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<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:399px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://statigr.am/p/323592707352192609_30142200">Instagram/niabellagama</a></div>Last week, <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/01/feature-friday-privacy.html">Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson wrote a blog post about privacy</a>. He said a number of interesting things in it, like that <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-facebook-copies-everything-2013-1">Facebook copies everything.</a>
He also said this:
"I like to talk to my kids and their friends. Here is a typical college aged woman I know. She uses Twitter, <keyword id="819905" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Instagram">Instagram</keyword>, <keyword id="1781934" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Cinemagram">Cinemagram</keyword>, <keyword id="76575" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Foursquare">Foursquare</keyword>, iMessage, and Snapchat. And Facebook too."
None of those are surprising, with one exception.
Cinemagram?
Wilson explains the use cases for most of the others:
" If it is something silly that she wants to share with a friend but would be mortified if it ended up on Facebook, its Snapchat. If it is something she wants out there broadly, it is Twitter. If it is something she wants to share with a wide group of curated friends, it's Instagram. She has a private Instagram account so she controls who follows her there."
But what's the use-case for Cinemagram?
I texted my cousin who has an iPhone and is a sophomore at Tennessee. "Do you and your friends use Cinemagram? i.e. Do you and your friends have it on your phones?"
She replied, "I have no idea what that is."
I tried another college student, a senior at Notre Dame who runs his school's social media accounts. He owns an Android and replied, "Never heard of it."
As for the others Wilson mentioned he said, "I personally only use FB, Twitter. But plenty use Instagram obviously. Not too many Foursquare but I've seen it on occasion." Then he added something surprising. "We all use GroupMe though." He and my cousin both use Snapchat.
So what's up with Cinemagram?
Cinemagram is an interesting, easy way to make animated GIFs on a mobile device. It caught fire in October after raising $8.5 million round led my Menlo Ventures. <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/snapchat-cinemagram/">Then, it was #4 in the App Store</a>, just above Snapchat. But while Snapchat is holding strong at #5, Cinemagram has fallen out of the top 100. Now it doesn't seem to be losing or gaining users. 
In October, Cinemagram shot up to 300,000 monthly users, per AppData (which only shows the number of people who log-in to the app through their Facebook accounts):
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/22/snapchat-cinemagram/">Appdata via TechCrunch</a></div>
Today, it's steady at about 300,000 monthly active users and 60,000 daily active users.
<div class="image-container" style="width:589px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.appdata.com/apps/facebook/327229777290354-cinemagram">AppData</a></div>
That doesn't mean Wilson's go-to college student is a one-off, or that Cinemagram is dead. One great thing about college kids is they're like sheep.
As my cousin wrote in a follow up text, "I'm sure in a couple weeks everyone will have it."

The Apps That Are On A College Kid's Phone: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat And...Cinemagram?

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><a href="&lt;a href="></a>"&gt;Alyson Shontell via Business InsiderLast year <keyword id="745360" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="GroupMe">GroupMe</keyword> owned SXSW.</div>This morning, I was polling college students about what apps are on their phone. According to <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/01/feature-friday-privacy.html">one Fred Wilson knows</a>, they use Twitter, Instagram, Cinemagram, Foursquare iMessage, Snapchat and Facebook.
The students I asked <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/college-kids-and-cinemagram-downloads-2013-1">responded a little differently.</a>
From a sophomore girl at Tennessee who has an iPhone 4S (full disclosure, she's my cousin):
" I mainly use Facebook and iMessage but a bunch of my friends use Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram." She has a Snapchat account."
Unlike Wilson's subject, she had never heard of Cinemagram, an app for creating animated GIFs.
From a senior guy at Notre Dame who owns an Android runs one of the school's social media accounts:
"I personally only use Facebook and Twitter. But plenty use Instagram obviously. Not too many Foursquare but I've seen it on occasion."
He said he had never heard of Cinemagram either. Then he added something else.
"We all use GroupMe though."
Yes, GroupMe, the group messaging app that was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/skype-acquires-groupme-2011-8">acquired by Skype just one year after launch for about $85 million</a>. Apparently it's as alive on some college campuses as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-there-may-have-been-the-breakout-app-at-sxsw-2012-3">it as at South by Southwest.</a> Although my cousin has never heard of it. That could be the age difference; she was in high school when GroupMe was all the rage.

College Kid Says All His Friends Use GroupMe, An App Most People Haven't Thought About In Years

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/author/daniel-goodman">Daniel Goodman / Business Insider</a></div>You may have heard of Qwiki before, the interactive video app was previously available on iPad and was one of Apple's favorite <keyword id="6354741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Apps">apps</keyword> of 2011.
It was a lot like an interactive version of Wikipedia, letting you watch multimedia presentations to get information on stuff.
But now Qwiki is relaunching with a new focus. It's yet another one of the company's pivots since it won TechCrunch Disrupt's startup contest in 2010.
This time, Qwiki is iPhone-only. The app works by automatically stitching together photos and video from the <keyword id="6354606" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="iPhone">iPhone</keyword> camera roll and creates a 30-second to one-minute video mashup from a certain day or event.
Behind the scenes, Qwiki's software and algorithms analyze all the photos and videos from a set of events, then strings them together to create the most emotionally impactful video possible.
The difference between Qwiki and other short video clip apps like Vine or Cinemagram is that Qwiki has a beginning, middle, and end. If Vine were a bite, Qwiki would be the entire meal.
Qwiki is more like <a href="https://videolicious.com/">another app called Videolicious</a>.
With Qwiki users have the freedom to move frames around, add filters, and set the speed of clips. Once that's done, sharing to Facebook and Twitter is a tap away.
"We wanted to build something everyone wants to use," Doug Imbruce, Qwiki's founder told Business Insider. "It's perfect for someone who has little patience but loves the medium of video."
Qwiki is free and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id599210280">available for the iPhone in Apple's App Store.</a>

After Another Pivot, Startup Qwiki Pulls Off An Impressive Video App For Your iPhone

<div style="max-width: 800px;" id="_giphy_12UlfHpF05ielO"></div>

 
<a href="http://www.giphy.com">Giphy</a>, a visual search engine that launched two years ago, just raised a $17 million Series B round of financing at an $80 million post-money valuation.
Lightspeed Venture Partners, which also invested in Snapchat and Whisper, led the round. General Catalyst participated in the financing as well as previous investors Lerer-Hippeau, RRE Ventures, CAA Ventures and Betaworks. The company has raised $20.5 million to date.
Giphy was founded by Alex Chung and Jace Cooke in February 2013 in a New York startup incubator, Betaworks. The pair were discussing how sometimes, words fall short. They're good for describing objects, like trees or cars. But an image or GIF can express feelings, or words like "great" and "excited," so much better.

(Giphy's 15-person team, above)
There are now tens of millions of people searching for images on Giphy every month. Giphy serves more than 3 billion GIFs per month too. The company is becoming increasingly popular on mobile, even though Giphy doesn't have an app. Its mobile-friendly website makes it easy to copy and paste a GIF into a text message or share it on social media. The company is receiving several hundred million API calls per month.
When you visit Giphy.com, you can search for any type of image. It's adjective-friendly too. For example, if you search for "Happy Cat," more than 330 images show up and at glance, most results all relevant.
<div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"></div></div>
Giphy will also be launching an easy way to make GIFS soon.
How big a business can GIFS possibly be? Other startups, like mobile GIF creator Cinemagram, have launched with a lot of traction then fizzled out. But sites like Tumblr have helped make GIFS extremely popular, and social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and messaging apps are making the visual content easier than ever to share. Giphy recently worked with mobile messaging company Line on an animated sticker contest. Even <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/425747507717484544">Barack Obama has shared Giphy's</a> content.
Jeremy Liew, who led the Giphy investment for Lightspeed, has been hunting for a startup in the sticker or GIF space for months. 
"GIFs are a thing, you can't not notice it happening," says Liew. "I'm not that great at predicting the future, but I'm great at seeing what's happening and not just saying, 'Oh, that's stupid.' When you see a behavior becoming more widespread, that's not just a thing, that's a trend. And if you believe GIFs are a trend then you say, 'Who's the leader?' Well, it's Giphy. It's the place where you can go find whatever GIF you're looking for. It makes GIF [discovery] super easy."

Giphy, A 2-Year-Old Search Engine For GIFS, Just Raised $17 Million At An $80 Million Valuation

<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindseykone/4533048289/sizes/l/in/photostream/">www.flickr.com</a></td></tr></table>Most startups fail. But there is a common thread among some of the most successful startups:
Consumers, not investors or tech blogs, find them first.
A few examples:
<ul>
<li><keyword id="6354576" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Facebook">Facebook</keyword></li>
<li><keyword id="819905" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Instagram">Instagram</keyword></li>
<li><keyword id="939877" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pinterest">Pinterest</keyword></li>
<li>Most recently: <keyword id="6358096" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Snapchat">Snapchat</keyword></li>
</ul>
Facebook was founded in February 2004. It received seed funding, $500,000 seven months later. Then, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-traffic-and-pitch-deck-from-april-2004-2012-8">Facebook already had more than 100 million monthly pageviews and 70,000 users</a>. By the time Mike Arrington wrote about the first TechCrunch article on Facebook, it was in September 2005 and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-traffic-and-pitch-deck-from-april-2004-2012-8">85% of college students were already using it.</a>
Instagram was loved by "normals" before the tech world became obsessed. It went through a rough period when investment firm <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/one-investor-who-definitely-wont-be-in-instagrams-new-40-million-round-2012-3">Andreessen Horowitz ultimately picked another startup, PicPlz, over it</a>. Then it turned heads in September 2011 when its co-founder, Kevin Systrom, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/9-million-users-in-11-months-for-instagram-2011-9">announced Instagram had 9 million users 11 months after its relaunch.</a>
Pinterest, which is now worth more than $1.5 billion, circulated among moms and crafters before it got noticed in the blogosphere. We first <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/20-silicon-valley-startups-to-watch#anyone-can-build-web-apps-with-flotype-1">wrote about it in July 2011</a> after learning about it from its early investors. That was three years after its launch. When <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pinterest-andreessen-horowitz-2011-10">Andreessen Horowitz put the first big money into the company three months later</a>, it already had one billion monthly pageviews.
Snapchat is the latest teenage craze and it's just now <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/sexting-app-snapchat-is-the-consumer-startup-most-likely-to-sell-for-huge-pile-of-money-in-2013-2013-1">getting investor and tech blog interest.</a> In December it announced an $8 million financing, the first round it has raised since it was founded in May 2011. Now <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-confidence-is-shaken-2013-1">50 million pictures are being shared daily over the platform</a>. That's higher than Instagram's daily upload number.
Where did investors learn about Snapchat? Again, from people who aren't tech obsessed. <a href="http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/01/feature-friday-privacy.html">USV's Fred Wilson recently wrote</a>, "I like to talk to my kids and their friends. Here is a typical college aged woman I know. She uses Twitter, Instagram, Cinemagram, Foursquare, iMessage, and Snapchat. And Facebook too. She uses each of them for what they are good for. Each of them is on her home screen - one click and she is sharing something with someone."
It's much harder to get consumers to adopt new products than to get forward-thinking technology investors and experts on board. So, if you want to accurately predict the next big thing, ask your parents or children what they use. Once a startup attracts normal people, the rest is cake.

One Tell-Tale Sign Of A Wildly Successful Startup

<div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div>Adam Ludwin</div>Adam Ludwin sees a lot of startups as a principal at RRE, a venture capital firm that's invested in companies like Moda Operandi, Makerbot, Braintree and Business Insider. 
As such, he sees broad trends in entrepreneurship; he knows what every founder is working on, which spaces are the most crowded, and which types of startups investors are looking to financially back.
Two of the biggest trends right now are: 
<ul>
<li>Social photo and video apps -- Think Viddy, SocialCam, Cinemagram and Snapchat. All emerged as Instagram was getting acquired for $1 billion and Pinterest was receiving a billion-dollar valuation.</li>
<li>Reinventing the iPhone's default apps -- Instagram re-invented the Camera app and found success. Spotify is often used instead of Apple's "Music." Evernote is a good alternative to "Notes," the new Mailbox app is preferred to "Mail" and apps like Sunrise and Fantastical are better than "Calendar."</li>
</ul>
Ludwin founded two companies prior to joining RRE, and now he's trying his hand at another one. He's co-founding an iPhone app with a friend from Los Angeles, Devon Gundry.
And guess what? 
<ul>
<li>It's a social photo app called <a href="https://bitly.com/WbwBij">Albumatic</a></li>
<li>It's trying to smother one of Apple's default apps, "Photos."</li>
</ul>
"I really don't want to like another photo app," I told Ludwin as I looked at the app. He laughed and said, "Neither do I."
But as I stalked recent photos of CrunchFund's MG Siegler on a trip to Cabo with his girlfriend, I found myself warming to <keyword id="1765878" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Albumatic">Albumatic</keyword>.
Albumatic is a social, beautifully-designed alternative to Apple's "Photos," an album app most people forget they have on their iPhones. Ludwin calls Albumatic an "organizational layer" for photos, separating them by event, location, and featured people.
"There were seven or eight of us all taking photos of Devon's new baby," Ludwin explained Albumatic's origins. "All together we had taken 100 photos, but they were all siloed in each others' devices. There are endless places to share photos -- via text message, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter -- but there's no good, social way to bulk combine camera rolls and image galleries."
When you join Albumatic, it helps you find other users on Facebook, in your contact list, or nearby via the iPhone's GPS. From then on, when you and a friend are near each other, you can create and join albums together. 
No invites codes are sent back and forth; friends see albums as you create them through push notifications, and they can either "watch" it if they aren't nearby, or they can join the album if they're witnessing the same event. Like Instagram, people can favorite or comment on photos.
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div>Albumatic</div>
Like Path and Foursquare, each user has a profile page that displays their albums, photos and activity. Here's what it looks like:
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div>Albumatic</div>
Only your friends can watch/subscribe to your albums, so strangers won't be able to creep into them (I was only able to "watch" photos of MG's trip to Cabo because Ludwin is friends with him. I wouldn't have been able to do that on my version of the app).
Albumatic could be good if you want to witness a friend's spring break trip you can't make, or a wedding you weren't invited to. Subscribing to an album is like being there in spirit, and you can watch the event unfold in real-time without having to wait for Facebook uploads after the fact. 
It's also good for weddings you are invited to, where every friend has a camera and is snapping their own shots. Instead of uploading and tagging each camera roll separately on Facebook, you can join forces and see everyone's photos at once on Albumatic.
Here's what the album view looks like in the app:
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div>Albumatic</div>
One problem with Albumatic is, if events are too big (think South by Southwest), it's possible to have too many people join a single album. If a bunch of friends of friends of friends are at a concert or event together, they could all end up joining the same album and contribute thousands of photos that the album creator never cared to see.
Ludwin calls this idea "album hijacking" and admits it could be a problem. He and Gundry have contemplated capping the number of people who can join albums. He says Siegler has already hijacked one of his from a San Francisco trip.
Here's a view of all the people that have joined or watched an album:
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div>Albumatic</div> 
Also, there's no way to remove or "untag" a photo of you once it's in Albumatic, and anyone who's subscribed to the album can see it. Ludwin says the only current solution is to ask the poster to take down the image.
Here's what the group camera roll looks like in Albumatic:
<div class="image-container" style="width:590px"><div class="image"></div>Albumatic</div>
For now, Ludwin will remain at RRE and involved in companies where he's on the board: HowAboutWe, Moda Operandi, Kik Interactive, Paperless Post and VYou. 
RRE will also be investing in Albumatic, although a round of financing hasn't closed yet.
Ludwin realizes photo-sharing is a packed space, but after months of mulling it over and researching Albumatic's competitors, he's confident in his startup. 
When asked why he picked such a crowded space he replied, "Simple: the problem was still unsolved!"

You Searched For "Cinemagram" and got 6 results

The Apps That Are On A College Kid's Phone: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat And...Cinemagram?

Alyson Shontell

College Kid Says All His Friends Use GroupMe, An App Most People Haven't Thought About In Years

Alyson Shontell

After Another Pivot, Startup Qwiki Pulls Off An Impressive Video App For Your iPhone

Kevin Smith

Giphy, A 2-Year-Old Search Engine For GIFS, Just Raised $17 Million At An $80 Million Valuation

Alyson Shontell

One Tell-Tale Sign Of A Wildly Successful Startup

Alyson Shontell

RRE Investor Adam Ludwin Has Decided To Start A Company, Albumatic, In The Most Crowded Space Ever

Alyson Shontell

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