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| YouTube's 10 Most-Shared Ads in August | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 11:01 PM | Christine Erickson |
|  As summer ends, we all wonder what the next viral YouTube sensation will be. Will the song "Call Me Maybe" stand the test of time and continue to make parody waves in the fall? Probably not, but it certainly has permeated the social advertising sphere in recent months. Also topping August's most-shared ad charts are zombies, flash mobs and emotional tearjerkers. Now if only we could get an ad featuring a zombie flash mob dancing to "Call Me Maybe." Thanks to our friends at Unruly for compiling this list. |
| Zuck: I Won't Sell Facebook Shares for a Year | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 2:16 PM | Seth Fiegerman |
|  Some investors and Facebook insiders may be rushing to sell off their stock in the company, but at least one person plans to hold onto his shares for a while: Facebook's CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday that Zuckerberg has "no intention" to sell any of his Facebook shares for at least the next year. "Mark Zuckerberg... has informed us that he has no intention to conduct any sale transactions in our securities for at least 12 months," Facebook noted in the new SEC filing. "Mr. Zuckerberg currently holds in aggregate approximately 444 million shares of Class B common stock as well as 60 million shares of Class B common stock issuable upon the exercise of an option." Some Facebook insiders including cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and early investor Peter Thiel have already begun the process of offloading some of their shares in the company, despite the fact that Facebook's stock value has dropped to less than half of its IPO price. Zuckerberg, for his part, did sell off more than 30 million shares of Facebook stock immediately after the IPO, earning more than $1 billion in the process. But most of that just went to cover his own taxes. The new self-imposed ban makes a lot of sense. Not only would it be foolish for Zuckerberg to start selling off more shares now, considering how much their value has plummeted, it would also potentially send a bad message to investors that even Facebook's CEO doesn't want to hold onto the stock. Image courtesy of Flickr, denneyterrio |
| Old Spice Launches New Commercials Featuring NFL Star | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 12:01 PM | Seth Fiegerman |
|  Old Spice is kicking off football season with a new marketing campaign centered around an active NFL star. Greg Jennings, a wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers, will serve as the newest Old Spice Guy to promote their Champion deodorant in a series of seven commercials that will air during the NFL season. The first will officially debut on Wednesday during the NFL kickoff game on NBC, but Old Spice has already put up the spot on YouTube. As with most of Old Spice's recent commercials, this one is as random as it is hilarious. In the commercial, which you can watch above, Jennings is shown playing frisbee with his dog on a football field in an over-the-top cinematic victory scene. "When you use Old Spice Champion, it's like you're the star in a film about your own life," he says. Then we meet the man inside the dog costume who reveals that if you don't use the deodorant, you end up being a bit actor in someone else's movie. The advertisements were developed by Wieden + Kennedy, the same agency that developed the Emmy-award winning "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" commercial for Old Spice, featuring Isaiah Mustafah as the Old Spice Guy. |
| Private Social Site Rootsy Lets You Connect With Your Family Tree | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 11:00 AM | Kate Freeman |
|  Name: Rootsy Quick Pitch: Share photos, invites and stories with family members only. Genius Idea: Rootsy lets you connect to family members on a private social network to share things that might be too personal to post on Facebook. Frustrated with existing social networks and over-sharing personal family moments, a group of seven entrepreneurs at tech incubator QLabs in New York City developed a site called Rootsy. Rootsy is a new social networking site that limits your connections to family members. So baby photos, reunion announcements and other information you might not want to share on Facebook can only be seen by select family members. "People have their Facebook personality and are trying to create an image for themselves," said one of the founders of Rootsy, Cezary Pietrzak. "We're going for higher-value type of content." Launched last Wednesday, Rootsy's founders said they wanted to create something to address the problem of the lack of privacy and intimacy with current social networking sites. Rootsy lets you build a digital family tree and contact those family members. Here's how it works: Add yourself the the family tree. Then you can add a spouse, sibling, parent or child. When you add this person to your digital tree, you can invite them to the network by entering their email address. Once they join, they can invite other family members to Rootsy, too and help your grow the tree, or you can add all the family members yourself. The person who starts the tree is the admin, but down the road Rootsy will add functionality for other people to manage the tree. And any family member can post or share something with the group. Users will receive notifications when major family events occur, and all this information is kept private. No one else outside your family tree can view what you post on Rootsy. The site doesn't allow syncing to Facebook or Twitter to prevent over-sharing personal details. Families can be complicated but Rootsy has built-in most of the members a person might want to include in their tree -- including someone with divorces, in-laws and same-sex spouses. It does not let you include step children or an ex spouse for yourself (it does let you include exes of people higher in your family tree). You can also branch out to your second cousin.
The site is free to use. Pietrzak said if they do ever charge users for features on Rootsy, it will be in conjunction with partnership -- something like printing photos or other interesting brand integrations, so long as it's not interruptive. Pietrzak tells Mashable they don't want to be the next Ancestry.com, but if users begin to ask questions about their ancestry, they'll consider a partnership. The site wants to focus on the intimate social networking aspect rather than researching family members. (Path, founded in 2010, is another a social network that limits users' friends to 150 people. Its creators also wanted a more personal social network than Facebook.) Rootsy was developed by the QLabs tech incubator, backed by AOL, in Noho, New York. Would you use Rootsy? Tell us in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, monkeybusinessimages |
| Coca-Cola Is First Retail Brand to Pass 50 Million Facebook Fans | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 10:11 AM | Seth Fiegerman |
| 
Coca-Cola passed 50 million fans on Facebook shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to a spokesperson for the company. Several celebrities like Rihanna and Lady Gaga have more more than 50 million Facebook fans, as do services like YouTube and Facebook, but Coca-Cola is the first retail brand to hit this milestone. Disney, Converse and Starbucks, three of the other most popular retail brands, each have fewer than 40 million fans on Facebook at the moment. To celebrate crossing such a major threshold, Coca-Cola launched a new application on its Facebook page. The app encourages fans to submit ideas for inventions and causes that this online community of 50 million can turn its energy towards to improve the world. Coca-Cola will ultimately provide support for one of these ideas and unveil the finished result sometime next year. SEE ALSO: How Much Did Famous Logos Like Coke's Cost to Design? "Throughout its history Coca-Cola has always had a role in bringing simple moments of happiness to people around the world every day," said Joe Tripodi, Coca-Cola's chief marketing and commercial leadership officer, in a press release. "Today we have an engaged global community more than 50 million strong connected through Facebook. This provides an opportunity to engage our most supportive and enthusiastic fans in a quest to find ways to make the world a happier place." Photo courtesy of iStockphotot_kimura, Mashable composite. |
| Amazon Inks Deal to Double Its Instant Movie Selection | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:16 AM | Seth Fiegerman |
| 
Watch out, Netflix. Amazon has signed a multi-year movie streaming deal with Epix, an entertainment channel that partners with several major movie studios, that will double the selection of streaming movies for Amazon Prime members. Epix is a joint venture of Paramount, Viacom, MGM and Lionsgate, which streams thousands of recent releases online, including popular titles like The Avengers, The Hunger Games and Iron Man 2. Netflix entered into an exclusive video streaming partnership with Epix in 2010, but that deal expired this month, opening up the door for Amazon. "We are investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the Prime Instant Video library for our customers," said Bill Carr, Vice President of Video and Music at Amazon in a press release. "We have now more than doubled this selection of movies and TV episodes to over 25,000 titles in just under a year." Earlier this year, Amazon struck another big deal with Warner Brothers to stream some big-name TV shows like The West Wing and Fringe. These deals should make the service more competitive with Netflix. Amazon Prime costs $79 per year, while Netflix streaming starts at $7.99 a month (or about $96 per year.) Perhaps just as importantly, these streaming deals will serve as a strong selling point for the next generation Kindle Fire tablets, which are expected to be released later this week. Photo courtesy of Flickr, Horia Varlan |
| 4 Ways to Budget Your Business Like a Pro | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 8:35 AM | Dani Fankhauser |
|  Nobody likes to talk about budgeting. Even more, budgeting is sort of a drag to do -- but all can agree it's incredibly important. A few companies have launched software to make budgeting faster and easier. Plus, options for interaction with fellow entrepreneurs on sites like Twitter and Quora enables relevant feedback so you don't pay excessive amounts for a service you don't need. Read on to discover a few ways you can manage your company's spectrum of debits and credits without too much stress. 1. Use Software If Excel spreadsheets, paper receipts and data entry don't match your cloud storage lifestyle, you're in luck: Many entrepreneurs felt the same and a few decided to create an app that would turn their dream version of budgeting into reality. inDinero is like Mint for small businesses and offers a deep feature set for keeping your transactions in check. You can connect bank accounts to view all of your cash flow in one place, as well as set categories, which inDinero will bucket transactions into automatically. If you're looking to solve a more specific problem in your workflow, there are niche finance solutions as well. Xpenser is a platform specifically for expense reports, with apps on iPhone, Android and Windows. FreshBooks is for invoices, and while it's especially useful for freelancers and the self-employed, it's also been used effectively by teams. Apps like these will help to visualize cash flow, something that's difficult to get a handle on with multiple accounts and payments that are set on automatic. "So much of entrepreneurship is future-focused," says Derek Flanzraich, founder of Greatist. "Especially in terms of funding and revenue generation -- it's tough sometimes to remember you need enough money in the bank today." 2. Hire Outside Help When you're bootstrapping, you'll want to take extra care when deciding what tasks to outsource -- because, if you can do it yourself, why pay someone? For Melani Gordon, founder of Taphunter, bookkeeping was one task that was just too time consuming to fulfill in-house. For Taphunter, Gordon hired a CPA separate from her bookkeeper. She's found this to be more affordable, but don't forget that you'll take on an extra task -- making sure these two people are communicating with each other. The third piece of the financial equation for Taphunter required finding a financial expert to act in an advising role. "The bookkeeper or CPA doesn't have the pulse on the startup world, so we had to go out and hunt for this type of person to help with our financial modeling," Gordon explained. The financial expert offered specialized expertise to nail down its cost of acquisition -- which Gordon says is a moving target in the beginning, when there's little data to go on. Drilling down on the ROI of sales staff and/or marketing is included here. 3. Ask Around Money is a touchy issue, but remember it's often easier to be transparent about how much you're paying for a service during in-person conversations. So, next time you're at an event or getting coffee with other entrepreneurs, ask if they don't mind sharing how much they pay in fees for something you're looking to buy. Flanzraich also found Quora to be helpful in answering questions, especially generics such as "How much is too much to pay for ... ?" Even though each industry and region is unique, it helps to get a general idea so you know you're not getting robbed -- especially while your company is young. Every small business is different. State taxes will vary, and due dates won't be consistent. Even though the web is filled with how-to explainers and guides on budgeting, you won't know how your business is different until you get started. "Especially for companies in which most employees are under 26, health insurance costs can vary like crazy," says Flanzraich. 4. Overestimate Monthly Burn Is it better to be safe than sorry? Probably. Most of your expenses are predictable. Office expenses -- including desk, phone, furniture, computer, and if your company employs salespeople, travel, entertainment, gas, mileage -- are commonly divided up by headcount. "We've seen us and entrepreneurs around us underestimate month-to-month travel, entertainment and office expenses," says Gordon. One lesson learned was to stagger hires over a period of time, which will reduce monthly burn. And, in the vein of preparing for the worst, consider unfortunate things like parking tickets and high gas prices, if employees (or you) will be doing business travel on the company's dime. Budget success, as most will agree, is not necessarily hitting the nail on the head with what your expenses end up being. It's setting yourself up for the least money-related stress possible. There's enough to worry about with product, recruitment, PR and more -- don't let that unexpected debit put you in the red. Make sure there's room for a few untimely expenses and if they're avoided after all, you've got extra cash. What steps do you take to budget more effectively? Let us know in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Hiob |
| Will Streaming Music Ever Be Profitable? | | Tuesday, September 04, 2012 7:49 AM | Matt Silverman |
|  Think of nearly any song and pull it up instantly on Spotify. Can't get enough rockabilly in your life? Create a dedicated radio station on Pandora. In a streaming world, the era of music ownership is over. Or is it? Despite their increasing popularity, these services are hemmoraging cash in the face of tough license agreements and mounting content acquisition costs. In truth, we're still in a period of transition. People are consuming more streaming media than ever, but record labels, movie studios and TV networks are still figuring out how to license it profitably. We hold out hope they'll get it right, and that great apps like Pandora and Spotify live to tell the tale of how they got into the black. For now, we can only gape at these disturbing numbers, charted for us by Statista.com. Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Andreas Blixt |
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