The MoID blog

Good news: MoID went Instagram

2015-01-22T15:38:00.000+01:00

We just released a new version of MoID with Instagram support. If you use Instagram, this is why these are phenomenal news for you:

1. People nearby can easily follow you

Say you are a fashion blogger. Wouldn’t it be great if people around you could actually see and follow you on Instagram? Look no further! With MoID people can directly see your Instagram feed when you are nearby. They do not need to know your username or search for any tags. Yeah, it’s really that easy.

2. You can see Instagram pics of people around you

You are sitting in a lecture and want to browse the Instagram pics of people around you? Easy as pie. Open MoID and you’ll see a list of people around you. Tap on a person to see their Instagram feed.

Catch me if you can

Actually MoID and Instagram fit so well together, that we are really thinking about making a standalone app just for Instagram. We’d call it “Catch me if you can”, and it would focus entirely on browsing Instagram users around you.

So here’s an open question to you: what are your thoughts about such an app? Would you use it? Which features would you want to see? We’d love to get your thoughts on that in the comments!

Dennis Pagano

CTO @ MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Download MoID here

This was our 2014

2015-01-19T11:36:00.001+01:00

In a startup, every year feels like a decade: Dozens of new features implemented, hundreds of contacts made on startup events, thousands of lines of code written. Yet we had one single goal: to provide the best networking experience for our users with this one app.

2014 has been an incredible year for us. We made phenomenal progress, have been featured in TechCrunch, exhibited at the Collision conference in Las Vegas and the WebSummit in Dublin.

We attended the Society3 accelerator in San Francisco and won the GotoStartups pitch contest. We refined and improved our application, focused on traction and our user community, and got tens of thousands of new users.

We drank a whole lot of coffee in our basement, missed the sun over a hundred times, and got competitive at table soccer.
And we finally got our patent in the US, so that MoID is now protected in Germany and in the states.

Now is the time to say a big thank you to all our supporters, beta testers, people that helped us, taught us, connected us, made intros, listened to our pitches in numerous elevator trips, and last but not least to our friends and families, who missed us for most of the year.

We are really thankful to all of you. Keep it up like this. 2015 will be even better :-)

Dennis Pagano

CTO @ MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Download MoID here

Why we focus on events.

2015-01-14T14:45:00.000+01:00

In our latest pivot, we decided to focus on events as part of our go-to-market strategy. But why?

Well, first of all, events are the place where networking actually happens in a concentrated form. This makes them the perfect scenario for MoID. That is, if we can ease part of the pain that networking causes you on events, then we did something right.

Second, events allow us to establish an environment where networking gets efficient. While typically the main problem for networking apps is that both parties need to have the app, the advantage of events lies in their organization: The event organizer usually sends out pre-event notes to their future attendees, to facilitate their experience. We found that around 80% of attendees install MoID before an event, if told so by the organizer.

Third, we will soon be able to provide premium features to event organizers, such as generating event summaries and stats for their users, and creating recommendations for users who might be interested in future events.

Last but not least, MoID is the only networking app which works across all events. This is most handy for you, our users, because you do not need to install a new event app for every event you attend.

We are quite happy. So far, we were or will be the official networking app on most of the major startup events in the German-speaking area, including Spätschicht, Bits and Pretzels, and Goto Startups.

You are an event organizer? We integrate your event for free! Click here for more info.

Dennis Pagano

CTO @ MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Download MoID here

Networking made easy: This is the new MoID

2015-01-12T17:29:00.000+01:00

The key to professional networking today is being able to find and connect online to people you already met in your real life. This has always been the basic idea behind MoID, ever since we first thought about it in 2011. But being a startup we've learned a lot since the early days, and our experience reflects in many incremental changes to our product. One of our latest learnings was about business cards, and it led to one of our biggest and most important changes.

Why do people still use business cards?

People exchange business cards, go back to their hotels, review the cards they collected, throw away some of them, and search for interesting people in social networks like LinkedIn. We learned that what people love about business cards (other than fancy layouts) is the possibility to delay the decision if a contact is valuable or not. However, people hate about business cards that they are hard to archive and there's a big gap to the social networks where the actual connection is made today.

Whereas unsuccessful apps like Bump or CardFlick only cloned the act of exchanging cards, we decided to focus completely on the result: Business cards are a chance to get in touch after the first meeting. As a consequence, we made a bunch of changes to MoID:

1. No contact information exchange, but connections on social networks

We got completely rid of contact information. Instead we focus on connecting people on social networks. The reason for this decision is twofold: First, handling contact information leads to privacy concerns among users. Second, eventually professionals want to connect on social networks anyway. With the new version, you can connect directly from within MoID on all major social networks, which is extremely handy.

2. No mutual friendships, but one-sided follows

Until now you needed to make mutual offers to get connected on MoID. But we found that this hindered our idea of allowing you to delay your decision if a contact was valuable or not. We therefore dropped this mechanism all together, so that you can now simply follow other people who might be interesting in the future.

3. Focus on events

MoID unfolds its great potential whenever many people are at the same place. We therefore decided to put a strong focus on events. MoID now automatically recognizes whenever you are attending an event organized on Eventbrite or Meetup, and automatically includes it in your MoID timeline. This facilitates your organization by keeping a visual diary of who you met where.

4. View social profiles of who you met

Whenever you encounter new people, you are interested in learning something about them. Typically this is among the first things professionals do, when they decide if a contact is valuable. Furthermore, the bigger the event, the more important it is to identify interesting people. The newMoID therefore allows you to view the social profiles of whoever you met in your real life. Trust me, you’ll love this feature :-)

I would summarize the changes we made as follows: Fast, lightweight, and efficient networking at your fingertips.

Wanna see it in action? Here is a short product video:

Dennis Pagano

CTO @ MoID

Help us spreading the word.

Follow me on Twitter

Download MoID here

The next „Facebook“ will be from Munich!

2014-10-13T14:37:00.000+02:00

As a German founder you are in a dilemma. Of course you start your business to disrupt a market or at least to slightly change the world. Otherwise you shouldn’t build a company in the first place. If you create a new social network, you are going to aim for more than just 20,000 users one day. If you create an online shop, you will want to sell more than just books for the next 10 years. You are going for millions of users. You want to change the way people do online shopping.

For a founder it is absolutely essential to have concrete visions and to communicate them. But compared to the US, in Germany it is hard to do so.

Although there is a German saying „Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier, doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr“ (meaning modesty is good, but you will be more successful without it), being moderate is really well respected. Of course, at the first glance nothing is bad about it and to be honest, I do really prefer moderate people in my private surrounding.

But as a startup the story is different. A typical startup has too little money, too little manpower, and too few users using a product which is not yet ready. So as a founder, what can you do to change that?

Should you tell potential investors that most likely you are going to fail like most startups? Should you tell potential staff that they could earn more money in an established business? Or should you tell the few users you have that you will probably never reach the critical mass needed for your buggy product?
No, no, and no!

You have to tell investors that you will succeed in any case, with or without them. You have to convince employees that it is the chance of their lifetime to become part of something huge. And of course you have to congratulate your early adopters on being first using the next big thing.
You are the founder. If you do not believe in your baby, who else should? Besides the problem that many people in Germany will call you babbler, freak, or something like that (I don't care), the biggest challenge is to make your new users believe that they are on the next big thing. And they have to believe it! Otherwise, why should they tell their friends about it?

Convincing new users of a product’s potential seems to be a bit easier in the US. Americans love to try out new things and they love to be the first ones using a new service.
Unfortunately the situation in Germany is quite a bit different. People here start using apps like MoID when they are perfect and when at least 5 friends told them to use them.
However, there are also positive examples: Two startups that overcame this dilemma are XING and ResearchGate.

So we are totally positive that MoID can perform like this!
Deal with it, Germany, MoID will be the next Facebook.

Phillip Bellé CEO of MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Help us spreading the word!

Download the MoID app right here.

Social Media Campaign: Berlin, Munich, or San Francisco? Promote your City!

2014-09-23T12:09:00.001+02:00

MoID is growing rapidly in 2014, but we still need to get more traction. Our early adopters can’t always use the full potential of MoID yet, because there are too few people in their surrounding who use the app. That's why we have now decided to put all our social marketing efforts on one single city at first. We hope that this is going to help us to turn around network effects to our favor and to the favor of all our users. And that is why we need your help!

Most of our current users are from Berlin, Munich, and San Francisco, which makes these cities the best candidates.
We see the traction we gained in these cities as a big plus, and this is why we have decided to pick one of them to kick off our campaign.

Berlin is the the tech capital of Germany. The most influential German tech blogs like Gründerszene and deutsche startups are located here, and people are really open minded. In addition, it is a beautiful city where our team would love to spend some more time to boost our social media campaign.

Munich has one big advantage: we are based in Munich and a large part of our network is based here. Munich is smaller than Berlin and San Francisco (Bay Area), but we have about the same number of users here, so Munich has some advantages in terms of market share.

San Francisco. What should I say about San Francisco? Of course we would love to accompany our campaign right in the heart of Silicon Valley! We have as many users in San Francisco as in Munich and Berlin. People there are really open minded and love to try out new apps and technologies, but unfortunately our network is smaller over there.

MoID in Berlin

MoID in Munich

MoID in San Francisco

So we really need your feedback, guys! Let us know which city you would choose, why, and of course if you could help us out with intros to local blogs, radio / tv stations, celebrities, or anything else that could help us spread the word.

Thanks a lot!

Phillip Bellé CEO of MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Help us spreading the word!

Download the MoID app right here.

Why is the new MoID on Android much better?

2014-09-13T20:45:00.000+02:00

A new version of our Android version is out! It has many improvements but they're not visible for the user, that's why I'm writing this post!

First of all, this version is yet technologically in 2014: it means that we removed the old libraries and softwares to take only the best (for our great users, of course)! So, we moved to Gradle, we write now code with Android Studio and we make our exchange between client and server with Google Volley. From a developer side, it's day and night: the IDE is much more stable and the build process much more customizable!
But it brings also cool aspects to the users: Volley is much faster than LoopJ and also a bit more secured (I have to admit that our implementation of the old library, LoopJ, was not perfect...).

Also, the current version is so stable and reliable that it gave us the possibility to find a tiny bug in the MoID Server API, a thing which was totally impossible with the old one.

In the new version, you'll find a new Panel which demonstrates one of our new directions: gamification! It's called "Leaderboard" and you'll see there the best MoID users on the Earth (the goal is that you become #1).
To be #1 on Android, it will be a bit more complicated than on iOS because you cannot drop your ID (not yet, but it's the next step and it will come fast!) but I'm sure that the Android users are much better than the iOS users (yeah, I'm an Android user :P) so it's the perfect place to demonstrate this: invite friends, exchange contacts and be at the top!

Yes, I designed the "?", beautiful, isn't it ? ;)

Laurent Meyer
Android (what else?) Developer
@laurent_m_meyer
+Laurent Meyer

Proximity in social networks: Find, don’t explore.

2014-08-22T14:39:00.000+02:00

Few months ago, Natasha Lomas @riptar wrote on TechCrunch: “Proximity social networking has often been a tough sell to consumers”. Apart from proximity services related to dating I totally agree with that. In my opinion there are actually two success factors for proximity in social networks.

First, its style and UI have to fit to its purpose. For example, the “hot or not” design of Tinder obviously is a perfect fit for the dating area. It’s easy to make ten decisions within five seconds, and even if one of them was “wrong” - no problem, it’s just for fun. In a business context, it is risky to dismiss someone just because of a quick glimpse when they are nearby. That is probably the main reason why the traditional business card is still doing a good job. It is extremely helpful to be able to quickly exchange cards at the first meeting, but still having the chance to decide if the contact might be valuable or not - maybe even with the help of additional tools such as LinkedIn. In any case, there will be no problem to get in touch with these contacts in the future. Even if you had first decided to ignore someone, you can still contact them, for instance if your professional environment has changed.

The second success factor is that users really have to benefit from their proximity to other users. Recalling the dating example, it totally makes sense to recommend persons nearby, rather than from the other end of the country. People would not be interested in these guys anyway.

From the business perspective, proximity between social network users is nice to have, but it isn’t essential. It might be a little factor, but to be honest, experience, introductions, and past success count way more when people decide whom to get in touch with. If you are looking for an expert in any field, why should you limit yourself to people nearby?

In my opinion, proximity or location services should be used the other way around. It’s not about finding people online to get in touch with them later. The key to professional networking is being able to find and connect to people you’ve already met in your real life.

Our app is pretty good at that, but we now came to the conclusion that decisions about the relevance of a contact do not have to be mutual. Therefore, in our next major update, you will be able to simply follow or favorite people you’ve met, so that you can easily find them on the major social networks later on. No mutual contact exchange and no social network friend request are needed anymore, but you will still be able to keep track of important people from your real life.

Phillip Bellé CEO of MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Help us spreading the word.

Download the MoID app right here.

What makes a successful event?

2014-08-12T17:18:00.004+02:00

Everybody who attended an event such as a tech meet up, a fair, or a conference, wonders about the same: Was this event worth attending? Was it successful? It’s not only about how much money you spend, but also about the time you invest in relation to the outcome. Probably the best result for us is to get in touch with people who can help us - no matter if they are potential new clients, press contacts, investors, or simply people who like what we are doing.

But why are some events more successful than others?

Probably the most essential success factor for event organizers - besides from finding helpful sponsors - is to find awesome speakers. Speakers are not just important to obtain high quality content for the prospective audience, but also to get attention for an event in advance. Moreover, their announcement helps to form a big and likeminded audience, so that event organizers can select their attendees in the best case or simply adjust the ticket pricing ;-) All organizers of successful events look for these three components: great speakers, a homogeneous audience, and sponsors to keep ticket prices on a moderate level.

But there are more possibilities to maximize the outcome for the attendees.

The most helpful organizers know their attendees in advance and proactively help to build an effective network, so that everybody has the chance to contact people that matter to them. In addition, and this is probably best practice, organizers should know what every single attendee is doing, in what they are good at, and what they are looking for. Providing all this information in advance might seem time consuming to the regular attendee, but it can be a great chance to connect with likeminded people, for instance in speed networking or discussion rounds out of the limelight.

For us, the event with the best outcome yet was the Collision conference 2014 in Las Vegas, which was organized by the same guys who run the Summit in Dublin every year. We can’t wait to attend the Summit in November and we can only highly recommend it! These guys really know how to organize events.

But since you will still miss interesting people on a big event, we decided to modify our app: it will soon be possible to directly access the social media profiles of the people around you. Like, “hey this press guy could be a good contact, let’s add him on LinkedIn”. Our users told us that it would be extremely helpful to identify interesting people around them. We totally agree.

MoID at the Collision conference 2014 in Las Vegas.

Phillip Bellé CEO of MoID
Follow me on Twitter

Help us to spread the word!

Download the MoID app right here.

How to make a blog hit counter on Blogger (Part 2 of 2)

2014-08-11T18:00:00.000+02:00

So as you’ve read on this article, we now have an operational keeping the data that we’re requesting it.

Our current job is yet to link the blog to this server and retrieve the data of the server (i.e. the number of view). I must admit that I’m convinced that there is a better way to do it than the solution I'm submitting but my current knowledge in Web programmation are limiting me to this ugly but working solution. So, if you have better idea, feel free to comment this article, it would be very helpful!

First, we need to send a unique non-changing id to the server in order to associate a view count with an article. Happily, Blogger provides us this kind of data with this code:

expr:href='data:post.id'

Second, we need a way to detect if the user is on our homepage or on the article-specific page. Here also, Blogger provides us “nearly-built-in” tool with its condition and a tricky combination:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

    <!-- Here is what happens if we're in article specific page -->     
    <b:else/>

         <!-- Here is what happens if we're not in article specific page -->
</b:if>

Last but not least, we need to display what the server returns and that’s the point where the solution I used is extremely dirty: I used a … <iframe>! It didn’t find any other way with JS, jQuery or whatever! If you find/know a solution, I would be very interested to know it.

Anyway, here is the code used by our blog:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
          <li>
          	<iframe expr:src='&quot;http://lolobosse.pythonanywhere.com/get_count/&quot;+data:post.id' frameborder='0' height='30px' name='about' scrolling='no' width='25%'/>
          </li>
<b:else/><li>
          	<iframe expr:src='&quot;http://lolobosse.pythonanywhere.com/get_count_homepage/&quot;+data:post.id' frameborder='0' height='30px' name='about' scrolling='no' width='25%'/>
          </li>
        </b:if>

Laurent Meyer, Android Developer
@laurent_m_meyer

How to make a blog hit counter on Blogger (Part 1 of 2)

2014-08-07T18:00:00.000+02:00

--This article is a bit technical--

As you maybe have seen, we installed last week something to count the views of each article to better analyze our performance. It doesn’t like great (as I always says, honesty is something crucial!) but it counts and that’s its only purpose so it’s enough!

You were maybe laughing when you’ve seen that we’re writing an article on a dummy view counter ; so would I if I wasn’t its creator (who needed on complete day for this counter)!

But, it’s much more complicated than adding a simple widget at the end of post via WordPress or whatever! No, folks, we’re on Blogger and Blogger isn’t written in PHP and is not as flexible as WordPress or the newer platforms are!
It appeared, after a bit of research that there isn’t any Blogger variable which is counting the view per article (or that they cannot be accessed because they’re existing, as we can see on the photo).

It would be too simple to be able to take these numbers directly, isn't it?

So, without any answer to get these variables and no solution on Internet without using a closed-source third party service, I decided to build our own view counter (YOLO!).

I have to say that the only web language that I can fairly use for web development is Python associated with Flask (but if you’re using Bottle, Django or just used to Python, it is very easy to understand!).

So I wrote two basic functions: one for the article from the homepage (where they’re aren’t properly read so I do not add one view in this function) and one for the article that are requested from the article-specific page (where I’m sure they’ve clicked/read; so I’m adding 1). Here is the code:

__author__ = 'laurentmeyer'

from flask import Flask, render_template, abort, request
import pickle

app = Flask(__name__)

DictUrlViews = dict()

@app.route('/')
def test():
 return str(0)


# This view is called by each article when it is specifically called in his own page (this function adds one view).
@app.route('/get_count/')
def get_count(id):
 DictUrlViews = pickle.load(open( "savefile.txt", "rb" ))
 if id is not None:
  postId = int(id)
  views = DictUrlViews.get(postId, 0)

  # Yeah, you're right that makes no sense to add it and not to display it.
  # You'll have to invert the two lines
  DictUrlViews[postId] = views+1

  pickle.dump(DictUrlViews, open('savefile.txt', 'wb+'))

  return render_template("numberTemplate.html", number = str(DictUrlViews[postId]))
 abort(400)

# This function is called by all the articles of the main page to get their view count without adding one each time
@app.route('/get_count_homepage/')
def get_count_without_modifying(id):
  DictUrlViews = pickle.load(open( "savefile.txt", "rb" ))
  if id is not None:
  postId = int(id)
  views = DictUrlViews.get(postId, 0)
  return render_template("numberTemplate.html", number = str(views))
  abort(400)

@app.route('/set_count/')
def set_count(id):
 DictUrlViews = pickle.load(open( "savefile.txt", "rb" ))
 if id is not None:
  postId = int(id)
  views = request.args.get("views")
  if (views) is not None:
   views = int(views)
   if views >= DictUrlViews.get(postId, 0):
    DictUrlViews[postId] = views
    pickle.dump(DictUrlViews, open('savefile.txt', 'wb+'))
    return str(views)
 abort(400)


if __name__ == "__main__":
 app.run(host="0.0.0.0", debug=True)

You maybe noticed that the pickle function is useless loading on every call; the explanation is quite tricky: I’m using PythonAnywhere.com to host this code. It means that I do not have control on the server stops/restarts, which means that I need data persistence (and I find Pickle much better than SQL for so little things); and yeah, I could load only one time the pickle by calling it in the initialization function, however the initialization function is provided by PythonAnywhere (mine won’t be called when deployed, was just for local testing) and is, I think, easily modifiable but I didn’t wanna search further (coder is a lazy machine that transforms coffee into code).

So, I deployed on PythonAnywhere and I searched a way to connect to my blog…

To be continued …

Laurent Meyer, Android Developer
@laurent_m_meyer

From paper prototype to UI - the resource friendly way

2014-08-04T18:09:00.000+02:00

The notion "lean startup" has become a buzz word by now. Yet, embracing change and being able to react quickly is for sure one of the most important characteristics of a startup. You start your day with several hypotheses regarding your target audience and their pains, needs, and expectations, and in the evening, you'll already need to sort out quite a lot of them. In the following, I will briefly give you an impression on why changes happen so often in the startup area, and show you a quick example of how to consistently handle a change of the UI with a lightweight tool.

Why does change happen?

Especially in the kind of greenfield projects startups typically operate in, little is known about what the prospective user is going to think about the product you're building. And even though there are methods like questionnaires, focus groups, and the likes, it is very difficult to foresee the necessities of all the different kinds of users - especially in the current software market. Obviously, you should know your audience well, but it so happens that you will sketch your target group too fuzzy, and you will need to rely on feedback to know what is really going to work. Naturally, I am not talking about revolutionary changes to your idea, but more about small improvements of its realization and refinements of your target audience.
There will usually also be numerous other triggers for change, including time to market, opinions of external stakeholders (e.g. business angels or VCs), competitors' products, resource shortage, better ideas, and so on and so forth...

How to handle a change to the UI of my product?

We first sketch changes to our UIs on paper - no stencils, no rulers, no color, just plain pencil and paper. This allows us to quickly show one or several new designs to the whole team and selected beta users. It literally takes only minutes to come up with something understandable, while the lack of sophisticated graphics and color helps to concentrate on the most important: the content. On Figure 1 below, you see a sketch of one of our views, proudly hand-drawn by myself.

Figure 1. Paper sketch of a new view.

We wanted to create a view that resembles the typical badge that you get on an event. It should only contain your picture, your name, your company and links to your social networks.

The next step we perform is to enrich the sketches to form a preliminary prototype. To this end, we use a tool called POP (Prototyping on paper), which allows us to visualize changes to several UIs and transitions between them in a cheap, quick, and yet very vivid way. POP is just awesome, it is really easy to use, has practically no learning curve, and no unnecessary features that distract from the main use case. We can really only recommend it. Above all, it's free.
With POP we can create a shallow prototype of an application in mere minutes. Of course, there is no functionality whatsoever - but we can investigate interactions and concentrate on a consistent interface. This allows us to find errors and wrong assumptions even before spending hours to develop the real UI.

The last step of course, is to take the sketch from the drawing board to the interface builder. This is typically the most time intensive part of the game. Not always will the pencil design work on the real screen. Sometimes the metaphor needs more work, sometimes it just doesn't seem right. In any case you should consider taking the design one step back and trying out other realizations before spending days with the interface builder - the right level of abstraction for the right task. In our case, we went back and forth for some 2-3 iterations. Figure 2 below shows the result we are working with in our current dev version.

Figure 2. Current dev version of the new view.

When to use what?

In the end, a startup is a project with few resources, so choose your weapon wisely. Drawing on paper is the fastest way to go. POP will allow you to try interactions and observe people using your app before writing a single line of code. Starting to build the real UI only with a clear picture in mind, will help you to survive longer.

Dennis Pagano
CTO of MoID

Follow me on Twitter

Additional features cost growth. We tried it! ;-)

2014-07-30T18:57:00.000+02:00

As a startup nowadays you need to have a vision. Something you can answer if people ask where you want to be in ten years. And it’s not just that answer - for a startup it's a perfect way to keep focused in the face of all these brilliant ideas of yourself, your team, customers, and friends you're getting everyday. „Wouldn’t it be cool if we….“ or „couldn’t you integrate…“ or „why don’t you just…“. Don’t get me wrong, we love to get feedback and we are taking everything into account, but we can’t integrate too much at the beginning.

At least feedback means that people understand what we are doing, and that is what we really care for. The more features you integrate in a novel, early stage product, the more confusing it is for your early adopters. However, it is essential that these early adopters understand what you are doing and, in addition, that they can repeat and reformulate it. The number of features needs to grow with the user base and not the other way around. Believe me, we tried it! ;-) Too many features, actually, cost growth.

New features need to be implemented hand in hand with a growing number of users. That way, existing users learn step by step and can become advocates who do not simply recommend the product, but can also show others how to use it.

So, in case you do not have as many users as Facebook yet, keep it as simple as possible.

Phillip Bellé - CEO of MoID
Follow me on Twitter
on XeeMee

Multiple software platforms and versions - a chance for startups!

2014-07-28T13:05:00.001+02:00

As a startup with a mobile product we often get asked to make MoID available on other software platforms than iOS or Android. To be honest we love to get this question because it shows that at least some people like what we are doing. We always feel bad to answer that we have to focus on iOS and Android due to our limited startup resources. Wouldn’t it be a great scenario if simply all users would use the same platform and if they would get updates automatically. No need to develop the same product several times for different OS and simply kicking older code needed for older versions. We would be a lot faster, it could be so easy…

Fortunately it’s not that easy! Within that scenario, the absolutely dominating platform could easily rebuild everything startups invented. WhatsApp would have had no chance competing against iMessage, Facebook could have been pulled from Android to make people using Google+ and Spotify pulled from iOS to protect iTunes, if there wouldn’t be the choice to switch for the users. Of course you have to make it to the stage where it is making sense to cover all big platforms but as soon as you get there you will find a bigger potential market than Apple or Google sometimes find.

Thanks for that competition between the big ones!

But there is still one thing you could do that really helps. Update your devices as soon as available! ;-)

By the way, as soon as iOS 8 will be available will quit supporting iOS 6. Sorry!

Image from coronalbs.com

Germany, hol' das Ding !*

2014-07-12T18:00:00.000+02:00

Last Tuesday was a great day! As Germans we obviously were flashed by the stunning performance of our national team at the world cup. But that was actually not the only highlight for us. MoID got patented in the US! We did not believe in it anymore because it took so much time and the first try was not that promising - but hey, sometimes you probably need to have luck.

Wish you all a great weekend. If you are not from Argentina cross your fingers for Germany on Sunday (and if you are, be fair and support us!). We think Germany deserves the title after a final and 2 semifinals in the last 16 years. Thanks ;-)

*hol' das Ding means "get the WorldCup"!

New Android version online

2014-07-11T17:05:00.001+02:00

Hey guys! Did you try our new Android version? After 6 months struggling with thousands of Android devices and their respective problems, we finally did it. Our new version (Android 4.0 and above) actually works pretty well and is quite close to MoID on iOS.

A side note to other startups: If you think about starting any project on both platforms at the same time: Forget it. Really, concentrate on a single platform only. Although we are proud to have MoID working cross platform, from a startup perspective we would never start with two versions again!

Get our new version here: MoID on GooglePlay

MoID Vision

2014-07-11T16:13:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of July, MoID got picked out of 96 startups as one of 8 teams to participate in the Society3 Accelerator in San Francisco. This accelerator has a strong focus on traction and we are getting feedback on every step we do. The great thing is that we do not only get feedback from the accelerator, but also from the other startups. And you won’t believe it, some of them are struggling with the same problems we do! We love it so far.

One of our tasks was to create a short video to clarify the vision of MoID. We created a 3 min video in the perspective of the year 2025 about what we have reached the last ten years. It sounds easy, but actually it wasn’t. We invested a huge amount of time to get our vision crystal clear and we are still not sure if we get it to the point. We hope you like it anyway but we will continue to work on it.