TechCrunch
Tubular Labs Launches Audience Analytics Platform For YouTubers Into Public Beta
YouTubers need tools to better understand and grow their audiences, and Tubular Labs has built out a SaaS-based platform for just that. Once only available in private beta, Tubular’s dashboard is now becoming available to more users as it enters the public beta phase of its rollout.
The company built its analytics dashboard to give advanced insight into where YouTube audiences are coming from, and to help creators to engage directly with their biggest fans. The platform is designed to look at a number of signals that will give creators better tools for optimizing their channels and growing their number of viewers and subscribers.
Tubular helps creators to understand when their viewers are most active or most likely to tune in, allowing them to target video releases around those times. It also helps them to track their growth against other competitors and find new collaborators or brand partners to work with.
But the most important tool in the dashboard may revolve around the ability to identify influencers in your audience and to engage with them. By tracking these social engagements, brands, digital studios, and creators can know what influential people are saying about them, and to start a dialog with them as a way to build and grow their fan bases.
Up until now, that SaaS-based platform was only available to a select number of YouTube creators and networks, as Tubular sought to work out any kinks in the product. Already it’s being used by more than 100 channels and networks, including AwesomenessTV, Big Frame, INDMUSIC, Machinima, and StyleHaul. But today it’s opening the tool up to others to try out in public beta.
The company is hoping that will help grow audiences at more YouTube channels. The company reports that regular users were able to grow their subscriber bases by 30 percent in the second quarter, which is 16 percent faster than non-users. Video views also increased by 12 percent above the norm, according to Tubular.
Tubular Labs was founded last summer and has raised $3.1 million in funding since then from investors that include FirstMark Capital, High Line Venture Partners, SVAngel, Lerer Ventures, and Bedrocket Media Ventures, as well as angels such as Allen and Philip DeBevoise, Matt Coffin, Ben Ling, Ben Smith, Corbin Day, Dean Gilbert, Hilary Schneider, James Walker, John Hadl, Paul Bricault, and Tony Nethercutt.
The Fuel3D Is A Handheld, High Resolution 3D Scanner For Sub-$1,000 That Can Grab Faces & Textures
Makers and 3D designers who want to replicate the shape and colour of real-world objects in their creations clap your eyes on the above gizmo. The Fuel3D is a handheld, high resolution 3D scanner, which captures 3D photos of real-world objects/subjects and, in conjunction with its creators’ software, turns them into a 3D model with accurate geometry and colour.
With 3D printers taking off, the demand for object scanners is likely to rise — especially affordable scanners, and the Fuel3D’s creators are aiming to ship this high resolution 3D scanner with a sub-$1,000 price-tag. Or that’s the plan, if it achieves its Kickstarter funding goal of $75,000 — all but certain, given it still has 31 days left to run on its campaign and less than $10,000 required.
A sub-$1,000 price-tag is not as cheap as the Photon 3D scanner we covered back in April — which was on Indiegogo for $399 — but that scanner was specifically focused on object scanning, with a small turntable design. Whereas the Fuel3D is more freestyle in what it can scan, allowing for human faces to be captured by holding the device up and taking photos in conjunction with a small target placed next to the face.
Its high resolution 3D capture also allows for detailed textures to be captured, providing a variety of use-case scenario for animators, game developers and 3D artists. In other words, this could be a handy office gadget for your gaming startup.
Pinterest Adds Price Alerts To Turn Aspirational Pins Into Purchases
Pinterest, which has long since served as a place where users collect items they want to buy as well as a leading referral source for e-commerce websites, is today taking another step toward encouraging users to not just aspire, but actually purchase the items they save with the debut of price alerts. The company explains that it’s now iterating on its previously released “pin price” feature, which allowed users to see the current price of product pins on the site.
With the introduction of price alerts, Pinterest now actually monitors those pin prices for changes, too.
To use price alerting, you simply save a product pin to one of your boards, and if the price ever drops, you’re alerted via an email notification. A company representative explains to us that Pinterest will try to aggregate those notifications into as few emails as possible, in order to not overload users’ email inboxes. The frequency of these emails can also be controlled in users’ settings.
In addition to email alerts, pinned products on the site can also showcase the price change, indicating that the current price listed is a drop from an earlier, higher one.
You may recall that Pinterest this May had introduced new pin types, including product pins (for example, these) along with others like recipes pins and movie pins. These enhanced pins show you more information than the usual pin, and in the case of products like clothing, accessories, furniture or anything else you want to purchase, the pin includes the current price of the item, the retailer’s logo, and a link to the e-commerce website where the product can be purchased.
Online merchants can “enhance” their pins, product or otherwise, by placing additional code on their websites to help Pinterest identify and validate the pins. Many well-known retailers now do this including big names like Walmart, Target, Neiman Marcus, Sephora, Nordstrom, and Home Depot, for instance, as well as online shops and marketplaces like ModCloth, Etsy, eBay, ASOS, Zulily, Urban Outfitters, and Free People, to name a few.
PInterest says that today, there are tens of millions of product pins on its site, and early results show that these are generating higher clickthrough rates to the e-commerce sites versus regular pins.
This week, the company had said that this year’s focus is on bringing more value to the pins users are saving on the site. Already, it’s doing this not only with richer pins, but also tools for businesses including improved Pin It buttons which now work in mobile apps, widget builders, and even analytics.
With the debut of price alerting, the company is challenging several startups which help consumers figure out when it is the right time to buy. Some of those are Decide.com, whose focus is more on consumer electronics and larger purchases for the home, plus recently launched Nifti, and even a Pinterest for price drops, Clipix, as well as a slew of older tools for price alerting and tracking sales.
More generally, though, this also puts Pinterest up against other social product aggregators like Fancy or Wanelo, the former which has always been more of an actionable, shoppable feed of products, while the other is more focused on making it easier to find what’s popular at your favorite stores.
Like other features Pinterest recently introduced – such as the newly added personalization options in the form of pin and board suggestions – price alerting is rolling out slowly to users starting now, so you may not see the option available immediately.
Apple Exploring iPhone-Stored Car And Home Preference Profiles To Configure Seats, Climate And More
Apple is exploring more in-car abilities for its mobile devices, according to a new patent filing published by the USPTO today (via AppleInsider). The patent application describes a system where a user could store their configuration profiles for seat, steering wheel and mirror position on their devices, as well as things like climate control options for instant customization when getting into a car. The system could also be used for home, with a user getting lighting, television and other things turned to just the right setting when they walk through the door.
Top-end cars already offer user profiles that can be used to set seating and other options automatically depending on who’s doing the driving, but then again, car manufacturers also already offer in-vehicle entertainment and information systems, and Apple is planning to try to reinvent that market with iOS in the Car, a new feature coming to iOS 7 that’s essentially AirPlay Mirroring for your dashboard.
In both cases, the inspiration is to take something maybe already exists, but to package it in a way that makes more sense and appeals to a broader user base. Apple has done basically this for each of its successful innovations in the past, so it’s not a surprising strategy, but it is a smart one.
The system described in the patent would not only automate the process through device-to-car communication, but it sounds like it would have a portability element, too; your iPhone could relay your settings to a car from any participating manufacturer, and would be able to calculate differences in geometry to adapt your preferred cockpit configuration to different vehicles. That’s ideal for travellers, car-sharers and others who find themselves in a lot of different vehicles from each day to the next. Likewise, with home configuration, it sounds like the idea is that you could bring your home preferences to a hotel room and vice versa.
Apple building an ecosystem around a user’s car and home makes a lot of sense as an extension of its existing success. While many have been watching for it to innovate in the TV space as the next step in such a strategy, it has been quietly building up more improvements on the automotive side, and this looks like a continuation of that strategy. It would require significant buy-in from car and home system manufacturers, but those are likely easier targets than the rights-paranoid movie and TV show studios.
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