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From Barry Moltz:
Business people network a lot. Unfortunately, most of it is a total waste of time. They spend a lot of their time at networking events talking to people who will never ever be a prospect or influence a customer to buy. They randomly go from...
We’re excited to announce a partnership with Little Black Bag, a new online shopping experience that will allow you to use your social currency like never before. Take an interactive style quiz and Little Black Bag will create a personalized mystery bag of fashion and beauty products for you. Once you open your bag, you’ll have time to trade items with other shoppers, see what’s trending, and discover new brands. With this Perk, you’ll receive an additional $1 of product for every Klout Score point you have with the purchase of your first bag! Is your Klout Score 44? Get $44 worth of additional product in your bag at checkout!
At Klout, we’ll continue to find ways to reward you for what you’re already doing online. Creating a 1:1 social currency partnership is just the beginning of the evolution of Klout Perks. Try out the sweet new Klout integration with Little Black Bag here!
Some people just love Google+ and others just hate the company’s efforts to create a social network and a social layer across all of its services. Google itself seems to be pretty happy with the results it is getting from Google+ so far – or at least that’s what the company is saying publicly. No matter your overall feelings about Google+, though, Google’s new native Google+ app for iPhone is worth a look, especially because it’s hopefully just a first glimpse at what more of Google’s mobile apps will look like in the near future.
So far, the Google+ mobile app was adequate but nothing to brag about for Google. For the most part, it worked (though it did crash at times) and gave you access to Google+’s most important features. Even Google+’s most ardent fans wouldn’t have called it exciting, though.
The latest redesign, however, suddenly makes the app one of the more interesting social networking clients on the market today. Unlike the previous version of the app, which felt like it was designed by committee and lacked luster, this new version almost makes Google+ feel like a Path-like “mobile first” service. It’s highly visual, puts an emphasis on images, and its endless scrolling with new items quickly sliding into place as you scroll down is a nice design touch that feels very different from Google’s latest, often lackluster, design efforts.
Just compare the new Google+ app to something like Currents, Google’s once-hyped Flipboard competitor. It’s not a bad app. It does what it says it does, but it just doesn’t inspire the same kind of enthusiasm as the highly visual Flipboard. The Gmail for iPhone app, which didn’t even work at first, is a better effort but still feels more like Gmail for a small screen than email re-imagined for mobile the same way Sparrow, for example, does.
The new Google+ app, however, finally re-imagines what the service should look like on a mobile device. It doesn’t just try to recreate a version of the Google+ desktop site for a smaller screen.
From what we’ve heard, the new app was developed in-house by Google and the new design wasn’t informed by any recent acquisitions. So Google clearly has the design chops to develop apps like this.
The Google+ team, Steven Levy wrote last year, generally gets a bit more freedom to experiment and make fast decisions than other groups at Google. Maybe it’s no surprise then, that we would first see an app like this come out of the Google+ group. Let’s just hope other teams at Google will look at this app and let it inform their work as well.
This Mother’s Day, we’re celebrating moms everywhere. We asked you to share how your mom has influenced you in our Pin for Perks contest and we got some amazing responses that you can find on our #KloutMom Pinterest board.
You can also check out our graphic to find a collection of stories from our Klout employees, some friends of Klout, and some of our contest submitters.
Happy Mother’s Day!
How has a mom in your life influenced you?
From MSNBC's Your Business: Top Five:
If you want a higher profile for your business, you may need to grab the spotlight yourself. Here are five ways your brand can become a household name courtesy of Inc.com.
The best time in my life started when I realized my mom could also my best friend.
— Mindy Kaling (@mindykaling) April 26, 2011
like i said on @mtv im gonna release the song i wrote for my mom #TurnToYou end of this week for Mother's Day to raise money for charity
— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) May 7, 2012
An email from my mom contains the phrase "she very annoyed me." I just love her so much sometimes it gives me an ache.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) December 2, 2011
@ActuallyNPH wow. Those are the cutest children, well, among the top four children I've ever seen. s/ Mamaw
— Sheila Scott Harris (@gladsheila) March 17, 2012
“@mariashriver: Amazing journey, Katherine. So proud of you. You are a gift from God.” best mommy ever!
— K Schwarzenegger (@KSchwarzenegger) April 27, 2012
Becuz ur a beast!!! RT @dodger27mom: @dodger27mom: cardio for 1.5 hrs on leg day wit squats sucks! Remind me why I do this please?
— Matt Kemp (@TheRealMattKemp) December 9, 2011
@dodger27mom: takes one to know one!!!!! RT@TheRealMattKemp: @TheRealMattKemp: Becuz ur a beast!!!
— Judy Henderson (@dodger27mom) December 9, 2011
"Same-sex couples should be able to get married."—President Obama
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 9, 2012
Gay marriage conversation peaked at 7,347 Tweets per minute at 3:22p ET yesterday. CHART: twitter.com/gov/status/200…
— Twitter Government (@gov) May 10, 2012
Historic day for justice and equality. Our United States President Obama endorses marriage equality. I rejoice in this announcement.
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 9, 2012
“Glad Pres finally laid out position to American ppl, but changing def of marriage isn't something I can support" ow.ly/aOaXy...
— Senator Hatch Office (@SenOrrinHatch) May 9, 2012
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Macao: 2.06
— Quartz (@quartznews) May 8, 2012
▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ Cayman Islands: 1.78
— Quartz (@quartznews) May 8, 2012
I love that @SalmanRushdie is following @MollyRingwald. What a weird world we live in.
— paulabernstein (@paulabernstein) May 8, 2012
.@MollyRingwald @paulabernstein That goes for me too.
— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) May 8, 2012
Google’s map data has been baked into the iOS Maps app since the days of the first, thick, aluminum-backed iPhone, but that may no longer be the case once iOS 6 hits the streets. Unnamed sources told 9to5Mac that the Cupertino company would instead take that opportunity to reveal their own Maps application, and those early reports paint a pretty impressive picture.
Astute readers may recall that Apple has been on something of a mapping company shopping spree these past few years — what began with the purchase of Placebase in 2009, continued with Poly9 in 2010, and culminated with Apple snapping up C3 Technologies late last year.
As far as the app itself goes, the biggest addition to the mix is a robust new 3D mode that is said to be a straight implementation of the what C3 was already working on when they were acquired. Considering how damned good some of their 3D maps looked, this should be a real treat (assuming the report isn’t just hot air). Also on deck is an updated street view mode also courtesy of C3, and what would a major revamp be without a new app icon?
While C3′s (and possibly Poly9′s) tech seems to have been used in building (or replacing) features, the purchase of white-label mapping service Placebase presumably allowed Apple to build up their store of map data to the point where they apparently feel comfortable giving Google the boot. Apple has forecast their shift away from reliance on Google in other ways, too — about two months ago, Apple switched from using Google’s map data to data provided by the OpenStreetMaps project (even if it did take them a while to own up to it).
While Apple isn’t expected to fully unveil iOS 6 and all the changes they’ve made until this year’s WWDC in June, if you’re champing at the bit for nifty 3D mapping functionality on your iDevice, apps like UpNext Maps may be able to hold you over until Apple delivers their next big iOS update.
Just a day after it announced its well-received updates to its search result pages, here is some more good news for Bing: according to the latest data from Experian Hitwise, Bing-powered searches — that is searches on Bing.com and search.yahoo.com — now account for 30.01% of all U.S. searches. By itself, Bing grew 16% year-over-year and 5% month-over-month and now accounted for 14.32% of all U.S. searches in April 2012. Yahoo grew somewhat slower, but still at a respectable 5% month-over-month and 7% year-over-year.
Things didn’t quite look so rosy for Google, though. Searches on Google.com, according to Hitwise, declined 3% in April 2011 compared to the previous month and were down 5% year-over-year. Google, of course, still remains far ahead of its competition. In April, almost 64.5% of all U.S. searches were powered by Google.
The 65 smaller search engines Hitwise also tracks only accounted for 6.51% of U.S. searches, by the way.
While Bing is still losing money – and while there have been some rumors about Microsoft trying to sell its search engine to Facebook – there can be little doubt that Microsoft’s persistence is slowly paying off and eating into Google’s still sizable lead. Leaving out the searches it powers on Yahoo, Bing itself, of course, still remains a niche player at under 15%, but crossing the 30% barrier is quite an achievement for Bing.
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