of all the existing services. That is how Pinevio, a social content discovery platform, was founded a year ago.
TenFarms: Broadcast Your Life As It Happens
Nils Forsblom, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Fruugo (among other companies) is building TenFarms, a web service that combines location-based mobile applications to broadcast user's life as it happens in real-time. 'You have loads of mobile apps that stream location and content - Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter. None of them, though, provide a stream of your real life as you go along', explains Nils. 'TenFarms is built around a 360˚ map view of the area around you and everything revolves around your location. You can broadcast your real-life experiences based on where you are and see what others are doing around you'.
Endomondo, Among 25 Apps At The Google I/O, Announces Social Features
Endomondo, a sports community based on real time GPS tracking for trekking, cycling etc has registered another milestone. The Copenhagen based startup was among the 25 developers selected to showcase their talent at the ongoing Google I/O conference. Endomondo Sports Tracker, the mobile app that transforms the mobile device into your pocket trainer can also boast of being the one out of the 100,000 or so apps in the Android Market to be invited for the same.
Is Stardoll Finally Making The Big Move To Mobile?
Last night Mattias Miksche tweeted that Stardoll is looking for iOS and Android developers in Stockholm. Miksche is the CEO of Stardoll. This could signal a change of things to come for Stardoll. The mobile platform, especially the likes of Android and iOS, is something that is becoming more available to even the teenagers and thus it makes sense for Stardoll to try and tap onto this market. Stardoll has a simple styling game on iOS called Stadoll Fashion Spin, but it's only available for the iOS.
Foodie.fm Becomes More Social
Foodie.fm, the startup we reviewed back in February last year. Foodie helps you with grocery shopping in a reverse way; lets you add a meal to your cart and breaks it into the ingredients that you need to prepare the meal. The value of the application is clearly in its ease of use - it basically combines your cook book with recipes and your shopping list.
Uplause Crosses 2 Million Audience Mark
When we called Uplause the Real World Massively Multiplayer Crowd Games, we weren’t wrong at all. The developers who create games for large events to enable the audience to collectively play interactive mini games. Uplause has recently made news with registering a milestone of hitting 2 million users.
Skype Comes To The Classroom
Skype is setting itself to become a center of all attention as it comes to the classroom. The idea is to connect teachers beyond classrooms with its online directory. Again this isn’t about teachers only, but rather bringing a global experience to students as well.
Wantlet: Shop More Socially With Twitter Of Wants
Shopping in general is a nightmare for me, especially when it comes to buying products I am really not keen at purchasing. I guess it is here we need recommendations from those who we think are experts or at least have some experience in a particular genre. Bring that online and the idea of social shopping is transformed totally. Readily connecting with the countless shopaholics online and helping you make the best choice. This is where Wantlet comes in to answer your shopping wants.
In The Footsteps Of Spotify - Voddler Goes Social
Voddler, the Swedish movie startup that is in many ways referred to as the "Spotify for movies", has announced today that it has added social features to its service. We recently wrote about Voddler getting more powder on board with its 40 million Swedish Kronor investment, where one of the biggest investors was the Finnish communications company Elisa. With the new features, Voddler is looking to attract of course more suggestions of movies and thus usage of their service. Regardless of this, I think this is an extremely natural direction to move into.
Flattr Enables Social Micropayments For All Content On The Web
Flattr is a new Swedish service enabling easy microtransactions, or social donations, for the whole web. Flattr wants to make it easy for people to share money in addition to content on the web, and thus allow content producers to get income on their work. The service is currently in closed beta, but I got an account to take a closer look.
In practice, every Flattr member needs to pay at least 2 euros per month (you can up to 5/10/20 as well). Then, during each month, you discover content on the web that you really like, be it text, audio, video, or something else, and you want to "flatter" the creator. You then click a small button the content creator has placed on her site. After each month is over, your monthly allowance (e.g., 2 euros) is divided evenly to all of the content creators whose work you have "flattred" during the month. Flattr itself takes 10% cut initially.
Music Wants To Be Free And Social - So Does Spotify
iTunes just got a kick in the head when Spotify revealed their plans this morning realeasing the Spotify version 0.4.3 which includes the largest feature upgrade since Spotify's launch in late 2008. Why? Because music just become very social. It's on now and Apple can ignore it only at its peril.
The release is centered around a set of social features more than anything else. It lets you create an identity that is defined by the music you listen, or put other way you can create a personal playlist and share it with your friends. In the new release you see your friends profiles and by clicking them you also see all the music they listen to (given they allow it to be seen).
Sofanatics Developing A Social Viewing Service
Yesterday we reported that a big name team has come out with a new startup called Sofanatics. The team consists of Toni Laturi, CEO (former Valve managing director), Asmo Halinen (Apaja co-founder) as well as Sami Kuusela and Peter Nyman, a familiar face in Finnish television as he hosts one of the most known Saturday night shows Uutisvuoto.
We have gathered some further information and believe Sofanatics is a service focusing on sociel viewing. Wikipedia describes a social viewing service as a practice revolving around the ability for multiple users to aggregate from multiple sources and view online videos together in a synchronized viewing experience. Typically the experience also involves some form of instant messaging or communication to facilitate discussion pertaining to the common viewing experience. This would fit our earlier prediction of 'something with video, football and doing all this is a social manner.'
Open And Social Internet - What Does It Really Mean (Video)
There's a big trend currently sweeping though the Nordic and Baltic countries. This is not a new phenomena for those who have been following what has been going on with the Internet, but it seems that the bigger public has been hit in the head with it and now doesn't really know what to think of it. Internet is becoming more social and most of everybody seem to be lost on what it really means.
A symptom of this is the social media consultants of all kinds that supposedly give advice the companies that have been hit to get their head around what the social Internet really means for them. Unfortunately very few of these social media experts advising the companies really understand what a more social Internet means, where it's going and what's its real promise for the whole civilization in the long run (more on this in the video below). There's more to social Internet than creating Product pages for companies on Facebook, telling them they need to be on Twitter and hiring students to become community managers.
MySites And Dazzboard Team Up
Two Finnish startups, MySites (see our previous story here) and Dazzboard (see our previous story here) announced recently that they will partner up: MySites which has completely rebranded itself as 'social cloud storage' is now offering Dazzboard users (as well as everybody else) unlimited amount of data storage for free.
We talked to both, MySites and Dazzboard CEOs, to get to the bottom of what is happening with the services and what the co-operation is all about.
MySites, for its part, is going head on againts services like Dropbox or even Mobile.me, which are cloud storage services primarily for consumer use. Ramine Darabiha, MySites CEO, emphasized that "MySites is going for the social angle. Not just a file service, but the best way to share files while you're on Facebook and on Twitter." Darabiha adds that "MySites is aiming to be the most Facebook friendly cloud storage service by integrating with many Facebook features such as friends and commenting to name a few".
Moozement - A Simplified Training Log For Sharing Your Activities
To "minimize the hassle in input & maximize the social benefits". That's how Moozement descriped their goal with their service. Moozement is a Finnish startup offering a simplified training log for sharing your activities with friends. I have been a user now for a while and unlike many other services I have tried out, I come back to Moozement week after week. This is clearly much more than I can say about most services I try.
There are still some user experience bumps in the service and the dashboard is way too busy, but overall it's a good start. Before I had tried the service I thought they are going head-on against Nokia Sports Tracker, but little did I know and was told what the service is really about when I had a chat with one of the founders, Ivan Kuznetsov (video below).
Youkebox Makes YouTube Social
A Finnish music enthusiastic Lauri Soini who has been very active in the Finnish DJ scene along with Pirkka Hartikainen / DJ Pirkka have come up with a fantastic service, Youkebox, that make listening YouTube a social experience.
Youkebox is ensentially a YouTube window with a queue that people can list a song they wish to be played next. On the left hand you have a dynamic messaging board where you can discuss anything regarding the song that is being played or anything related to that. The beaty is that you will be able to create rooms for you and your friends where you can play the music you like ...or would you will be as soon as the Beta development reaches that point. This makes listening a social experience despite people are watching the YouTube video in different locations. Similarly you can join rooms that play music you're interested in and chat with strangers.
You can also skip the song that the community (the room) is playing, and as Lauri pointed out, people will not look it very favourably if you go and press the skip-button without consulting others in the room. I did it once and found out this very quickly. The conversation went something like this:
Me: [Pressed 'Skip']
Other listener: Why did you skip the song?
Me: I did not like the song that was playing
Other listener: Dickhead!
Other listener: There's Mute-botton right next to the player for that
Me: Ups. So there is. Sorry!
The service is in closed Beta at the moment and you can't create your own rooms just yet, but all that should be in place soon I hope. I liked the service from the get-go even without being able create my own room yet and will expect it to spread like wild fire among music fans when it will be opened to public.
We have 5 invitations to the first 5 who tell us in the comments why they should have them ...and watch out for that Skip-button.
Nordic Venture Forum: Loanland
Here's the second startup in a run down of startups that I saw at the Nordic Venture Forum last week in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, Denmark. All the startups present at the forum were seeking either financing from the investors or partners for their business.
Loanland (Sweden) - Loanland is a P2P marketplace for loans, offering customers & investors new financial 
opportunities.
Loanland is the first P2P (social) lending site in Sweden, offering the Swedish market a new alternative to banks and credit institutes where you can decide your own terms & conditions. It is not only an alternative for people looking for a loan (borrowers) but also for anyone looking for investment opportunities ( lenders).
Loanland claims to offer all of the following:
- Letting the customer set her own terms
- Direct access to the loan market
- The best interest rate in the market for borrowers & lenders(!)
- An alternative to banks, financial institutions, pawnshops and micro loans
- A new type of investment
The company is currently providing unsecured loans to the Swedish market. The Swedish market for unsecured loans to households amount to around 160 billion SEK (around 16 billion EUR or 20 billion USD) at present and with unsecured loans to SMEs the figure is about 500 billion SEK (around 50 billion EUR or 63 billion USD). The market has grown 15% annually during the last few years. Gartner Group has estimated the P2P lending to take 10 percent of the loan market by 2010.
Loanland's business model is based on a 'reversed auction' model, where the borrower creates a loan request defining the loan amount, duration of the loan and the maximum interest rate, and then the potential lenders bid downwards on the interest rate. For this process to happen smoothly, Loanland provides the market place and assists with administrating the market, credit rating, loan agreement, reports, payments and claims. In effect, Loanland makes its money by taking a setup fee and a transaction fee from the conducted loan transactions.
Loanland is using an open source platform that it has developed, automating most of the processes. The technology is based on Java, J2EE, MySQL, Tomcat, Spring and Hibernate. The platform and auction engine allows individual and automatic bidding, electronic signatures, integrated credit scoring and efficient payments.
The company launched in December 2007 and has already over 10 000 members and 5 000 registered borrowers and lenders. They have 6 million SEK (600K EUR or 750K USD) deposited out of which 95 percent is lend out as loans. Quite significant number considering that the startup operates currently only in Sweden.
This is exactly the right time to be a new type of financial service provider in the market when many of the economic underpinnings of the markets are tested and people are looking for alternatives for all the massive lehman brothers of the world. Loanland for its part is combining the financial industry with Web 2.0 and is allowing its customers to provide and impact content.
Many of the facts and figures are from the good people at Nordic Venture Forum.
