Centrl Review on TechCrunch
Serkan Toto has reviewed Centrl at TechCrunch. Here is his article:
Centrl Symbian App (beta) for Nokia phones
If you have a Nokia N40, N60 or higher, now you can give Centrl a try on your phone!
You can go to this page and install it and then you can let us know what you think at support at centrl dot com.
Map tiles exposed
When writing an LBS application, you have many different options when it comes to map tiles.
At Centrl, we have licensed map tiles from Microsoft (data supplied by Navteq) for use on the iPhone and BlackBerry. We pay Microsoft per transaction, which is 8 map tiles downloaded from their map tile servers.
And we use Google map tiles (data supplied by TeleAtlas and more) on our website and on the Android (through the native Android Maps component).
Now there is one more option on the new iPhone 3.x SDK: a native Maps component that comes with map tiles from Google. We think this is going to make writing LBS apps on the iPhone much easier since there will be one less issue to worry about.
But no matter where you get your map tiles, you will find that, somewhere in the world, some user will definitely be dissatisfied with the accuracy, detail and zoom level of your map tiles. So you will have to go that country, find a local partner and customize your map tiles for that location to satisfy your customers.
It’s interesting that nobody has thought of creating a network of local partners that someone can just go and choose from, like a smorgasbord of high-quality local content that is aggregated very conveniently.
Furthermore, there are even companies that will fly over a specific area for you and create super high-precision map tiles for you. Now imagine all this were offered as a single menu where you could purchase from 
Fred Wilson at Entrepreneurs Roundtable 15
We had the great fortune of having Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures as the guest ‘VC’ at the Entrepreneurs Roundtable last night. We had a sold-out full house and almost everybody in the room was an entrepreneur. Five startups were scheduled to pitch to Fred to get his feedback and with some extra time, Fred was gracious enough to let 4 more entrepreneurs pitch to him. Overall his feedback was amazing and everybody was very impressed with his energy, constructiveness and insights. We hope he will be back at a future event. Here are some videos from the event:
I will be uploading the rest of the videos soon. Please check back.
New layers 11870, Oodle and Google Base now in Centrl!
We have just added new exciting layers in Centrl. Now you can access great content from 11870.com, Oodle.com and Google Base easily in Centrl as a map layer around you.
11870:
“The best services in your area. The service guide with reviews and images by friends and users.”
Find luxury hotels in Buenos Aires, tapas and flamenco in Madrid, shopping in Paris or bars in New York using our 11870 layer in Centrl.
Oodle:
“Buy, sell & trade locally. Oodle - a smarter classifieds site”
You can find that great rental apartment listed on Oodle from within Centrl as easy as 2 clicks. Type in some keywords like “1BR” and see all the available rental apartments around you.
Google Base:
“Post it on Base. Find it on Google.”
You can find great rental apartment listings from Google Base easily in Centrl. Again, type in some keywords “2BR” and you will see all the active listings around you on the map.
Please enjoy these new layers and let us know what other new layers you would like to see in Centrl at feedback at centrl dot com.
Centrl is the first LBSN with Navteq’s LocationPoint advertising platform/The rise of ‘right-place,right-time,right-person’ advertising
Advertising spend in broadcast media is on the decline:
* With the rise of on-demand world, push/broadcast advertising model is no longer effective.
* In October, the four biggest broadcast networks reported declines in audiences between the ages of 18 and 49.
* Advertising Age, in a study on social networking and its impact on television, found that 25% of users of social networking sites like Facebook indicated they were spending less time watching TV because of the time they were spending online.
So this means online advertising spend is exploding? Not really:
* TechCrunch indicates that in the third quarter, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL collectively eked out only a 0.6% increase in online advertising revenue quarter over quarter.
* MediaPost.com reports that, while online ad revenue is up 11% year-to-date, compared to last year’s growth of 26%, growth has all but stalled in 2008. They predict that 2009 will be the first flat year for online ad spending since 2003.
* In a survey of attendees at AdTech New York, private equity firm Halyard Capital found most predicted digital-marketing budgets would be down 10-20% in 2009.
* According to research by Morgan Stanley, the average CPM for a banner ad has dropped from $3 to $1 over the past decade.
* MediaPost predicts that this decline in the rates advertisers are paying will extend to online video advertising in 2009, which is an area that has been enjoying a two year spike in CPMs.
So then where will the ad dollars go? Will they go to social networks that is getting monster page views? No, again:
* Click-through rates on social networking sites are 10 to 100 times lower than the average for banner ads, which were already in the 0.1 percent to 1 percent range.
So then, what is the rising star? It is ‘mobile’ and ‘location-based social networks’:
* 62% of AdTech’s attendees responding to the survey by Halyard cited mobile as the advertising platform that will grow the most in the next two years, as they point that the ’spray and pray’ model no longer works and they need more effective ways to get their messages to the consumers.
At Centrl, we are seeing amazing engagement metrics from our users with the location-based ads we are serving through our partner Navteq and their LocationPoint location-based advertising service.
You are traveling to New York? Download Centrl for free to your phone, see where your friends are, pick some restaurants to go to through Centrl’s layers and while you are at it, click on these green icons and get 10% off your hotel stay. The advertisement becomes a benefit when it is delivered at the right place at the right time.
We are very excited to be the first LBSN to use Navteq’s LocationPoint and we are working with them very closely to improve and optimize every aspect of our system. As the industry and advertisers are gearing up to send their messages to the right people at the right place at the right time, it is very encouraging that these messages are transforming from advertising into ‘benefits’ for our users.
Centrl is now available on Android and BlackBerry
Our Android and BlackBerry applications are finally available:
Android:
BlackBerry:
You can download them at http://centrl.com/mobile . We are looking forward to your feedback!
Unype is now Centrl with a brand new iPhone app and website
As we get more and more users, we have changed our name from Unype to Centrl to reflect the wider userbase we are going after.
After receiving funding late last year, we have been working very hard around the clock and in March we have released our iPhone app along with our completely redesigned website and a brand new scalable backend running on Amazon EC2.
Today a new version of our iPhone app with virtual gifts and extra useful layers (like Yelp and Wikipedia for starters) became available on the App Store: http://itunes.com/app/centrl
We are very excited about our iPhone app and thanks to the easy feedback system that my co-founder Eric Redlinger has put in place in our iPhone app, we are getting great, live, very useful feedback from all of our users. So we hightly recommend to make it very easy for your users to give you feedback inside your application, not just as a ‘email us your thoughts’ line.
Our Android and Blackberry apps are also coming out in the coming weeks and we are looking forward to seeing you in Centrl where you can easily connect with your friends, share and discover places and events, get a lot of useful data on our layers and get special money-saving offers from our partners.
