Real-time on Twitter
You might have seen the news on Tuesday shortly before market close... A tweet from Associated Press’s account mentioning explosions in the White House and President Obama being injured sent the Dow down 145 points within seconds. Shortly after markets rebounded as it became clear that the account was hacked and the news was fake.
With its rising power, Twitter is also facing arising issues with fake information spreading on the web. One of the few select companies that has access to its fire-hose is Dataminr, and it is making a lot of head-way lately as it targets a very important factor in the Twitt-economy. Dataminr analyzes real-time trends by using geo-location, influence power, activity, etc. and and it is able to send out highly accurate alerts to its clients (who are mostly banks, hedge funds, and governments). In last week’s case, Dataminr was able to determine almost instantly that the AP tweet was unlikely real as it didn’t detect any other local tweets around the White House perimeters confirming any explosions. The first time Dataminr made big headlines was in 2011 when it reported Bin Laden’s death almost an hour before any of the major news sources. (Disclosure: GSV owns shares in Twitter and Dataminr)
Taxi disruptor Uber had a nice win last week after the NY Taxi and Limousine Commission gave its final approval for UberTAXI to be the first approved e-hail app. Users in NY can now hail a taxi directly from Uber’s app, in addition to Uber’s limousine service. This comes after prolonged discussions and multiple push-backs from regulators in the past, and it shows that Uber has become a new standard in the Taxi industry. Initially, Uber will be the only e-hail service, but it is expected that other competitors will follow. Also, Uber will not be able to use the e-hailing service at major locations such as airports, but I won’t be surprised to see this rule modified in a year or so.
Path, the “mini Facebook” network that has a 150 friends limit, is seeing some strong traction after launching its latest version, the Path 3.0. The company is now growing by 1 million registered users a week, it passed 10 million total users, and most of the growth is coming from Central and South America. Also, it is among the top grossing apps with growing sales of its stickers and filters packages. CEO Dave Morin said that engagement rates are at 50% and that monthly users are approximately half of all registered users. A year ago, Path raised $40 million at a ~$250 million valuation and had 2 million users. We are watching Path closely and have them high on our list.
