If you are still waiting to join the popular new service, CitySpeek may be your answer! We are giving away 1 Google Voice invite to the CitySpeek user that creates a new group and recruits the most group members by 11:59pm PST on Friday July 24th. The contest is open to both new and existing CitySpeek users. The group must have been created after 9:00pm PST on July 20th, 2009. In the event of a tie, we’ll pick a winner at random from the pool of tied users.

So if you want a Google Voice invite, log into CitySpeek, start a new group and invite your friends to join. Don’t have many real life friends on CitySpeek yet? Use our “Invite Friends” tool to send them an invitation. Get the most group members in your new group and you’ll be a Google Voice user this coming weekend!

Good luck!

For more information, contact jeff@cityspeek.com.

A Special invitation related to Twitter
CitySpeek cross posting to Twitter
CitySpeek iPod winner
New groups

We know that many CitySpeek members are also Twitter users. On Tuesday June 16th at 2pm PST, Twitter will go offline for 1 hour of maintenance. Why not use that time to come build your network on CitySpeek and take a few of our features for a test drive? Accept friend requests, join a group or post a picture. We promise not to get mad if you go back to Twitter after their maintenance.

Speaking of Twitter, don’t forget that you can have your speeks posted to your Twitter account as well. To enable this feature: Log into CitySpeek, click “Settings,” select “Social Network Settings” from the drop down, enter your Twitter credentials and make sure to check  “Send messages to my twitter.com account” before clicking SAVE CHANGES. Imagine how powerful this feature is if you use CitySpeek with an IM account!

A few months back, a loyal CitySpeek user approached us about donating a prize to a fitness challenge that was utilizing a CitySpeek group to keep each other motivated. Of course we said yes and offered a new iPod Nano to the user that logged the most days with a speek in their private group. The challenge is over and the lucky winner is CitySpeek user @Josh (http://www.cityspeek.com/profile/josh). If you are interested in running a similar contest, let us know by emailing support@cityspeek.com.

CitySpeek adds new groups almost daily. Some of the newest groups include: @beer, @Overheard in PDX and @Obama Followers.  To sell all groups, click through to http://www.cityspeek.com/groups.

That’s all for now, thanks for your support of CitySpeek.com!

http://www.CitySpeek.com

Twitter plans to take their site down again this Wednesday May 15th at noon PST (3pm EST). CitySpeek would like to invite you to use this as an opportunity to check out CitySpeek and see what we have to offer. In addition to being available when you expect us to during the middle of the day, we also offer some neat features that Twitter does not:

• Groups, both public and private
• Pictures in messages
• Translation in over 30 languages
• and so much more!

So give CitySpeek a try tomorrow at noon pacific, 3pm eastern and see what you think. Don’t worry, we wont be offended if you go back to Twitter when they come back online…whenever that will be. We think you’ll be back soon

-The CitySpeek Team

Number 6 on their list said:

Regardless of who acquires Twitter, viable Twitter rivals will likely emerge. As micro-blogging becomes as popular as social networking, Twitter will become a too generic and one-size-fits-all for many. Twitter will launch a groups feature in an effort to combat this, but people tend to like their niche products and communities. We may see a Ning-like platform for micro-blogging, which fragments this trend into hundreds of thousands of unique mini Twitters. A couple rival startups might actually gain traction by adding value in new ways. We saw several Twitter wannabes fail already, but that was before micro-blogging went mainstream. Indeed, “status updates” will become a standard feature for any type of community-driven site.

Today Max Gladwell posted on twitter that CitySpeek was an example of this:

CitySpeek (http://www.cityspeek.com) is a lot like what we talked about in our predictions for MG01 (#6)

So a big thank you is in order for Max Gladwell. Make sure to check out the blog on social media and green living, its a great read.

-The CitySpeek Team

“We couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore” said VotLP managing partner, Richard Oswego. “We had to jump on this opportunity before Jeff and Jeremiah signed a term sheet from Kleiner Perkins or Sequoia” he went on to say before heading into a champagne celebration toast in the board room.

Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. CitySpeek plans on using the new funds to lease class A office space, furnish it with Aeron chairs, fill it with clerical employee’s and provide the entire staff with free, unlimited food and beverages.

CitySpeek thanks you for your support and wishes you a happy April Fools Day.

CitySpeek is unique by being integrated with most popular instant message (IM) providers. If you are not yet an IM user, know that if you have an email address from Gmail or Yahoo (just to name a few), you also have an IM account. When on your computer you can simply post and receive speeks via IM, just like you would with any other contact. But did you know that most IM services also have mobile phone applications? Specifically, both the iPhone and Blackberry’s have free, easy to use applications.

Using the cell phone and IM account you already have, you can ’speek’ on the go! To get started, visit your  SETTINGS and select MY INSTANT MESENGER. From there, let us know what your IM username is and then add the displayed CitySpeek contact information to your IM account. Then in EMAIL NOTIFICATION, let us know if you’d like to receive messages via IM. If you’d like, you can still post to CitySpeek via IM without also receiving messages.

Give CitySpeek a try next time you are out and about. We know its not the ideal solution so we promise to have our mobile applications finished and tested as soon as possible!

Starting tonight however, speeks with media that are also cross posted to Twitter contain a linkback to your original speek. This will allow Twitter followers to easily see your integrated pics or video without being left to wonder what you are talking about. You don’t need to do anything different, the link will be added by us before your speek hits Twitter. Speeks without media will not include a link and longer speeks will be truncated on Twitter to make room for the link.

Give this new feature a try and let us know if you have any questions!

The CitySpeek Team

歓迎, selamat datang, witamy, chào mừng!

Girl in Your Shirt: http://girl.inyourshirt.tv/cityspeek/

KillerStartups.com: http://www.killerstartups.com/Blogging-Widgets/cityspeek-com-move-over-twitter

RotorBlog: http://www.rotorblog.com/2009/01/22/cityspeek-takes-on-twitter-with-integrated-video/

These are just a few….stay tuned for more!

We were recently approved by Flickr for a Commercial API key which forced us to override our development key. Due to this change, all users will need to re-authenticate their CitySpeek account with Flickr in the same manner you did when originally signing up for CitySpeek.

To re-authenticate:

1. Log into CitySpeek.com
2. Click on SETTINGS in the header
3. Select SOCIAL NETWORK SETTINGS from the drop-down menu
4. Click AUTHENTICATE near the bottom of the screen, you will be taken to a Flickr page
5. Follow the instructions given to you by Flickr
6. Once Flickr sends you back to CitySpeek, click SAVE

Thanks for using CitySpeek.com, please let us know if you have any questions!