Betaworks

betaworks is thankful for...

Posted 4:42pm EST November 19 2012

The holiday season has begun. Turkeys are being stuffed, potatoes are being mashed, and the team at betaworks is thankful for the great month we’ve had. Here are some of our standout fall successes:

betaworks has launched Swirl, a new iPhone app that automatically creates albums from your Instagram & Twitter networks.

bit.ly/TMqf6b

betaworks has launched Tapestry, a collection of tappable stories for your iPhone or iPad.

bit.ly/WpnRJB

Pickie raises $1M.

bit.ly/TTF6On

RebelMouse Raises $2.5M.

bit.ly/TTF6On

betaworks invests in Seesaw.

tcrn.ch/10gBw4G

17 year old founder creates Summly, one of our new seed investments.

tcrn.ch/Sa4TlC

We hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving! 

-team betaworks

seed investments update

Posted 2:57pm EST November 14 2012

We spend our time at betaworks in three areas. Structured as a company, rather than a fund, we’re afforded the flexibility to build, to invest, and to buy. Most of our time is spent building new products at the studio and scaling our existing core companies. This is why we identify first and foremost as makers, builders, and operators. So far, 2012 has been an insanely active year for us at betaworks. We have launched new products like Tapestry and Swirl, acquired and re-launched Digg, acquired a significant stake in bloglovin’, and closed more seed investments than any year in our history.

As John outlined in a blog post over two years ago, we do seed investments in order to create an ecosystem of founders and companies that share our vision for the future of the real-time social internet. In betaworking for almost five years now, we’ve made almost 100 investments in the category and have seen a tremendous amount of value emerge in the network that we’ve built.

We believe that the real-time social web represents a massive change in the way companies will be built and operate, and the way in which people interact and communicate with one another. We continue to be fascinated by products that are social, data-driven and design oriented, as well as extraordinary entrepreneurs that have the guts and commitment to build something big and different and often times terrifying.

In 2012, we’re on pace to be our most active yet, having already made 20 new investments (several not yet public) in early-stage companies. We pride ourselves on being “first money in,” making investments in entrepreneurs with very early betas (or alphas) because it’s at this stage where we think we have the most to add. We understand this awkward period in a company’s lifecycle because we do it ourselves all the time, building and breaking products that are every bit as experimental as the companies and entrepreneurs we invest in.

The year is not over yet. In the next few months, we’ll have a few new things to announce that we think you’ll love. So stay tuned, more soon.

betaworks launches swirl

Posted 12:43pm EST November 9 2012

Today we are excited to announce the official launch of swirl, the new iPhone app from betaworks that automatically creates albums from your Instagram & Twitter networks.

Several apps are trying to solve the problem of group photo sharing. Some require one person to create a set and invite friends to join, while others attempt to guess which photos are related and auto-create sets for you.  swirl simply creates a photo set from a shared hashtag among your friends.

When you log in with your Instagram and Twitter accounts, swirl will index everyone you follow on those networks, and place all hashtagged photos into sets called ‘swirls.’

Between the hurricane and the election, we’ve seen some pretty interesting sets from our friends in the past few weeks.

We also love the everyday events we see tagged.  The designer swissmiss tags her 2-year-old’s tantrums with #itshardbeingtwo, while Dennis Crowley tracks his most caloric meals with #fatdenny. Tech Ethnographer Tricia Wang tags an ongoing set of her dog’s balancing acts with #stuffonelleshead.

You can try swirl’s public web view, which is a great way to browse photo sets. Far more fun though is seeing the personal sets swirl creates for you and your friends on the mobile app.  Download the swirl app to check them out. 

More from the Betaworks blog →

@betaworks tweets we love

  • RT @mhedevag: @betaworks buys Digg, two months later the iPhone app is suddenly a killer product. Nice work!
  • RT @JamesBenSmith: @betaworks I am looking for investors for a highly profitable fish farm, for an investment of $600k with returns of 200% per year.
  • RT @Rob_Hope MySpace should honestly just hand over everything to @borthwick and his team, they're doing a stellar job with Digg.

via @betaworks

  • Loading tweets from: @betaworks
Related searches:
company twitter studio bloglovin tapestry
gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.