Author Archives: Ken Yeung

Have you ever wanted to build your very own mobile application? Are you having trouble trying to figure out the server-side backend functionality? Well don’t waste precious time on that–a new startup has emerged out of it’s “beta” phase to help you out. It’s called Parse and it was started in June 2011 as a service designed to “provide cloud service for mobile developers. It makes it dead simple to add a backend to your iOS or Android app.”  With over 10,000 developers already signed up with Parse, the goal for the company is to be, quite frankly, considered the “Heroku of Mobile“.

A Y Combinator-funded company, Parse was founded by startup veterans, including co-founders Ilya Sukhar, James Yu, Tikhon Bernstam, and Kevin Lacker. Just within their first year, Parse has raised over $7 million in funding from angel investors like Google Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Yuri Milner, Garry Tan, Don Dodge, SV Angel, and many others, in addition to a Series A round covered by Ignition Partners. With all this funding, what problem is Parse really trying to solve? Well according to Mr. Bernstam, a co-founder, many mobile app developers just aren’t “deeply familiar” with the server-side code that you need to manage things like databases, user authentication, notifications, and even other common features. Parse hopes to cut through all that angst and just let developers push out their mobile apps a lot quicker by simply leveraging the service’s extensive library of resources.

Did you know that today marks around one year since the announcement was made that yet-to-be-proven startup Color declared that it had received $41 million in funding. All because they were developing a brand new (and supposedly “revolutionary”) photo-sharing application that dozens of other companies had already gone and did. The industry was rather chagrined and dismayed when they heard this, with even some publications declaring that the infamous “bubble” had returned. What made Color so fascinating for some people? It helped develop a brand new “paradigm” for photo sharing, but that you would take a photo and view the pictures that those around you would share photos. Simply put, according to GigaOm, it was more like Foursquare than existing photo-sharing services. The technology itself probably made it plum for the reputation that it was worth $41 million, but it ultimately was a bust, having hardly gained any traction.

But now, a year later, Color has undergone a bit of a pivot–moving past being an app displaying real-time’ish photos from those around you to now being an app that will enable you to basically broadcast live right from your phone, without requiring any upload time–give yourself 30 seconds and then your status update is now on the world’s largest social network. An interesting pivot, don’t you think?

Have you wondered what’s the largest website (based on visits) are in the United States? You might think it would be Facebook with it’s enormous user database, but you’d be a bit off on your count. In a 24/7 Wall Street report by Douglas McIntyre and reported on MSNBC today, a look at the top sites has been done to see which Internet property is dominating the rest in terms of traffic. It’s estimated that that there are over 240 million users on the Internet as of 2010, and in the two years since then, it’s probably drastically increased. If you look at the list curated by Mr. McIntyre, you might be surprised by a couple of things: it’s being reported that each one technically has a different business model and none are in the same business as the other. I’ve looked at the list and it seems that some are actually in the same business, but it isn’t their primary competency. But when it’s all said and done, this year, the largest web properties are mostly dominated by those with capabilities in search and have an offering in social media.

The list by Mr. McIntyre includes the world’s largest search engine, web portal, video site, software company, social network, encyclopedia, and e-commerce site. Technology has certainly done a tremendous job at cornering this list, but then again, it’s not that unexpected right? The Internet is all about technology so it wouldn’t be far-fetched to expect these sites to not be on the list. It should be noted that this curated list only includes size of the site and traffic. The revenue generated isn’t necessarily factored in–according to MSNBC, “revenue is not essential to size online, but size can be essential to revenue.”

So what Internet properties took top honors as the largest websites in the United States?

The hit mobile application Instagram is moving one-step closer to making their app available to millions of potential new users. As first announced by The Verge, Instagram has launched a brand new page on their website designed to help people be notified when the long-awaited Android version is launched and made available.

We first got wind of Instagram’s plan to roll out an Android app around the time of South by Southwest where co-founder Kevin Systrom indicated that it was “coming soon”. There’s still no Android app available right now, but this is another key milestone for those who have been keeping track of the missing Instagram Android app saga. Right now, the company has amassed a loyal following of over 27 million registered users and has made some interesting news of late, including the large partnership with another popular iOS app, Hipstamatic. And with only four employees and a pretty impressive growth spurt over the past two years, it’s amazing that the app has kept being so popular throughout its entire existence.

Right now, interested people who want to be kept in the loop about the expected launch of Android can do so on Instagram’s website. Basically it’s an email newsletter-type sign up and by encouraging others to sign up, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to be the first or at least move up your spot for notification–it’s a fair and level playing field right now. So make sure you sign up today!

If the music video killed the radio star, then what kills music videos? Probably online media. We all know that MTV doesn’t have real music television anymore–it’s mostly made up of reality shows and nonsensical programming. So how exactly are musicians and artists going to try and get their name out to the masses and be heard? Well you could try and go with Pandora or even Spotify, but most likely you’re going to need some sort of label backing you in order to be considered to be placed. And another thing you might need to worry about is just how are you going to make sure that your music is shared with the rest of the world–traditional means of distribution just doesn’t have that much widespread appeal or reach anymore…well not compared to leveraging social media.

And that’s where a brand new startup is gearing up to help artists from all genres get noticed and build a better engaged community. Tracks.by is a young company created by two former UStream TV employees who helped offer services to some of their most prominent VIPs, including musical artists. Founders Mazy Kazerooni and Matt Schlicht saw that there was a need for a service to emerge that would help musicians leverage the new forms of communication and get the attention of their fans, without necessarily going through their record labels. In essence, Tracks.by is probably geared towards cutting through the middleman and connecting directly with those most passionate and interested in helping to spread the word about the artist’s work.