Categories
News Trademarks

Warner Bros. to launch photo sharing social network called Out My Window

Out My Window

With photo sharing one of the fastest growing segments of social networking and services like Flickr and Instagram exploding in popularity, it looks like Warner Bros. is throwing its hat into the ring with a new photo sharing service called Out My Window.

The Coming Soon page, which can be found on outmywindow.com, went live this week with the slogan, “Share your view at the speed of life.”  The home page reads:

A perfect picture. The urge to share it. From my view to your view. From my phone to your TV. With Out My Window, our photographs will always weave the stories of our lives together.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. filed well over a dozen trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in late December for Out My Window, OutMy Window and OutMyWindow

The goods and services covered in the filings include: peer-to-peer photo and video sharing services, digital enhancement of photographs, digital imaging software, providing temporary use of on-line non-downloadable software and applications, and of course, social networking services provided via the internet.

The company’s latest trademark filing (Serial Number: 85500122) specifically covers, “Social networking services provided via the internet and other electronic communications networks; Providing on-line computer databases and on-line searchable databases in the field of social networking; Providing a website on the internet for the purpose of social networking.”

The filings include serial numbers 85500122, 85500376, 85500370, 85500357, 85500348, 85500336, 85500066, 85500046, 85500031, 85500017, 85499976, 85499960, 85499947, 85499927, and 85499899.

As of today, you can sign up to be notified when the service launches, but not much else.

The Terms page and Privacy page offer little in terms of details and Warner Bros. has yet to make an official announcement about Out My Window.  However with the launch of the teaser page and several trademark filings, my guess is you can expect an announcement any day now.

[Update 1 on January 10, 2012:  Out My Window will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.  According to the LA Times it will be available to consumers in the spring. “Targeted primarily at young parents, it’s designed as a new alternative for people who frequently upload and email pictures but don’t want to use social networks or Web photo services that can allow pictures to be seen by outsiders.”]

Discussion: Techmeme, Time, ParisLemon, The Next Web, FayerWayer, DigitalTrends.com, Electronista, Business Insider, Houston Chronicle, Social Times, Marketing Land and Pulse2

Categories
News Video Games

Tiny Speck continues private alpha testing of Glitch.com (for at least four more months)

glitch

I broke the story this past February about the domain name Glitch.com being purchased by the co-founders of Flickr.  Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake had resigned from the company to launch Tiny Speck.   If you’re not familiar with Tiny Speck, the company was founded in early 2009 by four of the original members of the Flickr team.  

At that time of my story, the Glitch.com web site had nothing more than a picture of an animated pig on the home page. 

 The domain had sold for $19,000 on Sedo giving the seller a nice profit.  According to DomainTools sales records, the seller paid only $3,000 in 2007 on Afternic.

Working on a hunch that something big was going to be unveiled, I contacted TechCrunch and other news sites – and a day later TechCrunch announced the news.   Though TechCrunch didn’t give us a mention, it was not all for naught: The Guardian backlinked to our story about the sales price.

Private Alpha Testing

I haven’t been following the story of Glitch since earlier in the year, until yesterday when I received an email about alpha testing from the Tiny Speck team.  Alpha testing has been taking place for several weeks already.

I tried it out with my kids and was amazed at how much they liked the game.  It runs in the browser and the quality is something I would expect to see on an Xbox 360 or Playstation.

Because of the terms of the alpha testing, I can’t post details about the game (from screen captures and movies to details about game mechanics and styles) until Tiny Speck is further along in development.  The screen shot above is from the Glitch.com public site.

According to the email I received from Tiny Speck: ‘We are still very early in development and have only recently switched our focus from the underlying technology platform and tools to the actual game design and play. Much will be changing in each testing
cycle. Testing will last for at least the next four months.’

One thing I have noticed about the game as I have played – is the amount of new terms throughout the game that I could see becoming popular with users once the game goes public.  Terms such as ‘glitchling’ – which isn’t registered at the time of this story.

You can follow @isglitchopen on Twitter to be notified when the game opens and closes for testing.

Glitch’s main Twitter account is here: http://twitter.com/playglitch

Stewart Butterfield also has a YouTube channel, where he occassionally shares videos demonstrating some of the ins and outs of the game and development.  The latest video is about the game’s avatars:
 

Categories
News Video Games

Coincidence? Shortly After our Story on Glitch.com, Flickr Founders Launch Site, TechCrunch Runs Story

glitch home pageThe massively-multiplayer game “Glitch”, which is playable in the browser and built in the spirit of the web according to the website has launched their official website announcing the soon-to-launch game which will be in Private alpha shortly. 

 Though it’s most likely one heck of a coincidence, the website announcement just went online today – a day after we revealed Glitch.com was acquired by the former founders of Flickr for their secret project Tiny Speck. 

Our story ran on the popular Domain Industry web site Domaining.com.

We tweeted @Stewart, one of the founders of Tiny Speck yesterday and also emailed the News Tip to TechCrunch yesterday as a follow up to their July story that discussed the Tiny Speck project. 

AND TODAY: TechCrunch’s lead story is none other than –

Tiny Speck Uncovers Glitch, A New Flash-Based Massively Multiplayer Game

A quality backlink from a web site like TechCrunch never hurts, but unfortunately there was no mention of the News Tip we sent yesterday afternoon.

While it looks like the folks at CNET have been eagerly awaiting to publish their story, it seems to be quite the coincidence that after we post our story, that TechCrunch puts out the news today. 

Either way, the premise for the game looks interesting and for the seller of the domain Glitch.com, they made a $16,000 profit before fees.   Below is a screenshot from the Glitch Teaser video. 

glitch teaser

From the Domaining angle, there are a lot of great backstories to domain names: Glitch.com is another excellent example.