| TRENDING STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | | | | | | ALL STORIES IN BUSINESS & MARKETING | | |
| Zeel Connects You With Mind, Body and Beauty Practioners In Your Area | |  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: Zeel Quick Pitch: Find qualified wellness practitioners in your area and book appointments online with this free web service. Genius Idea: Vetted practitioners for massage, skin care, weight loss and more on one site that lets you book appointments online. Finding wellness practitioners in your area seems like an easy enough task. Go online, search for "massage" or "dietician" or whatever other service you're looking for -- then sift through a bazillion results. Peer review sites can help narrow down the search, but are often lacking information like pricing, qualifications and the ability to book appointments online. Meet Zeel, a new website that launched in January of this year. The site connects users to some 2,000 practitioners listed on the site. You can find massage therapists, dieticians, acupuncturists and skin care specialists in your area by searching with your zip code. Zeel was founded by husband and wife team Samer Hamadeh and Alison Harmelin. Both had searched for specialists for various reasons and found no helpful online service gathering all wellness provider information in one place. So, they created Zeel. "There's a lot of noise in the area of health and wellness, particularly complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and the marketplace is fragmented," Hamadeh said in an email message. "Our focus isn't life-or-death acute issues like heart surgery; most of our customers are looking for specific results -- pain reduction, improvement in a joint or muscle injured through sports, anti-aging skin care, or a stress relieving massage after a particularly rough week of work," he said. "In short, we help you book the care you need to maintain a healthy, pain-free life with highly qualified providers ranging from acupuncturists to massage therapists to dermatologists." Treatments that users can find on Zeel are not typically covered by insurance, although insurance companies are increasingly starting to provide complementary and alternative medicine benefits, he added. Using the site is free for consumers. Providers pay about 12-13% for every appointment booked through Zeel. Currently, Zeel is only available in the United States. The wellness practitioners listed on the site are mostly in the New York metro area, but also in Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Francisco, Phoenix, Atlanta and other areas. Sites like ZocDoc, Vitals and EverydayHealth are similar to Zeel's model, except for one major difference -- most of these sites point users to regular doctors, not CAM providers. Hamadeh is a co-founder and former CEO of Vault.com, and Harmelin is an Emmy-nominated television news correspondent. Zeel is based in New York City and currently has 10 employees. It is in the first class of startups in former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin's StartUp Health Academy. What do you think about Zeel? Would you use it? Tell us in the comments. ?Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, pixdeluxe ? 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. |
| Dashboard Ads Coming to Tumblr, CEO Says | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:53 PM | Sonia Paul |
|  Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp announced that advertisers will be able to buy ad units on the 'Featured' section of Tumblr's dashboard, which gets approximately 120,000 impressions a day. Karp made the announcement at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York, and said advertisers will be able to pay for space beginning May 2. The move represents a significant turnaround for Karp, who in 2010 told the Los Angeles Times, "We're pretty opposed to advertising. It really turns our stomachs." But two years later, things have certainly changed. If recents developments are any indication, the five-year-old platform is growing at an astounding rate. As of Wednesday, the site boasts more than 52 million Tumblr blogs, which have in turn churned out over 21 billion total posts, more 53 million of which were created April 18 alone. The site's statistics are available on its About page, which is updated daily. In February, Tumblr took its business development a step further with the launch of "highlighted posts." The feature lets Tumblr users pay $1 to get more visibility for their work.
SEE ALSO: The Quick and Dirty Guide to Tumblr for Small Business In a recent interview with Advertising Age, Karp said that using something like Google AdSense to generate revenue was "far down the list" of priorities. But he also acknowledged the growth of Tumblr, and the potential that growth has for marketers. "We have about 4.5 billion impressions a week. There's value in that to advertisers.," he said. As for Karp's 2010 reaction toward advertising, he acknowledges now that he didn't know what he was talking about at the time: .@tumblr's david karp calls himself an "idiot" for saying advertising turns his stomach in 2010. #gottagetpaid #aadigital— Kunur Patel (@kunur) April 18, 2012 What do you think of Tumblr's announcement? Selling out, or necessary step? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. |
| YouTube Sensation Does the Robot in $10 Million Roomba Campaign [VIDEO] | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:36 PM | Joann Pan |
|  Dubstep master and YouTube sensation Marquese Scott is back with another jaw-dropping routine. His 2011 YouTube dance video gained more than 43 million views. This time, he is promoting the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. iRobot Corporation -- behind the Roomba and Scooba automated cleaners -- is making moves with a robust $10 million ad campaign, appealing to fans on T.V. and online. Scott appears in the T.V. and online spots doing "the robot," alongside the Roomba. The T.V. spot will run on national cable channels as well as on the websites of online publishers including Conde Nast, Epicurious and The New Yorker. iRobot promotes the futuristic Roomba vacuum in the ad campaign, though their long list of products includes automated machines that wash floors, pools and gutters. The campaign celebrates "the unique bond that is created between people and robots," according to the Boston-based ad company Mullen. iRobot is also tying in a global YouTube competition with the national ad campaign. Dubbing it an "Robolution," iRobot has created a branded YouTube channel to promote a robot dance contest. Contestants are asked to submit videos of themselves dancing to the iRobot theme song, available for download on the branded YouTube page. It's suggested that dancers mimic the Roomba's slow back-and-forth movement -- like Scott does in his videos. SEE ALSO: Beyond the Roomba: How iRobot's Technology Is Making War Zones Safer for Soldiers The YouTube page so far is a branding win. People can submit entries for the dance competition while reading up on the latest iRobot products, all in one place. Plus, there's room for fans to leave personal comments about the futuristic products. Watch Scott's unique moves in this YouTube video created specially for the competition: Can you do the robot better than a Roomba? If so, post a link to your "Robulution" video in the comments. |
| 10 Apps to Keep Your Business Organized | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:41 PM | Scott Gerber |
|  Scott Gerber is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, a nonprofit organization that promotes youth entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and underemployment. No matter what industry you're in, so much of any business depends on networking. But keeping track of business contacts, back-to-back meetings, and pending deals can be a real headache. Thankfully, there's an app for that. A few, actually. I asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs for the mobile apps that keep them on track in their work and on the go. Here are their favorite suggestions. 1. LinkedIn CardMunch CardMunch is a real problem solver for me. I used to have stacks of business cards that always needed to be processed. Now I scan them and often auto-connect with the person on LinkedIn, giving me something to anchor the face-to-face meeting and go back to if needed. - Derek Shanahan, Foodtree 2. Asana Asana, our project management tool, links to mobile devices and is a great asset. The software allows us to update projects, request followups, and tracks all user activity so nothing is lost in the vortex of e-mail. Use the calendar function to see upcoming meetings at a glance, including notes, attendees, and dial-in information. - Kelly Azevedo, She's Got Systems 3. Launch Center Launch Center is a way to organize the most important things you need to get done on a day-to-day basis, but can also be used for reminders. Things should be simple, and this app makes everything on your iPhone one tap away from being checked off your list. - Ashley Bodi, Business Beware 4. Bizzabo Bizzabo is an excellent app to keep track of connections you've made at conferences and meetings. It's also an exceptionally powerful way to network with others while your at events and even after you leave. - Ben Lang, EpicLaunch 5. Remember the Milk Remember The Milk is the to-do list I use for everything I do. I have customized and improved my RTM experience a bit through their API, but at the very least, it can serve as an easy-to-use task list that you can leverage anywhere you go. - Logan Lenz, Endagon 6. ToutApp ToutApp is the networking tool that I use the most while I am on the go. One of the hardest things to do is to follow up with people that you meet from networking events. This app makes it easy to send templated followup messages with just a simple text. It will also enter that person's contact info into your favorite CRM system. - Lawrence Watkins, Great Black Speakers 7. Hashable If you want to introduce people on the go, I highly recommend Hashable. It's especially perfect for the informal introductions that are so common in the tech scene, where you can just introduce two people on Twitter and leave the rest to them. - Matt Wilson, Under30CEO.com 8. Google Calendar Having your calendar handy is a huge boon when you bump into that investor or new hire of your dreams. Google Calendar lets you lock in a time for a longer meeting at the moment that you meet someone. It's a simple way to make sure that you connect with this person again. - Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches 9. Mobile Assistant Through Mobile Assistant, I've gotten my thoughts transcribed on the go. I just call in to a mobile number, record my thoughts, and then they're sent to me the next day. Whether I'm recording meeting notes or creating a draft of a new proposal, I've never documented things this quickly. - Garrett Neiman, CollegeSpring 10. Evernote It doesn't matter if I'm on my phone, computer, Kindle Fire, or iPod Touch -- everything goes into Evernote. It's priceless to have all that information in one place and be able to sort through it during a more convenient time. Sean Ogle, Location 180, LLC Image courtesy of iStockphoto, akinbostanci |
| Color Forecast App Scours Streets For Trends, Shows You What to Wear | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:15 PM | Joann Pan |
|  Ever stared at your closet in the morning, fraught with indecision over what to wear? A new web app can make sure that never happens again. European clothing brand Pimkie created the Color Forecast app to help women get dressed in the morning. High-tech cameras installed in Paris, Milan and Antwerp scan the streets, calculating trending colors around the clock. Camera images feed into an application that computes the most popular colors seen on the street at the moment. The fashion-forward crowd can consult the website and soon-to-be iPhone app as a what-to-wear guide. The Color Forecast web app updates every few seconds, showing a live stream of fashionable streets in the three European fashion capitals. Comprehensive graphs display current trending colors, the hourly trends of past days, the week's popular colors (organized by day into three segments) and last month's trending colors on an infographic. SEE ALSO: Kaleidoscope, An App for Curated Street-Style Fashion, Arrives on iPhone How does the app work? Cameras only consider moving objects, ignoring still cars and green trees in the frame. As people walk by the camera, it picks up colors and the application starts processing images. "It collects the clustering of moving colors, you have to sort these buckets by order of importance -- their quantity, brightness and saturation," Pedro Cruz, the application's visualization designer, tells Mashable. The app's simple interface hides the complex technology driving it. The one-camera setup in each city is very simple, Cruz says. The project's complexity lies in building and maintaining an application that doesn't crash as information is constantly being filtered and analyzed. Happiness Brussels is the ad agency behind the concept. The agency's CEO, Karen Corrigan, says the ongoing project will inspire fashion-driven women to "follow or to deny the real-time, instant fashion trends." The agency wanted to encompass the idea of instantaneous trends proliferated through social networks with the application. "In this way, the technology remains a means to make a concept happen and deliver the content," Corrigan says. The color predictor pairs up clothing from Pimkie's merchant site with each color. Pimkie will "fine tune" the colors of their collections, according to Corrigan. This technology has completely changed the way Pimkie markets its clothes and accessories. "The Pimkie Color Forecast tool is a way to not only claim that Pimkie is there to help its clients, but to actually really do so," Corrigan tells Mashable. "The tool allows Pimkie to present its collection that matches the colors of the moment." The iPhone Color Forecast App will be available at the end of April. Do you use social media or fashion apps to follow trends? Is this an app you will download? Tell us in the comments. Image courtesy of Flickr, mrsraggle |
| Facebook's Analytics Tool for Ads Will Soon Measure Actions Other Than 'Likes' | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:36 PM | Brian Anthony Hernandez |
|  In a few weeks, Facebook will introduce a feature within its ads management platform that will allow marketers to see exactly how their Pages' fans are responding to their ads. The new feature -- "Action Measurement" -- will appear as a column and pie chart in Facebook's Ads Manager and will help marketers tailor ads for relevant consumers. "This isn't just an analytics feature; it's an optimization feature," David Baser, product manager for Facebook's Page Insights, told Mashable ahead of Wednesday's announcement. Traditionally, marketers use Facebook's Ads Manager to create ads, target them to specific demographics and measure the performance of a campaign. With the new feature, marketers will be able to dive deeper into user-engagement data and go beyond the typical stats regarding inline actions. The actions that Facebook will measure and that marketers will be able to optimize are: People talking about this (includes Page likes, Page post likes, Page post shares, comments, @ mentions, check-ins, photo tags, offers shared, offers claimed) App installs App used Credit spend events (number of times someone uses credits in the app) Credit spend amount (value of credits that were spent in the app) Number of RSVPs This mock-up from Facebook shows stats for an ad promoting a Page post. The Actions column lists 257, the number of different behaviors fans performed on the post -- not the ad for which promoted the post. On the bottom right, a pie chart shows the top actions and a link is available for marketers to see a full report of all actions. Take a museum's brand page, for example. A museum can run a campaign touting its Facebook app tab where people can buy museum tickets. In the past, Baser says, that museum could see how many clicks the ad got, but with the Actions data, the museum will see how many people used the app as well. SEE ALSO: Facebook Ad Engagement Down 8% in U.S. Stats about actions will be available for marketers to review in 1-day, 7-day or 28-day increments. Google on Wednesday also introduced a plan, dubbed Brand Activate, to measure online advertising that it hopes will become the industry standard. Will this Actions feature be useful for your or your brand? Sound off below. BONUS: 20 Facebook Page Cover Photos to Inspire Your Brand |
| Domino's Solution for Soundless Electric Scooters Is Rather Brilliant [VIDEO] | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 3:38 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  You say traffic hazard, Domino's says "branding opportunity." Domino's in the Netherlands appears to be experimenting with a scooter that emits the utterances of a man saying "Domino's!" and "pizza!" in between revving noises. It's a solution of sorts to the problem of soundless electric vehicles, which provide no aural warning to pedestrians or other drivers and are a special hazard to the sight-impaired. The auto industry has responded with electric vehicle warning sounds that in some cases are designed by Hollywood special effects wizards. This Dutch effort doesn't seem to have the same pedigree, but then again, how often does the sound of vehicle make you hungry? |
| Internet Ad Revenues Hit $31 Billion in 2011, Up 22% Over 2010 [STUDY] | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 2:38 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Strong growth in display, video and mobile-based advertising prompted a banner year for U.S. online advertising as revenues topped $31 billion, a 22% jump over 2010 and a new record, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Mobile grew the most of all categories -- 149% -- but still represents a puny share of the overall market -- $1.6 billion -- according to the report issued on Wednesday. Digital video also rose 29% to $1.8 billion, search was up about 27% to $11.7 billion and display advertising jumped 15% to $11.1 billion, or 35% of all revenues. Search is still the largest category with 47% share. "This historic moment, with an especially impressive achievement in mobile, is indicative of an increased awareness from advertisers that they need to reach consumers where they are spending their time -- in digital media," said Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO, of the IAB, in a press release. In terms of spending, retail continued to be the top category, accounting for 22% of all Internet ad spending. Next on the list was telecom (12%) and leisure/travel (8%). Meanwhile, Internet advertising is the second-biggest ad category next to television, which accounted for $38.5 billion of ad spending on 2011. A full copy of the IAB report can be found here. Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alikemalkarasu |
| Startups Meet Reality TV: Watch 'TechStars' on Mashable | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 1:21 PM | Adam Ostrow |
|  Getting into a top startup accelerator program can make the difference between a company making it big and being lost in the ether. Starting today, Mashable goes behind the scenes of that experience by bringing the Bloomberg television show TechStars to our community. TechStars has emerged as one of the most influential and well-funded accelerators, with the 114 companies that have been through the program raising a collective $134 million -- and 8 of them being acquired. The organization now offers companies up to $100,000 in funding, after raising a $24 million round of funding last fall. The process of getting into TechStars -- which is statistically more challenging than getting into an Ivy League university -- and then going through the grueling 3-month process of building your startup, was profiled by Bloomberg in a 6-episode documentary that recently aired on the cable network. Now, you can watch the TechStars show on Mashable. We've made the entire series available on-demand, and chopped it up into short segments that are ideal for Internet viewing. Over the course of the next couple of months, we'll also be sharing each episode as part of a Mashable post, giving our community a chance to discuss the themes of each show in our comments section. Watch the Full Season of TechStars on Mashable In the first episode, embedded below, TechStars executives review the hundreds of pitches they received from startups that applied to the program, and then grill some of the finalists during in-person interviews. The episode also features soundbites from top investors Fred Wilson and Brad Feld, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. We hope you enjoy watching TechStars on Mashable, and invite you to view the full series at any time in our video section. |
| VC Funding Fell 22% in Q1, Upswing Could Be On the Way | | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:22 PM | Todd Wasserman |
|  Venture capitalists plowed $5.9 billion into startups in the first quarter of 2012, a 22% drop from the previous quarter and the lowest level of VC funding since Q2 2010, according to a researcher tracking the market. However, that shortfall is not necessarily a worrying sign since Facebook's recent $1 billion acquisition of Instagram may fuel a flurry of new activity, according to the researcher, CB Insights. CB Insights's report found there were a lot of deals in Q1 -- 785 investments, which was the second most in the past nine quarters. But the dollar amount of those investments was relatively low, which accounts for the drop. "We do not think that a single quarter dip in funding is in any way symptomatic of any sort of correction or any sort of bubble bursting," reads a statement from the firm. "Deal activity, which we view as a better gauge of investor sentiment, remains strong. The funding dip is primarily the result of fewer VC mega deals in the quarter, which as the quarter illustrates can and do move numbers significantly up when present and down wildly when absent." Speaking of mega deals, though, CB Insights sees Facebook/Instagram as a catalyst for more and larger investment in mobile. "We expect that the coming quarters will be interesting for the mobile sector as companies and investors try even more aggressively to ride the mobile wave," the researcher concludes. Although the report looked at VC activity across the board, the same phenomenon of more deals for smaller sums of cash held true for Internet-based investments as well. While Internet funding fell 17%, deal volume grew 16% with a five quarter high for seed VC deals. Image courtesy of iStock, Ljupco |
| |  |  | | | TOP STORIES TODAY TOP TOPICS | |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home