Networked Insights Measures the Social
Move over Nielsen, there’s a new form of audience measurement in town. This week, Networked Insights released the first Measuring the Social report, focused on network television show ratings that are based on online interactions instead of Nielsen’s traditional (and much-disputed) TV ratings. Erik Abels from Forbes says “I Want My Non-Nielsen TV” and Adam Ostrow from Mashable says “TV Viewership is From Mars, Social Interactions are From Venus.” Other coverage included TV Week, TechCrunch, Wired and NewTeeVee.
The report is based on Networked Insights unique approach to online audience measurement. Advertisers used to just care about the number of eyeballs, then ComScore revolutionized online measurement by introducing the concept of transactions. But now that there are so many ways to interact online, Networked Insights is establishing interactions (and the influence of each one) as the key metric online. This phenomenon was put to the test in the recent report, and saw some pretty eye-opening results:
Stay tuned to Networked Insights’ SocialSights blog for more Measuring the Social reports, and you can dowload the full report here.
Vivaty is Virtually Everywhere
This week our client Vivaty launched Vivaty Everywhere, allowing anyone to embed visually-rich, browser-based virtual experiences on any blog, brand or online destination – it’s as easy as cutting and pasting a YouTube video!
Vivaty adds this new feature to expand the immersive Web experience (they started out on Facebook and AIM). Now, Vivaty is literally “everywhere” on the Web.
Vivaty also launched customized, embeddable scenes for two leading brands, Universal Music Group and BarelyPolitical:
- The Queen + Paul Rodgers scene presented by Universal Music Group allows fans and bloggers to connect and share their enthusiasm for the band across many social networks and fan sites. Watch videos, chat, dance and discuss all eras of the band’s history in the Queen + Paul Rodgers Listening Party.
- The BarelyPolitical scene features classic and new Obama Girl videos and BarelyPolitical’s political satire content to give an engaging, social experience to its audience.
We’ve already seen some great coverage so far in VentureBeat, Forbes, SF Business Times, Silicon Alley Insider, Virtual Worlds News and Adotas.
Read the announcement or visit Vivaty’s blog for more info. See you in the scenes!
The Squad Hits The Trail Running
A few weeks back LaunchSquad participated in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, a 3.5-mile run around Crissy Field and Fort Point just below the Golden Gate Bridge. This marked the 5th anniversary of LaunchSquad’s participation in the event and resulted in our best performance to date. We had more participants than ever (16 runners), and apparently we brought on board some ringers in the past year!
The Squad’s Squad was led by the blazing Reed Lyon, who finished in the top five overall for all runners (we’re talking 5,693 runners from 259 companies) with a very impressive time of 17:35 (uh, that’s a 5 minute/mile pace!). Needless to say, Reed lived up to his expectations of being the ringer runner and we couldn’t be more proud.
Reed was closely followed by recent team addition Emilie Cole, who lead the charge for the LaunchSquad women by clocking in at 23:15, an overall 13th place finish for all female participants.
These amazing times led to our best finish ever as a team, coming in second overall for all teams that participated. Unfortunately the official time didn’t go down in the official books due to some fine print rules, but we know in our hearts that we did pretty darn well (and yes, if you add up our top times, it equals 1:33:10 – 2nd place!).
Also to be acknowledged are Jesse Odell for spearheading the snappy uniforms, as well as Corey Lewis for throwing the first ever LaunchSquad luau in his very own backyard. Mary the steel-drummer DJ provided the entertainment, and we even had the cops called on us! It was quite the rager on a Wednesday night, but hey, we couldn’t help but celebrate our victory.
All in all it was a great experience as always, but we’ve got a lot of work to do to top this year’s performance! After a brief hiatus to rest our sore legs, training packets are being compiled for the ’09 season …
Good Things Come In Threes
Lots of exciting things happening around these parts recently. First, we wanted to congratulate Melissa Biles on reaching her 5 year anniversary here at LaunchSquad this month. Melissa joined us shortly after graduating from Georgetown (and being an All-American lacrosse player to boot), and has played such a pivotal role in our evolution and growth. We’ve been lucky to have her.
Second, we’ve had two LaunchSquad weddings to celebrate. Jennifer Gazin, our very first employee who joined us back in 2002, got married this past weekend in a lovely ceremony in Montreal. She met her husband Julien while on a trip to Ireland. Amy Neal (aka Green Amy) also tied the knot a few weeks back up in Sonoma County. She then took off with her husband Dustin on a three-week honeymoon to Croatia.
Congrats to all!
Brightstorm Launches As Online Teen Learning Network
Do you remember your favorite teacher in high school? The one whose lectures were so engaging that the concept still sticks with you today? Do you also remember those late nights studying when you had to figure out an Algebraic equation or write a paper? Wish you could have referred back to a great lesson from your favorite teacher explaining the concepts in a way that made sense to you?
Today, Brightstorm launched its online learning network–geared at teens looking for quality supplemental education options that are accessible to them on their terms. Based around the idea that great learning starts with great teaching, Brightstorm’s learning network offers Web-based video lessons, designed and taught by real teachers from all over the U.S. and complemented by bonus materials and interactive elements. The network is already getting tons of buzz–from the New York Times to TechCrunch and Forbes.
On Brightstorm, teens can create personal profiles and purchase year-long access to 5-hour interactive video courses broken down into 10-20 minute lessons. Brightstorm’s lessons cover a variety of subjects including math, writing, history, as well as AP and SAT test prep.
Brightstorm’s mission is to help teens succeed in school and better prepare them for college by meeting them in an environment in which they are already comfortable and engaged – the Internet.
Money Is Falling From The Sky
In the midst of gloomy economic news, cloud gateway provider Sonoa Systems has found their silver lining. On Wednesday, our client announced their latest round of funding: $10 million led by Third Point Ventures with Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners and SAP Ventures. Sonoa has a technology that solves the huge problems companies face when using cloud-based applications and lets them enjoy the benefits of cloud computing without the risks associated with it — too slow, not secure and not scalable, just to name a few.
Cloud computing represents the next tectonic shift in the economics of delivering products and services, providing big opportunities for new revenue, reducing IT costs, and reinventing customer relationships–yet it isn’t quite enterprise-ready. Many enterprises have concerns around the risks and issues of either providing or using cloud services such as SaaS, Amazon web services, mashups and APIs, or mobile applications.
But as TechCrunch IT’s Steve Gillmor points out in his recent story on Sonoa, “IT now has the opportunity to embrace that which they fear and reassert control as APIs become the heart of our economic engine.” Sonoa solves these tough issues for companies that want to open their applications to the cloud. For example, if Twitter was using Sonoa during the time of their recent outages, they would have never happened. Sonoa would have given Twitter the critical level of visibility into the usage levels and performance that all on-premise applications have and been able to buffer and queue API traffic at peak times.
By 2012 virtually all Web traffic will be through APIs or the cloud, and Sonoa is well-positioned to be at the heart of these changes.
AnchorFree Launches The Privacy Cops Blog
We’ve been working with our client AnchorFree to launch a new blog called The Privacy Cops as part of our campaign to put them front and center on issues pertaining to online consumer privacy.
The blog is an extension of the company’s free Virtual Private Network (VPN) product called Hotspot Shield, which protects and secures consumers broadband sessions online. The Privacy Cops provides a forum to objectively discuss and debate online privacy and security trends and help position the company as experts surrounding these ever-important issues. The blog offers thoughtful commentary, relevant news headlines and real solutions visitors can use to minimize their own risks while surfing the web around the world.
Whether it’s the recent Senate hearings involving ISPs and ad targeting, the launch of Google’s Chrome drawing criticism from industry experts, or new invasive technologies from companies such as NebuAd, Phorm and other third-party ad-tracking companies, it is apparent that the debate around online privacy will not subside in the near future. More importantly, it has become clear that our privacy online may be in jeopardy. The Privacy Cops is another outlet in which AnchorFree, through Hotspot Shield, openly advocates a secure and private online environment for all consumers.
Check out the blog and chime in on the discussions.