MogoTXT, a company that wants to become the place for celebrities and sports superstars to connect with each other, announced Tuesday that it has launched a new microblogging tool. According to the company, five players have already signed up for the service including Shane Battier, LaMarcus Aldridge, Jordan Farmar, Eric Gordon, and Spencer Hawes. The real attraction for celebrities, the company's CEO says, is that MogoTXT allows the stars to share in the revenues of their following. In other words, the more users they can attract to the service to follow their micro-blog updates, the more money they can make off MogoTXT. The company plans to expand its service to Major League Baseball, soccer, NASCAR, college football, and NFL players later this year.
Mashable announced recently that it has acquired microreviews service Blippr for an undisclosed sum. According to the blog's founder, Pete Cashmore, users will be able to submit a microreview of any service the site's writers mention in a post. Those reviews can then be syndicated to Twitter, Friendfeed, and other social services. Cashmore said the Blippr acquisition is just one part of his company's plan to bring more social elements to the site.
Popular social network Hi5 has inked a deal with mobile payment service, Paymo, that allows users to buy virtual goods in the Hi5 Gift Store through their mobile phone. Once users clicks on the Paymo link from their phone, they will be asked to provide their phone number, country, and carrier, and every time they buy gifts through their device, the charges will be tacked on to the next month's phone bill. The Paymo feature is available now to all Hi5 users.
Twofish, a self-proclaimed "virtual economy," announced Tuesday that it has been able to add several new customers to the ranks of those using its Twofish Elements platform, which allows users to create virtual goods and microtransactions in online games. According to the company, developers Pocketville, Star Fever, Pangaea, and Ignite Skill Gaming are using the platform. Going forward, it hopes to add more customers and increase the instances of virtual goods and microtransactions in games.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
In case you can't read from the screenshot above, Blippr lets users browse and rate commercial products including books, video games, movies, and music. The twist is that these reviews are incredibly short at just 160 characters, or the limit on an SMS message on your mobile phone. Twitter, the popular micropublishing tool pioneered this idea, and the folks at Blippr think it might work on product reviews.
The fact that I need to write more about it is also one of the reasons that Blippr doesn't fit he bill for what it was created for. Sometimes reviews just need to be longer to give a product or service justice.
Coming back to the review system, the written reviews are coupled with a 1-4 rating system that uses emoticons (aww how cute) to establish a metascore for how good an item is. In addition to the rest of the Blippr users scores, you can get see a quick friends score as long as your Blippr friends have rated said item. These scores are shown at the top of each review and help sort through content.
Blippr doubles as a social bookmarking tool, letting you create custom lists and subscribe to the day's hot list of products that are getting buzz. There are no ads on the site, so to supplement an income for the creators, the entire thing runs off affiliate links to various online retailers.
Here's the thing, I like this service at a very visceral level. It rips off a lot of GUI from Flickr, but I'm OK with that because writing 160 word reviews is simple and brings that same publishing happiness that Twitter does. What I don't like is that same limitation ends up amounting to something more like one-line comments on a blog post than something constructive or substantial like you'll find on the native user review systems on popular Web retailers such as Amazon and Netflix. Sometimes the details really do amount to something.
The service is in private beta, although the folks at Blippr were kind enough to offer Webware readers some invites. To get yours, click here. More shots after the jump.
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