| TRENDING STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | | | | | | ALL STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | |
| Forget Traditional Tours; Vayable Helps You Discover New Ways to Travel | | Friday, July 27, 2012 7:38 PM | Veena Bissram |
|  Name: Vayable Quick Pitch: Vayable is a marketplace for travelers seeking unique traveling experiences. Genius Idea: Discover, book and sell authentic experiences and tours with local and experienced tour guides. If you're planning to travel, why not fly to Fiji and fish with a Fijian king? Or how about spend a night in Alcatraz with just you and your friends? Travelers interested in authentic experiences like these can now find them on Vayable - a marketplace that lets people discover, book and sell unique, local experiences in more than 600 cities worldwide. Instead of booking tours through travel agencies, Vayable lets you book them directly through experienced travelers or tour guides. Vayable has more than 2,500 tour guides who are either seasoned experts - experienced travelers or tour guides, or savvy locals - guides that know everything from the culture to the history of the city they live in. Once a tour is booked, travelers can connect with tour guides via direct messages. "Travel agents can't be experts at every place around the world," Jamie Wong, CEO of Vayable, told Mashable. "Every one of our guides is an expert of their own towns and part of a community that they are passionate about." Travelers can search for unique trips and tours by destination. Once they select an experience and a few times available times, Vayable will authorize their credit card information. Credit cards are not charged until the guide confirms the experience within 24 hours.
As soon as the booking is confirmed, travelers can use direct messages to communicate with the tour guide, ask them questions and request any changes. "Cutting out the middle man provides a better, more affordable experience because there's more accountability from both sides of the marketplace" says Wong. Founded in April 2011, Vayable screens each guide during an interview before they can offer an experience or tour. For each booking, the company charges a 3% service charge to travelers and takes 15% of the total booking price. |
| Forget Traditional Tours; Discover New Ways to Travel With Vayable | | Friday, July 27, 2012 7:38 PM | Veena Bissram |
|  Name: Vayable Quick Pitch: Vayable is a marketplace for travelers seeking unique traveling experiences. Genius Idea: Discover, book and sell authentic experiences and tours with local and experienced tour guides. If you're planning to travel, why not fly to Fiji and fish with a Fijian king? Or how about spend a night in Alcatraz with just you and your friends? Travelers interested in authentic experiences like these can now find them on Vayable - a marketplace that lets people discover, book and sell unique, local experiences in more than 600 cities worldwide. Instead of booking tours through travel agencies, Vayable lets you book them directly through experienced travelers or tour guides. Vayable has more than 2,500 tour guides who are either seasoned experts - experienced travelers or tour guides, or savvy locals - guides that know everything from the culture to the history of the city they live in. Once a tour is booked, travelers can connect with tour guides via direct messages. "Travel agents can't be experts at every place around the world," Jamie Wong, CEO of Vayable, told Mashable. "Every one of our guides is an expert of their own towns and part of a community that they are passionate about." Travelers can search for unique trips and tours by destination. Once they select an experience and a few times available times, Vayable will authorize their credit card information. Credit cards are not charged until the guide confirms the experience within 24 hours.
As soon as the booking is confirmed, travelers can use direct messages to communicate with the tour guide, ask them questions and request any changes. "Cutting out the middle man provides a better, more affordable experience because there's more accountability from both sides of the marketplace" says Wong. Founded in April 2011, Vayable screens each guide during an interview before they can offer an experience or tour. For each booking, the company charges a 3% service charge to travelers and takes 15% of the total booking price. |
| Hidden Genius Project Provides Tech Mentorship for Young Black Men | | Friday, July 27, 2012 5:53 PM | Sam Laird |
|  Outfitted smartly in a dress shirt and necktie, 17-year-old Tyson Walton stood up from a chair on a recent afternoon at the downtown San Francisco headquarters of Tagged and pitched an app idea to the co-founders of American's most engaging social network. The app, called Crave No More, will suggest nearby food options based off users inputting dining dislikes. But it's not just a copycat of Yelp or Foodspotting. "What we're focusing on and what makes ours so much better is that we give you that food suggestion," Walton said. "We're taking all the work out of having to decide where to go, then once you get there, what you want to eat." Crave No More is more than just an idea though. The app will be "fully deployable" and in the iOS App Store by the end of this summer, after eight weeks of hard work by Walton and four other high school students. They're part of the Hidden Genius Project, a program based in Oakland, Calif., that aims to get more young black males involved in tech startup entrepreneurship, design and engineering. "With our youth in particular, there aren't a whole lot of role models you can point to," says Tracy Moore, one of the Hidden Genius Project's nine founding volunteer mentors. "If you look at most media, the only people you really see are sports stars and entertainers so that's where a lot of their efforts are really focused." Walton and his cohort make up the program's pilot class. While they'll leave the program with a salable app, all five students entered with no programming knowledge. Yet they do all the coding themselves, without a single line written by the project's directors. The reasons for black males' tiny representation in the tech community are varied, but much of it is cyclical. As Moore said, a lack of role models and examples to emulate in the field is one problem. Many students don't come from families with parents who work in technology, or from schools with strong STEM curricula. But strong peer connections and mentorship opportunities are paramount for all aspiring entrepreneurs, not just those from underrepresented groups. As part of their visit to Tagged, the students learned that company co-founders Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith have worked together since middle school and count LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman as their chief mentor. "It's just great that there's this ever-evolving ecosystem, where each generation gives back and helps the next generation in Silicon Valley," Tseng told the students. The Hidden Genius Project's mentors say demand has far exceeded the amount of space they're able to provide at this point for students after the program first became a kernel of an idea just three months ago. But, they say, businesses and non-profits are eager to contribute money and resources to help the project grow. How exactly it grows reamins to be determined, but the mentors know they want to expand to a year-round setup, increase to up to 20 students and possibly add chapters in other cities. One more big piece will be keeping Tyson Walton and his pilot class included so that future enrollees have mentorship opportunities and build an ecosystem of their own. "The goal is, after we've worked with them for an entire year, to the have them stay involved at a different level," says Hidden Genius Project volunteer Kilimanjaro Robbs. "Maybe they become mentors to the younger students while they're still working on something at a higher level. But at the end of the day, the end goal is to make them all employable. That's the bottom line." What other programs are helping provide more opportunities in technology for underrepresented minorities? Let us know in the comments. |
| The Anatomy of a Killer Content Marketing Strategy | | Friday, July 27, 2012 3:20 PM | Joseph Lazauskas |
|  Joe Lazauskas is the co-founder and CCO of Faster Times Media, a content studio and consultancy that helps businesses create exceptional articles, videos, blogs, and social media updates. Say hello on Twitter @joelazauskas or via email at joe@thefastertimes.com. Content marketing has become a powerful way for brands to build long-term relationships with customers while still generating short-term results. As a first step, many marketers are building out new brand publishing initiatives, often with the help of a content studio staffed by editors and journalists. Smart content marketers will tell you that brands need plenty of their own content published on their own sites. But that's not the only option. One very effective new tactic is custom branded content campaigns that appear not on the brand's site but on the sites of popular niche publishers. At a recent talk, Chris Ahearn, the former president of Reuters Media, said that while the big publishers are still alive, they're bleeding badly. Meanwhile "small" digital publications are doing brilliantly thanks to a stranglehold on a niche audience. SEE ALSO: Why Brands Are Becoming Publishers Although, some of the so-called "small" publications are not so small anymore. Trend-setting fashion site Refinery29, with local coverage in six markets, has 2.6 million visitors a month who average almost ten page views per visit. The site has an extremely loyal user base. Fifty percent of their users visit at least six times per month and 20% visit at least thirty times a month. Refinery29 was long run by an innovative four-person team, but has quickly grown in the last three years into a 65-person publishing force, complete with what Director of Brand Integration, Anna Plaks, calls a "mini ad agency" that develops custom content campaigns with brands to run on the site. As a trendy fashion site, Refinery29 knows how to make people want to buy clothes. So what do these branded content campaigns look like and what can marketers learn from them? Here are a few of their best. The Guess Generation Guess came to Refinery29 looking for a custom content program that would drive sales and amplify their brand's social media presence. Guess was going back to its roots with a new campaign celebrating the 30-year anniversary of their iconic three-zip Marilyn jean. They brought back the star of its classic ads, Claudia Schiffer, and released a line of their iconic pieces with modern updates. Refinery29 suggested a trends piece featuring thirty young fashion influencers wearing iconic Guess looks and reflecting on Guess and the '80's. "Something that we thought was really interesting about Guess was the heritage of it. All of our users grew up with Guess," VP of Sales, Alison Koplar explains. "So, we thought where can we first connect modern-day Guess with the Guess that we all knew and wore growing up?" Refinery29's brand integration team works deeply with editor-in-chief Christene Barberich to create branded content that their readers will love. This is why they write and shoot all of the content themselves. "We'd rather shoot it ourselves to ensure that it is in our voice," Plaks explains. The process works. The month-long "Guess Generation" program garnered a million impressions. It succeeded on social platforms, too. The thirty fashion influencers featured in the program promoted the piece, and Refinery29 created overlays of the piece for Facebook and Pinterest to maximize its shareability. The result? More than 2,500 social actions, 1,300 shares on StumbleUpon, and influencers sharing the piece on fashion blogs across the web. Macy's StyleBlogger Contest Refinery29's most successful editorial initiative in their seven-year history is probably their annual "Styleblogger" contest. It also happens to be a piece of branded content. This year, in a quest to build exposure of their millennial-targeted Bar III line, Macy's partnered with Refinery 29 to host their Styleblogger contest, in which millennial style bloggers competed to be named the "Styleblogger" for Macys' Bar III line. Another winner won a blogging job at Refinery29. It turns out that among Refinery29's 2.6 million loyal readers quite a few had their own style blogs. Eight hundred blog submissions came in within the first two weeks to compete for readers' votes, and the contestants went to work promoting themselves. Twenty thousand people voted via Facebook Connect, and the R29 judges pared the contest down to five finalists, who competed in weekly challenges to be named the winner. Readers were hooked, spending ten times more time on the Styleblogger page than the rest of the site. The contest was the biggest traffic driver to the site for two months and built incredible brand awareness for Bar III. As a bonus, it generated two great feel-good stories. Stoli's 30 Under 30 With Stoli, Refinery29 created the "30 Under 30" editorial series, which detailed the top thirty professional twenty-somethings in New York and L.A. The series was a precursor to a New York versus L.A. party battle, where young, attractive partygoers on each coast flocked to R29 and Stoli-sponsored parties. There they got to snap some shots of minor celebrities like actress Sophia Bush and designers Yigal Azrouel and Erin Fetherston sipping Stoli cocktails. The party recaps were posted online, and the public voted on which coast parties better. "30 Under 30" got of half a million page views and when the piece was shared, 2,700 people liked it on Facebook. It also sparked serious engagement, with almost 100 people commenting on the piece. Refinery29 is perfect for fashion brands, but there are publications in every vertical capable of doing what Refinery29 does. Forward-thinking sites like The Atlantic are jumping into branded content, and many more popular sites are capable of taking the leap, though they might not see the opportunity yet. A smart content marketer can help brands identify those opportunities and execute. |
| Chick-fil-A PR Chief Dies as Company Battles Controversy | | Friday, July 27, 2012 1:42 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  Don Perry, head spokesman for fast-food chain Chick-fil-A died "suddenly" Friday morning, the company confirmed Friday. Perry has been with the Atlanta-based company for 29 years, last holding the position of VP of public relations, a Chick-fil-A spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to Mashable. The spokesperson was unable to comment on the cause of death. Chick-fil-A is under fire from gay rights' activists after its CEO, Dan Cathy, voiced his support of the "traditional family" and the "Bibical definition of the family unit." He later added, "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.'" Activists have called for a boycott of the restaurant chain, and the mayors of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco have criticized Cathy's statements publicly. In a letter to Cathy, Boston Mayor Tom Menino wrote, "There is no place for discrimination on Boston's Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it." The Jim Henson Co. pulled its Muppet toys from Chick-fil-a's kids' meals. SEE ALSO: Chick-fil-A Parody Offers to Swap 'Homosexuality for Chicken Sandwich' Last week, Perry e-mailed out an official response to the controversy, stating that the company's plans were to "leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena." The company's policy, he wrote, "is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect - regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender." |
| Facebook's Not the Only One Struggling With Mobile Advertising | | Friday, July 27, 2012 1:17 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Considering all the attention it gets, mobile advertising is still a pipsqueak in the industry, accounting for just $1.6 billion globally in 2011. Compare that to the overall $498 billion global ad market and you might wonder what all the fuss is about. Even newspaper revenues, which hit their lowest mark in 60 years in 2011 were 129 times higher than those for mobile. True, mobile advertising is a fast-growing category -- that 2011 figure is triple what it was in 2009 -- but even if the category nearly doubles, as it's projected to do by 2014, we're still talking about a $3 billion market. At the moment, though, the mobile advertising segment is known for its destructive power -- it's a vampire, sucking the net worth out of Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Google. Investors, who calculate the value of a company based on how they think it will do down the road, see a future in which users are accessing Google and Facebook products and services more via mobile devices. In that scenario, falling ad revenues are inevitable. Of the two, Google is doing the best; CEO Larry Page claimed a $2.5 billion run rate for mobile ads last October, which appears to give the company more than 100% of the global market. However, even that's not enough for investors, who fret that Google's cost-per-click keeps falling as mobile ads become more prominent. Facebook, meanwhile, has only offered mobile advertising for a little more than a month. During the company's second-quarter earnings call with analysts, the company claimed it was making about $500,000 a day off its mobile ads, which would amount to $182.5 million over the course of a year. However, you'd assume that the figure would increase as adoption rises. This did nothing to please investors, who pummeled Facebook's stock price until it hit a new sub-$24 low on Thursday. Is Facebook really screwing things up that much? Led by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook appears to be giving mobile the single-minded focus that you would expect. The company has some of the best minds in the business attacking the problem and it's solution so far -- Sponsored Stories on mobile -- isn't bad. Multiple reports have found that the ads perform much better than standard desktop ads. David Williams, CEO of Blinq Media, says he's seeing click-through-rates as high as 8.5% on mobile Sponsored Stories ads "which is pretty much unheard of." The only problem with the ads, in Williams's view is scale: The ads depend on an interaction with the brand by someone in your network. If none of your Facebook friends has interacted with a brand, then you won't see the ad. Of course, novelty might account for much of the ads' efficacy. "New ad units always perform better," says Nate Elliott, a Forrester Research analyst. "That will decline over time." But even if the ads are the silver bullet that Facebook hopes, the company has to grapple with a situation that's affecting everyone in digital media: The transition to mobile, which, so far, is much less lucrative. How much less? Michael Wolff of The Guardian estimates that media companies that used to make $4 on advertising on a webpage only make .25 on the equivalent mobile page. Shrinking screen size is a major reason: You simply can't cram as many ads on a 3.5-inch iPhone screen as you can on a the 15-4-inch MacBook Pro screen. That means saying goodbye to Facebook's unloved, but lucrative Marketplace ads (the direct-response ones that run in the right column.) Some investors believe that Facebook can only solve the problem by making its own mobile devices -- as Google does now -- to better control the experience. However, Facebook put the kibosh on such speculation on Thursday. But, as we've seen, even Google's not immune to the trend. In its most-recent quarter, the search giant disclosed that the price advertisers pay for clicks on Google ads fell 16% year over year. Yet Google is less threatened by mobile since it has a lock on search advertising. Facebook doesn't have the equivalent. That's too bad. Without a mobile device of its own or a proven method of maintaining its overall ad revenues despite the transition to mobile, Facebook is in a tight spot. Unfortunately, Facebook's not the only one |
| Manicube Delivers Manicures to Your New York Office | | Friday, July 27, 2012 11:57 AM | Lauren Indvik |
|  Name: Manicube Quick Pitch: A manicure service that comes to your office. Genius Idea: Making women's lives easier. As a beauty industry executive who worked long hours, Katina Mountanos frequently found herself running to meetings with big brands -- think Chanel, Bobbi Brown -- with unsightly nails. "I always worried about getting a manicure before these meetings, but I was always working really late," she recalls. It was that, and the memory of the in-office shoe-shines and drycleaning pickups offered to her former, mostly male colleagues at Citigroup, that led to the creation of Manicube. The startup, which launched about a month ago in Manhattan, serves up exactly what its name implies: Manicures at your office. To book, you'll need to round up at least seven other people, says Mountanos. Manicures cost $15 and are designed to take 15 minutes, plus five minutes for drying time. For every manicure purchased, $1 is donated to fund women entrepreneurs through lending non-profit KIVA. Manicube currently employs six people part-time, but is increasing their hours quickly. Mountanos and co-founder Liz Whitman interviewed 35 people to start, selecting those who were able to consistently deliver manicures in 15 minutes or less, and had strong backgrounds in service. Mountanos says Manicube is able to compensate more than an average salon, because it guarantees workers three appointments -- and thus three gratituities -- during hours that are typically slow, i.e., weekday mornings and afternoons. What's next? Expansion -- both in key cities in the U.S. and internationally -- is at the top of the list, says Whitman. Manicube also wants to increase the number of its services it offers to include eyebrow grooming and massages. "The idea is to make women's lives easier," Whitman explains. A mobile-friendly website, as well as iPhone and Android apps, are on the way. Manicube's founders haven't yet raised any funding, but are hoping to raise money in the fall. |
| Memo to the IT Crowd: Lose the Hoodie | | Friday, July 27, 2012 11:21 AM | BusinessNewsDaily |
|  While Mark Zuckerburg has made wearing hoodies and T-shirts to the office each day chic, new research shows most IT professionals won't be looked upon as favorably for sporting such attire. A study by Robert Half Technology revealed that more than three out of four chief information officers said the way someone dresses influences his or her chance for a promotion within the organization's IT department. Refuting the myth that IT departments are overly casual, the survey found that 66% of CIOs have a dress code in their department that requires employees wear somewhat formal attire, such as dress slacks or a skirt and button-down shirt. "Increasingly, IT team members and managers must interact with executives across the company, the board, customers and strategic partners," said John Reed, senior executive director for Robert Half Technology. "Image does matter, and you're not likely to be taken as seriously in these interactions if you're wearing unprofessional attire." Robert Half Technology advises IT employees ask themselves several questions when trying to dress for success at the office: Would managers in the IT department at my company wear this? If the answer is no, you probably shouldn't wear it either. Is it distracting or potentially offensive? Unless you work for a political action committee or advocacy group, shirts or accessories with political, religious or controversial messages are best left at home. Is it clean and in good condition? Clothes that are torn, wrinkled or stained should be left at home. Sloppy attire may prompt your manager to wonder how serious you are about your job. Is it comfortable? Relaxed clothing is important for IT professionals, especially those spending long hours writing code, or who are in more active roles such as repairing hardware. Dress for your position, but make sure you can move comfortably. The study was based on surveys of 1,400 CIOs from companies with 100 or more employees. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, EdStock |
| 5 Digital Marketing Metrics That Matter | | Friday, July 27, 2012 9:28 AM | Marc Poirier |
|  Marc Poirier is the co-founder and CMO of marketing at Acquisio, where he leads all sales and marketing activities. He often speaks at events like SES, and writes columns and articles for publications like Search Engine Watch and SES Magazine. Follow him @marcpoirier. Marketing is currently in a state of evolution where it is dispensing (again) with the old, and introducing the new. So if digital marketers who buy media are hung up on last-click attribution they are missing so much of the big picture. They need to start looking at the role of media as an introducer and as an influencer, rather than just a last-click deal closer. They also have to start looking at customer engagement and its influence. SEE ALSO: Which Ad Attribution Model Should You Use? Here are five metrics that can help a digital marketer take these new shifts into consideration and better handle their daily bid management routine. 1. Bounce Rate Monitoring how different ads or keywords generate different bounce rates can make a huge difference in your optimization efforts. Traffic sent to your landing page, homepage, or to an internal page on your website should yield important differences in bounce rates. You will need to bid down on bounce rates that are one standard deviation above the average, and bid up on lower ones. Don't abandon low-converting properties with a low bounce rate, because the reality is that you've managed to start an interaction with someone that could turn into something a lot more important than you may have first anticipated. 2. Average Page Views Per Visit You can really measure how engaged your visitors are at this point by measuring how deep into your site they will go. By measuring engagement at this level, you're seeing an indicator that you are beginning to influence, even if this does not immediately turn into a conversion. When people find content that means something to them, they keep going deeper, and we know that the trend leans towards them sharing content they enjoy with their friends. These are people who may actually end up influencing more sales, and knowing what keywords are successful in this endeavor will help you to build an even larger customer base. 3. Average Cost Per Page View This metric is absolutely critical to publishers, because it allows them to reach out to new audiences and turn a profit. The publisher model is to sell ad space, and knowing what a given page will yield in terms of revenue allows them to reach out to customers via paid channels in order to generate more revenue. This means that if a publisher knows their revenue per page view is .50, then they must keep their cost per page view below .50 Let's say a publisher pays an average cost per page view of .39 and they generated 100,000 page views for a period of time. This means that, by using this metric, publishers can now drive traffic to their site from search campaigns and measure immediate success in terms of profitability. Here's the formula: Revenue per page view - cost per page view * number of page views This looks like: .50 - .39 * 100,000 .11 * 100,000 or $11,000 in profits At this rate, bidding to an average cost per page view of .39 is generating a margin. 4. Average Time on Site Are you reaching your customers? Are you speaking to them, and are they responding by spending time on your site? If, for example, you have a video on your site that is three minutes long, you'll want to see that you've reached your audience for at least that long. This is not just about how many page views you are generating, but the level of trust your customers are starting to put in your brand, and how curious they are about you. Bidding based on how much time people invest on your site will help you to automatically focus your efforts. Use this metric in combination with bounce rate and page views per visit for a complete picture. 5. Rate of Return Visitors This is one of the most important metrics in measuring customer engagement. A higher rate of return for a specific keyword, or set of keywords, is good reason to focus more closely on those visitors. Because we're often so focused on the last click when buying media, we forget to focus on the ones who are returning to our site, and we don't give them what they need to convert. Understanding that consumers "browse the aisles" on the web as much as they do in a store gives you a reason to look more closely at those return visitors, and concentrate on assessing their true value. You will most likely find that keywords with a high rate of return visitors are ones that are deeply influencing the sales cycle. More than ever, people need to trust brands before they will make a purchase, and if you are able to show them that you are willing to make the investment into having that conversation with them, then you are showing them that you're willing to go that extra mile for their business. With any marketing campaign, what's at stake is the big picture, and it's time to start making use of the technology that's currently available to us and start looking at how each channel is influencing the other. Knowing which ads represent influencers, introducers, or closers, is absolutely critical to understanding how the aforementioned metrics are working in concert with your overall marketing strategy. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak |
| 5 Startups Transforming Online Education | | Friday, July 27, 2012 8:30 AM | Zev Gotkin |
|  Zev Gotkin is an entrepreneur and founder of L'Mala, a writing firm specializing in website content development, blogs, branding, and social media promotion. He can be reached at wgotkin@gmail.com. As the global economy continues to shift, there's an increased demand for services in higher education. This fact, coupled with the rise of technology, is bringing many of these options online. These services are only being spurred on by the more than one billion people who have joined the middle class in the last decade. In fact, in the next eight years, 150 million people will seek higher education. Additionally, funding for education startups has tripled in the last decade, going from $146 million in 2002 to $429 million in 2011. This leaves entrepreneurs with the opportunity to create exciting new ways for individuals to learn online. Here are some of the startups that are shaping the online education trend. 1. 2tor 2tor is the first startup of its kind to offer full degree programs online at top-tier universities. It's also the most highly funded. As of April, its total investments added up to a little under $97 million. 2tor partners with universities across the country to help them build and market their own online degree programs. The startup has created master's degree programs for a variety of schools, including a master of arts in teaching at the University of Southern California and Georgetown University's nursing program. 2tor is making waves for its web-based infrastructure that allows professors to easily share information with students, create interactive lessons, and provide lectures and opportunities for social interaction among students. Its iPad and iPhone apps even allow students to participate on the go. These varied services are allowing 2tor to lead the way as an online education startup. 2. Udemy Udemy is unique because it allows anyone to take or build an online course, not just colleges and universities. Instructors can implement videos, PowerPoints, zip files, audio files, and PDFs to create a course and share it with the world. The site offers courses on technology, business, music, art, languages, math, science, games, sports, and more. The basic premise is to crowdsource education. Much like blogging allows anyone to share information, Udemy allows anyone to create courses with nothing more than an internet connection. Many individuals with a desire to learn are cut out of the education system by rising tuition, housing, and commuting costs, but Udemy empowers anyone to share and learn at a more affordable rate. 3. EdX Announced on May 2, EdX is the joint creation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard. The partnership strives to bring online learning to people across the globe and offers online classes for free. EdX courses include videos, quizzes, feedback, and more to help students navigate the material. This month, the service received a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which shows just how much potential online education programs have to grow. 4. Voxy This startup is allowing users to "learn a language from life," meaning they use context and flexibility to teach new languages via web-based and mobile technology. Voxy turns your real-world conversations, activities, and the media you consume into contextual language lessons. The service allows users to control the pace of their learning with tailored language lessons focusing on things that are of interest to them. The iPhone and Android apps also allow users to learn on the go. Language acquisition is more difficult for adults, but Voxy's customized pacing allows for a stress-free environment. Since January 2011, the site has grown to more than one and a half million users, and spent nearly a year as the number one education app in twenty countries. 5. Noodle Noodle has created the very first search engine of its kind, devoted solely to navigating the vast sea of educational information available online. Noodle's customized search engine helps students and their families to find resources for tutors, pre-K schooling options, guidance counselors, summer camps, MBA programs, and much more. Basically, this service is revolutionizing the way we search for and locate educational opportunities suited to our needs. How do you think educational startups are changing the way we learn? Share your thoughts below. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, -hakusan- |
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