Want to catch up with what happened in the digital world this week? Our weekly cheat sheet will fill you in on everything you missed while you were scrambling to meet deadlines and put out fires.
This week, we check out the future of Facebook, brands expanding into video sharing apps, and the launch of Yahoo!’s new Axis browser.
Yahoo! Launches Axis, a New Web Browser
Yahoo! has launched Axis, a multi-platform web browser available for desktop, iPhone, and iPad. The browser is primarily focused on using search, but in a unique way. Instead of providing a list of links, search results in Axis are visual previews of the search results, making it easier for users to choose the site with the content they’re looking for. Questions remain over whether users really need another mobile browser from a major tech company, but Yahoo!’s partnership with Microsoft’s Bing could mean that Axis presents a potential threat to Google’s mobile search dominance.
TBS Includes Facebook Ads in Upfront Package
As part of the recent television upfronts, TBS has partnered with Facebook to bundle Facebook ads with traditional media buys through TBS. The partnership will make it possible for TBS to sell through branded content that will then be promoted by TBS through its Facebook ad buys. The partnership has the potential to use branded video content in Facebook’s Sponsored Stories, opening up new opportunities for exposure and to beef up the reach of a Facebook campaign for brands who don’t have the same social footprint as a TV network like TBS.
Brands Start Using Social Video Apps
Social video apps like SocialCam and Viddy are being embraced by brands looking to tap into the rapid growth of these Facebook/mobile-connected video apps. GE, Lipton Brisk, and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week are a few of the brands using these apps since they started growing a little over a month ago. We recently discussed the meteoric rise of these apps after they integrated Facebook’s Open Graph API to drive awareness and build large audiences. A few weeks ago, we touted that each had reached the 10 million user milestone. Now, Viddy has over 35 million monthly active users, and SocialCam has crossed the 50 million monthly active user threshold. SocialCam has also redesigned their online video viewer in a strategic move that they says positions them to compete with online video heavyweight YouTube instead of mobile video sharing competitors like Viddy.
SceneTap Puts Facial Recognition in Local Bars
Facial recognition is being used in the strangest places. Fresh off the heels of a privacy backlash that saw location-based app Girls Near Me pulled from app stores, SceneTap is a new facial recognition startup hoping to let bar and club patrons know the best places to hang out. The app uses anonymous facial recognition data to provide bar owners and patrons with stats on the guy:girl ratio, wait times, and occupancy at popular bars in key markets. With not only bars but also major retailers like Walmart looking into facial recognition as a source for real-time in-store analytics, foot traffic is becoming as easy to track and measure as web traffic.
Facebook Introduces “Camera” Photo Sharing App
On Thursday Facebook announced a new app, Camera, that joins Facebook’s growing suite of mobile apps. The app provides a feed of friends photos and also serves a s a replacement to the default camera. The app lets users crop and add filters to photos before they are uploaded to Facebook in a way similar, but not identical, to Instagram (which Facebook just purchased for $1 billion this year). The app comes amid Facebook’s recent IPO, which has gotten battered since last week due to Facebook’s acknowledgement of a potential weakness in mobile. You can bet that these new mobile app rollouts from Facebook are built to combat that perception and make the company more competitive in the mobile ad space over time. The company currently places ads around images in its desktop version, so look for Facebook to find ways to bring a mobile-friendly attempt at this in the near future.
Simeon Spearman, 05.24.12
