How Much Does it Cost to Build the World's Hottest Startups? Could $100,000 and the right developer skills make you an overnight billionaire? How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? With mobile development agencies and product incubators on the rise and more corporate “labs” spinning out each day, there’s no shortage of talent to help you build the next great Web or mobile app. We interviewed the heads of the top Web and mobile development companies, incubators, agencies and labs to understand what it takes to design and develop the most successful apps of our generation. Here are their breakdowns of the costs and time investments to create 10 of the world’s hottest startups. 1) Twitter Henrik Werdelin, the Managing Partner of Prehype, a venture development firm based in New York City that has helped build companies like Tradable, Barkbox, FancyHands, Basno and Path, says recreating Twitter isn’t necessarily difficult, but the layered features will take time to get right. 2) Instagram 3) Facebook 4) WhatsApp 5) Uber
Argos wins at Twitter when customer tweets to ask if Playstations are in stock at Moss Side store Immy 'BADMAN' Bugti tweeted the catalogue firm to ask when the 'PS4 tings' would be back in stock - only for the company to reply in spectacular style Catalogue firm Argos responded in spectacular style to a customer from Manchester who tweeted them asking when the Moss Side store would get more PlayStation4 consoles in. The company showed it was totally ‘down with the kids’ when it responded to Immy ‘BADMAN’ Bugti’s tweet - with both messages quickly going viral. Immy, whose Twitter bio says he lives on Wilmslow Road, tweeted at Argos: @Argos_Online YO wen u gettin da ps4 tings in moss side? And the firm quickly replied: @BadManBugti Safe badman, we gettin sum more PS4 tings in wivin da next week y'get me. The firm’s response has since been re-tweeted 1,500 times, with hundreds of people favouriting both messages. And luckily Immy ‘BADMAN’ Bugti was happy with the firm’s response, replying: @ArgosHelpers respect. More news from the Manchester Evening News
The Most Popular Words Used in Viral Headlines 6.3K Flares Filament.io 6.3K Flares × There is no one way to create viral content. So many different variables go into a viral post—timing, emotion, engagement, and so many others that you cannot control. There is no viral blueprint. Thanks to some incredible work by the team at Ripenn, we have access to headline analysis from four of the top viral sites on the web—who happen to be really good at headline writing. The top words used in viral headlines The headline data from Ripenn came from four of the most click-worthy sites on the web—BuzzFeed, ViralNova, UpWorthy and Wimp. To give some variety to the list, I added the top headlines from 20 different tech, social media and productivity sites that we find ourselves reading and sharing often here at Buffer—sites like Seth Godin, 99u, Social Media Explorer and more (the full list is available in spreadsheet form)—for an additional 400 headlines to be analyzed. In total, I examined 3,016 headlines from 24 top content sites. You and Your This
9 Tips to Writing Posts That Get Read on the LinkedIn Publishing Platform Switching from Windows to Mac: What I Learned Apple announced new Retina display-equipped MacBook Pro laptops at its event last month, as well as the launch of the latest version of OS X, Mavericks. For this PC user, it was enough to finally make the jump from Windows to Mac for the first time. Almost everyone I know slowly switched to Mac in college, but I stuck it out with Windows. For a long time I thought it was the best choice of platform simply because purchasing a Mac seemed to be extortionately expensive compared with buying a PC desktop or laptop. The Good After booting up for the first time it stood out to me that there wasn’t a longwinded setup process, nor was there any pre-installed junk on the machine. The applications that are bundled with Mavericks are pretty fantastic, Mail and Calendar work great. Unified notifications and the Notification Center are well-built pieces of functionality that leave me wondering why Microsoft still hasn’t added anything similar to Windows yet. The bad
9 Steps to Compelling Contagious Content for Your Social Media Marketing Why do you turn on the television? Why do you open a magazine? Why do you read the newspaper, whether it is online or folded and crumpled on your coffee table? We want to be entertained, amused and educated and the reason you open the laptop, turn on the tablet or browse on the mobile, is that we are seeking information and it is called content. Google earns $30 billion a year indexing and helping you find information and content. The Difference Between Success and Failure Content comes in all types of formats, shapes and styles and often the creator has only a few brief seconds to entice you to go beyond the headline or the opening line. Creating compelling contagious content can be the difference between success and failure of any media marketing venture whether it be social, mass media or traditional. So where do you start? Well for one it’s not about you, it’s about “them” your prospects,customers, viewers and readers. Step 1: Find and Define your Target Audience FacebookYouTubeTwitter
Social Media Frequency: How Often to Post to Facebook, Twitter 2.1K Flares Filament.io 2.1K Flares × Subway has this sandwich with Fritos on it. I know this because their commercials play constantly on my TV and computer such that I nearly have the ads memorized. Every time their commercial airs, Subway is flirting with the fine art of frequency. Social media marketers face the same dilemma. If guessing is required for finding the optimal frequency, then at least we can be making educated guesses. Strike the balance between informative and annoying Good content can be found in a multitude of places, and once you find it all, the next question you may ask yourself is how often you can share. Our post on curating content sparked this exact question, asked in the comments by Ryan Battles. I’ve started tweeting content from Buffer, ranging from 3x per day to 7x per day. Informative versus annoying. How frequently Buffer shares to social media Twitter – 14 times per day, from midnight to 10:00 p.m. The optimal frequency for posting on social media Predict.
18 Ways to Improve Your Facebook News Feed Performance Social Media Examiner Are you frustrated with Facebook’s frequent changes to the news feed algorithm? Do you feel like you’re being forced to buy ads to reach your audience? While Facebook change is the rule rather than the exception, this article gives you 18 ways you can improve your Facebook news feed performance—and gain the upper hand. How Reach Is Created on Facebook Facebook defines reach as the number of unique Facebook users who see your updates. To see your page’s reach, go to Facebook Insights and look at your page’s Reach report. How much reach does your Facebook page have? Reach is generally influenced by one or more of the following actions: You post content to your Facebook page. All four actions are interrelated. For example, if you publish content (organic reach) that your fans react to, friends of those fans will see that content (viral reach). The more kinds of reach you generate with an update, the more people see that update. #1: Create a Content Strategy #2: Know When Your Fans Are Online
30 of the Most Beautiful and Well-Designed Android Apps 4 November '13, 09:24pm Follow Android can be beautiful. Here, we present 30 of what we consider to be some of the most beautiful and well-designed apps available on the Android platform. Update: This article is paginated to make reading easier, but you can click here to read all of them on a single page. Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
How Do You Balance Your Personal and Professional Social Presence? I started on Twitter 6 1/2 years ago as @MarketingProfs, sharing headlines from the site and representing the brand there. Then about a year ago I resuscitated @AnnHandley on Twitter as a personal ID—a handle I’d been squatting on for years but never used. Why now? I guess the easiest answer is that it seemed a fitting time to do so, because I had started to feel that Twitter itself had shifted. In 2007, when I started on Twitter, things felt a bit under the radar. It was quieter. Yet now, as Twitter has grown in influence as both a social platform and a communication channel for companies, and as the MarketingProfs account has climbed to 225K followers, I’ve realized I had recalibrated the way I interact with people there, almost by accident. This idea was on my mind when a question came up at a marketing event where I spoke recently: How do you balance the personal and professional on social networks? In the moment, I advocated for a blending of the two. Community trumps curation.
10 Theories to Know For Greater Persuasion Power 478 Flares Filament.io 478 Flares × What are we really talking about when we’re talking about conversions? Persuasion, right? Influence. When we talk about conversions, we are—most of the time—discussing ways we can be more persuasive, more influential. So how can you persuade—i.e., convert—better? Perhaps not surprisingly, the hacks for conversion and persuasion begin with psychology. The psychological theories of influence and persuasion One of my favorite places to learn about psychological theories is Dave Straker’s Changing Minds website, which is full of theories written in layman’s terms, organized neatly into specific categories and clusters for easy reference. Here is a brief snapshot of each of the 10 theories, many of which might sound familiar to you—either because you’ve employed them in the past or because you’ve had others try them on you. 1. When you express with certainty a particular attitude, that attitude hardens. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. You want what is in short supply. 7. 8.