Observer » vyou

Sasha Grey, Post-Porn, Does Some Brand Building with Video Q&A

admin — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:48:12 -0400

For years now Sasha Grey has occupied a unique niche, sitting the world of adult entertainment while also branching out to modeling, books and more mainstream films. But then, two weeks ago, she officially called it quits.

Piers Morgan–No Longer Just on TV Screens!–Joins VYou

Daniel D'Addario — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 17:22:39 -0400

Piers Morgan joined New York social-media startup VYou yesterday--the service allows users to communicate with friends, fans, and followers by recording short videos answering questions of varying degrees of pertinence. Piers's default video, running on a loop, shows him sitting in front of a picture of Kim Kardashian, covering his mouth with a closed fist then straining to smile. Morgan hasn't yet mastered VYou--he has 23 followers, and follows no one. (VYou investor Rex Sorgatz has 285 followers, and follows 328 people.) The site allows users to keep hidden questions they opt not to answer--perhaps ones about Larry King's recent criticisms of Piers? The only question the host has chosen to answer thus far was "What did you think of the Arsenal win today?" He thinks it's historic.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Video Q&A Site VYou Puts Faces to Brands

Adrianne Jeffries — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:42:10 -0400

Media brands including Daily Beast, Mediaite, Hollywood Life and Crushable effectively issued a "bring it on" to comment trolls this morning by launching channels on VYou, the New York-based question-and-answer site where users record video answers to questions that can be submitted anonymously. (Shushannah Walshe, Daily Beast reporter and author of the Palin-opic "Sarah from Alaska," seems particularly vulnerable.)

The companies are among the first to launch branded channels on VYou, which provide brands with a landing page on which to curate other channels related to the brand. Mediaite and The Daily Beast are represented by reporters and editors; New York dating site HowAboutWe created six interactive TV shows ("The Love Seat," "The Sexperts," "Is This Weird?").

VYou is more intimate than Twitter (the technology is usually seen on porn sites) and other text-based forms of social media, making it attractive to companies hoping to humanize their brands. Same goes for people who want to humanize their brands--VYou also announced today that Piers Morgan of CNN has joined, although he hasn't posted any videos yet.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

Freebies, Skirball Pride, and Scott Heiferman Breaks Another iPad: What You Missed at NYTM

Adrianne Jeffries — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 18:23:23 -0400

New York Tech Meetup had its first meetup of 2011 last night at its usual spot, the Skirball Center at New York University off W. 4th, and attendees seemed glad to be home after community board elections forced the December meetup to an away venue.

"Skirball!" hecklers shouted, when the audience was prompted for questions after demos or asked who would win the BCS title.

Ten companies demo'ed Web and mobile apps:

Dump.FM, an image-based chatroom reminiscent of 4chan
JaaVuu, a way to create openly-editable image galleries
Munchly, an app to order movie or ballpark concessions from your seat
Firefly, a Twitter client that aggregates geotagged check-ins from a variety of apps
Sitesimon, a browser add-on for broadcasting what sites you're viewing
Adstruc, an online marketplace for the antiquated world of billboard advertising
Superfluid, a project collaboration tool and marketplace that lets you pay for skills with social capital
VYou, a video-based question and answer site
DOTGO, a markup language to add interactive SMS technology to your site
Guguchu, a platform for bands to manage sales, distribution and marketing

Munchly, the "mobile concession booth," got cheers from the audience, even before founder Andrew Tider offered to buy everyone a beer. The mobile app lets you see what concessions are on offer, order and pay for them at your seat, and then either have them delivered to you and get a notification that they're ready for pickup at the counter. The company is about to announce a partnership with a major movie chain, Tider said, and it's looking for funding.

Another company that got the audience buzzing was VYou. VYou is part social network, part YouTube. VYou takes Formspring's proposition--"ask me anything"--and adds video, categories and asynchronous following. The site managed to attract director Kevin Smith, who uploaded a video of himself picking his nose.

Porn is the common use for the conversational video technology, and the "Chatroulette issue"--where the video chat site became overrun with nudity and drove away clothed users--naturally came up in the Q&A. VYou plans to moderate content, said founder Steve Spurgat, but so far the site has seen 60,000 videos uploaded "and only one boob."

DOTGO wrote an SMS polling app in less than a minute using its own markup language, which scored some goodwill from the audience for sheer hackery. Sitesimon (sites-im-on) pushed the envelope on oversharing with a demo of how it broadcasts what you're looking at online in real-time and gives points for discovering content before it goes viral.

TechStars alum Adstruc did not have the sexiest demo, but theirs was by far the most polished. Founder John Laramie showed the extensive online marketplace his company has built to replace the Excel spreadsheets that still power the outdoor advertising industry. The database of available billboard space is integrated with Google Maps so that advertisers can see a streetview of the space they're considering.

As an example, Laramie plugged a $1,500, 5'1" by 5'11" ad space in the subway at 23rd and Park and offered to pay for printing. "Half a million people will see this ad," he said.

NYTM and Meetup.com founder Scott Heiferman took the stage (video below) to talk about the vibrancy of New York's tech scene and how much NYTM has grown.

"We came together in 2004 because New York had not made any of the great things about the Internet," he said. "Finally New York is kicking ass. Etsy is kicking it. Foursquare is kicking it. Tumblr is kicking it. Kickstarter is kicking it."

The group now has more than 15,000 members, two sponsors at every meetup and two newly-elected community board members. He then tossed an iPad off the stage--a reference to this--and proposed a toast to the new year.

"Cheers!" the audience echoed, and clinked phones.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries