Mochi Media Makes a Splash on Forbes.com
It’s not often that you see a startup featured in a publication like Forbes more than once a year at best. Well, one of our clients, Mochi Media, was featured twice within three days last week. Mary Jane Irwin, a gaming reporter at Forbes.com, wrote two fantastic stories about Mochi Media, the first being a profile about the company and a few of their developer success stories, and the second being a long profile about Ninja Kiwi, the creators of the hit Web game Bloons.
Mochi Media offers free tools and services to Web game developers and publishers to help them distribute and monetize their games or gaming portals. Mochi Media’s ad network, MochiAds, makes it easy for advertisers to reach the huge (around 200 million people), but vastly underserved audience of Web gamers.
As evidenced by the Forbes stories, a vodcast from Robert Scoble in FastCompany.tv, coverage of its $10 million funding and even attention from overseas, the buzz is big around Mochi Media. And it’ll only get bigger. Congrats guys!
Hockey Fans: Bid on Gear Benefiting LaunchSquad Friend’s Cancer Treatment
Exclusive NHL memorabilia is now available in an online auction benefiting Katie Thomas, a Denver mother and friend of LaunchSquad who is fighting Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
The auction runs until 6:00 AM PDT on Thursday, August 7th and includes signed sticks, jerseys, pucks and pictures by current and former all-stars and Hall of Famers including Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Gordie Howe, Brendan Shanahan, Steve Yzerman, Patrick Roy and Evgeni Malkin. You can also bid on signed jerseys and helmets from John Elway and Brett Favre.
Read more about Katie here and be sure to check out the auction, all proceeds from which will go towards her continued treatment.
BusinessWeek Features SignalDemand
Last Friday, BusinessWeek investment reporter David Bogoslaw wrote a fascinating story investigating how food companies are grappling with the new challenges of global market complexities and how on-demand technology from SignalDemand is helping them make smart decisions to drive toward profitability. This is the first business analysis that really investigates how prices are set at the production level and how that plays out along the supply chain. Bogoslaw provides a few examples of food companies that are benefiting from SignalDemand’s price optimization solution, including Cargill – one of the nation’s largest meat producers:
“…Although they have no choice but to pass on higher costs to customers, they are now able to do it in smarter ways—by raising prices on only the least price-sensitive items instead of whole product lines or tailoring prices to various levels of demand in local markets, for example.”
… Cargill Meat Solutions, a division of privately held Cargill, which processes 25% of all the beef and 10% of all the pork produced in North America – it makes 1.5 billion pounds of ground beef a year – has found it easier to more accurately price its products in the three years since it started using an on-demand software technology developed by SignalDemand, a San Francisco-based technology company.”
Kudos to Bogoslaw for a well-researched story – the business of the production side of the food industry is just beginning to see attention from the press as the global food crisis wanes on. It will be interesting to see what developments he turns up next.
In addition to food and meat, SignalDemand addresses pricing across commodities-based manufacturing, including chemicals and paper and pulp.
Fully Immersed – Vivaty Goes Public on Facebook
This Tuesday, Vivaty launched their first product, Vivaty Scenes, in public beta on Facebook and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)!
Vivaty Scenes are virtual spaces that you can personalize with photos, videos and virtual goods, where you can socialize with friends, by chatting or posting messages – it’s like a 3D version of your profile page. The entire application is browser-based and opens right in your Facebook account or AIM chat, there’s no big download and the Vivaty Scene templates let you get started enjoying and sharing your personal scene right away! Check out Vivaty Scenes on Facebook here!
Over the last 6 months, Vivaty has been testing the private beta version of Vivaty Scenes on Facebook with thousands of testers, gathering feedback and tweaking to make the experience more immersive and engaging.
We’ve already received some great coverage from TechCrunch, Mashable, ZDNet, Fast Company and Wired. Last week, Robert Scoble even did a live video interview with Keith McCurdy, Vivaty’s CEO, showing some of the product.
Everyone seems to be excited about and ready for the immersive Web and the news virtual experience that Vivaty brings. So, go ahead and try it – immerse yourself!
MediaZone Serves up Wimbledon LIVE for the 3rd Consecutive Year
Our client MediaZone is in the midst of streaming the 2008 Wimbledon Championships live and on-demand for the third consecutive year. Since its debut in 2006, Wimbledon LIVE has joined March Madness and the Masters as mainstays on the broadband sports circuit as consumers have increasingly embraced the Web for coverage that expands on traditional broadcast offerings. In its two previous years, MediaZone’s coverage of Wimbledon has set tennis industry records for site visitors, live streams and downloads, while achieving a 129% increase in revenue. The final numbers for this year aren’t quite in, but all signs are pointing to a breakout year.
Kristen Nicole of Mashable sampled the service and wrote a blog post about her thoughts. We invited her to take an honest look at the offering and also give away free passes to Mashable readers for the upcoming finals this weekend. Her post offered straight-laced but constructive criticism, though the overall picture she painted was quite positive. This type of analysis and response from journalists and bloggers is valuable because it offers a truthful view from the user’s perspective. From here they can see what works and what doesn’t.
For you tennis enthusiasts, 2008 Wimbledon LIVE includes full match coverage of Centre Court and Number 1 Court action, as well as six other courts in play. In total, the service includes more than 300 matches and immersive features such as user ability to toggle between up to eight courts, as well as live commentary and complete integration with the official Wimbledon website, www.wimbledon.org. Viewers are able to combine video coverage with player information, live scoring and statistics from all matches. Check it out!