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| New Social Network Connects Travelers with Destinations, Experts | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 11:10 PM | Veena Bissram |
|  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: Touristlink Quick Pitch: Touristlink is a social network for travelers. Genius Idea: Social platform allows travelers to meet others, discover new destinations and connect with experts. Many turn to friends and family for advice and recommendations when traveling to a new destination. But now you can find all the travel information you need through a new social network called Touristlink, which allows travelers to not only meet and connect with other travelers around the world but also get answers from experts. "Touristlink is a way to communicate with other travelers and travel experts," Dr. David Urmann, CEO of Touristlink, told Mashable. "Right now, no other site gives users a means to communicate with them." By signing up for Touristlink through Facebook or on the site directly, members can create lists of their favorite destinations and share with friends, suggest new attractions for other travelers and post photos of cities they've traveled to in the past. Touristlink also provides a list of the top attractions in any city based on member rankings and reviews to help users discover new attractions and hot spots. To ensure all travel needs are met, Touristlink gives its users full access to its network of local tour guides, travel agencies, city tours, hotel owners and private rentals. If you need any help such as finding a luxury hotel situated on a beach, booking a day tour to Mount Everest or scheduling an airport pickup, just post your request and you'll receive multiple offers from travel experts. Then, you can choose the deal that is best for you. Touristlink screens each travel expert to confirm their identity before allowing them into the system. Each expert is ranked based on their cheapest rates, services and how active they are. "The main difference between Touristlink and other travel sites is that we put users in touch with real people," says Urmann. "Users can ask questions to guides and hotel owners, they can add them as friends and develop a relationship with them." The site is free to use, but it adds a 10% service fee when you book anything through the site. For example, if you book a car service to pick you up at the airport and it costs $50, Touristlink will add the small fee. Touristlink is currently in public beta and has 1,500 registered members. The site will officially launch in May. Image courtesy of iStock, Maica 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. |
| Reddit Gets 2 Billion Impressions in December, Leaving Digg in the Dust | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 5:30 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Reddit raked in more than 2 billion pageviews in December, double the amount the site posted the year before The network also disclosed that it got close to 35 million unique visitors for the period, meaning the average user viewed about 13 pages per visit. The average time on site for Reddit was 16 minutes. That also averages to 100 million monthly pageviews per Reddit employee. Reddit broke the 1 billion pageview barrier last February. Reddit, a unit of Advance Publications (also the owner of Conde Nast) has been growing fast since 2010, when its longtime rival, Digg, imploded as many former fans rejected the site's introduction of Version 4 in August of that year. Reddit appears to have eclipsed Digg in traffic in April 2011, but now Reddit's traffic is more than twice that of Digg's. A Digg rep says that the site got 14.1 million uniques in December, which is typically a slow month. The average is around 16 million or 17 million, she says. In its post, Reddit also made a point of underscoring how little it relied on search, Facebook and Twitter. The company claims it "doesn't know anything" about SEO and doesn't link to its Facebook and Twitter accounts, according to the post. What do you think? Are you a Reddit fan or do you wonder what all the fuss is about? Sound off in the comments. |
| NewsRight: a Game Changer for Online Journalism? | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 5:16 PM | Zoe Fox |
|  The Associated Press, The New York Times Co., The Washington Post Co. and several other news organizations banded together Thursday to launch a new company called NewsRight. Its goal: let news orgs see how widely their original reporting is being spread, and let them easily license content to interested partners. Following three years of planning, NewsRight's industry reach is already substantial. It has 29 co-investors and 30 additional participating companies, representing more than 800 web sites of U.S. newspapers. David Westin, former ABC News president and NewsRight's founding CEO, hopes the company will help sustain original content production. NewsRight's News Registry platform tracks websites, blogs and other Internet aggregators to measure the spread of its participants' content. "NewsRight is designed to address an issue in the marketplace of an increased appetite for news but some real challenges to supply," Westin told Mashable. "There is a flaw in the business model right now. Value is not going to those who pay, and we want to correct the imbalance." The company provides publishers with strings of HTML code to insert in their stories' headlines and text, so they can track the spread of each piece of their content. The encoded stories report to the registry, showing where and when a story is reblogged and read. SEE ALSO: 6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011 Though Westin hopes NewsRight will help correct the broken business model in the new industry, NewsRight does not tell its publisher partners what to do with its information. Publications can chose if they would like to do nothing, believing their contents' aggregation promotes their brand, seek licensing fees individually or join with other participants to obtain licensing through NewsRight. Do you think NewsRight can bring extra revenue to a depleted media industry? Let us know in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, fotosipsak |
| NYC Mayor Bloomberg Vows to Learn Code in 2012 | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 3:43 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  More than 170,000 people have signed up for Codecademy's challenge to learn how to code in 2012, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is one of them. The challenge, Code Year, was launched by New York-based startup Codecademy on Sunday and quickly took off as Twitter and Facebook users adopted it as their New Years resolution. Codecademy turns learning JavaScript into an interactive game. Anybody who signs up for Code Year will receive one of these programming lessons each week in their email inbox. Mayor Bloomberg tweeted on Thursday afternoon that he had signed up for the challenge. SEE ALSO: Codecademy Signs Up 97,000 People for Its New Year's Resolution Coding Class "I think it just goes to show the importance of what we're doing - and the growing emphasis NYC is putting on technology," Codecademy co-founder Zach Sims tells Mashable. "It's too awesome for words." Bloomberg has taken a large interest in the New York technology scene, showing up everywhere from TechStars demo day to a Facebook press event. It's not a surprise that he also showed up when a NYC startup signed up 170,000 people for a tech challenge in less than a week. Who knows? After he finishes the course, maybe he'll start attending hackathons, too.
Photo courtesy of NYC.org, Kristen Artz |
| This Online Coding Contest Could Get You a Job Interview With Facebook, Apple and Amazon | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 3:16 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  How is this for a gauge of how desperately technology companies are seeking programmers? Over the weekend, any coder can audition for jobs at companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Groupon and Apple simultaneously -- without changing out of their pajamas. Programmer database startup Interviewstreet is hosting an online coding challenge called CodeSprint beginning Friday, and 75 technology companies will be looking for employment candidates on its leaderboard. Coders who sign up for the challenge will receive an email on Friday evening when a set of programming problems becomes available. As they solve problems throughout the weekend, they will earn points and can see how they stack up against other participants. After the challenge ends on Sunday night, the participating companies will have the opportunity to contact specific candidates for job interviews based on their performance. Questions will include basic programming challenges as well as real-world problems. A practice problem in the latter category, for instance, asks users to create a program that finds what time of day any Twitter user tweets most often. Some companies, including Groupon, have created problems that are relevant to their own engineering challenges. In all cases, better code that works faster will earn more points. This is the second time that Interviewstreet has hosted a coding challenge. The first event, in October, only admitted students at select universities, resulting in 140 job interviews. This upcoming challenge will allow anyone with Internet access to participate. Interviewstreet is not conducting virtual employment hackathons out of sympathy for unemployed computer scientists (of which there are few). Coding challenges are core to its business, which catalogs programmers based on skills they have proved themselves in. When an employer hires a coder it finds on the site, or through a CodeSprint challenge, they pay the startup $10,000. Are you participating in the CodeSprint challenge? Let us know in the comments below. |
| 4 Online Secrets for Getting Amazing Flight Deals | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 2:25 PM | Samantha Murphy |
|  The best time to travel each year is during January and February, as flight prices plummet after the holiday season when consumers try to cut back on spending. So for those not burnt out from holiday travel and can spare some extra change, the Internet is bursting with great flight deals. "People are spent and traveled out, and there aren't as many destinations that are desirable for mid-winter travel since a lot of the bigger cities in the U.S. are experiencing colder weather, such as Boston, Chicago and even Atlanta," George Hobica, founder of AirfareWatchdog, told Mashable. "Airfares are always lowered from about now until Mid-February, when the school vacations start up - with the exception of some higher fares around Martin Luther King weekend." 1. Look for Airline Tweets A low fare could pop up at any minute of the day or week, so shop around, follow tweets -- because the best deals, even if they're good for travel over a long period, last only a few hours -- and be prepared to go wherever it's cheap rather than where you can't afford, Hobica advises. 2. Sign Up for Alerts First, sign up for AirFareWatchDog's fare alerts and email newsletter that sends cheap flight deals based on your home airport. Most domestic deals are under or around $200 - and some right now are so low, it's mind-boggling. A roundtrip trip to Chicago from New York, for example, could cost as little as $54 and you'll find airfare to Florida for less than $100. In addition, non-stop, round-trip flights from New York to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines are unusually inexpensive ($565), including taxes, and that fare has been steady for a few months. Other popular deals include a non-stop roundtrip flight to Liberia, Costa Rica under $400, taxes included, on JetBlue's new service route.' 3. Let Web Sites Do Your Legwork Another site worth checking out is SkyScanner, which is perfect for flexible travelers. By typing "everywhere" into the destination search and selecting when you want to travel, the site reveals the cheapest options out there - from New York, fares to the Caribbean right now are under $300 and there's even an option to Ireland in the $400 range. Kayak also lets you search "everywhere" through its Explore feature, which shows on a map the prices to fly to certain destinations. 4. Know When -- Exactly -- to Buy While searching for deals, remember that traveling on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday are the cheapest days to fly, while Friday and Sunday are the busiest travel days and the most expensive. The most cost-efficient time to fly is also first thing in the morning and red-eyes, according to FareCompare.com, followed by lunch time and dinner-hour flights. The best time to purchase an airline ticket, however, is Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET, as discounted flights hit the sites. Most of these specials are pulled by Thursday, FareCompare said. The deals are good, but not the best ever. Rock-bottom airfare is actually slightly higher this time of year than it's been in the past, according to Hobica. For example, a standard roundtrip fare from New York to Los Angeles this time of year usually costs about $198, but it's priced at $238 now. Even so, the route is significantly less expensive than it was just a few weeks ago during the busy holiday-travel season when it inched close to $500. International airfare is also more pricy thanks to mergers and less seat availability. "Airlines are getting better at making use of their planes when they can to make the most money - some such as Delta were flying domestic routes usually reserved for 757 aircraft with larger 767 planes reserved for Europe," Hobica said. "Since European traffic was soft and certain domestic routes were strong, it made sense for them to take this approach but it cuts back on seat availability for the European travel and doesn't help the price." But all is not lost. You can still get great deals now and all year round by putting in a little time (and using a little strategy) to get what you want. Check out some other tips from AirfareWatchDog on how to find cheap airfare in the gallery below. |
| A Brief History of Kodak, American Tech Icon | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 2:07 PM | Amy-Mae Elliott |
|  A brand name that has come to define a photogenic moment, Kodak made the once expensive and complicated hobby of photography accessible and affordable to the common man. From the late 1800s to the 1980s, Kodak dominated the consumer photography market -- an innovative and admirable icon of American industry. It has won Emmys and Academy Awards, sent cameras into space and is credited with creating the digital camera. With the sad news that the company is now struggling to stay afloat, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the consumer history of Kodak, a firm that once represented the American dream, but who's future looks like a nightmare. Thumbnail image courtesy of Joost J. Bakker |
| How 4 Business Students Took on the Eyewear Industry [VIDEO] | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 1:52 PM | Mashable Video |
|  When four friends met in business school and discovered they shared a common problem -- an aversion to paying hundreds of dollars for eyeglasses -- they realized there was a business opportunity in it. The group founded Warby Parker, an innovative startup that aims to revolutionize how people buy eyeglasses. Warby sells directly to the public, via their website, allowing them to bypass retailers and sell their frames and lenses for $95. Check out our interview with Dave Gilboa, Warby Parker's CEO and learn how the company is disrupting the eyewear industry, similar to the way How a First-Time Entrepreneur Built a Top-Grossing iPad App |
| How to Design an Ecommerce Site to Maximize Sales | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 11:14 AM | Daniel Alves |
|  Daniel Alves is the design director for the small business web design division at the digital marketing and web design company 352 Media Group. If you read the business news that followed Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you would remember that this year's online holiday shopping season was predicted to be the biggest in history. Many reported that online sales were up a whopping 16% compared to 2010. However, despite these impressive trends, ecommerce websites only convert 1-4% of their leads, on average. On the other hand, some of the best ecommerce websites convert upward of 15% of their visitors. So how do they do it? While there are many factors that go into creating conversions, one thing is certain: Great ecommerce websites successfully connect a user to a product with a system that is efficient, easy and fun. When designing your ecommerce website, keep in mind there are three basic steps in an online shopping experience. First, a user must find the product she wants. Second, you must showcase the product well. Third, you need to seal the deal with a seamless checkout process. Read on for more details. 1. Finding the Product Believe it or not, the biggest reason why a shopper won't buy something on a given website is not due to its price, your customer service, or a lack of buyer's intent. Surprisingly, the biggest reason ecommerce websites fail is because shoppers can't find what they are looking for. So, why is it so hard for websites to guide users to their desired products? The key to understanding this phenomenon is understanding your users. Great web design has the ability to cater to different user needs in a unified user interface. For the users who know exactly what they are looking for, your job is to help them find their desired product in as few steps as possible. Some users might need more hand-holding, while others just want to casually browse. Each type of shopper presents unique challenges, as well as unique opportunities. The Power Shopper: Power Shoppers know exactly what they want, have sophisticated shopping strategies, and don't want to waste time casually perusing your website. For these shoppers, your first priority is to provide them with an awesome search bar so they can type exactly what they want. In terms of design, you want to make sure your search bar is large and presented with enough contrast so it's easily visible. Per conventions, place it in the top-right of your website and make sure it is consistent across the entire website. As for functionality, it's pretty much expected that your search bar should provide suggestions as you type. This allows your shoppers to type a few characters and be presented with potential choices, without having to type out the product's entire name. This auto-complete feature can also be leveraged to cross-market products related to the product users are looking for. If you do include these suggestions, make sure to clearly label them as suggestions, not actual results of the search. The Recreational Shopper: If you're not a recreational shopper, you probably know one. This type of shopper would prefer to spend an entire afternoon at the mall casually exploring any store that piques his curiosity. They don't see shopping as a means to an end; they're shopping for the experience. While these shoppers are more likely to jump ship and not purchase from you, they provide an incredible opportunity, due to their tendency to be more adventurous and impulsive in their shopping habits. Because these shoppers respond to visual cues, you need to wow them with dynamite photography, featured item showcases, unbeatable deals and the occasional unique surprise. Don't worry, you don't have to blow your marketing budget with a tricked out homepage to lure in shoppers. In fact, some of the best ecommerce websites accomplish an eye-catching and entertaining storefront with simple and creative techniques. A popular women's clothing website, Free People, shows off a traditional model spread, but presents a simple, unique twist when you move your mouse over one of the images. The Reluctant Shopper: This type of shopper is generally uncomfortable and nervous about shopping online. She is typically less tech-savvy and needs more guidance throughout the entire shopping experience. One of her biggest concerns is privacy and security; therefore, she responds well to promising statements of trust and customer service. Because online shoppers cannot physically touch the item they are buying, promoting return and refund policies greatly increases the likelihood they will do business with you. For finding products, these shoppers benefit greatly from gift guides or "Shopping Wizards:" The customer answers a few pre-qualifying questions, and the site provides suggestions that suit her particular needs. 2. Showcasing the Product Once a shopper zeroes-in on a product, the conversion clock starts ticking. Your number-one goal at this point is to get the user to add the item to his shopping cart. While there are several different ways to arrange a product detail page, several important components will help retain shopper interest and make him more likely to commit to a purchase. Photos: Humans are visual creatures and high-quality photography is the key to showcasing your product. If you can only give them one photo, make sure the product has a distraction-free, neutral-colored background. If you do show your product in a lifestyle-oriented setting, make sure the product is overtly emphasized, so as not to confuse the shopper and take attention away from the product. If your design doesn't allow you to display the photo at such a large size, make sure you give shoppers the option to view the photo in a modal window. Don't offer them a zoom tool that limits them to a small quadrant of the photo. There's no reason to not display a large photo in its entirety. Price: Price is perhaps the biggest reason why a shopper will abandon your website and look elsewhere. While determining prices is outside the scope of this article, you can do a few things to help sweeten the deal. First, display the price boldly and clearly. Don't make users register or add the item to their carts before showing them the price. This will certainly annoy users and cause them to leave in droves. If your price is discounted from the suggested retail price, show them the discount because everybody likes to know you are giving them a deal. Reviews: Social influences have a profound effect on our shopping behaviors. You can tout the virtues of your product with fancy and elaborate prose, but shoppers won't believe one word of it until it's been confirmed by an independent customer. While positive reviews will motivate users to take the plunge and purchase an item, negative reviews give you a unique opportunity to either make product changes or respond to customer concerns publicly. This open and proactive approach to giving and receiving feedback ultimately gives your website more credibility, which translates into loyal customers and repeat sales. Add to Cart: Because your call-to-action entices the user to click on the "Add to Cart" button, you must give plenty of attention to optimizing it for conversions. Try the following tips to increase your conversion rate. Use the words "Add to Cart." This may seem like a no-brainer, but shoppers can either be apprehensive about the commitment of "Buy Now" or confused when they see "Add to Bag." The convention of the words "Add to Cart" is non-committal, and leaves them comfortable to keep on shopping. It's your most important button, so don't hide it. Use bold colors that contrast well with your design and attract attention. Try choosing a color that is not used anywhere else in the design to really set it apart. By making the button plainly visible, shoppers won't have to wonder how to add items to their shopping carts. Any time spent searching for the "Add to Cart" button is time in which the shopper will reconsider her motivation to purchase. When your shopper clicks on the "Add to Cart" button, make sure to show her some indication that the item has been added to the cart. Don't take her to the shopping cart. If you take her away from the product page and force her to the shopping cart, you lose the opportunity to cross-sell, and the user will be less likely to keep shopping. Related Products:Offering shoppers suggestions gives you the opportunity to feature items they wouldn't have stumbled upon otherwise. Some shoppers might not be savvy in searching, but are more likely to wander through your website based on the suggestions they receive. Because the biggest reason for a lack of conversion on ecommerce websites is not being able to find the desired product, this feature gives you the unique opportunity to customize the products your customers see based on their browsing history. Deals: Without a doubt, shoppers are responsive to deals and promotions, and the king of all deals is free shipping. Marketing guru Seth Godin dedicated a whole chapter of his book Free Prize Inside! to Amazon's success with its free shipping model. In order to offer this and still make a profit, make a minimum purchase amount, but don't make it too high. A minimum purchase amount will encourage shoppers to spend a little bit more just to get free shipping. 3. Sealing the Deal So, you've gotten your shopper to add a cornucopia of products to his shopping cart, but it's not time to break out the bubbly yet. One of the biggest hurdles a shopper must overcome is the often plagued and cumbersome checkout process, beautifully portrayed in this video. While shopping is fun, spending money isn't. Your job is to get customers through the payment as quickly and painlessly as possible. I'll offer some helpful tips. One-page checkouts increase conversions. Long forms with many steps require the browser to load a new page, proving detrimental to a shopper's patience. One A/B Split Test study determined an improvement of more than 20% when users were able to checkout with one click of the submit button. Provide instant chat. A study by BoldChat found that 76% of shoppers want to have instant access to a customer service rep during the checkout process. Instant chat not only lets you help your users with technical problems, but it also allows you to encourage them to complete their order. Follow up. If you've been keen enough to capture a customer's email address in the first steps of the checkout process, you have a unique ability to recover a lost sale if she decides to jump ship. Don't require registration. A Forrester Research study found that requiring users to register before checking out decreases ecommerce conversions by a staggering 23%. While registering users is a great tool for identifying repeat shoppers and making the checkout process more streamlined, make this an optional step. Also, consider using Facebook Connect or other social media sign-in widgets. These tools allow shoppers to register with your site without having to create a unique account. Use cookies. A cookie is a small amount of information a website puts in a user's web browser so that it can remember something about him/her at a later time. You can leverage this simple tool to remember a user's shopping cart or shopping history, so when they do visit your website again, they can pick up where they left off. Selling online is as much an art as it is a science. You need the creative prowess of both a marketing and design genius to attract customers, and the keen eye of a usability guru to make conversions happen. However, implementing the suggestions provided above should help increase your conversion rate, and lead to happy and satisfied customers. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarsBars |
| Barnes & Noble Considers Spinning Off Nook Business Amidst Record Sales | | Thursday, January 05, 2012 10:12 AM | Stan Schroeder |
|  Barnes & Noble's Nook family of tablets experienced record sales during the nine-week holiday period at the end of 2011, the company announced. Color tablets Nook Color and Nook Tablet sold especially well, while the black and white Nook Simple Touch underperformed, Barnes & Noble says. The company expects the digital content sales for 2012 to be around $450 million, with the annualized forecast between $700 million and $750 million. Overall, the device and content sales were so good that the company is considering spinning off the Nook business altogether. "We see substantial value in what we've built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it's the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value," said CEO William Lynch. Of course, the fact that Barnes & Noble is exploring this option doesn't necessarily mean it will ever happen, but with Nook growing to a $1.5 billion business this fiscal year, it might be the right time to turn it into a separate business entity. The company also said it is in discussions with strategic partners to expand the Nook business internationally. Barnes & Noble's chief competitor, Amazon, also recently reported great sales of its Kindle family of ereaders and tablets. Amazon sold more than 4 million Kindles during the holidays, making it the best holiday ever for the Kindle family of products. |
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