Fotopedia is quickly building a reputation for producing beautiful travel-focused photo apps for iOS. Today, the company is launching its latest free app, which focuses on Morocco. The app is optimized for the new iPad’s Retina Display and, as usual, features hundreds of stunning professional images.

Morocco is the company’s eleventh app and as Fotopedia’s senior vice president of global business Christophe Daligault told me earlier this week, the company’s plan is to release about two apps per quarter going forward.

Fotopedia has actually gone through a subtle but interesting change since its inception. In its early days, Fotopedia was mostly producing something akin to large coffee table books for the iPad era. These apps often featured thousands of photos, but as Daligault told me, most users would only ever see a small number of all of these images. Now, the company is focusing more on smaller projects and sees itself more as a publisher of beautiful travel magazines. As part of this change, Fotopedia also recently started updating its apps with new photo tours and other content on a regular basis.

Thanks to this, as well as the growing popularity of the iPad itself, of course, Fotopedia has been seeing explosive growth over the last few months. In March, it served up a very respectable 120 million page views across its apps. In April, that number jumped to 200 million. About 60% of these came from iPad users and overall iPad views were up 70% in April compared to March.

The company’s apps have now been downloaded over 12 million times. The average user currently loads the app 4.5 times per month, a number that has been steadily increasing since Fotopedia launched its more magazine-like approach.

As the company is growing, it’s also evolving its business model. Its free apps currently feature a mix of sponsorships and more traditional full-page ads. What the company is working on, too, is something akin to an “AdWords for images” that will allow advertisers to create their own ads and target users in specific countries and with very specific interests. Given the global reach of the apps and the fact that its users are clearly interested in travel, finding advertisers will likely turn out to be pretty easy for Fotopedia.

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It’s almost here. The big day. Can you feel the excitement? Yes, if all goes according to plan on Friday, Mark Zuckerberg will ring the NASDAQ bell in a hoodie, the big blue social network will go forward with one of the largest IPOs for an Internet company in history, the markets will hit a fever pitch, the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse will update their statuses — and the rest of us will just go back to using Twitter.

Nonetheless, Facebook is expected to go public at a valuation between $92 and $103 billion. As such, it’s pretty clear what Facebook is worth to us (really, to the market), but the real question is: How much are you worth to Facebook? Hmm?

Thanks to online privacy company Abine, we now have a simple tool by which we can calculate our monetary value to Facebook. In good old dollars and cents.

To illustrate the potential for Facebook to lose sight of the importance of the individual (and his or her privacy) amidst the pressure to maintain its ridiculously high valuation/metrics, Abine has created a quiz called the “Val-You Calculator,” which, based on your answers to seven questions, determines the dollar value you represent as a user.

These questions ask you where you live (most of Facebook’s ad revenue comes from North American companies), how many friends you have, whether or not you play Zynga games, for example, all in an effort to demonstrate that your personal data comes with an implicit dollar-value.

According to Abine, its Val-You Calculator uses data from Facebook’s S-1 filing, as well as “independent financial and market research analysts, Facebook advertisers, and our own internal modeling and estimates.” A little bit of magic, and presto, you can see how much revenue you generate for Big Blue.

Of course, when it comes to IPOs, with a ton of financial information being disclosed for the first time, naturally the magnifying glasses come out, books are scrutinized, business models molested, etc. For better or for worse. Regardless of the hot air that gusts from pundits, privacy will continue to be a serious concern for Facebook users going forward. In fact, just last week, Facebook launched a major update to its privacy policies in compliance with an audit by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner.

Among those changes, Facebook one-upped Google and created the “Facebook Terms and Policies Hub” to bring its 10 critical privacy policy documents under one roof. As the social network explained in a blog post, the changes are being made in an effort to increase the level of transparency around its handling of users’ personal data. And, as Josh details, for the most part, these changes seem logical, user friendly, and anything but suspicious, as some might have you believe.

That being said, with a scary-big user base creating even scarier amounts of big data, and considering that its model revolves around revenue derived from targeted, personalized ads, privacy advocates believe that the coming pressure to beat projections in the public markets leaves our personal data in a precarious position. The shortest line between A and big quarterly gains is a straight line to selling our private data to marketers.

In a recent survey, Abine found that 75 percent of its users wouldn’t leave Facebook alone in a dark room with their data, a sentiment that was confirmed by an independent AP-ABC poll in which nearly 60 percent of respondents had “little to no trust in Facebook to keep their information private.”

By updating its privacy policies, Facebook is working to allay those concerns, and it’s made progress. Yet, as Josh points out, privacy policy won’t be its only concern. Beyond making moves to stay on the right side of the law, down the road Facebook may face government regulation in regard to privacy. If a governing body were to place restrictions on how the company launches products, or displays features, for example, it could become increasingly vulnerable to the competition.

As it feels the pressure to drive big returns, Facebook may be forced to devise more clever ways to utilize data. It can think bigger, and will, but then it has to worry about mobile. As it has itself admitted, mobile is a big threat, and the company’s growth may be impeded as it works to keep up adequate transparency and has to show fewer ads per user as a result.

Whether or not this will significantly affect revenue in the long-term remains to be seen, however, thanks to Abine and Val-You, at the very least, Facebook will know exactly how much ad revenue each of its users represent. And that, my friends, is priceless.

Sadly, I was only worth a little over $50 to Facebook. Clearly, I’m not a good customer. What about you?

For more on Abine, find them here, or get your own Val-You appraisal here.

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We’ve been covering Gogobot since it first launched in early 2010. It took the social travel discovery and advice site a little while to find its niche, but since about the middle of 2011, it’s been adding new members rapidly. Today, Gogobot is announcing that it has now surpassed the 1 million registered user mark. According to the company’s own data, a new member is signing up for service every 15 seconds. Overall, Gogobot now has 65 times as many members as just a year ago and its users have now shared over 5 million places on the service.

In its early days, the site was more akin to a Yelp for travel than a social travel discovery site. Since then, it has added numerous new features, including Facebook and Twitter integration (Gogobot says 92% of its users now use their real identities to sign up for the service), as well as gamifcation elements like badges and leaderboards. You can also just browse the site for reviews and recommendations without having to sign in, of course.

The site credits much of its recent growth to the launch of its iPhone app last October. Since then, the company says, the number of reviews submitted by user has doubled, the number of photos uploaded by user has increased fivefold and the number of trip plans created on the service has doubled.

Given these numbers, it’s pretty clear that the company is on to something. While the company prefers to compare itself to other social travel startups like the Wanderfly, and the Pinterest-inspired travel sites Trippy and Gtrot, there can be little doubt that the companies it is really trying to challenge in this space are TripAdvisor and – maybe to a lesser degree – Yelp.

So far, Gogobot has raised $19 million. Its investors include from major venture capital firms like Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Innovation Endeavors. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington’s CrunchFund has also invested in the service.

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With smartphone penetration now at 50 percent in the U.S., the world of apps is seeing a knock-on effect in their popularity: according to a new report from Nielsen, mobile consumers are downloading more apps than ever before, with the average number of apps owned by a smartphone user now at 41 — a rise of 28 percent on the 32 apps owned on average last year.

But at the same time, there are hints of people possibly approaching a limit to how much they might use them: despite the rise in app numbers, the amount of time that people are spending in apps has remained essentially flat: collectively, they are being used for 39 minutes per day today, compared to 37 minutes in 2011.

Nielsen also notes that apps seem to be taking a bit of time away from mobile web usage (perhaps this is where the extra two minutes comes from…): it says that users are using apps 10 percent more than the mobile web, compared to last year.

As for why users are spending no more time on apps than they were before: Nielsen doesn’t really explore that issue, but it does note that privacy has slightly increased as an issue for U.S. consumers: some 73 percent note personal data collection as a concern (compared to 70 percent a year ago), with 55 percent saying they are wary of sharing information. It could be that this privacy concern is actually keeping at least some people away from engaging in apps more.

Going back to the increase in app downloads noted by Nielsen, this is something that has been pointed out by the app store owners in a different way: Google says it has now passed 15 billion downloads announced this month, and Apple noted 25 billion downloads in March 2012.

This morning, Gartner released some figures that pointed to even more consolidation among the top handset makers and the top platforms — with Samsung and Apple accounting for 49.3 percent of all smartphones sold in Q1 2012 (compared to just under 30 percent a year ago).

Nielsen’s app figures seem to point to a similar trend: Android and iOS owners accounted for 88 percent of all apps that were downloaded in the past 30 days, it says (up from 74 percent last year). That may partly be to do with their own market share size in the U.S., where Android and Apple’s iOS dominate the smartphone landscape with respectively 38 million and 84 million users — but it also seems to imply that those users are also actively engaging with their respective app stores.

The other significant consolidation trend that Nielsen has picked up on is around what apps are actually getting the most traffic: even as app stores have grown, and our own collections of them have grown, we continue to fixate most on the exact same five apps this year as we did last year: they are Facebook, YouTube, Android Market, Google Search, and Gmail.

Yes, that’s right: you can slam Google, Android and Android fragmentation all you want, but four of the five most popular apps today, as they were last year, are owned by the company, and that’s partly thanks to the popularity of three of them on iOS.

Ironically, that concentration at the top is also being met with growth in long-tail consumption: Nielsen notes that the time spent on the top 50 apps is actually down compared to last year: the top 50 apps today get 58 percent of our app time, compared to 74 percent in 2011. As with our own personal app catalogues growing in size, this points to consumers getting more diverse in terms of what apps they are using overall, not a surprise really when you consider that there are around 1.1 billion apps currently between just Google Play and the Apple App Store.

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Here’s hoping that you already managed to get your hands on an HTC One X, because it may be a while before they appear on store shelves again.

According to a release put out by HTC last night, U.S. Customs has blocked shipments of AT&T’s HTC One X and Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE thanks to an ITC ruling handed down last year.

The news may come as an especially large bummer for Sprint customers looking to upgrade to the new EVO, as a new report from the Wall Street Journal indicates that device will miss its original May 18 launch date. Sprint has since scrubbed their website of references to the device’s forthcoming launch, and there’s still no word on a revised launch window.

To get a firmer grasp on why this is happening, we have to flash back to 2011. After HTC was originally slammed with allegations that they infringed ten of Apple’s patents with their “personal data and mobile communications devices.” International Trade Commission Judge Carl Charneski ruled in Apple’s favor on two of those claims (which just so happened to stem from the same patent, No. 5,946,647) in July. After a smattering of delays, the ITC handed down their limited exclusion order in December, which prohibited the importation of devices that violate the ’647 patent.

And what are the offending bits? The big one in this case deals with a minor UI feature, namely the ability for users to touch a phone number displayed in an email or a webpage in order to fire up the phone’s dialer.

The import ban didn’t go into effect until April 19 (the ITC wanted to give HTC some time to make the appropriate fixes), but the company apparently didn’t make thoughtful use of their time. HTC now claims to have fixed that “small UI experience”, and noted in their release that they are “working closely with Customs to secure approval” for the devices to be released. The ITC’s order does allow for refurbished handsets to enter the country in order to replace faulty devices, though both devices in question are brand spanking new (one of them hasn’t even been released yet) so that little loophole will likely go unused.

Even so, we’re left with little clue as to when shipments of devices will be permitted once again. Sprint and AT&T can’t be too pleased with this turn of events — I’ve reached out to both carriers for comment, but haven’t heard back at time of writing.

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The iPhone might be coming to the world’s largest mobile carrier, China Mobile. The world comes from Bloomberg quoting China Mobile’s chairman. The report also details that the phone might not hit the carrier’s 655 million subscribers yet this year. But the two sides are talking. That’s a start. Apple needs China Mobile and China Mobile needs Apple.

“China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” Xi said. “When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.”

As Bloomberg notes, one of the sticking points has to do with China Mobile’s proprietary network that’s not friendly with the iPhone’s mobile radios. China Mobile is currently rolling out 4G service but only in six cities so far; three more cities are slated to get it this year. The rollout kicks into high gear next year with plans to expand the 4G base stations from 900 units to 200,000.

Although China Mobile is the country’s, and the world’s, largest mobile carrier, its 3G network is starting to show its age relative to newer, faster 4G networks. A 4G iPhone is exactly what China Mobile needs to keep up with the times.

The iPhone is already a hit in China even without China Mobile. Apple revenue in China is up threefold year-over-year for Apple. In fact, Apple has reported more revenue in China so far this year than it did all of last. Getting the iPhone on China Mobile is likely a top priority of Cook and Co.

Cook said in the October 2011 earnings call: “For China — the sky’s the limit there. I’ve never seen so many people rise into the middle class who aspire to buy Apple products.”

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Is the Twitter platform about to get a second wind of dedicated apps?

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen a handful products that are starting out by filtering out the most relevant news stories, videos and photos from people’s personal streams. Thirst is one of them and it’s coming out with an iPad app today. The company is backed by nearly $1 million from investors including BlueRun Ventures, former Powerset chief operating officer Steve Newcomb and DCM general partner Jason Krikorian. It was started by two recent Berkeley graduates, Anuj Verma and Kunal Modi.

Although Thirst is starting out on the Twitter platform, the company is really more about natural language processing technology. The Twitter iPad app is more of a proof of concept around whether its NLP processor works well. Verma says that it’s really difficult to keep up with information shared through Twitter and there has to be a better way of surfacing the most important news. Thirst uses a custom natural language processor to pick out the most important stories around different keywords or subjects like ‘gay marriage’ (because of this past week’s big announcement from President Barack Obama in support of it).

The issue though, is how big any individual company like this can become. The biggest exits that the Twitter platform has spawned to date are, well, relatively small. Tweetdeck went to Twitter for between $40 to 50 million. Contrast that to the biggest iOS acquisition to date, which is Instagram, or Zynga, the most successful Facebook platform company to date. You could argue that recent M&A deals like Instagram and OMGPOP owe something to the Twitter platform because the social network was a growth channel for both apps, but it’s hard to say how much of their success was derived from the Twitter platform. There are also plenty of iPad-based news readers like Flipboard, Pulse and News.me that serve as competition for Thirst.

Again, Verma says Twitter is just a start. And there are plenty of other places that Thirst could go.

Thirst for Twitter from Thirst on Vimeo.

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Mobile payments and identity verification company Jumio is introducing its Netswipe Mobile SDK today, which allows developers to add credit card scanning functionality to their mobile applications. The SDK (software development kit), is available now for iOS, but an Android version is coming soon, the company says.

To jump-start usage, Jumio is also waiving transaction fees for the SDK’s first users for a temporary period of time.

The company is calling this a “$5 million fund,” but it’s not really a fund – it’s a just a discount to developers who choose to implement the solution. They’ll be able to try out the Jumio SDK in their apps before committing to paying the extra cost of doing so. Jumio says it will cover the cost of the first 1,000 scans every month, but did not announce an end date for this promotion just yet. (Until the $5M runs out, it seems).

The SDK allows developers to integrate the card-scanning technology into their app, which means users can hold up a credit card to their smartphone’s camera in order to have the card “read” by the app and the numbers automatically entered into the correct fields. To confirm the purchase, the 3-digit CVV still has to be entered, however.

The technology is similar to what a lesser-funded competitor Card.io already has in place. In fact, while both companies have operated in the same space – “computer vision” for speeding up mobile payments – they’ve been coming at it from different angles. While Card.io started with SDKs for iOS and Android, then moved into web support for e-commerce sites, Jumio has been going the opposite direction. As of March, Card.io already had some 200 developers using its SDK.

The Jumio SDK for iOS is available for download here.

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The Galaxy S III is likely the most anticipated Android phone in existence. At least, today it is.

Samsung is the king of Android hardware, the Galaxy S II is its most successful phone to date, and a third iteration is only expected to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps.

Plus, we weren’t even comforted by the usual pre-announcement leakapalooza — Samsung reportedly kept early units locked in test boxes, which only made that glorious moment of unveiling all the more wonderful.

But we’re still waiting and wondering about a potential U.S. release date for what is sure to be Samsung’s most popular phone yet, meaning that getting a peek of the device in the wild is near to impossible until “later this summer”. But as is the case with almost any phone, someone has gotten their hands on a unit of the S III and set up the good ol’ handy cam for our viewing pleasure.

Without further ado, check out this unboxing of the Galaxy S III alongside some of its biggest competitors.

If you can’t tell from all the Italian, a full list of cameos in this video includes the Samsung Galaxy Note, the HTC One X, the HTC One S, and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. You’ll notice that the Galaxy S III is running pre-release software, so things should look a bit more refined come launch day.

Unfortunately, there’s no telling how long we’ll be waiting before the GSIII hits stores shelves. It could be in June, or it could be at the end of August to compete with the next iPhone. Luckily, that soothing soundtrack and Italian stallion narration should soothe your anticipatory twitch until launch day, or at least for the next 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

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Path co-founder and CEO Dave Morin is joining the board of the event ticketing startup Eventbrite, the company is announcing today. The news of the appointment follows what has been, so far, quite a busy year for the startup, which has now sold 60 million tickets, and is expanding globally with websites in eight different languages.

Morin, whose background includes time as the former head of the Facebook Platform and several years at Apple, will bring his knowledge of social to the ticketing company, says Eventbrite.

Morin joins Barry McCarthy, former CFO of Netflix, Sean Moriarty, former CEO of Ticketmaster, Roelof Botha, former CFO of PayPal and Partner at Sequoia Capital, among others serving on Eventbrite’s Board of Directors.

“Eventbrite has long been a believer in the impact of the social graph, and the work that Dave did while at Facebook has had a profound impact on our business,” Kevin Hatz, CEO of Eventbrite says. “Our integration with Facebook Connect in 2008 predicated an exponential increase in traffic and engagement among event attendees,” he added.

Eventbrite is heavily benefitting from Facebook integration. In 2011, the company reported that every time an event was shared on Facebook, it generated an additional $2.52 on average in ticket sales for event organizers and 11 clicks back to the Eventbrite page. And this was before the launch of Facebook’s Open Graph in early 2012, and the introduction of “actions” like “bought,” or “want” or “watch,” etc.

Notably, Eventbrite was one of the Facebook Open Graph launch partners, but it’s not yet using “actions.” According to Tamara Mendelsohn, VP of Marketing at Eventbrite, however, they’re “working on something now” on that front, and we should see the results of that soon.

Facebook is also the number one driver of Eventbrite’s traffic, says Mendelsohn, but the company won’t share how much.

As for engagement levels, you can see in the chart below what the impact of Facebook integrations have already had on the company’s business. With Morin’s guidance on deeper integrations, those numbers should jump yet again.

Outside of social integrations and global expansion, the company has also been pushing itself forward in the mobile payments space. In March, Eventbrite launched a complimentary credit card reader to go along with its iPad ticketing app “Eventbrite at the Door,” which attaches to the iPad’s dock connector, allowing users to swipe credit cards. Just prior to this, the company had announced a product called “Endurance,” specifically for selling tickets to races and walks, like marathons and fundraising events. And only last week, Eventbrite announced integrations with SponsorHub for connecting event organizers with sponsors.

“Eventbrite is fundamentally changing the way people create, promote and find events and gatherings in their local communities,” said Morin in a statement. “I’ve been more than impressed by their level of innovation, their commitment to their users, and by their long term focus. The decision to join the board as they forge into making event discovery more mobile and social was an easy one. At the end of the day, we all live for great events.”

Eventbrite has been making a huge push towards reaching $1 billion in gross ticket sales this year, about doubling the number of events on the platform in 2011 (458,207 events in 2011) and tickets sold (20,798,509 tickets in 2011). In 2011, Eventbrite sold $400 million worth of tickets, up from $207 million in 2010.

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