A to Z of cool startups, apps, fundings and acquisitions in 2013

A London-based start-up has created the “ultimate platform for debate” has developed a website and iPhone application which invites instant reactions to user submitted posts.

The Amirite social media platform asks users to post an opinion, question or statement while others give their opinion by simply voting 'Thumbs Up' or 'Thumbs Down'. Votes are used for ranking opinions, with the most active posts being more prominently featured.

Amirite has an achievement system to allow users to find and vote for the most contentious posts.  Users’ positive or negative opinions are displayed directly to the world with trending posts gaining more and more opinions the longer they are popular.

Israel based startup Bazaart announced the launch of the Bazaart iPhone free application in June. Part collage app, part social network, the Bazaart application is intended to help users be more creative and make collages from Pinterest pins.

Bazaart’s editor allows you to cut out the background automatically with its “computer vision algorithm”, and with your fingertips, copy, flip, rotate, scale and position the photos in your collage.

Chasm is based on social reciprocity. Influencers share content and get their own content shared. Partnered with Klout and Microsoft, Chasm already caters to a network of over 30,000 top-end influencers.

The Austin Tx company received seed funding of $1m in May 2013.

Dotmach launched in July. Dotmach is a team workflow platform, a “simple work management tool”, a “unified application to perform internal communication and team collaboration in an effortless fashion”.

It was named as one of the top promising startups at TechSparks 2013.

emoteShare is a start-up dedicated to adding a unique and fun twist to the way you give your opinion. The Silicon Valley based start-up announced its official launch of the emoteShare social plugin in July.

The emoteShare plugin is a free-to-use web application that gives web publishers the ability to capture social reactions from their audiences to their online content in real-time.

Family Leaf is a social network that connects your family away from your work colleagues and other friends. It  is a centralised network for your family that keeps everyone’s information in one secure place.

You can create a photo gallery for the family and check in to see what other members of the family are doing. The company received $177k funding in January 2013.

In July an Australian start-up launched Hustle, a bag for woman and wallet for men that powers your phone. Making running out of battery thing of the past, it can power your phone all day and night up to 4 times, while you are on the go.

It also has a USB charging port on to its charge pad to reduce the adapters and cables you require. Plug your existing USB phone charging cable into the Hustle Charge Pad to charge your Hustle Bag and phone at once.

Founded  in June 2013 Izooble promised to be a social discovery network where you discover great new apps. Its algorithm finds the best apps based on your own network of people you trust. 

In November 2013 it received $135k in seed funding.

Juump , founded in 2013 makes it easy to find and organize tennis games near you. All you have to do is post a request to play or respond to someone else.

Keepy lets you organize, enhance, share, admire and preserve artwork and memorable items forever in an interactive keepsake box. It is available for iOS and Android. Users can add their own voice and video to add emotional attributes to the keepsake.

The New York based company received $1.1M in seed funding in October 2013.

In July Likebook, now renamed My social book announced its free PDF offering. The company lets Facebook users chronicle their timeline in an offline keepsake with statuses, photos and comments.

This keepsake book can be referenced or shared outside of Facebook.

MultiPLX is a visual RSS Reader which is intended to deliver everything people want to see in one convenient place. Based in Walnut Creek CA, it is a full web based service with no plugins or extensions to support migration from Google Reader which disappeared in summer 2013.

MultiPLX has its own backend that can scale-up to serve millions of users, and billions of feed posts each day.

Nimble announced version 3.0 of its platform in May 2013. Nimble is a relationship management platform created to help professionals build better relationships in a noisy, multi-channel world.

Nimble provides users with a way to track, engage and nurture relationships— providing context to conversations. Profile technology helps users connect with the people who matter to you in business.

Ohoola invites you to create exiting content, post your thoughts, photos, video, audio, report on exciting news, join exciting conversations and get rewarded for your social activity. It received $350k in seed funding in June 2013.

Ping.it is a discovery platform that puts you in touch with the most exciting, useful and relevant stories of the web. Simply subscribe to the content you find interesting and watch your feed build up.

Using “Intersecting Feeds” technology, stories on Ping.it are connected by what users find interesting . This means you will only ever be connected to likeminded people. You won’t get ‘information overload’ or see the same article over and over again. You will see the best pieces that personally resonate with you.

Qeepr is a social media site dedicated to memorializing the lives of the departed with the aid of modern technology : the QR code. By placing a QR code on a gravestone, urn, or other monument, you will allow others to discover your lost loved one’s story.

You can create a profile where friends and family can leave condolences, upload photos, like, share, comment, connect, and remember those who are dearly missed.

RebelMouse is a social front page for anything or anyone. It is a content management system built from the ground up around the social real-time web. It also has a responsive mobile web view that ensures content displays on all devices. 

You can curate and publish from anywhere: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, RSS and original content. Publish to anywhere - including pages, apps, email and social platforms. Implementation uses a single line of code.

The plugin has just launched in the Wix App market. It received $10.3M in series A funding in August 2013.

Sgrouples, the private social network, announced its Member Search feature in July 2013, allowing its users to find their friends and family in the safe social network.

People use Sgrouples to privately share photos, videos, events, documents, discussions, direct messaging and more, one to one and in separate groups with their friends, family, co-workers and communities. Sgrouples is designed to reflect real life — online.

At Sgrouples, you own your content, your personal information is private. There are no tracking cookies, no stalking, no spying and no bullying.

Tile is the first device of its kind. Tile’s range can go far beyond that by using the Bluetooth connection of neighbouring iPhones running the Tile app to cast a wider search net. 

If you mark a Tile outside of your range as missing, Tile sends out a signal that puts other Tile apps on the search for your missing item.

This happens in the background, and means that if someone else running the Tile app comes within range of your lost object, the Tile app will identify your item and send you a notification of its location.

Upworthy has been appearing across many Facebook feeds. 87 million people visited the site in November. Its aim is to make useful posts go viral and tug at your heart strings. 

The site promises to deliver “a steady stream of the most irresistibly shareable stuff you can click on without feeling bad about yourself afterwards”. It is certainly hitting the mark raising $8M in series A funding in September.

An Israel-based startup company, Visualead, has launched a new technology that will change the way QR codes are displayed on ads. Visualead’s embedded QR codes don’t exactly hide the QR code, but make codes "odd-looking" to attract interest of a viewer just enough to make them pull out their phones and scan it.

Visualead’s generator enables users to embed QR codes into any image or advertisement in a user-friendly way without the need for any graphic design skills.

Funded in April 2012 by Kaedan Capital investment group and private angels Visualead's mission is to make QR Codes more appealing for customers and more valuable for brands.

Weathermob is a crowdsourced weather app with 100,000 monthly active users in 136 countries who create the Weathermob ‘army,’ collecting weather data all around the globe and improving the quality of everyone’s weather information.  

Weathermob provides weather from the ‘ground up’ rather than forecasts which come from the "sky down".  Weather and climate data is extremely important for business. Weathermob lets the social component of weather reporting come to the fore with real-time weather data and mapping in an app.

Image Weathermob

No longer a start up but this company has been in the news this year. Xobni is the smart way to manage your inbox. It includes updates from your contacts on LinkedIn Facebook and Twitter. Xobni was acquired by Yahoo for $48M in July 2013.

Yakit is an iOS app that makes it easy to make your own commercials or animated videos. It allows people to animate, just by speaking into their phone. Teachers from kindergarten to high school have adopted it for their iPad labs.

It meets educational core standards, and kids are rabidly using it because it feels like a toy. There is some great storytelling and creativity with the app that kids are expressing and the designers promise some fun stuff fresh on the horizon.

Credit Freak n' Genius

Zinged, a San Francisco-based company, brings its version of the "three Rs" to the web with a new site for reviews, a personal reference source and dispute resolution.

The site gives users a forum to write reviews about anything and anyone. Zinged also provides a solution for dispute resolution when there is a conflict between parties.