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| UrbanSitter Helps You Find and Book Babysitters Online | | Friday, February 24, 2012 10:01 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: UrbanSitter Quick Pitch: Find a babysitter through your friends and others' recommendations. Genius Idea: As any parent well knows, locking down a babysitter isn't easy. Finding a babysitter in the first place is difficult, frequently leaving parents to trust their kids with strangers that were referred by friends, or friends of friends. And that babysitter won't always be available, leaving parents to go through the discovery process all over again. UrbanSitter is designed to make it easy for parents to find and schedule babysitters without picking up the phone, just as OpenTable makes it possible for diners to discover and reserve tables at restaurants, or StyleSeat enables people to locate and book beauty professionals. Parents can browse for sitters by location, availability, price range, experience, education and more. Using Facebook, parents can also locate sitters that their friends have used and recommended, or sitters that have watched children who attend the same school as their kids. Parents can request interviews with sitters ahead of time as well. For babysitters, UrbanSitter is a way to better advertise their services, as well as organize their schedules and recommendations. Signing up is a simple process: Sitters can log in through Facebook, select the neighborhoods they're willing to babysit in, and set their availability and hourly rate for one to four children. They'll also have the ability to display the extent of their with each age group, and children with special needs. They can request reviews from parents they've worked for in the past to build up their credibility as well. UrbanSitter raised $1.75 million in seed funding led by First Round Capital in January. The startup, which is based in San Francisco, has since expanded to New York, Chicago, San Diego, Napa and Sonoma Valleys, Seattle, Boulder, Lake Tahoe, Denver and St. Louis. Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today. Image courtesy of Flickr, oksidor |
| Good Karma Clothing Is a Netflix for Baby Clothes | | Friday, February 24, 2012 7:24 PM | Zoe Fox |
|  You can subscribe to just about anything on the web -- toiletries, beauty products, organic snacks -- and now, one mom has created an online subscription service for baby clothes, Good Karma Clothing. "This wouldn't work in a small community," Sharon Schneider, Good Karma founder and CEO, told Mashable. "It's the network effect that I need." Subscribers receive one seven-outfit bundle at a time, which they later return once their child grows. The outfits come at three different levels -- basic, for $27.99 a month, better, for $45 a month, and boutique, for $75 a month. The prices are pegged at the cost of a single new outfit. Schneider is in the process of developing a "Netflix-like" experience for subscribers, where they will tell her "loves monkeys" or "no princesses" and she will be able to recommend outfits based on user preferences. Schneider, a mother of three, came up with the idea while she was boxing up her daughter's old clothes to send to her sister, who had a younger daughter. She realized it would be great if there was a service that could connect moms with clothing for their quickly growing children. SEE ALSO: Recycle Your Kid's Clothing Through the Mail with ThredUp Bags Schneider hopes to follow Netflix's lead, by setting up regional distribution centers across the country in what she calls "progressive cities" -- Seattle, New York, Austin, Boulder and San Francisco. Shipping shorter distances is one of several the company's ecologically-friendly plans. Good Karma Clothing has also partnered with an environmentally-friendly baby detergent, ships clothing bundles in reusable nylon bags and has plans to upcycle damaged clothing. Though Schneider assumes she attracts subscribers primarily for Good Karma's convenience, she has a large overlap with diaper subscription services, suggesting to her that the low environmental impact is an important draw as well. Good Karma recently won COMMON Pitch NYC, a social entrepreneurs competition during Social Media Week. Are you a parent who would use a service like Good Karma? Let us know in the comments. BONUS: 20 Online Home Delivery Subscriptions |
| Upset About AT&T Throttling Your Data? You May Be in for a Payday | | Friday, February 24, 2012 7:11 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  At last there's some recourse for consumers upset about AT&T's decision to throttle their data: small claims court. A precedent at least has been set by a California judge who ruled in favor on Friday of a man who sued AT&T charging its practice of slowing down data violated the terms of its "unlimited data" plan. The man, an unemployed truck driver named Matt Spaccarelli, received $850 in the small claims court suit in Simi Valley, Calif. To AT&T, which posted revenues of $31.5 billion in its most-recent quarter, that's pocket change, but Spaccarelli may soon have imitators. According to a report by the Associated Press, about 17 million of AT&T's customers with unlimited data plan could be subject to throttling, as Spaccarelli was. Under the terms of the contract, such users can't band together in a class action lawsuit against AT&T, but they can sue them individually in small claims courts. AT&T reps could not be reached for comment on whether the company plans to appeal the decision. Spaccarelli's case argues that his phone is being throttled after using 1.5 GB to 2 GB of data after the billing cycle starts. However, AT&T offers 3 GB of data to subscribers for the same fee Spaccarelli is paying -- $30 per month. AT&T's customer contract outlines that consumers who win an award in arbitration will get at least $10,000. That was the amount that Spaccarelli sued for, but the judge in the case, Russell Nadel, calculated AT&T's charge for every extra gigabyte over 3 GB ($10) across Spaccarelli's remaining 10 months in the contract. The telecom giant began throttling data for its top 5% of users this month to manage data usage on the network. AT&T's not alone. Verizon is also throttling its top 5% and Sprint is slowing data for its top 1% of data hogs. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, geoadventures |
| Pinterest Pins Are on 9% of the Top Online Retail Sites | | Friday, February 24, 2012 2:53 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Consumers aren't the only ones getting Pinterest fever. About 9% of the top online retailers are offering Pinterest pins on their sites, according to a researcher. The Find, a vertical search engine, analyzed the top 300 online retail sites and found around 28 had Pinterest pins. Among the list, which was based on Internet Retailer magazine's ranking, are Etsy, Tory Burch, Hanes, Barneys New York and Aeropostale. In each case, the pin appears when you click through to a specific item. SEE ALSO: Pinterest: Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012's Hottest Startup/a> In some cases, such as Hanes', the pin is one of dozens of sharing options. But others such as Etsy put the pin in en elite group that includes Twitter, Facebook and email. Siva Kumar, CEO of The Find, says the pins just started showing up on sites in November. Kumar says he thinks the pins are growing faster than Facebook's Like button, introduced in 2010, did, "probably because people are much more comfortable adding buttons." To put Pinterest's growth in perspective, some 60% of the top 300 sites have Facebook Like buttons and 20% have +1 buttons from Google. If anything, the retailers' addition of the Pinterest pins seems low. The site made headlines earlier this month when it reached 10 million visitors, making the now 2 year-old site one of the fastest-growing in history. In addition, there doesn't seem to be a downside to adding a Pinterest pin since it will expose the retailers' items to a larger number of people who presumably have an interest in the products. BONUS: Popular Pinterest Users Zoomsphere has released a list of the 10 most-followed users on Pinterest. Flip through this gallery to see what they share. We also encourage you to check out some of our favorite Pinterest users. |
| 3 Things Retailers Can Learn from Mom and Pop Facebook Stores | | Friday, February 24, 2012 12:50 PM | Christian Taylor |
|  Christian Taylor is founder and CEO of Payvment and developer of the number-one Facebook ecommerce platform for brands, agencies and merchants, and the world's only Facebook Shopping Mall. Recently, Gap and J.C. Penney closed their Facebook storefronts because the retailers weren't seeing immediate traction. The move has sparked an interesting debate: whether Facebook commerce will actually take off. Clearly, we are still in the very early days of Facebook shopping, but there is already ample evidence that social commerce is thriving. For every big brand that's failed in its initial social commerce attempt, there are thousands of smaller brands that are killing it with Facebook commerce (F-commerce). Why have some large retailers stumbled with their initial F-commerce attempts, while many smaller retailers are seeing success? Here are three things smaller sellers can teach large retailers about Facebook commerce. 1. Start From Scratch The first mistake many large retailers make is trying to build custom storefronts that are essentially clones of their .com websites, when they should attempt to truly integrate their presences into the social fabric of Facebook. Smaller sellers have the advantage here; most don't already maintain big ecommerce presences, so they can start from scratch with a social model. Successful smaller sellers are also opting for commerce solutions that take full advantage of the Facebook platform, such as robust sharing, commenting and social expression features. They also typically have a smaller product catalog, which helps to focus sharing, promotions and wall posts, creating concentrated buzz and rapid fan and visitor growth to their storefronts. 2. Be Authentic Successful smaller sellers engage in active, authentic communication and dialogue with their fans and shoppers on Facebook. It's very compelling to talk to an actual jewelry designer about his or her inspiration, or to the creator of the sustainable t-shirts you found through a friend. The passion of the smaller seller and the direct, honest dialogue makes for lifelong customers that subsequently spread the word throughout their social connections. It's hard for a larger retailer's marketing team to replicate this authenticity within its Facebook presence, but it's possible. Start by picking the right person to manage your Facebook presence - and make sure he has the time and resources to drive robust interaction and conversation with your fan base. Or try featuring guest posts from a supplier or designer to drive more conversation, especially if that person has an interesting, authentic point of view and is willing to engage in some back and forth discussion. Finally, don't make everything about sales and deals -- there should be a balance between promotional posts and open-ended stories about the products you offer. 3. Join a Network Large retailers have typically created custom tab storefronts on their Facebook Pages, which focus on selling to an existing fan base. This "island" mentality might work for .com destination stores, where SEO and email promotions drive the bulk of the traffic, but it doesn't work very well on Facebook, where social discovery drives traffic and exposure to a broad swath of the social and interest graph is key. With a stand-alone store, you're only as good as your "graph." In other words, you're limited to your existing fan base when it comes to product discovery and social sharing. Plus, you're limited to relationship-based graphs rather than the possible interest graphs generated by broader community data. Smaller sellers that are part of a community dramatically amplify social discovery of their products. Examples of this include Pinterest and Yardsellr, each of which enables a seller to expose his or her products to a rapidly growing base of visitors connected both socially and through shared interests. The fact that some larger retailers have recently shuttered their Facebook stores doesn't prove that social networks lack potential as sales channels. Chances are, many retailers will continue to experiment with the potential of these powerful social platforms. When larger retailers move out of the .com paradigm and embrace a truly social model for their Facebook storefronts, they'll discover a huge opportunity for success. |
| Why Stunts Drive Clicks for Gen-Y Auto Marketers | | Friday, February 24, 2012 11:16 AM | Todd Wasserman |
|  The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including marketing analytics tools. This year, Chevrolet's Super Bowl ad for its Sonic hatchback had its share of white-knuckle stunts. For those who missed it, the hatchback skydived, bungee jumped and executed a kickflip. But those stunts were child's play compared to the risk Chevy seemed to be taking. After all, the ad featured no actual reasons to buy the car, no mentions of gas mileage, pricing or even its iPhone/iPad compatibility. The only thing you could surmise from seeing the ad is that the car might be useful if you and it were ever flung out of a plane. Yet Matt Scarlett, Sonic's advertising manager, says the stunt-ridden ad was actually the safest choice. Canvassing consumers in the younger-skewing millennial demo revealed that their flashy approach got the strongest response by far. "We said, 'OK, if you saw an ad like that, would you engage with the brand's website to learn more?'" recalls Scarlett. "Pretty much everyone said they would, if only to see how the heck they did it." This is one way to market cars to Gen Yers. When your target demo lives on Facebook and zones out when you show them a standard car ad with stereotypical beauty shots and performance claims, you have to mess with the formula a bit. That's especially true if you're an underdog brand. In some ways, the auto industry is like tech: There are brands like Apple, which can create buzz merely by teasing new releases. But those that lack this built-in sense of drama have to create their own trans-media narratives. The progenitor of this approach is Audi's Art of the Heist, a 2005 campaign for the A3. The carmaker, working with New York agency Campfire, concocted a story about the car being stolen that included a game replete with online and offline clues about the car's whereabouts. "Stunts have been a viable way of generating a lot of conversation with a relatively minimal investment thanks to social media," says Jeremiah Rosen, president and partner of Campfire. "The difference between how we sell beer and how we sell automobiles is dramatically different -- longer purchase consideration and longer ownership. Given that the purchase cycle for a car is famously long, starting the conversation with a spreadable, buzzworthy stunt is a very good way to drive attention. It starts the conversation and moves the consumer toward consideration." Agency 180LA made the same calculation. When it won the Mitsubishi account in mid-2010, the agency's assignment was to generate buzz and show off the 2011 Outlander Sport compact crossover's features. The agency's solution was "Live Drive," which was billed as the world's first online test drive. The brand created a microsite where users could (after getting a code), remotely steer an Outlander Sport. Mitsubishi followed that effort with an event in February 2011 that had the Outlander and Outlander Sport breaking Guinness World Records in arctic conditions in Ghost Lake, Canada. "Necessity is the mother of invention," says Gavin Milner, creative director of 180LA. "We are outspent 10-to-one or 30-to-one by our competitors, so we had to do something different." Toyota's Prius doesn't suffer under quite the same constraints. Yet, the brand launched its own record-breaking frenzy during two 10-hour webcasts in March 2011. Unlike Mitsubishi's Guinness campaign, though, this record-breaking attempt was more about whimsy than product attributes. Among the records sought: "Most shadow animals made with Prius LED headlights in two minutes." Melissa Eccles, associated director of integrated productions for Saatchi & Saatchi LA, the agency that worked on that effort, says once again the usual claims about mileage and LED headlights would have likely fallen on deaf ears. "It grabs people's attention and creates a different channel to connect with a generation that is turned off by traditional approaches to advertising," she says of the effort. "It changes the conversation, giving people a means to participate in an experience, versus being advertised to." Not everyone agrees with that logic, though. Todd Turner, owner of Car Concepts, a Thousand Oaks, Calif., consultancy, points out that there are still lots of car brands that continue to emphasize product attributes in their advertising. Two other Super Bowl advertisers -- Hyundai and the Ford Silverado -- stuck to that formula this year. Turner says that's smart. "I think that all these companiesrun the risk of devaluing their brands," Turner says of Chevy Sonic and others. Turner notes that Volkswagen's ads from the '60s were lighthearted, but also provided good reasons to buy the cars, like reliability. "To build a car brand that ends up on people's shopping lists, it has to be something that retains an image for them. That's whereare lacking. There's no definable reason to buy the product. They're focusing too much on what goes viral, what gets teens' attention." Scarlett, however, is happy for the moment to be getting attention for the Sonic. The Super Bowl ad has gotten almost 2 million views on YouTube at this writing and has about 100,000 more Facebook fans than the Ford Fiesta. Scarlett says when OK Go's official video for "Needing/Getting" -- the song featured in the Super Bowl ad -- hit 10 million views in five days, "That's when we knew we really hit it. We really connected with people." Whether they'll go out and buy the car remains to be seen. Series supported by HubSpot
The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including marketing analytics tools. Image courtesy of Flickr, Secret London |
| Today's Top Stories: Apple Acquires Chomp, Acer's Liquid Glow | | Friday, February 24, 2012 7:55 AM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Welcome to this morning's edition of "First To Know," a series in which we keep you in the know on what's happening in the digital world. Today, we're looking at three particularly interesting stories. Apple Acquires Discovery Engine Chomp Apple has acquired app discovery engine Chomp, TechCrunch reports. The acquisition could lead to a complete revamp or at least big improvements to Apple's App Store. Chomp's 20+ employees will all be joining Apple's ranks; the company CEO Ben Keighran has already joined iTunes Marketing. Acer Launches Liquid Glow Smartphone Acer has launched a somewhat unusually named Android 4.0 smartphone: the Liquid Glow. It's a 3.7-inch device with a 5-megapixel camera and NFC capabilities. We'll likely learn more about the Liquid Glow at the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona next week; for now we know that the device should hit the market in early summer 2012. Sony Ericsson Xperias Get Android 4.0 Beta ROM Sony has launched an Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) beta ROM for its Xperia smartphones. Some of the ICS functionality will not work, since this is merely a preview version, but it's a chance for users to try out the latest and greatest of what Android has to offer on their Xperia devices. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59 |
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