Category: Brightkite
Katango is a simple mobile group messaging app built on technology with huge potential. The first Kleiner Perkins sFund investment, Katango debut is an eponymous iPhone app that lets users send email, private Facebook wall posts and in-app messages to lists of friend that it automatically that it automatically assembles. It’s this last part that’s so important.
Based on data about a user’s interconnectedness with their friends, Katango instantly and accurately builds what Facebook calls friend lists and Google+ calls Circles. When the company showed me a prototype web interface in early June, it allowed users to export these groups as Facebook friend lists.Continue
A large set of documents and images of an as yet unreleased Facebook mobile photos app was leaked yesterday. Many details remain unclear, including whether the app will be part of the traditional mobile apps, a standalone app, or both.
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Yesterday, Blackberry announced the launch of a native Facebook app for its new tablet device the PlayBook. It will include the ability to browse the news feed, upload and browse photos, send Messages, and most innovatively, Chat with multiple friends simultaneously via two-panel interface and be notified of new instant messages. Unfortunately, the app lacks a core mobile feature — Events — as well as new Facebook features such as Groups and Places.
Facebook for Blackberry PlayBook lags far behind native apps for iOS, Android, and even the standard Facebook for Blackberry, but at least the tablet has an official native Facebook app, unlike Apple’s iPad.Continue
In Facebook’s first update to its iPhone app in five months, the company added a new map view for seeing friend’s locations and check-ins for events.
Facebook also changed the user interface for notifications, putting bigger profile pictures in, and added the ability to unfriend people from the iPhone app. Overall, the changes are pretty modest.
The map view will also help people better visualize how close their friends are, which might help if they’re in unfamiliar or new cities (see right).Continue
Blackberry’s new Facebook application, Facebook 2.0 in beta, is a big improvement over the previous version, which was cumbersome because it was designed with menu after menu to scroll through to do anything. The new application is much more sleek, easier to use and faster, to boot.
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Twitter announced a new version of its app for Android today, which it says is now one of the top 5 most popular ways to access Twitter. The new version is easier to read updates on without having an account, has more granular search options and interface more like the one iPhone owners see.Continue
Yesterday we selected our Best LittleCo of 2010, the light blogging service Tumblr. In this post we select a company that we think has the potential to be Best LittleCo of 2011. Next year we're expecting a lot from data-centric companies and one in particular. This company provides a platform for developers to create location-aware applications: SimpleGeo.Continue
The recently released version 3.3.3 of the Facebook for iPhone mobile app has been released. It includes an updated notifications interface, the restored ability to post as Page you admin, and various performance, reliability, and memory improvements. However, this release freezes more than previous updates, frustrating users by requiring them to restart their iPhone or re-download the app.
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The mobile social network Brightkite announced back in September that it would be focusing more on its group texting feature, but today the company announced that it will be officially dropping the check-in function altogether from its service. One of the earliest companies in the location-based social network trend, Brightkite calls today's announcement to move away from check-in to focus on messaging "the next stage of our evolution."Continue
