A Digital Pop Quiz

Back in the day, one had pop quizzes in high school. And now, according to the Internet they’re still considered a useful teaching tool.

True to form, a teacher strides into a room and says, “It’s a pop quiz day.” This is met with loud groans and gnashing of teeth because if one hasn’t completed the assigned reading – it’s thumbs down.

Here’s a quickie digital pop quiz -- but not to worry – the answers are here, too. (Be a sport and don’t peek first.)

QUESTIONS:

1. What free app was created at a kitchen table in New York’s East Village?
2. What name of a website means “the holder of precious things”.
3. What company was created because the founder got a $40 fine for an overdue movie?
4. What shopping app rewards points as soon as one walks into a store?
5. What social networking service uses a “whale” to denote an outage?
6. What video-sharing website was used for the first time at a U.S. president’s inaugural?
7. What website for professionals cannot be accessed in Cuba and Syria.
8. What company’s name means “a short, sharp bark or cry”?
9. What social networking website was acquired for $1.1 billion in cash?

ANSWERS:

1. FOURSQUARE is a free app that was founded in 2007 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. It started at Crowley’s kitchen table in his East Village apartment in NYC. It allows friends to interact and reaches over 30 million people worldwide.

2. HULU is a website and Over-The-Top (OTT) subscription service founded in 2007 that offers on-demand streaming video of TV, movies and more. In Mandarin Chinese “hulu” means “the holder of precious things”. The site is available in English/Japanese.

3. NETFLIX is a public company founded by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings who came up with the idea when he had a $40 fine for an overdue movie. In 2013, Netflix won its first Emmy Award for House of Cards.

4. SHOPKICK is a shopping app for smartphones that uses “kicks”. This program rewards points instantly – as soon as one walks into a store. No purchase required. If one buys an item, and uses Visa or MasterCard, the kicks go up.

5. TWITTER is an online social networking service founded by Jack Dorsey in 2006 that currently has 900-plus employees. If an outage occurs (Michael Jackson’s demise) users see a “whale” message: eight orange birds using a net to hoist up a whale.

6. YOUTUBE is a video-sharing website created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees. Like “Google” the word “YouTube” is often used as a verb, e.g., Obama’s inaugural was the first to be YouTubed.

7. LINKEDIN is a networking website for professionals. Launched in 2003, the site now has 238 million users in over 200 countries and 20 languages. The U.S. is first (74 million) followed by India (20 million). Cuba and Syria have no access.

8. YELP (a short, sharp bark or cry) is a company that operates a local search website that focuses on user reviews. It was launched in San Francisco in 2005. Yelp posts user comments about restaurants, shops, bars, beauty salons, spas and more.

9. TUMBLR is a social networking website that allows users to post content to a short-form blog. David Karp launched it in 2007 and within two weeks the service had 75,000 users. In June 2011, Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in cash.    

- Shaun

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