Legendary tech writer Kara Swisher recently penned a tell-tale look for Vanity Fair into the Instagram and Facebook billion dollar partnership. With a publication like VF dedicating 4,500+ words to a company that developed a mobile app, it’s safe to say Instagram has gone mainstream. But, how did they get there? Fave Contributor Katy Jackson, tells all.
Snoopify is a new app launched by the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg (he now goes by Snoop Lion). The photo-based app allows users to add in “snoopified” sticker overlays. Once done, you can save and share photos with friends on social networks, like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with hashtag #snoopifyapp.
The Apple App Store is quickly approaching a huge milestone of 50 billion downloads. The lucky person to download the 50 billionth app will receive a $10,000 App Store gift card. That’s potentially 10,000 $.99 apps you could download, the equivalent of 66 iPod Nanos or 30 16 GB iPad Minis or more than 3300 songs from the iTunes store.
Not to worry, if you miss the lucky number, but download one of the first 50 apps after that, you could win a $500 App Store Gift Card
At the time of writing this post their countdown clock reads 49.2 billion downloads–and it’s moving fast.
You don’t even need to be an Apple customer to be considered, you can enter to win without purchase or download.
(h/t 9to5mac)
Since Google Alerts have trickled to a slow drip, you’re probably looking for other free ways to monitor what’s being said about you, your company and your contacts. Here’s a great alternative using two services I can’t live without:
Media, social monitoring and “live alert” app mention (available for iOS, Android, Mac and can be accessed via browser) used in conjunction with news monitoring service newsle is the ultimate one-two punch.
Mention allows you to monitor millions of sources in 42 languages, including social networks, news sites, forums, blogs and web pages. You can customize your monitoring to remove homonyms and spam and share alerts with others.
I like that you can assign priority to people or outlets who mention you and favorite things you’d like to save. There’s a free version of the service, but if you monitor a lot of clients or keywords, there are paid versions that offer more robust features.
Newsle works by connecting with your social networks, like Linkedin and Facebook and alerts you via email when: 1) one of your contacts is mentioned in the news; or 2) when one of your contacts has written a news article. This is especially helpful if you’re monitoring journalists and bloggers for a particular industry, or client. You can even monitor celebrities, political leaders or other people of prominence.
What’s really cool about the service is that it allows you to congratulate the person on their media mention from within the email. If you click “tweet,” newsle pulls up a ready-made tweet, including the recipient’s Twitter handle:
Both services allow for “live alerts” and will send you email notifications, but, because mention is app-based, it has the ability to send push notifications via your mobile phone as new mentions come through.
Enjoy this news monitoring #workhack and make your (work) life easier.
A developing story from The Verge, reports that Twitter is shutting down Tweetdeck for iPhone, Android and desktop.
There’s no question that Tweetdeck is one of the most (if not the most) robust of all Twitter third party applications. I’m a client and a fan and will be among the many who shed a tear when it’s no longer available. That said, it means it’s time to find a replacement.
I will most likely migrate back to Hootsuite. Remember them?
Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com)
HootSuite is a browser and app (iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry) social media dashboard. There are free and paid versions of Hootsuite. For the basic account users can add a maximum of 20 tabs per dashboard, 10 streams per tab and five social networks, including Facebook profiles, pages and groups, Twitter, Google+ and more. They also work with a ton of third party apps.
What about you? What will you use? Let us know in the comments.
photo credit: Mait Jüriado via photopin cc