Socialcam Vs. Viddy And The Curious Calculus Of Picking The Most Popular App

Welcome to the Curious Cat Investing and Economics Carnival: find useful recent personal finance, investing and economics blog posts.

(modenadude)

Here's something I bet you didn't know. Back in 1979 and 1982, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan broke the opening weekend record with $11.9 million and $14.3 million respectively. So, yes, for a brief period, the Star Trek franchise really was in the same kind of company as Batman and Jurassic Park.  The above quote is from my weekend box office report from four summers ago, when Star Trek debuted with a whopping $79.5 million in 3.25 days and seemingly restarted a grand old franchise.

Ever since Mark Zuckerberg surprised everyone, including his board of directors, by snapping up Instagram with a $1 billion offer, people have been wondering: Who's next? Speculation has centered on a handful of apps that facilitate sharing of videos over social networks, including SocialCam, which has a reported 40 million users, and Viddy, which claims 28 million. You could put Mobli into that camp as well

Everyone wants to know which lucky startup will be the Instagram for video, hoping to see if Facebook will spend another billion dollars to buy it?even if it?s unlikely there is in fact an Instagram for video. Either way, Socialcam apparently just got a big angel funding round as it battles Viddy and others to ...

"Star Trek Into Darkness" opens in theaters this weekend and diehard Trekkies won't be the only ones heading out to see the new J.J. Abrams directed film.

Paramount just released a short behind-the-scenes look at "Star Trek Into Darkness" featuring director J.J. Abrams.  The clip gives a rare look at Abrams working on set, with images of the director laughing with the cast and crew including stars Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana, and Zachary Quinto.

For many of we Star Trek fans, it is agreeable to anticipate the Star Trek: Into Darkness film and today's release of Star Trek: The Video Game. But some fans were not happy with the 2009 Star Trek film script's addition of a new setting that added a quantum reality to Star Trek's universe timeline. The setting of Abram's 2009 film is an alternate timeline, a new reality that runs parallel to the prime reality. If you are a little weak on the actual physics of this in the real world, you can listen to Stephen Hawking's Seattle Science Festival panel talk about baby universes here. Senior V.P.