Archive for April, 2011

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Celebrating social media with jello, an open bar, and a whole lot of networking By Talia Sternberg on Wednesday April 13th, 2011   No comments

Techluff .tv was thrilled to attend this years’ Social Media World Forum Social Soiree. The party was held at Amika -a fun environment for attendees and event organizers to relax and celebrate social media. It was great opportunity to chat with like-minded folk about how social technologies have progressed through the years, and how businesses have benefited from the use of these ever-changing tools.

Loads of networking took place! I witnessed some great friendships and relationships being formed, both personal and business related. This gala had so much to offer, not to mention the neon, glow-in-the-dark, absinth and lime flavoured jello with real gold flakes!

I had the opportunity to speak with some truly interesting people about which events they attended, and what they learned. To find out what Social Media World Forum is all about, watch the video below!

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Citizen journalists breaking news across London on UGC site Blottr By LucyH on Wednesday April 13th, 2011   No comments

Blottr gives citizen journalists a platform to upload, share and collaborate local news content in text, pictures and video.

They’ve been going in beta since February this year but already have around 600 regular contributors and 5000 unique visits per day.

Founder Adam Baker says that 93% of the uploaded content is exclusive to Blottr.

How does it work?

Users sign up for free and can start uploading content immediately and directly to the site. The Blottr team then moderate content, checking for offensive or libellous material. Adam says it’s important to have humans doing the vetting process and plans to keep it that way.

How can we trust the content?

They’ve created an authentication algorithm which ties is to a ‘credibility scale’ at the top right corner of each post. Data is pulled in on the influence of the contributor, how many times the story has been shared on Twitter and Facebook and authenticity of photos and videos uploaded. The scale goes from unconfirmed to credible and is updated accordingly in real time.

How does it make money?

Cash comes from licensing platforms out to publishers and media companies that haven’t been able to move as fully into the UGC space as they may have liked. There’s been a good reaction from large media organisations and lots, including Google News, frequently pick stories up on Blottr.

What next?

Blottr’s pretty much entirely London news-focussed right now, but there are plans to branch out across the UK soon. Adam hopes to implement multiple language versions by the end of the year too.

TechFluffTV spoke to Blottr CEO Adam Baker at this month’s London Silicon Roundabout meetup. Check out a demo of the site and full interview below:

 

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Sing group karaoke, play giant Jenga, get £1 burritos. All of this at Twestival. The goal: raise money for Centre Point. By Talia Sternberg on Monday April 11th, 2011   No comments

Philanthropists and twitter lovers alike gathered at Twestival to raise money for Cenre Point, an organization that works to bring brighter futures to troubled youth. This years’ Twestival was incredibly successful! All who attended had a fabulous time, and more importantly, nearly £9,000 was raised! The event took place at The Cape, a venue, which on the night of the 24th held nearly 200 people!

Attendees had countless options as to how to spend their night: hang out, network, play giant jenga or dominos, listen to great live music, sing group karaoke, eat delicious burritos, or check out the many items to be raffled off later in the night. This event brought together the best of both worlds: charity and fun!

Not only did Cenre Point benefit from this event, but attendees were overjoyed to finally put faces to twitter names. Everyone I met expressed extreme excitement for this celebration, and couldn’t stop raving about how fun the event was, and I agree, it was loads of fun!

Check out the video below for peek at all the fun and to find out more about Cenre Point!

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London Silicon Roundabout meetup: why the Roundabout’s different from Silicon Valley By LucyH on Friday April 8th, 2011   2 comments

London Silicon Roundabout (LSR) is a new meetup which brings together startups, investors and techies based in and around the Old Street area in east London.

What started a few months ago with the aim of being a small(ish) gathering of like minded people into tech, has already grown to filling StartHub with over 100 attendees.

At last night’s event 6 startups pitched. All had been selected by LSR organiser Shawn for their innovation and being a bit different from all the other stuff out there.

We heard from UGC news site Blottr, Freelancestudents.co.uk, social meetup app Kliqed, ingredient analyser Recip.ly, knowledge share site TagBento and mobile learning tool Zuztertu.

More on the startups and demos of their products will be up on TechFluff next week.

Meetup organiser Shawn spoke about how the Roundabout is different from the Valley.

He said:

“Investors are a lot more cautious with their money here in the UK compared to San Francisco, which can hinder early stage growth. The Valley has a 10 year head start on innovation, but gradually we’re catching up in London and the UK.

“People are seeing that there are exciting things going on here with acquisitions like Dopplr by Nokia a couple of years ago.”

He’s confident that with meetups like LSR giving startups a chance to collaborate, show off their product and seek advice, we’ll close the gap.

Here’s our interview with Shawn in full:

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Google Site Clinic: 10 tips for better site visibility By LucyH on Wednesday April 6th, 2011   3 comments

Chris and Kaspar from the Google Search team at TechHub for the Site Clinic

Last night we went to the Google website clinic at Techhub on London’s Silicon Roundabout. Some of the Google search team were there to impart some wisdom on how to increase your site’s visibility.

Webmaster Tools was mentioned a lot (of course, it’s Google’s own report service). It’s FREE and gives you detailed reports on how far up search results you are.

 

If you weren’t able to make it to the event, fear not! We’ve put together 10 top tips straight from the horse’s mouth:

1. User experience is top priority. Makesure your site is easy to navigate and pages include keywords users will actually search for.

2. Use appropriate titles and headings. Lay things out in a useful way and prioritise (<h1>, <h2>, etc).

3. Have good description meta tags – these can be displayed in Google’s search as snippets.

4. Simple URLs – can we tell what you do from your web address?

5. Put the core content of your site in text – Google understands less about images and videos.

6. Use ALT attributes for images – so the user knows what the picture’s about even if they can’t see it.

7. Make sure crawlers can read keywords on your site. Try the Lynx web browser.

8. Ensure any particularly important or timely pages have a link to another page on your site that’s already indexed in Google.

9. Page rendering time is important. Faster = happier users.

10. For .com, .net & .org sites, improve your site’s geographic targeting.

 

For more on this, check out the Google SEO Starter Guide and Webmaster Forum.

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Want more transparency in business? Duedil aggregates company data, reputation and sentiment By LucyH on Tuesday April 5th, 2011   9 comments

You may have heard about Duedil. There’s been quite a lot of hype about them as of late.

They’re a business reputation tool that has some nifty algorithms pulling in data from all sorts of places in the blink of an eye. They’ve also just won £50,000 worth of investment from DFJ Espirit at Geek n Rolla 2011 last week in London.

What it does:

Duedil accesses 15 billion data points on 7.7 million companies worldwide. Users search the name of a company and results are brought back on profit and loss, shares, average salary, any litigations, employees LinkedIn profiles, Quora questions, tweets… the list is almost endless. There’s also a ‘local search’ tool where you can find out business information geographically. For example searching for all the locksmiths in Soho.

Biggest problem so far:

Understandably when some businesses first see the app at work they’re shocked at the amount and significance of the information that is thrown back in search results. But CEO Damian Kimmelman says all the data is out in the public domain, Deudil just aggregates it neatly in one place.

Can I sign up?

They’re still in alpha and so rolling services out slowly – but you can sign up. As it’s still early stages you’re asked to link to the app through Twitter and Facebook etc and the most social users are rewarded with more access to tools on the site.

What’s next?

With the recent funding boost, they’re taking on a new developer and there’s plans to incorporate news articles featuring searched for companies in results.

It’s pretty hard to get your head around the power of Duedil if you don’t see it working in real life, so check out the demo with Damain below:

 

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Shell encourages small business to make big differences! By Talia Sternberg on Monday April 4th, 2011   No comments

Out sister company Newspepper was delighted to cover such a socially responsible event as this years’ Shell Springboard Awards. Shell Springboard is a social investment program that encourages businesses to combat climate change. Through a series of generous donations to small organizations who receive an award, winners have the opportunity to expand their businesses, and as an end result, make the earth a cleaner place.

The award, £40,000, is given to companies with a progressive business plan that develops products with low carbon emission, to small corporations with big idea.

To check out who were the winners of the Shell Springboard Awards 2011 and how you can get your company involved next year, watch the video made by Newspepper below.

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Money matters with ClearBooks: How early stage startups watch their cash By LucyH on Friday April 1st, 2011   No comments

This series is sponsored by ClearBooks: Online Accounting to free your time.

Earlier in the week we featured the three businesses that pitched at the Launch48 Launchpad event at Google HQ in London and they’re back to talk about how they keep track of their finances.

They told us that if you’re looking for funding it’s vital you come up with accounts so potential investors can see where the money is being earnt and spent. Also that bootstrapping means you have to have as close an eye as possible on your purse strings.

Here’s CEO of Bluefields Andrew Crump, Managing Director of HipSnip Phil Woodward and co-founder of Minutebase Fabian Sasson:

 

Any others tips or advice on how startups can keep track of things would be much appreciated in the comments :-)

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