• Read more about Takeaways From The 2016 Internet Trends Report

Who feels like they can never keep up with the latest trends? I think we all have that feeling at some point. If you are not within the industry you often feel like you are lagging behind and are considered to live in the dark ages. It seems like each year a new piece of technology is created and is considered to be the cutting edge of technology.

TechCrunch recently released Mary Meekers essential 2016 Internet Trends Report and the findings were very interesting.

1. Global shipment of smartphones slowed dramatically, with cell phones not making leaps and bounds of improvement from year to year, people feel less inclined to purchase each year to “stay ahead of the curve”.

2. Android is gaining more market share on iOS but the average price of the Android is dropping drastically. Meaning Android is more of a hot item for web and app developers to use versus phone makers.

3. Mobile is dominating online advertising, with Facebook growing much faster than Google.

4. Advertisers are still missing the mark and spending way too much of their budget on traditional media. The focus has now turned to digital, more specifically mobile. Spoiler alert, businesses that go to mobile advertising will be ahead of the curve.

5. Millennials are not just an age group, rather they are focused on having a healthy work-life balance, self development, and community contribution - it is said that their impact will grow drastically.

6. The rise of video sharing is driving more usage to visual apps like Snapchat and Instagram versus using text heavy apps like Twitter or LinkedIn.

7. Video is evolving to control the video-on-demand.

8. With around 10 billion short video views per day, video creators must make content designed for Facebook and Snapchat.

9. The U.S could be named the top car industry once again with innovations by Tesla and Google.

What do you think about where the latest trends are headed? Be sure to check out Mary Meekers full report.

• Read more about Congratulations, Yammer, But Get Ready To Rumble!

Last night when Yammer won the TechCrunch50, our interest was more than a little piqued. Today we’re officially taking the wraps off of Present.ly, our “Twitter for Businesses” product that we’ve been working on in stealth mode for the last several months and are launching on September 16 at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York.

It’s great to see that short-form communication for businesses is so promising as to win top honors at such a competitive conference. We’re extremely passionate about the field because it has the potential to really transform how people communicate inside an organization. So congratulations are in order to the Yammer team for bringing so much exposure to the field.

One of the reasons that we were so surprised to see Yammer among the TechCrunch50 is because Present.ly was submitted to be included as well! Unfortunately, we never got the chance to demo our product for the TC50 experts (something that was supposed to be part of the process). We didn’t receive a clear response back as to why, but it would have been great to have the chance to go head-to-head with Yammer in the preliminaries of TechCrunch50 or on stage at the conference.

It’s Still On, Though

Be that as it may, it’s certainly been a shot of adrenaline for our team to have a surprise competitor mere days before we are set to launch. We’ve had some time to examine Yammer, and we’re ready for some competition! So how do they stack up against each other?

Security and Control: Present.ly is built to be an official means of communication for a business, rather than an ad-hoc network of employees. User accounts on Present.ly are created only through administrator invitations, and accounts are secured using SSL encryption.

Collaboration: Present.ly has hash tags, like Yammer. But it also has groups, private messaging, and media/file sharing built in. We built Present.ly from the ground up to have powerful features tailored specifically for business use. Present.ly accounts can also be extended beyond a single e-mail domain, allowing you to include clients, consultants and other collaborators effortlessly.

Platform Approach: Starting from day one Present.ly has an API that is fully compatible with the Twitter REST API. This means that existing Twitter applications can work instantly with Present.ly with almost no modification. Through the API, Present.ly can easily integrate with all parts of your business.

The Power of Context: Present.ly automatically analyzes each post for context, automatically separating out questions, replies, and urgent messages. Our robust notifications system allows you to receive updates via E-Mail, SMS, and IM based on this context.

We’re really proud of Present.ly and think that it can enable great new things for companies of all sizes, from 5 employees to 50,000. On September 16, get ready to start using the REAL Twitter for Business.

• Read more about crowdsound on TechCrunch

Intridea’s latest product, crowdsound has been featured on TechCrunch. We love showcasing our products to a new audience, so it’s definitely a treat everytime we make it to the front page.

Here’s the link:
CrowdSound on TechCrunch

We’re currently hard at work integrating our new features and pay-plans to take us out of public beta. At the same time, our own widget is helping us receive new suggestions effortlessly — these help us polish our existing features till they shine. As such, here’s a status update on some of the most popular suggestions.

You will soon be able to customize your widget top-to-bottom.

Next, we’re working on custom categories/tags. These would be in the form of an admin-created, user-selectable list of keywords to attach to each suggestion. For all those who requested internationalization — we’re working on it. We are also working on a new search algorithm to improve the existing suggestions shown when posting a new suggestion.

The bottom line is that crowdsound is under very active development. We recommend that you subscribe to this RSS feed if you want to hear about new releases. Thank you for your support!

• Read more about OpenSocial, Buzz and the Tao of Releasing an API

Generate the Right Buzz

OpenSocial was released the 1st of November, and there was much rejoicing. Developers rushed to the official site to see what exactly Google was up to. Facebook developers everywhere crossed their fingers as the page loaded up, hoping to find a means of escape from the FBMLized, constantly-changing hell they were experiencing. Surely, Google will have the answer! This is Google we’re talking about — they wrote Gmail, remember the buzz for that launch? They’ll surely deliver! Right?

Release the right thing at the right time (or ‘First Impressions Matter’)

November 2nd was the first day of RubyConf 2007, and while I saw many a Rubyist’s Macbook Pro loading up the API site during the morning sessions – I would say that it’s within reason to declare that there were no libraries or even hacky interface wrappers written that night. This was partly because Google has YET to release the actual meat of the API — the RESTful interfaces to their data. What the developers got on Thursday was a tiny set of extensions to Google’s pre-existing Google Gadget API, which is primarily written in Javascript. Google, if you’re reading this, know that you would have had a beautiful Rails plugin for OpenSocial a day after launch if you had only came through for the early adopters and opened up the REST interface. Release the whole API (or something respectable and usable) if you want to make a solid first impression.

Don’t frustrate your developers

The developers who actively seek out your API and are excited about it at the beginning are the ones who know a good thing when they see it. Don’t alienate them. The Gadget Javascript extensions are great for tiny widgets, but developing with those brings forth their own set of problems. Orkut has an extremely annoying caching bug that pretty much forces developers to add/test/remove/add their app every time they make a change — not a good start, we are no longer in the dark ages. This brings me to my next point – why just Orkut?! Brazil and India are Orkut’s main consumers, or at the very least, the only people who use it pretty much exclusively (even though I hear rumors of hi5 making major strides in South Asia). The last I heard, Friendster, hi5, LinkedIn and Ning were also launch partners, why are my sandboxed apps not running on their sites as well at this moment? Good developers love an all-encompassing solution rather than a targeted one. If one of these developers writes an app for Orkut now, and finds later when LinkedIn or Friendster finally opens up their sites as containers, that their code does not run as well as promised, Google loses trust, credibility and karma points.

In theory, OpenSocial is fantastic — I will not deny that. In time, I can see that it will be a sweet little platform for writing network-independent social apps. The pressure is on, however. The VCs are probably loving this, considering what Facebook apps are worth now, and Google needs to deliver a flawless platform that is ready to whip out of the gate and crush everything in its path. Intridea will be tracking OpenSocial quite closely, stay tuned for more in-depth posts quite soon.Michael Arrington announced OpenSocial on TechCrunch two days before its official release. Prior to that, there were whispers everywhere about Google’s new social platform, but not many seemed to know what exactly was about to go down. Needless to say, this is good buzz. Two days before ‘launch’ the overwhelming mood among web developers, especially us who dwell in the realms of social networking, was one of intense (even feverish at some points) anticipation. What unfolded over the next few days, combined with what we observed of Facebook’s API venture, provides us a set of best practices that we can apply to an API release.