Viadeo Raises 24 Million EUR

Viadeo, the French parent company for ApnaCircle, and the closest competitor to LinkedIn announced today the realization of a fundraising round of 24 Million EUR. This is believed to be the largest European Tech investment in the past 12 months. Viadeo is currently the world's 2nd largest PSN after LinkedIn is still a leader in France and China. Its Indian partner company ApnaCircle is the leading Business and Career Networking site in the country.
The fundraising round was through a pool of investors to boost its growth in the emerging markets like China, India etc. The whole group through which this raiser was realized consists of French Sovereign Wealth Fund, Allianz, Jefferies, Middle Eastern private funds, and its existing institutional shareholders, Idinvest and Ventech. Dan Serfaty the CEO of Viadeo which is headquartered in Paris had this to say:


We're a global society where critical business connections span multiple languages, geographies and cultures. We have always been laser-focused on our 'multi-local' approach, which goes beyond simple translation and focuses on catering to, and understanding the business and cultural needs of each market. This approach has awarded us tremendous growth and success in both European and emerging markets.


As is quite visible the focus is n a multi-local approach which saw Viadeo making in roads in to the China market through Tianji and Indian local market through their leader ApnaCircle. Both companies seems to making a very fast progress based on the business model followed by the Viadeo group as a whole. Tianji has been in particular making quite a progress with its total user base at 10Mn and it went from 100, 000 to 500, 000 user per month. The fund raiser will surely be a boost for the group(especially in the emerging countries as already specified), but what remains to be seen is the strategy that Viadeo and its partner companies would be adapting in order to compete with LinkedIn, who is by far the leader in the Professional Networking arena with around 150 million users as of Feb 2012.
Dan Serfaty has already hinted that the company is currently not looking to go public. The plans for an initial offering were already left out at May last year to focus on the emerging markets expansion. The news of Viadeo IPO was in circulation when LinkedIn went public some time back. It will however be interested to see if the strategy now is also being around the matter.

While LinkedIn was making all news since some time, its to be noted that Viadeo group has seen a raise in its total member base. The count is now at 45 million as can be seen from the signup or registration page of the site. The group is to be noted has been profitable since 2009 and have offices in France(Paris), US(San Francisco), China(Beijing), India(New Delhi), Spain (Madrid & Barcelona), Italy (Milan), Russia (Moscow), Mexico (Mexico City) and Senegal (Dakar). As a groups the company houses a staff of around 400 people.

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Facebook Buys Instagram

A photo sharing app, a social media giant, food for bloggers like us ;) and a lot of whys and what-fors!! Not a tough puzzle is it!! All combined together to create a deal that many experts are putting as a defensive one: Facebook bought the 2yr old photo sharing app Instagram for a whooping 1bn USD. The deal marks the biggest one in Facebook history in terms of money spent.

Although all smart phones allow the social sharing from nearly all of their camera apps, so why was this deal important? In a way the social media giant just bought a camera, just that in this case the camera happens to be very famous in the recent past, supposed to be generating a lot of traffic and somehow was viewed as one of the competitor to the social media company as far as the photo sharing and collection goes. Doesn't matter that the deal was worth a billion in US dollars and the amount just seems like a drop in front of the Facebook's IPO evaluation.

Instagram has generated a lot of buzz with its nearly 30 million user base producing quality content. Not only the app is famous with the Apple iPhone/iPad users but it also found the long awaited love from the Android community as well, just like we stated in the previous post on Instagram. The quality of images being shared on Instagram is very well known and in that way the step from Facebook seems pretty obvious and sensible. Comparing the images shared on either we know the winner would be obvious as far as the quality parameter is concerned. Facebook gains from this deal vary from parameter to parameter on which you start analyzing the move. All in all we thought the below ones apply well from which ever point you think about the deal, obviously from Facebook's perspective. The photo sharing app CEO and team would be happy to be part of a company that has been the leader of sorts in social media and as it stands right now it seems that will stay the same. And obviously the amount settled for the deal is well worth for a no revenue company.

1. Facebook being a leader in the browser world and not so much in the mobile area, would love some authority in there. No doubt Instagram has proved in couple of years since the start that it pretty much is able to do that.
2. As of now, user could share photos taken from Instagram but now a) Facebook gets to keep the content generated and b) it comes directly to them from the mobile ecosystem to their platform possibly via Open Graph.
3. Facebook to Instagram to third party apps! Instagram should have some third party app developers tied to them, these will now be part of Facebook indirectly and thus creating a new  way for the social media giant to (may be) use the Facebook Credits in a manner that it works pretty well than it does now.
4. Lets accept that photos for Facebook (of whatever quality trend) are a huge interactive points for the user base on their platform. Buying a platform that works so well with photos will not only make interactive freak out but for sure will improve the quality to no bounds.

You think we missed out in the list any points that may be more important to the realization of the deal, let us know in the comments!!

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Instagram On Android: Who's NOT Loving It

Ever heard any Android user complaining about the iPhone app? Don't think we have! OK, and what about the reverse? Before you reach for an answer, we have one for you right here. 
Android and iPhone have always been a tussle ever since Android started its recognition journey in the smart phone market. You could get virtually all the apps on an Android device that are available on an iPhone. The only thing seems missing was the photo sharing app called Instagram. That too was made available around a couple weeks back. The introduction was welcomed by Android community but possibly not as much as it was hated by their neighborhood. From whatever we see in the tweets (and other sources) iPhone users are seriously not loving it.

If you think we are playing a prank, here is an Evidence for you ;) Apart from the tweet itself, another interesting point to note is the bottom part of this pic. After all , 665 isn't too small a number ;)

So why is it that we are seeing a sudden outburst for as small a thing as a photo sharing app? Well for one, its not just a photo sharing app and secondly (and most importantly) its about the taste that both community users are drawing a line in the social connection medium. We will try and explain, but only a little...

When you as an individual start seeing flaws that other people normally tend to ignore or live with, you are generally seen as an individual with a taste of their own. This kind of personality trait in Steve Jobs transformed Apple in to producing quality products; something that we all agree iPhones are!! The deducing theory was that as an owner of an iPhone you are in the same league to people who have great taste or at least one that is better and above to others out there. So while the iPhones are still up as far as their price ranges are concerned, you will see Android phones easily available with the low cost pre and post paid plans.

We wont go in to the details much here, but you get the idea, right ;)

The outburst have been severe and although we weren't able to find the other side of the story, the Android community is (as of now) busy counting the initial rise in the number of Android users registering with the app. It is like the iPhone community was considering the app as a copyright within their own world and now they see their best known rivals in close proximity.

Belong to Android or iPhone community? We would love to hear you views. As for our Crunchers, they belong to both communities and currently are enjoying following each other. We will leave you with a more collective image of the outburst. Hope to hear from you soon in the comments section. Till then Happy Crunching!!

[Image Source: Twitter from respective Users, Handles visible from the images]

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Android ICS Rolling Again

Sometime back (nearly 2 months now) we put a post introducing the new Android version that may be due this summer. Code named Jelly Bean! We did mention at that time that Google is yet to roll out the ICS (currently at version# 4.0.4) to all types of devices and in more countries than it did at that time. Well, the news is that Google has announced its rolling ICS OTA updates (again) to more devices and in more countries as well.
You may remember that the OTA for version# 4.0.3 was put on hold due to the issues that users reported in bundles; especially the battery life. This was somewhere in December 2011. As a result quite a few Android users and fans were left out of the initial update season. Since then many blogs (including Google' official forums) and sites were thudded with questions and posts on what was going on and when the rollout will start again. No one seemed to have a clue and Google was mum. Neither the ones who got the OTA were happy (with the issues) nor those who didn't get the update. Questions, questions, and then a small period of silence.
If you are the one waiting, then we bring some good new for you. You should by now either already have received the OTA update or should pretty soon. Google last week officially announced that it is restarting the ICS rollout to nearly all the devices. As the word is, the update will be of the most up to date version available right now: 4.0.4

As a reminder your device needs to running on the stock build for version 4.0.3 or the Gingerbread (2.3.x) in case you still are not using ICS to receive this update. You will as usual see a OTA pop up like the image on your right. The Nexus S (GSM version) should be getting the updates first, still a doubt over the Nexus 4G version but Google hasn't said anything about a NO on this yet(nor a YES). If you are looking for a list of what's new on ICS, read on.


New Font and Spell Checker

The new font called Roboto is specially designed for high resolution screens and brings a magazine-like feel to the whole smartphone interface. Besides this new font you will see the new spell check and the word suggestion interface in your messages and everywhere else as well. As you may see on the left image, wrong spells will be red underlined and the moment you will select the word the system will present you with the spell suggestions.
You also have the option of adding this new word to dictionary in case you are not interested in the suggestive words. You all have the same way of doing this like it was in 2.3.x by double taping the word (partially visible in the image)


Notification Bar and the way to dismiss

With ICS you get a notification bar which is slightly different from the one that you were used to in earlier versions. No major changes apart from the settings button that you see besides the date. Clicking the settings button will open up the system settings for you to make any changes that you may require.
The new change you will see is the fact that you are now able to dismiss individual notifications right from this bar. So instead of  clicking a X and send all notifications away, just slide each individual notification bar towards your right to dismiss it.


Screen Captures
Major major update as far as Android users are concerned. You are now able to capture your screen and it just takes 2 sec to do it. No apps required and no extra settings. Just hold down the volume down button and the power button (both at the same time) as you are ready to take a shot. The capture is by default saved to your internal storage and you are able to view it from the notification bar, right after you capture it. Once there, just open or share as er your convenience.


Instant Voice
Still some work to do before we really start the comparison with Siri but unlike other versions of Android which support voice commands, Android 4.0.4 will not take very long to transcribe your words. Just speak it in and it instantly transforms it into text.
All dictation errors are underlined just as we showed you in the message type image above. Just tap them like you would and replace them from the suggestion list presented to you.


Android Beam
Based on NFC (Near Field Communication) it allows two Android smart phones to securely exchange Web pages, contacts, media or even applications. Once ready with the share item, just tap both smart phones (ideally back to back) and the app decides the rest. It is based on NDEF Push technology.


Mobile Chrome
The new version comes with a brand new Chrome mobile Web browser. It syncs with your

desktop or laptop Chrome bookmarks, it can save pages for offline reading, and it can open up to 16 tabs at the same time. We show you 3 tabs as they are visible in the image to your left. 
Just click on the plus sign at the top right on the screen as and when you decide to open a new tab. Closing a tab is as simple as clicking the cross on the tab itself.


Camera with Panorama Mode
ICS has some great new camera features, a brand new camera UI, options to edit your images using multiple effects right after you click them and it captures images at a ridiculously fast speeds, probably the fastest among smart phones. Don't just believe us, try it!! Video recording modes have also improved along with support for a time lapse mode and as a plus you now get the Panorama mode. Nexus S users will still fume over the nonavailability of the zoom feature. But we really are not sure how Google and Samsung could do tat w/o and hardware changes. So as it stands now, zoom will be missed badly.


Mobile Data Usage
If you are the one who uses smart phones to make extensive use of network data for streaming content, synchronizing data, downloading apps, and more, then Android has met with your needs of metered data plans in this version. Find the Mobile Data usage setting and you are on the move.
Try out the new features and let us know how you liked or disliked them. As for us, we are thrilled to have received it on nearly all devices owned by our crunchers. They sure are enjoying the update, how about you? Got it already or are still waiting, let us know in the comments!!

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Social Media' April Fool Pranks

Social Media is just isn't about creating a profile on a social media site or a professional portal. Nor its just tweeting your page links to get more and more people to come(and may be join) your network. It's about making fun as well; it's also about pranks; it's also about creating fun with your groups and then making people follow or join! We have seen big names participate in the fun around the years (Google comes to mind with its April Fool Pranks). In this post we do a round up of a few pranks that made the news on April Fool' day this year.


Conan O'Brien buys Mashable
News of its kind we would say! Here is what Conan posted on Mash:
Hello, fellow Mashables. It’s Conan O’Brien, and I’ve got big news. Two hours ago, I purchased Mashable.com. I’ve taken it over. Why did I take it over? Very simple reason...
For more follow this link here, and here is the video for you:

Sony's Q Series
The Vaio Q series as it's called, so named because the laptop is of the size of a Quarter! Yes, you heard us...the size of a QUARTER...and you probably will need a microscope to work on it ;). Checkout the video below and see if you can make out it was a prank:

Morse codes are back: Courtesy Google (and thier SmartPhones)
When Google gave a demonstration of the product that they called Gmail Tap right on the eve of April Fool' day, (we dare say) many would have believed it to be true. In fact we received quite a few feeds on a social media network suggesting Google was successful in playing the prank. Although considering the reaction Google Plus has received, they might have been more successful if they had used that product; OK we won't give away more ideas here ;)
This actually qualifies as the best pick of the list, and we hope you would agree once you see how much polished work they did on this video:

Similar to last year, the search giant was very much successful to creating a ripple effect.
Offline YouTube
YouTube announced it will offer its videos collection offline as well. Now we leave it to you to do a simple math here to guess the number of trucks the collection will fill up!
The first to guess the correct answer, gets a YouTube offline collection on 'How to open Milk Cartons' :-p 
Nice work again but far too optimistic for it to be true, what do you think? Enjoy the video and Happy Crunching!!

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Twitter Smitten By Bugs

In the past days if you have tried to mention somebody from your followers (or followed) list only to find you are not able to. Or you followed someone and still see the Follow button on their profile view? Well it wasn't you but Twitter!! And the good news is that the bug has been fixed now.
After the initial discovery and users complaining on the issue, Twitter did acknowledge that there was a glitch. Twitter confirmed the news on their help center. However they claimed that it only seemed like the person was un-followed but in real you were still following the profile.
Here is what Twitter put up on the help center page and you may follow the link to read more on the issue. 

Although Twitter has reported to be working on the fix, the unfollow issue has been a problem since some time now. Twitter acknowledged the same on the help center page. Users of the micro-blogging site may remember a similar sort of an issue that rose last year in May. With that issues people were permitted to force other to follow them. And even then there was a issue with the follow count like a few people have still tweeted about in the past month.


And then...
It isn't over with the follow/unfollow thing; TweetDeck seems to be creating more problems for Twitter. Twitter had to take down the TwetDeck app after it was reportedly hit by a bug that was giving its users access to other user's accounts. The bug crept in after a recent update was made to the app for some important bugfixes with support for managing lists and better display of the inline images. This is the official acknowledgement from TweetDeck on Twitter:
TweetDeck is down while we look into an issue. Apologies for the inconvenience


If TweetDeck is your favorite, you still have the option of using the browser based version of TweetDeck which is available from the Chrome web store. But that in case, you still are a bit uneasy with your normal app as it has been reported to be back up since yesterday.
Happy tweeting, oops Crunching ;)

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Facebook's QR Cap

Sometime back we wrote a post about usage of QR code in social media. Seems like Facebook' Co-Founder and Chief Executing Officer Mark Zuckerburg agrees to the concept as well; in fact Zuckerburg and Co. have gone a step or two ahead. At least that's what looks like when you look the Facebook headquarters from the sky.
A 42ft QR code that is visible from even the space occupies one of the building block. The word is that a group of employees took to the roof, tar painted the area and now the 42ft QR which when scanned takes you too the FB QR Code page. And rather than provide you with a link to the FB age we thought of putting up a small QR code for you here. Nothing related to the BIG QR on the Facebook roof ;)

Scan this code to see the Facebook page which already has over 4k likes to it. And it seems the page will be holding a few contest type of interactions in the coming days or weeks. Currently the page has a video of the employees creating the QR itself and a few other aerial images.
The QR was put as part of a Space Hackathon that was initiated by Mark. The group however was led by Mark Pike, an associate on user operations with the intellectual property team; and this is what he wrote on Facebook Engineer' blog about the whole event plan to build this QR. This is just a snippet, follow this link to read the while story. And finally we will leave you with the aerial view of the FB campus where you can see the QR nice and dark:

When the last of the employees moved in to our new Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Mark Zuckerberg announced a "Space Hackathon."  His post encouraged everybody to decorate the new space to make it our own—tag the walls with spray paint, hang cool posters, and hack the building with some patented Facebook personality. But a few of us interpreted the call to action a bit too literally. We decided that we wanted our "space hack" to actually be visible from space. We wanted to hack the globe.

It started with a comment on Zuck's post. I wrote, "Hack yeah! I'd like to paint a gigantic QR code somewhere so we can RickRoll online maps, or point people to our careers site, or send them to a 'Clarissa Explains it All' GeoCities Page." By the end of the day, that comment had nearly 50 Likes. I still wasn't sure if people were seriously interested, so I started a Group. When over 100 people joined, it was game on.

We spent the next few days planning out the logistics of how to put a QR Code on the roof of Facebook's office. Building materials were debated intensely:

"Should we build it out of wood?" Too costly. Too hard to get up on the roof. It'll rot. It'll blow away.

"How about tile?" Too heavy. Too expensive. Too difficult to paint.

"Has anybody actually been up there yet? What if we just paint directly on the roof?" Problem solved.

An engineer on the team realized that the shorter the URL stored in a QR code, the less complex the QR code needs to be. We figured that meant (a) less painting, and (b) a better chance that the code could be scanned from space. We went ahead and purchased http://fbco.de and the QR code pixels fell into place from there.

[Image Credit: Justin Shaffer and don't forget the HACK near the QR]

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