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Twofish Updates Focus on Virtual Currency Data Posted: 20 May 2009 05:00 AM PDT Twofish, the company that provides micropayments for applications, is announcing a few new products for its service. The new products mainly revolve around analytics and easier ways in which to get set up with Twofish. With these updates, Twofish is really looking to appeal to the developer community, gain new users and provide better ways in which to utilize the data it provides through its microplayment platform. From its Easy Element product, the core service for Twofish, comes a new tool called Currency Starter. This is closer to a turnkey solution for developers that want to get started right away with a virtual currency option for their applications. Some of the options that come with Currency Starter include Google Analytics integration, and all the other basics needed for setting up a payment gateway for virtual currency. Twofish has a one-click purchase option for users, which saves their credit card information, along with account history which users have access to. A highlight of the Currency Starter program is the customizable widget which developers can place on their site. This widget is skinnable and can be integrated quickly and easily into a developer’s site. The benefit of using the widget is tat users can handle all their transactions related to Twofish without having to leave the developer’s site. As Google Analytics cannot be integrated with a service that has to rediret end users to a third party site, another plus side for the widget is the fact that it still supports Twofish’s Google Analytics integration. Speaking of Google Analytics, the integration of this option is another of Twofish’s updates being announced today. For those developers that would like the basics of the analytics surrounding their virtual currency for their apps and already have Google Analytics, this is a good way to get the core information as it relates to their own site activity. For those developers that would like more ways in which to drill down into their metrics and user activity, Twofish is offering a new analytics framework that offers more comparison tools. These tools revolve around sales, currency catalog and user behavior. What are users buying, how much are they buying, when are they buying, where does the point of sales occur, and where are the referrals coming from? These are only a few of the analytics options that will be available on the new analytics platform. Twofish and its updates really fit into the larger picture of a virtual goods economy, as competitors such as Super Rewards step up their offerings to developers, and Facebook continues on its path towards a universal virtual currency in order to reap more of the benefits from this growing trend. Twofish still remains rather focused on the optimization of the data it collect son behalf of developers that use its service, and the current updates reflect this core concept for the virtual goods company, and recently added a number of new partners to its roster as well.

Twitter Tees on Threadless. Win Money for Your Tweets. Posted: 19 May 2009 08:00 AM PDT Many have tried to start a company that puts your Twitter status updates on a tee shirt, but the end results have been largely dismal. It’s a tricky concept to pin down in a revenue-generating model when you’re merely a third party service. But Threadless may have figured something out. In partnership with Twitter, Threadless the company that made t-shirts social, launches Twitter Tees today. And the best thing about this new project is that it keeps the community around Twitter and Threadless intact. Twitter Tees works by submitting a tweet to be considered for the next contest, where others can vote the tweet up or down. Logging in with your Twitter credentials will enable you to submit your tweet and also access submitted tweets of your friends. The winner does indeed get prize money. If you nominate a tweet that was created by someone else, the original Twitter user will be notified and approval must be given before the tweet can be used in the contest. This particular aspect of the approval process is a good safeguard against ownership and copyright issues, something that hindered others such as Twitshirt from having a successful launch. The Threadless contests for Twitter Tees, which run weekly, are still at the core of this new project. What this means is that the new service is not a place to have your tweets turned into t-shirts. There are no “one-off” printing options, and the community voting still applies. Lucky for you, the integration of Twitter into Twitter Tees makes it that much easier for you to spread the word about your nominations. While details of the partnership have not been revealed, we do wonder at the revenue-generating potential of such an idea. If it were to make money, now would be a good time, given the mainstream coverage of Twitter and our undeniable attraction to snarky, pop culture tees. I have a tendency to feel that Twitter could make some amount revenue with several smaller projects such as this, so I’m anxious to see the future for Threadless and the way in which Twitter handles this particular project.

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