The Objective: bring home the gold for “Most Innovative MySpace Integration on Mobile.”
Mission: Accomplished.
Today MySpace announced the winners of the MySpace Developer Challenge, and iSkoot was among the victors. The competition, announced in early January, aimed at inspiring the developer community to build cool new on- and off-site integrations with MySpace.
We submitted iSkoot’s Kalaida Platform, which has made it possible for us to include a real-time, media-rich connection to MySpace in our newest suite of mobile products, including AT&T Social Net, Social Beat on Verizon, T-Mobile Social Networks, and iSkoot Notifier on T-Mobile UK. Users can see friends’ status updates, access their inbox, see profile and status comments and take advantage of the full set of MySpace messaging and response options, like sending messages and posting profiles comments.
iSkoot is incredibly excited to have been honored with “Most Innovative MySpace Integration on Mobile.” We’d like to extend both our gratitude to MySpace and our congratulations to the fellow MySpace Developer Challenge winners:
They say time flies when you’re having fun. That said, garden variety “fun” doesn’t hold a candle to being the #1 mobile social networking developer for the top two carriers in the US. 2009 didn’t just “fly” - it broke the sound barrier.
Let’s dial the clock back: In January of last year, we were roughly two days into a soft launch of our “Notifier” product, a mobile application that combines access to social networks and live news feeds, with AT&T Wireless. To the casual onlooker, it was a low-key affair; but for iSkoot it marked a major milestone - our first foray out of “mobile Skype” territory and into the uncharted domain of integrated mobile social networking.
In the spring, Notifier found an invaluable home in AT&T’s new initiative, the AT&T Apps Beta program. Notifier was made available to a growing group of AT&T Beta testers, and we were able to tweak the application to carrier-grade quality based on candid, detailed feedback from actual AT&T customers.
In July, our new, improved and freshly re-branded app became ready for prime time, and our fine partners at AT&T introduced AT&T Social Net, the first-ever AT&T-branded Facebook + MySpace + Twitter application, to the world for the low, low price of, well, free. A big day for “firsts,” if we do say so ourselves.
AT&T Social Net launched for AT&T’s coolest devices, like the LG Neon and the Samsung Impression. Since then we’ve had been adding more and more devices to the supported handsets list, and even got AT&T Social Net preloaded on the Samsung Mythic and the Samsung Flight!
Along the way, we’ve been continually grateful for and humbled by the tremendous level of support AT&T has shown AT&T Social Net, from cameos on the AT&T Wireless homepage…
…to uber-slick window displays….
…to prime-time TV spots featuring college basketball star-gone-pro Tyler Hansbrough:
Fairly awesome stuff.
The launch with AT&T was one of iSkoot’s biggest achievements to date. So when the opportunity to work with Verizon popped up right on its heels, we were warmed up and ready to swing for the fence. iSkoot partnered with Verizon to launch Social Beat, a mobile application featuring Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and news plus Gmail and Google Talk, in mid November. Like AT&T, Verizon also made the bold move of making the application available for free, and Verizon customers appeared to be pretty enthused with the offering, if word on Twitter is an indication:
After offering Social Beat for top Verizon devices like the LG EnV and the LG Chocolate 3, Verizon followed up with a little holiday treat for Verizon’s “Prosumer” contingent: Social Beat was offered as a virtual preload on the Verizon BlackBerry Curve 2.
And then, wouldn’t you know it? It’s 2010: a brand new year, and what seems like an awfully long way out from the days the company known for mobile VoIP had a two-day old soft launch on their hands. We’d like to personally thank every single person at AT&T and Verizon who made 2009 such a groundbreaking year for iSkoot - we’re immensely excited about products, the partnerships and the momentum we’ve built.
We look forward with great anticipation and equal motivation to an exciting new year ahead. Stay tuned: more exiting news is coming down the pike all the time.
It’s been just under 5 months since AT&T first introduced AT&T Social Net to the world. We aren’t at liberty to divulge details, but let’s just say…the world noticed. As we here at iSkoot suspected, there was a heck of a lot of demand for mobile Facebook, Twitter and MySpace from people who didn’t want to pay boatloads for a top dollar space-age mobile handset. To the fearless users of the inaugural AT&T Social Net: We thank you. AND…we’ve got a little something new for ya.
Meet…the new version.
Veteran ATTSN users: You came, you talked, we listened. And now, a better-than-ever new build of AT&T Social Net is available for grabs at the AT&T MEdia Mall! We added some extra zip to make it faster, and threw in a few new bells and whistles based specifically on your feedback to enhance the entire mobile social experience. In no particular order, and in this blogger’s humble opinion, here are a handful of AT&T Social Net’s coolest new adds:
1. Retweeting
Spotted a shareworthy update in your Twitter feed? Now you can retweet posts from your Twitter feed directly from AT&T Social Net. It’s a one-click maneuver, and it’s awesome.
2. Read your @replies
Now there’s a whole tab in the Twitter section devoted exclusively to @replies. If anyone’s talking at you or about you on Twitter, now you’ll be the first to know.
3. Poke ‘em, like em, messege ‘em and more
Now ALL the stuff you wanna do on Facebook is done completely within the app. Like, all of it. Want to send your friend a message? Do it in the app. Want to “like” or comment on a post? Do that in the app too. Basically, you’ll never go out to the browser again, unless you want to look at something old or obscure. Jackpot!
4. See who’s commenting, and who likes what
When a post shows up in your feed or on your wall, you can not only read the update, now you can read what other people comment on it and see who gives it the ole Facebook thumbs up.
5. More News feeds
Now you can choose from over 50 different news sources! We’ve added Huffington Post, The Economist, Rotten Tomatoes, TMZ, Dictionary.com and a bunch of others. Get your news on.
6. Tie: MySpace Comments or MySpace Inbox
Now you can view both within AT&T Social Net. Which is cooler? I’m still on the fence. But I’m also glad they’re both in there. Now I can tell people to start sending me messages on MySpace again (which, as you can see from the video, hadnt been happening lately.) Amen.
Seeing is believing folks, so make for the AT&T MEdia Mall now and treat yourself to the new and improved AT&T Social Net. We think you’ll like what you see!
Attention holiday shoppers: Black Friday draws near, and Verizon’s new BlackBerry Curve 2 just hit shelves nationwide. This new phone has quite the sell. It’s slick, it’s speedy, and it’s got iSkoot’s Social Beat preloaded on the device!
That’s right folks - the social media app known for promoting an “all phones created equal” world just made the leap to BlackBerry. Don’t worry, we’re still holding true to our smarter-phone philosophy. But we’re also betting that Social Beat’s integrated, all-in-one social media experience has plenty to offer a BlackBerry contingent that values simplicity, efficiency and of course, connectivity.
That’s why Social Beat is now exclusively Verizon’s BlackBerry Curve 2 users with the “Prosumer” package. Prosumers can find Social Beat preloaded in the BlackBerry’s Applications folder. Just click on the Social Beat icon to fire up installation and launch the app.
The new BlackBerry Curve 2 flavor of Social Beat comes with most of the usual bells and whistles, including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google Talk and News feeds. Plus (because BlackBerry is swanky) you can move the Social Beat icon to your BlackBerry home screen for easier-than-ever access to all your favorite stuff.
More Verizon BlackBerrys will come equipped with Social Beat in the coming months, so be sure to check back here or tune in to the Social Beat Facebook fan page to stay on top of the latest news.
In the meantime, for you Black Friday veterans in search of the essential one-stop shopping solution, look no further than Social Beat on the new Verizon BlackBerry Curve 2.
We here at iSkoot are VERY pleased to introduce Social Beat, our latest product now available exclusively for Verizon customers in the Verizon Media Store.
In iSkoot’s latest charge to bring internet goodies and social media magic to all mobile phones, Social Beat delivers the top social networks - Facebook, Twitter and MySpace - plus Gmail, Google Talk and RSS feeds from over 50 leading sources on the web. It’s our most advanced feature set to date: users can check their email, IM with friends, comment on, “like,” retweet and @reply to the latest updates in their social networks, view messages on Facebook & MySpace, read @replies on Twitter and get feeds from New York Times, Huffington Post, TMZ, Rotten Tomatoes and Dictionary.com - all within the Social Beat application.
Want to see for yourself? Let us show you around:
Social Beat has launched on 15 top devices at Verizon, with many more coming down the pipeline. For the current list of supported handsets, click here.
Social Beat is iSkoot’s latest foray into the world of integrated social media on mobile, but it isn’t our first. This launch follows the launch of AT&T Social Net, a mobile application that iSkoot developed for AT&T that because available to AT&T’s customers last July.
What’s next on the iSkoot agenda? Only time (and perhaps the occasional blog post) will tell…
In the meantime, check out the newest addition to the iSkoot product family. We’re all very proud of Social Beat and would love to hear what users have to say.
The GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Grand Prix competition aims to spotlight promising entrepreneurs from small and medium-sized companies that bring innovative new products and services to market. GSMA teamed up with US-based investment bank Rutberg & Company to host the competition’s Americas leg (Rutberg does mergers & acquisitions advisory and private capital raising services for companies in wireless and digital media), and the next round is coming up fast!
On iSkoot’s Grand Prix to-do list:
1. Shine up our presentation skills (after a nonstop Fall tour ’round the trade show circuit, I think Mark’s still good and loose.)
2. Head to Redwood City on Dec 1st
3. Go toe-to-toe with 9 other Americas finalists in a round of presentations to a panel of industry experts!
Two of the ten finalists will go on to compete in the final round of the tourney at GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next February. Only one company will bring home the title! Can iSkoot go the distance? There’s only one way to find out. On to Redwood City!
Conference season is heating up, and iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein has gotten himself into the mix once again!
Tomorrow, that’s Thursday September 10, Mark is headed bright and early to kick things off at GigaOm’s Mobilize 2009 conference at the Mission Bay Center in San Francisco. His is the first panel of the show, a 40-minute examiniation how to company’s can turn mobile apps into a profitable business.
“Monetizing Mobile Apps” starts at 8:25am tomorrow; joining Mark will be Dorian Porter, CEO of Mozes, Zannel CEO Adam Zbar, Plusmo CEO Krishna Vedati and Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis. Raven Zachary, President of Small Society, will be moderating the panel.
Tickets are sold out, but for those of you who jumped on the wagon early, come check out the panel! For more details on Mobile 2009 speakers and tomorrow’s schedule of events, check out the Mobile website: http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/09/schedule/
It’s that time again - South by Southwest Interactive is recruiting speakers! The one-of-a-kind festival, known for assembling the best & brightest in cutting-edge tech and media, is looking for top-notch talents to tout their industry wisdom –and iSkoot CEO Mark Jacobstein is in the running for the job.
The best part: YOU can help us bring Mark - and the iSkoot anthem “Every phone a smartphone!” - to the festival-going masses next March. How, you ask? Simple: the kind folks in Austin are letting you vote to get him the gig!
Here’s how:
1. Click the button below. You’ll create an account (it takes approx 15 seconds total) so you can cast your vote.
2. All registered? Here’s Mark’s listing: Click me to vote for Mark!Just click the “thumbs up” icon to cast your vote!
3. Heck, why not leave an encouraging comment? Scoll down to the bottom of the page, and let SXSW know you’re a believer in iSkoot.
The polls close on Friday, Sept 4 so act fast!
Thanks team! Let’s get Mark Jacobstein to Texas in 2010!
AT&T Social Net is an all-in-one mobile application with a live connection to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and feeds from over 35 leading news, sports & entertainment channels. The user just has to sign in once, subscribe to his/her channels of choice, and AT&T Social Net does the rest - updating automatically to always display the very latest in tweets, feeds, posts, updates, photo alerts and more. Users can respond in real time too, with tweets, @replies, messages, pokes, wall posts and status updates. The carousel menu of icons at the top of the screen makes for easy navigation from service to service - and the AT&T Social Net Home screen offers an integrated Update stream for quick access to the newest activity across all services.
The word from Mark Collins, vice president of voice and data products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets:
“Five of the top 10 searches on our mobile Web portal are for social networking sites, a clear indication of the growing popularity of mobile social networking. With this app, we’re satisfying the increasing demand for aggregation apps that make it easy for customers to be active in multiple communities simultaneously.”
As the official press release notes, AT&T tapped iSkoot to develop AT&T Social Net, and iSkoot aficionados may spot a few parallels with iSkoot’s Notifier, introduced earlier this year. Notifier was one of the first applications featured in the AT&T Apps Beta - a program that lets developers test new applications with AT&T customers for feedback - and after a keen fine-tuning based largely on valuable insight from the beta testers, AT&T Social Net was born.
From Mark Jacobstein, iSkoot’s CEO:
“The feedback generated from Apps Beta helped us confirm some hypotheses and prioritize some features before general release. For example, we focused on ensuring seamless operation on touch-screen devices — a huge point of interest with Apps Beta users — and also added server-side content caching to improve app speed and responsiveness.”
Here’s a look at the application, fresh off the AT&T MEdia Mall, running on an LG Neon:
AT&T Social Net is available for download today on 20 devices, with more coming soon. AT&T customers can check to see if their devices are compatible here: www.att.com/socialnetdevices
Enormous gratitude goes out to everyone at AT&T for this fantastic opportunity!
