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| YouTube's 20 Most-Shared Ads in March [VIDEOS] | |  YouTube has revolutionized advertising, that's for sure. Nowadays ads can be long-form, interactive and often film-like. The platform adds a valuable social element to the experience, as well. That's how we're able to determine YouTube's most-shared ads, by month. March's list was quite diverse. You'll find some tear-jerkers, and lots of special effects. During certain ads, you'll giggle; during others, you'll stare at the computer screen shocked and gape-mouthed. SEE ALSO: April Fools' Day Classics: Top 10 Viral Pranks on YouTube Our friends at Unruly Media compiled a list of the 20 most-shared YouTube ads for the month of March. Each one is guaranteed share-worthy. Are there any that surprise you? Let us know in the comments. |
| Social Network Built for Apartment Dwellers is a Renter's Dream | |  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: RentSocial Quick Pitch: RentSocial is a new social platform aiming to makeover the apartment hunt process. RentSocial wants to make the search for rental space more social before and after you move in. Genius Idea: Share what you love about prospective properties directly from RentSocial onto Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest. RentSocial is a social platform for individuals looking for apartments. On the website, people can directly connect with property management firms and share details about their future homes. "It's a completely disruptive model where we allow property management companies to cater directly towards prospective renters," Eric Broughton, president of RentSocial told Mashable. "The genesis of RentSocial, or why we wanted to build the platform, is we saw a great need in the marketplace." RentSocial appeals to the connected generation who like to share aspects of their lives with friends and family, which is important in the decision making process. According to Broughton, there are more than 100 million apartment renters in the United States, with about 53 million of them 30 years old and younger. RentSocial hopes to change the way people are looking for apartments. The website has listings showing complete profiles of properties including photos, floor plans, price ranges and more. Directly pin floor plans onto Pinterest or post pictures onto Facebook. Get help deciding your next apartment from your family and friends. In other industries, customers expect a ton of information about products they are looking at buying including cars, iTunes music and various items Amazon, but are not particularly concerned about reviews when it comes to homes. The co-founders of RentSocial wanted to bring this model of fluid reviews, open communication and sharing to apartment rentals. There's data about business centers, child care, door attendants, saunas, Internet, garages and lease terms for each property listing. Reviews are written by approved residents who live or have lived in a building. The property comparison feature lines-up up to 10 apartments, so you can compare amenities. "Instead of going to a listings site, then a review site, and then an email to share info, it's all on one platform. There are ratings and reviews all there and they can see a voice of the property," Broughton says. "Find a property, say you are interested in it and it goes directly to the property management company, it doesn't have to go to a broker." RentSocial is free to all rental hunters as a web app. The creators of RentSocial say the mobile application will be out in a few weeks on iOS and Android markets. The app is available for all 50 states. There are more than 5,000 apartment buildings available users can view on the site and more than 1.5 million apartment units on the network. The social platform isn't just for apartment hunters but aims to help renters after they have found their perfect apartment. Consumers will be able to pay rent directly on the network with a rent program facilitated by RentPayment.com. Plus, connect with approved neighbors on the social network to schedule get-togethers or ask for a cup of sugar. "The greatest innovative we have is the solution we are providing," said Andy Hamilton, CTO of RentSocial. "We are innovative in that we looked at what we felt is missing from an apartment dweller's experience. Not only when they are looking for apartments, but when they are living in apartments." The social network is driven by the ability to use major social networks within this one platform tailored for renters. Image courtesy of Flickr, Alex Dram 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. |
| 4 Facebook Features Marketers Can't Afford to Ignore | | Monday, April 02, 2012 10:13 PM | Justyn Howard |
|  Justyn Howard is the CEO of Sprout Social, a social media management platform that empowers leading companies to effectively manage their social channels. Follow him on Twitter @justyn and read his blog at SproutInsights. If you have a brand or a business to market chances are you're using a social media management application to monitor online mentions, schedule updates, and generate reports. But if you really want to be an effective marketer, you need to develop a deeper understanding of which networks are most vital to your company, and what network features are key. In Facebook's case, we're talking about some powerful community management components that are unmatched by its competitors, and often overlooked by marketing pros. Here are the four that simply can't be ignored. SEE ALSO: 3 Reasons Facebook Brand Pages Are Good for Businesses 1. Activity Log Facebook's activity log is like a Facebook Timeline for every interaction that fans have with your page. It also includes updates you've made, like comments or Facebook Questions. What makes this tool unique and powerful is that it offers an archive of your Facebook interactions that you can review at any time. This is useful for tracking how well you're following up and engaging with fans, and what kind of feedback you're getting from them during specific events. 2. Demographic Targeting The manage tab in Facebook Page's Admin Panel allows you to publish updates to specific demographic groups. The feature isn't as robust as it should be, but it lets you reach out to people who, for example, speak a certain language. This is useful if your page serves audiences in different countries. Netflix is a prime example. Due to the nature of its content licensing deals, the site offers different movie and TV-show libraries in the United States than it does in Canada. If the Netflix page administrator wants to announce a new movie that's only available in one country, he or she can hide that update from fans in the other. Other options include making a post completely invisible to people outside of a certain location, or to people under a certain age. 3.Twitter Linking Cross-promoting between social networks is a critical component of any social media marketing strategy. Facebook recognizes this, which is why it offers the ability to link your Facebook page to Twitter for the purpose of publishing updates to both sites. The one caveat is that the implementation here is slanted pretty heavily towards promoting Facebook. This means tweets that originate from your Facebook page always have a link back to Facebook. If that's not your thing, you can supplement with a third-party tool. 4. Smart Moderation You probably already know how to moderate individual comments on Facebook, but you can also dive into your Facebook Page's settings and add specific terms you want to automatically block. While it's better to allow open conversation on your Facebook page - customers don't like to be censored - there will be specific situations that call for more control. This tool will give you that. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, courtneyk |
| SpinLister Creates Online Hub for Bike Rentals in NYC, SF | | Monday, April 02, 2012 9:54 PM | Joann Pan |
|  When it's 70 degrees out and the sun is beaming, you just might be in the mood for a day-long bike ride. Online bicycle renting hub SpinLister.com lets you do just that. SpinLister is an online startup that launched on April 1 in New York and San Francisco. Urbanites can rent a bicycle for a few hours, days or up to a couple of months -- for just a couple of dollars. The idea of the bike rental social network was developed when co-founders Will Dennis and Jeff Noh met in NYC at the General Electric/OMD startup incubator during the summer. "I knew I wanted to have a bike while I was in New York because it's my favorite way to get around," Dennis told Mashable. "I started looking into it and found that my only option was to buy and resell a bike. There wasn't anything like a long-term rental. Rentals were always short-term, expensive or not the bike I'm looking for." He posted his own bike on Craigslist and saw locals and tourists were interested in renting his bike for longer than a few hours. The wheels hit the ground and the idea took off from there. Bikers can now list their bikes on SpinLister, instead of stuffing it in a garage or paying for extra storage space. Simply state your location, specs of your mobile, ideal height for the bike and any extras you are willing to throw in with the deal -- helmet, lock, lights, etc. Listers decide how much the rental will go for. There are currently bikes on the website that priced at $1 to $30 per day. Individuals can also list per hour, week or monthly rates. SEE ALSO: How 4 Cities Are Deploying High-Tech Bike Sharing Programs SpinLister covers the insurance. The web community covers its platform, insurance, credit card and transaction costs by charging both the lister and renter 12.5% of the transaction cost. On the network, listers build profiles for themselves that are verified through Facebook or Twitter, which Dennis calls "good representations of online presence." The climate of social media plays a huge role in the formation of SpinLister, says the co-founder. As people allow themselves to show up online, it's easier for social networks of all kinds to take off. All transactions are made with credit cards in case of theft. Damaged bikes or injuries will be covered by the company's insurance. "A stranger in a town you've never been to, owning a bicycle you had no idea existed, is now someone you can see who has 600 friends on Facebook and 100 followers on Twitter," Dennis said. There are more than 1 billion bikes worldwide, Dennis said. SpinLister will work to foster this network of bikers who can share bikes while traveling. "I think there's an opportunity for people who are excited about bikes and recreation to really to share something," Dennis said. "What's cool about the cloud of consumption piece of SpinLister is you're not just bringing together people who have underused bikes, but people who are active, adventurous, who already have a specific interest in common." One of Dennis' favorite aspects of the website is the space where users can list where their favorite place to ride. "We think the largest bike rental system already exists," Dennis said. "We just need to connect it." SpinLister is working on building a mobile application and hopes to expand nationally soon. Currently there are many bikes to choose from in each city. SpinLister has also teamed up with San Francisco's Blazing Saddles and Bike and Roll in NYC to supply more rentals. Image courtesy of SpinLister |
| Gilt Groupe Samples Group Buying Model on Pinterest | | Monday, April 02, 2012 1:31 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  In the early days of daily deals, shoppers often had to band together in groups to "unlock" a deal. It was a strategy that proved effective in spreading awareness of those deals and the companies that offered them. But can the same idea work for Pinterest? Upscale flash sales site Gilt may learn the answer to that question shortly. The company is staging a "Pin it to Unlock" promotion for a toddler's party dress on its Gilt Kids Pinterest page Monday. If and when the image has been repinned 50 times -- it has been repinned 20 times as of writing -- shoppers will find a link to a hidden sale on Gilt where they can purchase the dress for $28, or 77% off the full retail price. The link will only be accessible through Pinterest. Although I'm not typically a fan of "repin to win"-style promotions, this may be an exception. The sense of urgency inherent in all Gilt sales makes it exciting, as does the need to band one's friends and followers together to cash in on the deal. I'd hate to see this strategy executed at volume, but for a one-off, it's clever. |
| Learning to Code? Codecademy Adds Beginner Languages HTML and CSS | | Monday, April 02, 2012 1:07 PM | Sarah Kessler |
|  Despite its promise to turn anyone into a computer programmer through interactive online tutorials -- and its more than 1 million registered users, including New York City Mayor Bloomberg -- Codecademy hasn't been equipped to teach the most basic languages until now. On Monday, the startup will launch tutorials for HTML and CSS, its first non-JavaScript courses to date. While JavaScript is used to build applications, HTML and CSS are the basic building blocks of webpages. New programmers typically learn how to use them before any other programming languages, and by including them on its site, Codecademy will become a more viable option for true beginners. the fundamental things you want to do when you're building a website," Codecademy co-founder Zach Sims tells Mashable. The site hasn't exactly had trouble attracting new users to its game-like lessons. More than 400,000 people, for instance, have signed up for its New Year's Resolution course alone. A bigger hurdle for the startup has been growing its content in pace with its user base. In January, the company announced a solution for this problem. A new teacher tool gives anybody the option to submit a lesson for the curriculum, thereby making Codecademy content curators rather than creators. Sims tells Mashable more than 2,000 lessons have been submitted, including those that compose new CSS and HTML curricula. User submissions will likely contribute to courses in other languages soon. are the first of many languages to roll out in the near future," Sims says. Codecademy's new HTML lessons show users how their code looks on a webpage without leaving the lesson page. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, nullplus |
| Pinterest Becomes Sales Driver for Major Home Goods Store | | Monday, April 02, 2012 12:39 PM | Lauren Indvik |
|  Pinterest isn't just driving record levels of traffic to the websites of retailers and publishers -- it's also driving sales, some early data indicates. Wayfair (formerly CSN Stores), the second largest home goods retailer by revenue, has found that Pinterest referrals are more likely to make a purchase and spend more on average than visitors from other social channels. Wayfair CEO Niraj Shah says that shoppers referred by Pinterest are more 10% more likely to make a purchase than visitors who arrive from other social networks, including Facebook and Twitter. They'll also spend 10% more on average. The statistics are in some respects even more impressive when non-social channels are added in. On average, Pinterest referrals spend 70% more than visitors referred from non-social channels, including search. They are not, however, as likely to make a purchase as those referred by other channels. Those statistics are averaged among Wayfair's three home goods websites: wayfair.com, allmodern.com and jossandmain.com, the latter of which is a daily deals site. Collectively, the three sites brought in $500 million in revenue last year. (Williams-Sonoma, the number one player in the category, posted revenues of $3.7 billion for fiscal 2011.) SEE ALSO: 5 Interesting Pinterest Marketing Campaigns Shah says Wayfair only began "getting active" on Pinterest at the beginning of the year, setting up its own Pinterest page with a mix of nearly 1,500 inspirational and product images. The company also hosted a "Pinterest challenge" in February, encouraging users to create pinboards with 15 to 20 Wayfair products for a chance at one of five $50 gift cards. When asked why he thinks Pinterest has proven a better sales channel than other social networks, Shah noted that Pinterest encourages people to collect images that inspire them, and that includes products. "Visual imagery drives inspiration, it's what makes you want to buy it," Shah said. "We sell thingsin the same way." Wayfair's numbers are certainly promising for both Pinterest and for other retailers, particularly in the apparel and home goods categories. Should conversions and average order rates continue to prove stronger than other social channels, the website will no doubt witness a sharp uptick in interest and investment from brands. BONUS: 15 of the most popular pictures on Pinterest |
| How to Be Creative: The Science of Genius | | Monday, April 02, 2012 12:26 PM | Josh Catone |
|  Bob Dylan. Ludwig van Beethoven. William Shakespeare. Steve Jobs. These are historical figures of staggering creative genius that we often think of as freaks of nature. That their creative talent is a God-given gift, or some biological mutation that only affects a handful of special people. But new research is beginning to shed light on the science behind creativity and imagination. As it turns out, anyone can be creative. "Creativity shouldn't be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn't be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other 'creative types.' The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code," writes Jonah Lehrer in his new book Imagine. In his book, Lehrer examines the inner workings of what we call imagination. He looks at the neuroscience behind sudden insights, how the brain solves different kinds of problems and which personal traits help foster creativity. He also shares how external forces factor into the creative process, how to design a workspace to enhance your chances of having an epiphany, why creativity tends to bubble up in certain places and how we can encourage our collective imaginations. Above all, though, the message of Lehrer's book is that creativity is not a super power. Anyone can be creative -- it just takes hard work. "We should aspire to excessive genius," says Lehrer, who took some time from his book tour to sit down with Mashable and answer a few questions about the mysteries of how we imagine. Q&A with Jonah Lehrer, Author of Imagine Can creativity really be taught? For sure. Creativity is not some gift of the gods. While there are going to be inevitable differences in raw talent -- human performance is a bell curve -- that doesn't mean we can't all learn to become more creative. The imagination can be improved. Yo-Yo Ma says his ideal state of creativity is "controlled craziness." How can we learn to harness that? What Yo-Yo Ma is referring to is the kind of creativity that occurs when we let ourselves go, allowing the mind to invent without worrying about what it's inventing. Such creative freedom has inspired some of the most famous works of modern culture, from John Coltrane's saxophone solos to Jackson Pollock's drip paintings. It's Miles Davis playing his trumpet in Kind of Blue -- most of the album was recorded on the very first take -- and Lenny Bruce inventing jokes at Carnegie Hall. It's also the kind of creativity that little kids constantly rely on, largely because they have no choice. Because parts of the brain associated with impulse control remain underdeveloped, they are unable to censor their imagination, to hold back their expression. This helps explain the truth in that great Picasso quote: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." "It turns out that that we can recover the creativity we've lost with time. We just have to pretend we're a little kid." And yet, there's some good evidence that we can recover the creativity we've lost with time, that we can learn to think again with the "controlled craziness" celebrated by Ma. Take this clever experiment, led by the psychologist Michael Robinson. He randomly assigned a few hundred undergraduates to two different groups. The first group was given the following instructions: "You are 7 years old, and school is canceled. You have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?" The second group was given the exact same instructions, except the first sentence was deleted. As a result, these students didn't imagine themselves as seven year olds. After writing for ten minutes, the subjects were then given various tests of creativity, such as trying to invent alternative uses for an old car tire, or listing all the things you could do with a brick. Interestingly, the students who imagined themselves as young kids scored far higher on the creative tasks, coming up with twice as many ideas as the control group. It turns out that that we can recover the creativity we've lost with time. We just have to pretend we're a little kid. I often feel like I have great ideas while taking a shower or just after waking up, which is normal, according to your research -- we're more receptive to insights when relaxed. But I have a terrible time remembering any of those great ideas. Do you have any tips for retaining those insights? How do we stay aware enough to remember what we come up with while daydreaming? I have the same problem! I wish there was a simple fix. But the unfortunate answer is that we need to practice. Productive daydreaming is an important skill, which is why people who daydream more (and can maintain awareness within the daydream) score much higher on tests of creativity. If it were up to me, we'd teach kids how to effectively mind-wander in school. How do you encourage fruitful collaboration in the workplace? When teams get too close they become too comfortable, and that stifles innovation, but when they're too far apart they don't work well together. How do you find the sweet spot? "The next time you're assembling a creative team, be sure to seek out the fresh voice." Look for your Stephen Sondheim. Let me explain. Brian Uzzi is a marvelous sociologist at Northwestern. He undertook an epic study of Broadway musicals, analyzing the collaborations behind thousands of productions. As you point out, he found that plays produced when people knew each other too well were more likely to fail at the box office and be panned by critics. But the same thing was true of teams that didn't know each other at all and hadn't formed crosscutting connections within the larger Broadway community. Instead, Uzzi found that there was a very narrow sweet spot of collaboration and that musicals within this sweet spot were three times more likely to succeed. (Three times!) Uzzi's favorite example of "intermediate Q"is West Side Story, one of the most successful Broadway musicals ever. In 1957, the play was seen as a radical departure from Broadway conventions, both for its focus on social problems and for its extended dance scenes. The concept was dreamed up by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents. They were all Broadway legends, which might make West Side Story look like a show with high Q. But the project also benefited from a crucial injection of unknown talent, as the established artists realized that they needed a fresh lyrical voice. After an extensive search, they chose a twenty-five-year-old lyricist who had never worked on a Broadway musical before. His name was Stephen Sondheim. So the next time you're assembling a creative team, be sure to seek out the fresh voice. Get a Sondheim in the room. Why doesn't brainstorming work? What should we do instead? I think the failure of brainstorming is inseparable from its allure, which is that it makes us feel good about ourselves. A group of people are put together in a room and told to free-associate, with no criticism allowed. (The assumption is that the imagination is meek and shy -- if it's worried about being criticized, it will clam up.) Before long, the whiteboard is filled with ideas. Everybody has contributed; nobody has been criticized. Alas, the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of these free-associations are superficial and that most brainstorming sessions actually inhibit the productivity of the group. We become less than the sum of our parts. However, in recent years, scientists have shown that group collaborations benefit from debate and dissent; it is the human friction that makes the sparks. (There's a reason why Steve Jobs always insisted that new ideas required "brutal honesty.") In fact, some studies suggest that encouraging debate and dissent can lead to a 40% increase in useful new ideas from the group. Why does failure seem to be such an important part of innovation? Because innovation is hard. If it were easy to invent an idea, that idea would already exist. Creative success is not about the avoidance of failure. It's about failing as fast as possible, going through endless iterations until the idea is perfect. What about Silicon Valley's creativity and innovation allowed it to overtake Route 128 as the tech center of America in the latter half of the last decade? It's a really interesting comparison, because if you time travel back to the 1960s, you never would have guessed that Silicon Valley would become the tech center of the world. (It was still mostly walnut and apricot farms.) Those Boston suburbs, meanwhile, were dense with engineering talent and technology firms. By 1970, the area bounded by Route 128 included six of the ten largest technology firms in the world, such as Digital Computer and Raytheon. The "Massachusetts Miracle" was underway. So what happened? The downfall of the Boston tech sector was caused by the very same features that, at least initially, seemed like such advantages. As Annalee Saxenian notes in her extremely insightful book Regional Advantage, the Route 128 area had been defined for decades by the presence of a few large firms. (At one point, Digital Equipment alone employed more than 120,000 people.) These companies were so large, in fact, that they were mostly self-sufficient. Digital Equipment didn't just make minicomputers -- it also made the microchips in its computers, and designed the software that ran on those microchips. (Gordon Bell, the vice-president in charge of research at Digital, described the company as "a large entity that operates as an island in the regional economy.") As a result, the Boston firms took secrecy very seriously -- a scientist at Digital wasn't allowed to talk about his work with a scientist at Wang, or to share notes with someone at Lotus. These companies strictly enforced non-disclosure agreements so that former employees couldn't work for competitors and prohibited their scientists from publishing peer-reviewed articles. This meant that, at Route 128 companies, information tended to flow vertically, as ideas and innovations were transferred within the firms. While this vertical system made it easier for Route 128 companies to protect their intellectual property, it also made them far less innovative. This is because the creativity of an urban area depends upon its ability to encourage the free-flow of information -- we need that knowledge spillover -- as all those people in the same zip code exchange ideas and work together. But this didn't happen around Route 128. Although the Boston area had a density of talent, the talent couldn't interact -- each firm was a private island. The end result was a stifling of innovation. The vertical culture of the Boston tech sector existed in stark contrast to the horizontal interactions of Silicon Valley. Because the California firms were small and fledgling, they often had to collaborate on projects and share engineers. This led to the formation of cross-cutting relationships, so that it wasn't uncommon for a scientist at Cisco to be friends with someone at Oracle, or for a co-founder of Intel to offer management advice to a young executive at Apple. Furthermore, these networks often led to high employee turnover, as people jumped from project to project. In the 1980s, the average tenure at a Silicon Valley company was less than two years. (It also helped that non-compete clauses were almost never enforced in California, thus freeing engineers and executives to quickly reenter the job market and work for competitors.) This meant that the industrial system of the San Jose area wasn't organized around individual firms. Instead, the region was defined by its professional networks, by groups of engineers trading knowledge with each other. And that's when new knowledge is made. You talk a lot about the benefits of cultural mixing -- how good ideas multiply when they're allowed to move freely and new perspectives are introduced. What legislative changes would encourage more of this? More immigrants! The numbers speak for themselves. According to the latest figures from the U.S. Patent Office, immigrants invent patents at double the rate of non-immigrants, which is why a 1% increase in immigrants with college degrees leads to a 15% rise in patent production. (In recent years, immigrant inventors have contributed to more than a quarter of all U.S. global patent applications.) These new citizens also start companies at an accelerated pace, co-founding 52% of Silicon Valley firms since 1995. Many of the anecdotes in Imagine have a disconcerting common theme of drugs or mental illness. Are creative people all doomed to be addicts or mad men? I don't think so. (Yo Yo Ma, for instance, is a very nice guy.) But I do think the prevalence of such stories reminds us that creativity is damn difficult, which is why those in the creativity business are always looking for every possible edge. That's why many great writers experimented with amphetamines and why performers have always searched for compounds that let them get out of their head, silencing that voice that kills their spontaneity. In the end, of course, these chemical shortcuts rarely work out -- there's nothing creative about addiction. And that's why I remained convinced that the best creativity booster is self-knowledge. Once we know how the imagination works, we can make it work better. Author image via Nina Subin; map image courtesy of iStockphoto, gmutlu |
| World's Only Flash Deals Site for Sports Tickets Is Going Nationwide [INVITES] | | Monday, April 02, 2012 12:00 PM | Sam Laird |
|  Flash deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial have caught on with consumers in a big way, offering discounts on everything from food to facials. But the huge market of cash-spending sports fans has not yet been isolated in a major way. CrowdSeats.com aims to change that. The first and only such site dedicated exclusively to sporting event tickets, it has run nearly 30 offers in New York and Los Angeles since launching in those two cities in August. Now it's expanding to Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. (Crowd Seats is running a special promotion to celebrate its growth and offering a special deal for Mashable readers; see below for details.) Founder and CEO Justin Cener says his company's biggest deal to date was selling 77 discounted tickets to the Army-Rutgers college football game at Yankee Stadium in November. Tickets sold through Crowd Seats typically offer a discount of around 50% -- but price cuts can rise to as high as 90%, according to Cener. Cener graduated from Rutgers three years ago with dual degrees in sports marketing and information technology. He currently supports himself doing freelance web development, running Crowd Seats with the help of handful of interns who do on-the-ground marketing at games in Los Angeles. Social marketing has comprised the bulk of the site's outreach so far, and Cener says a third of Crowd Seat's sales have come have come through Facebook and Twitter referrals. Cener says gaining traction has been a challenge, but that he's optimistic for more success -- especially considering Crowd Seats has been essentially a one-man operation so far. Using only street teams and Facebook pay-per-click advertising, the site has been able to gain an email list of over 11,000 customers in New York and Los Angeles without buying lists from third parties. He's partnered some with third-party ticket vendors to gain inventory, but his aim is to rely exclusively on the sports teams themselves for tickets as Crowd Seats becomes more established. Give the large numbers of passionate sports fans, it's not hard to see a site like Cener's becoming quite successful with consumers. After this round of expansion, Cener plans to begin offering deals in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The longer-term plan is to have a presence in 25 cities around the country. To mark its spread to a current count of five cities, Crowd Seats is selling discounted tickets to the following games over the next five days: New York: Yankees vs. Twins, April 19. $48 for $96 ticket Los Angeles: Clippers vs. Thunder, April 16. $30 for $53 ticket San Francisco: Warriors vs. Spurs, April 16. $24 for $49 ticket Boston: Celtics vs. Magic, April 18. $40 for $72 ticket Chicago: Bulls vs. Wizards, April 16. $48 for $96 ticket To gain an additional $5 off, use the MASH promo code at the Crowd Seats signup page. Do you think a flash deals site dedicated exclusively to sports fans is a business model that can become successful? Let us know in the comments. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adamkaz |
| How One Website Connects Those in Need With Government Assistance | | Monday, April 02, 2012 11:25 AM | Matt Petronzio |
|  The World at Work is powered by GE. This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place. Name: Aunt Bertha Big Idea: Aunt Bertha collects information on federal, state, county, city, neighborhood and charity programs and puts it all in one place. Why It's Working: Using information the team learns about various programs, Aunt Bertha matches people with public services available locally or federally, based on their specific needs. There are thousands of non-profit organizations, government programs, charities and other services across the United States specifically working for people in need. But finding a program that fits a user's particular situation and location (and the application process that follows) is not only difficult -- it's intimidating. That's where Aunt Bertha comes in. Aunt Bertha simplifies the search for food, health, housing, education and employment programs through its easy-to-use website. To find the programs a user is eligible for, all she has to do is type in a zip code and answer three questions based on family size and income -- and it's all anonymous. Armed with this data, Aunt Bertha delivers free and comprehensible information about relevant programs, including qualifications that need to be met, contact information and guidance on how to apply. "Aunt Bertha was an idea that took ten years, but it started with my mom," founder Erine Gray tells Mashable. "When I was 17, she caught a rare disease that caused her to lose her memory. When she came home from the hospital, she didn't know who we were. Through that experience I came to learn that there are services available, but they were very difficult to track down." After graduate school, Gray spent four years improving access to human services as a consultant for the State of Texas: "Many nights, I would listen to calls from the neediest Texans looking for help. I learned that the process for finding and applying for services is hard work and far too complicated," he says. "Listening to those calls, I became convinced that people wanted to help themselves, but it seemed as if the right information was being hidden from them. Because of this, our mission is to make human service information accessible -- to both people and providers." When coming up with a name for the site, Gray didn't want the company to sound like a charity, but rather someone personable whom users could trust. "Aunt Bertha's the eccentric family member each of us has," he says. "She never forgets your birthday, but she's not afraid to shoot you straight. She's someone you could go to when you're in trouble." Since the Aunt Bertha team organizes all of the federal, state and local government programs, a popular tagline for the site is: "Aunt Bertha picks up where Uncle Sam leaves off." In September 2011, a user named Kimberly pursued housing assistance, and she wrote under Aunt Bertha's "Praise" forum: "Although I am thankful for all resources and avenues, I find Aunt Bertha's site more accessible, and I don't have to wait on hold on my cellphone while someone is researching programs for me ... Surprisingly, there is also a live help desk attendant, via chat,was available to assist me with more information. I am very grateful for Aunt Bertha." Gray says an estimated 20,000 people have searched among the more than 3,000 programs on Aunt Bertha. Hundreds of new programs are added every week, as organizations and programs can submit their names and information to the site directly. Although the database has nationally accessible programs, the site has largely focused on Texas and will expand to Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arkansas in coming months. Gray has financed 100% of the operation himself, and he flexed his skills as a programmer to write all of the software and do most of the design -- often the most expensive part of starting a software company. There are currently five people on the Aunt Bertha team, two of which are contractors. However, Gray says they are "ramping up quickly." "We're currently looking for an Austin-based, detail-oriented operations manager familiar with and interested in public policy," he says. "We're also looking for interns with laser focus and a passion for public policy. An extra Python and brilliant front-end programmer wouldn't hurt either." Aunt Bertha is a Certified B Corporation, a for-profit business that meets higher standards of social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. Within the past month, it was selected as a 2012 Fellow at the Unreasonable Institute -- which partners with organizations to provide entrepreneurs with mentorship, capital and network -- and was accepted into the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI), which provides counsel, guidance and support to its member companies to help them transition into successful, high-growth technology businesses. Series presented by GE The World at Work is powered by GE. GE Works focuses on the people who make the things that move, power, build and help to cure the world. |
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