10:37 AM PDT Fri, Sep 16, 2011 Meet Fiverr: The Dirty Underbelly of Social Media Marketing
Fiverr, an online service for people to share tasks they are willing to do for $5, has an abundance of listings that offer guaranteed YouTube views, website promotions, Facebook likes and more.
We have reached out to Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman for comment on these listings and to YouTube and Facebook for comment on Fiverr's practices.
One Fiverr offer guarantees 600 YouTube views -- YouTube does SEO via likes, comments and views -- within nine days.
"This is great for increasing revenue share as this is legitimate human traffic," Fiverr user liamdeluchi writes. "I always deliver more than expected."
Those who bought the offer and posted a review all reported positive results. Of course, considering these services are all designed to game YouTube and Google search, chances are...
9:59 AM PDT Fri, Sep 16, 2011 Read It Later Hints At New Direction with Web App Release
Read It Later, which raised more than $2.5M in July in its first outside funding round, released a new web app to give its users a clearer way to consume content and appreciate media on the Internet.
UPDATE: "The previous list view, though efficient, didn't give the content a chance to really shine," Read It Later founder Nate Weiner told LAUNCH via email. "A lot of wonderful, interesting and beautiful content gets saved into user's lists and we wanted to ensure that each of those items could stand out and been seen."
Read It Later's new web app saves and organizes your future reads, videos and images into a tiled display with controls to sort saved media by article, video or photo.
"We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can create the best experience...
8:10 AM PDT Fri, Sep 16, 2011 Stitcher Radio Quietly Debuts Redesigned iPhone and iPad Apps
[ The "front page" of Stitcher's new iPad app -- see what's in the headlines and what's hot as well as new podcasts. ]
Stitcher, which provides on-demand podcast streaming to desktops and mobile devices, has overhauled the look of its iphone and and iPad apps, changing the dominant color from royal blue to dark gray, replacing the logo's rounded lowercase letters with blocky all-caps, and making images accompanying podcasts larger.
Overall the apps feel cleaner, and the changes give Stitcher a more serious, rather than playful, feel. [ The new logo hasn't made it to the Stitcher website just yet though. ]
Chuck Harris, Stitcher senior designer, wrote on the company blog that, "The logo had to have a narrative that told the Stitcher story...
3:12 PM PDT Thu, Sep 15, 2011 Yahoo to Delicious Users: Transfer Your Bookmarks or Else
Yahoo gave its members their final warning that if they want to keep their bookmarks from Delicious, they need to grant Yahoo permission to move them to new Delicious owner AVOS by Sept. 23, 2011 or they will lose everything.
LAUNCH has contacted Yahoo to see if there will be any mercy for those who do not see or miss this final notice.
AVOS is the latest company from YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who acquired Delicious from Yahoo in April for...
2:52 PM PDT Thu, Sep 15, 2011 Former MySpace CEO Mike Jones Launching Incubator in L.A.
[ Mike Jones still has a MySpace page. ]
According to our sources, former MySpace CEO Mike Jones is starting a Los Angeles-based incubator. We've reached out to Jones for comment.
Jones sold his company Userplane to Aol in August 2006. In 2008 he started a landing-page and SEO business called Tsavo that he abruptly left...