Hasta La Gadget!

A lot of noteworthy news came out of SXSW this year, but under all of the chaos YouTube co-founder Chris Hurley revealed that he’s planning on launching a new video streaming and sharing service that could rival YouTube. Hurley says he’s about a month away from launching his new platform, and he says the service will “give flexibility for people to work together and create content.”

Then again, Hurley notes that he isn’t launching the service to kill YouTube. Instead, he’s creating a platform that’s better suited for collaboration purposes, and says that “there’s always going to be a place for YouTube.” Indeed, given its large user base, we don’t think YouTube will go away anytime soon, no matter how awesome a new video service might be, but while Hurley means no harm to YouTube, we wouldn’t be surprised if his new service clashed a little with Google’s video powerhouse.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion six-and-a-half years ago, and Hurley stayed on board until 2010 when he stepped down from his role. Since then, he’s been working on several projects, including a service called Zeen that lets people “discover and create beautiful magazines.” However, it looks like his latest project is this new video service.

Other points of discussion during Hurley’s interview session included how YouTube was bought by Google, and how many of the key discussions took place at a Denny’s restaurant with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin. He even met with Yahoo a week after his discussion with Google about a possible acquisition, but YouTube ended up going with Google in the long run.

[via Adweek]

YouTube co-founder planning on launching rival service is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

When Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion a little over six years ago, the company knew it was a service they absolutely needed in their suite of products. That’s why when you hear one of the original co-founders of YouTube may be developing a new video service for the Web, people tend to take notice.

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley made his way to SXSW this week to say he’s about a month away from launching a platform to complement YouTube. AdWeek was there to capture what exactly he said, which we’re sure you’re dying to hear: (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: YouTube Gets In On The Harlem Shake Craze, President Obama Holding Fireside Hangout On February 14,

Just a few days ago, Marvel announced a new “Unlimited” comic book plan where you can have access to 13,000 digital comic books for $60 a year. However, if you don’t want to pay up, you can grab 700 first-issue digital comic books for free. The offer is good until tomorrow at 11 pm ET, and since you can’t download all 700 issues at once, you better get to downloading right this instant.

Marvel announced the offer at SXSW this weekend, and comic lovers can use either Marvel’s official mobile app or the ComiXology mobile app to download the free issues. Be aware, though, that both services are experiencing quite a bit of traffic, and I even had trouble signing up for a Marvel account (which you need to access the comics).

Both the Marvel and ComiXology apps are account-based service, which means that any comics you purchase and download will be accessable on any device that supports the Marvel or ComiXology apps. You can even use the browser-based Marvel Digital Comics Shop to purchase and download comics and have them ready on your mobile device instantly.

There are a ton of great selections to choose from, including various comic books of The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, X-Men, and even 22 first issues from the new Marvel Now line. You only have until tomorrow at 11 pm ET to attempt to download 700 comic books, so choose wisely what you start with, especially since Marvel’s servers are getting bogged down right now.

Marvel giving away 700 first issues for free is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Laser projected virtual keyboards? So 2004. These days, tech firms are dreaming up completely invisible typewriters, or at least Syntellia is. By marrying a Leap Motion sensor with its own Fleksy predictive keyboard, the company has created a system that seems to let you type on thin air — with the aid of Fleksy’s predictive text correction, of course. A brief teaser video of the project shows a pioneering air-typist hammering out “kalr tgw ltsp,” which Fleksy deciphers as “make the leap.” Syntellia’s SXSW Interactive Accelerator preview of the project won’t officially debut until tomorrow, but the impatient can check it out right now after the break.

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Source: Syntellia (YouTube)

There’s no doubt that Facebook is the most popular social network around, even if teens are losing interest in the service. Facebook has announced that its 1 billion+ users have shared over 400 billion open graph actions back to the social network so far, a number that many Facebook marketers love to see. These figures were announced prior to its event being held at South by Southwest (SXSW).

Open Graph actions range from a variety of things, including follows, likes, songs listened to (on a variety of services like Spotify or Pandora), articles read on various news portals, videos watched on YouTube, LiveLeak, etc, images pinned on Pinterest, photos liked or shared on Instagram, and more. Users enabled many of these services to automatically share their information through their Facebook Newsfeed.

So far, Facebook users have shared a total of 110 million songs, albums, and radio stations over 40 billion times, and have shared around 1.47 million books. Facebook makes it easy for users to share their data to their timeline through integrated apps, or social buttons placed throughout a majority of websites and blogs out there. It hopes to make sharing on its network more personable and enjoyable with acquisitions like Storylane.

These kind of numbers should have developers and companies promoting their next projects or campaigns through the social media behemoth. The user engagement looks promising for those that develop on the platform, or those who are looking to get more exposure to the world. Marketers should also be pleased that Facebook is offering new features that will make finding the right, targeted audience easier.

[via The Next Web]

Sharing is caring according to Facebook users is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.