Consider this the official soundtrack to your 2014 countdown.
Slowly working my way through the list en route to #Ultra this year.
25 DJ sets you need to hear before Ultra Music Festival’s epic return
Author Archives: affronti
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Millennials don’t want to talk on the phone. It’s 2014. They don’t want to say, ‘Hi, my name is so-and-so,—’ and talk for 30 seconds before asking the real question. It’s too much overhead. They want to be able to go on a site and type very quickly, ‘Hi, I’m John Doe, what’s my order status?’ and boom, there’s the answer,
via Brian Park, “Goodbye Call Centers, Hello Cloud”
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Considering that Twitter, as a much bigger company with 241 million monthly active users, just revealed that it generated $242.7 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, Line’s financial figures are pretty impressive.
“Line shows the potential for chat apps as platforms, after chalking up $338m in revenue for 2013” via TheNextWeb
It’s all about the stickers.
“Through efforts such as the release of stickers featuring popular soccer stars in Mexico and the cultural highlights of Diwali, a major festival in India, the stickers business concentrated on producing highly localized products and was successful in further entrenching the culture of sticker communication in markets across the world.”
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The honeymoon is on. Microsoft finally announced a new CEO yesterday: Satya Nadella. And the blogosphere seemingly could not be more pleased.
And I have to admit, reading all the coverage, Nadella sounds like the right choice. He knows Microsoft. He was leading the one…
This is basically exactly how I feel (minus the fact that I still use a lot of MS services and devices):
“Look, I’m rooting for Microsoft. I know that given the devices I prefer and where I work, this will sound disingenuous. But I mean it. Microsoft was once the tech company I admired above all others. And if nothing else, I firmly believe that a strong Microsoft only helps push the entire ecosystem forward, faster. Competition is not only good, it’s vital. And no company will be more competitive than a strong Microsoft. Any way you slice it, that would be a huge win for us, the consumers.”
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We really thought about this decision as it relates to the future as a health company — it’s good for customers and our company, in the long run.
CVS just made a decision that’s going to cost them $1.5 billion in revenue a year, and it’s a fantastic move.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/05/cvs-caremark-tobacco/5220479/
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The Line messaging app that spent last year pushing beyond its home market of Japan has inked a deal aiming to bolster its presence in markets in Latin..
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…the whole funding round was done in 22 days without having to build a pitch deck. It’s a message — and product — that just resonated with investors.
“Confide Raises $1.9 Million In Seed Funding To Bring Disappearing Messages To Enterprise Users” via TechCrunch
It’s SnapChat for the enterprise. The UX is pretty slick (makes me think of the “redacted” text in spy movie documents) and I’m looking forward to trying it out when it hits Android.
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“The scam, simplified: They call you, but immediately hang up. You see a missed call. You call back. They charge you for the call, and for each minute they can keep you on the line.”
It’s ironic that I bumped into this article today as I believe I got one of these calls last week. Keep an eye out for this scam, and if you’re an Android user this is a great time to download our free CallerID app, Contactive (Google Play), to identify spammers before they call you. Shameless self-promotion, I know. 🙂
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So what does a minnow like Mxit have that makes it so confident it can crack India? The answer is simple: a vision beyond smartphones. Unlike its bigger, richer, more established competitors, Mxit offers connectivity to old fashioned “feature phones,” of which there remain many users in India.
“An African messaging app could beat out WhatsApp, Line and WeChat in India” via Leo Mirani at Quartz.
As a mobile app company we know (and love and hate) the choices you have to make when supporting multiple devices and OS’s. It’s easy to get tunnel vision and think about amazing experiences that we can build on the latest, high-powered devices; Mxit’s potential success is another great reminder that for large portions of users in developing countries, feature phones remain the primary (and sometimes only) way they experience the mobile internet.
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You have to have innovative ad units … and we’re probably the most innovative in the marketplace.
“10X growth in 18 months: StartApp hits 1.5B downloads, 70K installs, and 200M daily impressions” via VentureBeat
Eighteen months after it reached the 150 million download plateau, mobile ad platform StartApp announced today that it has now hit over 1.5 billion downloads. And while the official release says the company’s ad software is now embedded in 60,000 apps, CEO Gil Dudkiewicz told me the number is actually higher.
Impressive growth and great platform; their ad quality and display flexibility is going make them a strong player on iOS.
#neato 