I don’t watch a lot of YouTube, but I go on occasional binges. Most of the people who are “YouTube famous” annoy the heck out of me, but I do have one favorite. It’s The Food Reviewer… he does “reviews on the YouTube… you never knew such a cool dude…” I have no idea why I enjoy watching a high school kid review packaged snack foods, but I do. Anyway, YouTube stars like The Food Reviewer (not sure if he’s a star yet with 17k followers) should do everything they can to capitalize on their fame. That’s where Victorious comes in. They’re a Santa Monica, CA based startup that is “motivated by the challenge of powering and uniting the world’s most creative communities.” In other words, they help digital stars build their own platforms so that they can make the most of the attention that they receive.
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For most of us social media is a time waster. It’s mindless entertainment that fills in gaps in our days. But for some people it’s a job. For them the mobile app just won’t do. They need power tools to manage all of their social media accounts, and that’s exactly what Sprout Social offers. They’re a Chicago, IL based company that offers “a management and egnagement platform for social business.” Sprout Social’s software offers all of the tools that one might need to engage with customers, publish content, and analyze the effectiveness of social marketing. This kind of platform is a must have for any company that takes social seriously.
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Bikes have to be one of the most versatile inventions of all time. They’re transportation, entertainment, and exercise all in one. You can even rig one to turn human power into electricity if you really want. They may have been around for a long time, but they’re still a surprisingly good solution to many of our society’s problems. That’s why the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition was started to promote the bicycle for everyday use. They’re a San Jose, CA based non-profit that is working to “to create a healthy community, environment, and economy through bicycling for people who live, work, or play in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties.”
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We live in a world of data. Everything from the prices on financial markets to our weights can be measured and tracked very easily. Even an average person can use easily accessible online tools to fake being a “data scientist.” But what about data that isn’t obviously data? I’m talking about stuff that isn’t neatly sorted into rows and columns–the kind of stuff that you’d have to painstakingly tabulate by hand. We now have technology that can do the hard work for us, and one of the companies behind such technology is ListenLogic. They are a Conshohocken, PA based company that extracts “insights from unstructured big data to drive business outcomes.” Their “big data” technology allows clients to act on information that they never before could have acted on.
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Who doesn’t love a good t-shirt? For me it’s all about comfort. That’s why I generally pick solid colored tees made out of high quality fabrics. For others it’s more about expression–you want your shirt to say something about who you are. If what you’re saying about yourself with your shirt is that you have a good sense of humor, then BustedTees mint be the place for you to shop. They are a New York, NY based company that was started by the same team as CollegeHumor. They started in 2004 because they wanted “people to have fun, laugh, look good, feel comfortable, get good jobs, get sweaty dancing and go home with someone who also did those things.” It’s amazing what something as simple as a t-shirt can do for people.
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For a long time marketing has been about piggybacking on other people’s content. You buy ads in newspapers, during tv shows, and on billboards (I guess scenery next to the highway is content?). At some point marketers realized that they could become the content creators–that’s what soap operas were originally about. Today social media has forced nearly every brand into content creation. Doing it right on all of the important platforms is really hard. That’s why Chute, a San Francisco, CA based company, has developed a “visual content engine for brands” that makes “it easy to keep pace with your customers and create compelling, fresh content to engage with your fans, build awareness and, ultimately, increase conversion.”
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Pretty much everybody in the business world has heard the saying “if it matters, measure it.” But what happens when you’re measuring so many different things that you stop paying attention? It’d be a lot easier if you could look at every important data point in one view–a dashboard. That’s exactly what SumAll offers for people who do business online. They’re a New York, NY based company that allows “you to see all your information in one place and provide you visibility into the past, present, and future.” It would be a lot harder to drive a car if you had twelve different dashboards for each important data point. The same can be said for running a business, which is why SumAll pull everything into one place.
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For some people a rug is a functional thing, for others it’s art. A handmade carpet can drastically improve the way a room looks–it can bring an exotic flair to an otherwise muted decor. The problem with handmade rugs is that they are often made by children. Child labor continues to be a problem across the world, and it’s especially bad in the handmade carpet industry–there are more than 250,000 children currently being exploited. Goodweave is a Washington, DC based non-profit that “is helping to combat this problem and transform the rug industry by certifying child-labor-free rugs and by providing education and opportunities to rescued and at-risk children.”
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Yesterday we took a look at an online marketing company. Today we’re going to do the same. While today’s company offers many of the same services, the difference is that they tend to work with larger, national clients. This may seem like a small distinction, but the level of competition can make it seem like a different business. WPromote is an El Segundo, CA based company that calls itself “the country’s leading Online Marketing firm, delivering incredible results for [its] Search Engine Optimization, PPC Management and Social Media clients.” That’s big talk, but they must be living up to it if companies like Toyota, Ford, TOMS, Tumi, and Southern New Hampshire University are hiring them to do their online marketing.
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I had 20/12 vision up until Junior year of high school. Then it all fell apart and I couldn’t read the blackboard. I was in denial for a while, but it became quite obvious that I… I needed glasses. Although glasses certainly weren’t cool at the time, I was more concerned with having to wear something on my face all of the time. That’s why I opted for contacts. Today it seems that people who don’t even need vision correction are wearing glasses, and that is making a lot of fashion brands want to enter the eyewear category. eponym is a company that allows them to do that quickly and easily. They are based in Brooklyn, NY, and they “help the world’s most exciting brands create and distribute their own eyewear.”
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We live in a 3D world, but we’ve often been constrained by two-dimensional mediums. For a long time it was pencil and paper, but then it became computers. They brought the hope of real 3D capabilities, but it took a long time for technology to get to the point that working in 3D became realistic. Believe it or not, Spatial got its start in 1986 when they released “ACIS, the first commercially available 3D modeling kernel.” Since then the Broomfield, CO based company has become “the leading provider of 3D components for technical application development across a broad range of industries.”
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As I mentioned earlier in the week, media and advertising are all about demographics. Unless you have the targeting capabilities of a Facebook or Google, it’s almost always better to build your properties targeted at a specific group. For SheKnows it’s all about women. They are a Scottsdale, AZ based company that has built a “women’s lifestyle media platform” that “allows brands to distribute authentic content and integrated advertising at scale.” What kind of scale? 40 million unique visitors per month. That’s a lot.
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Most media businesses are about advertising, and most advertising is about demographics. That’s why a lot of media companies focus on owning a portfolio of properties that cater to similar demographics. For Radio One the focus is on targeting African-American and urban consumers. The company is headquartered in Lanham, MD, but they have stations and offices all across the country. If your music tastes are similar to mine, there’s a good chance that you are familiar with one of Radio One’s properties.
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Events are inherently social. A lot of time who is going to be there matters more than what is going on. Yet all of our major social networks are about showing off what we’ve already done. If we’re going to broadcast our lives, it might make sense to let other people in on the fun. Fever is a New York, NY and Madrid, Spain based startup social network that is “changing the way people make plans.” Their idea is to take event discovery away from the calendar and make it all about the people.
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Think back to all of your years of school. Your teachers created a lot of content that helped you learn, but they also got a lot from educational publishers–textbooks, worksheets, tests, and more. Developing that content can be a painstaking process, so a lot of the times the publishers look outside for help. Since 1982 they’ve been turning to Quarasan, a Chicago, IL based “full service conceptual developer of content for publishers of educational materials and products.” They say that they cover the Pre-K-16 market, which, I think, means that they also develop materials for undergrad.
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Fashion trends are fascinating. I generally dress the same way that my parents dressed me when I was four, but I understand the urge to get ahead of the latest styles. Some people just have a sense for fashion and can pull it off on their own, but most need help. That’s why the fashion media is so big. The Internet is only making fashion move faster, and that means that the media has to be faster too. StyleCaster Media Group is a New York, NY based company that aims “to bring style to the people, empowering millions of readers to discover and share their style through inspiring features, expert tips, and innovative resources.”
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When my wife gets sick, I swear that she takes her temperature every 15 minutes (she also considers 98.6 a fever because her temperature is normally lower than that). I don’t even bother taking my temperature unless I’m worried that I’m very sick. Thermometers can be important tools for tracking health, but most of us don’t use them to our full potential. Kinsa is a New York, NY based company that is changing the way that people take their temperatures and monitor their health. They’ve developed a smartphone compatible thermometer that combines with an app to provide a completely new type of health tracking technology solution.
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I live in the third biggest city in the country, yet I often feel like there’s nothing to do. Part of that is because most of the things that I like to do are outdoorsy and Chicago isn’t the best city for people like me, but most of it is because I’m not aware of all the cool things happening around me. There seem to be a million startups that have tried to solve this problem, and none have really succeeded yet. Maybe UpOut will change that. They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that “is changing how locals discover unique events in their city.” They do this by pulling in event calendars from a variety of sources and curating the list to only show the most interesting ones.
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I always get confused by the terms modern and contemporary. To me they sound like they should mean the same thing, but they don’t–at least when you’re talking about art. Modern means that it was “produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s,” while contemporary means it was produced very recently. MOCA is the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and they are the only museum in L.A. that is entirely dedicated to contemporary art. Their definition includes works that date back to 1940, so I guess some of their contemporary art may also be modern art–though I definitely could be wrong about that.
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I’m pretty bummed that we’re going to have to wait almost a full year for a new episode of Mad Men now. If you need your fix, you’re going to have to take a look inside a real advertising agency. Today we’re going to do that for you, and the focus is going to be Mason Zimbler, an Austin, TX based “integrated agency rooted in the digital space.” They’re owned by a bigger company called Harte Hanks, but they seem to operate mostly on their own by combining “a love of creative” with a “desire for results.” They have quite a roster of big name clients, so they must be very good at finding that balance.
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The Yankees are in Chicago for a full week! I went to the game last night at Wrigley (and I’m going again today), but the Yankees lost, and we got soaked by a thunderstorm as we left the stadium. I was also annoyed because I tried to buy tickets off of StubHub a few hours before the game but couldn’t. They used to stop selling two hours before the game but have since changed that to six hours. I was still able to get tickets at well below face value, but I had to do it at the stadium at the last minute. The policy change was forced by Major League Baseball and its teams to try to prop up ticket resale values for season ticket holders, and it’s completely unfriendly to fans. That’s what happens when the “disrupter” gets co-opted by the big boys. Now it’s time to look for a new disrupter, and it might just be TiqIQ. They are based in New York, NY, and they aim “to make buying event tickets more transparent, efficient, and simpler.”
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What if I told you that there was a product that could increase your personal privacy, reduce your heating and cooling costs, and make your home much more stylish? You might think that I was talking about some sort of new home automation/security system, but I’m really talking about blinds. You know… shades, drapes, curtains, window treatments. You can buy all of them from Blinds.com, a Houston, TX based company that is “the world’s largest online window covering store.” In fact, they’re twice as big as their closest competitor.
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Over the past 7 years, I’ve heard from a lot of frustrated college grads who can’t find jobs. Some of the most frustrated have been international students. They came to the U.S. to get an education, and they’d love to stay here and put that education to use. Unfortunately, the current laws make that extremely difficult. Right now we have a system that is both unfair and economically damaging. We can do better, and FWD.us is a San Francisco, CA based non-profit lobbying organization that wants to make that happen as soon as possible. It was “started by key leaders in the tech community to promote policies to keep the United States and its citizens competitive in a global economy—including comprehensive immigration reform and education reform.”
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It wasn’t long ago that words like “builder,” “maker,” and “product” were reserved for talking about real, tangible things. Today it seems that those are all buzzwords used to talk about the production of web sites, apps, and other digital goods. There are all kinds of companies making software products, and one with a very interesting model is Betaworks. They’re a New York, NY based company whose “ideas, people, capital and data are united in an imaginative way that enable us to create beneficial and transformative products for the socially connected world.” Their goal is to define the future of media with their products, and they’re off to a good start.
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I’ve always been able to hit balls a really hard. Baseball was my sport growing up, and power was a big part of my game. When I picked up golf, I brought the power over from my baseball swing. The problem was that my big swing often resulted in a lost ball because my accuracy wasn’t quite there. I needed help and didn’t want to spend a lot of time taking lessons, so I eventually gave up golf. It’s too bad that Zepp Labs wasn’t around then. They’re a Los Gatos, CA based company that “empowers athletes and coaches with meaningful performance information to help them immediately improve their game.” They’ve developed 3D motion capture technology that works with your smartphone to give you the kind of analysis that used to be reserved for professionals.
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Have you ever thought that you accidentally liked something on Facebook because a post suddenly showed up in your feed from a site that you recently visited? It’s creepy, right? It’s called retargeting, and it’s amazingly effective. For at least the last few years, advertisers have been tracking your movement around the web and showing you ads based on where you’ve visited. Taking to Facebook was the obvious next step, and that’s the specialty of Triggit. They are a San Francisco, CA based company that “enables advertisers and agencies to build, run, measure, and optimize retargeting-driven display campaigns from a single platform.”
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Amy and I have spent 30+ hours in the car over the last week. We listened to the radio, we listened to Spotify, we listened to two Yankees games (one via the MLB At Bat App and one on the radio), we talked, and we listened to a book on tape. After a few hours of one, we’d get bored and switch it up. Maybe we should have “stitched it up.” Stitcher is a San Francisco, CA based company with an app of the same name that lets you access “over 20,000+ radio shows and podcasts on your iPhone, iPad, Android or PC–anytime, anywhere.” The focus is on news, sports, talk, and entertainment, so it’s kind of like Pandora for non-music audio.
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It still amazes me how much old media drives new media. If you’re already famous, you can almost instantly carry that fame over to social media. A show like Shark Tank can drive millions of dollars in online sales. And the right tv mention can crash a website. What I think is cool is that we’re starting to see the reverse happen. People who are famous on Youtube, Twitter, or Instagram are carrying that fame over to more traditional channels. In short, it’s all coming together, and marketers need to be ready for it. Fullscreen is a Los Angeles, CA based agency that is aiming to build “the first media company for the connected generation—together, right at the intersection of tech and entertainment.”
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It almost seems that a person’s comfort with buying something online has an inverse relationship with the item’s size. Books, digital goods (size = 0), and clothing are no brainers these days, but people still seem to prefer an in-person experience when it comes to furniture, cars, and homes. I guess it could be based on cost too. Either way, some things are easier to sell online than others. Home furnishings, decor, and outdoor furniture fall somewhere in the middle, but online will win eventually. Hayneedle is definitely pushing for it. They are an Omaha, NE based company that “has become one of the nation’s largest online retailers, offering more than 3,000 brands and nearly 2 million products for the home.” It all started with Hammocks.com, and they just kept adding niches.
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About this time last year, Amy and I were visiting my parents for Easter. Our wedding was a couple months away and preparations were going very smoothly. And then Amy had her one and only “bridezilla” moment. She realized that she was totally in love with a dress that she had once seen in a picture online, and had to find it. Without being able to look at any pictures because I wanted it to be a surprise, I helped her track down the exact dress at a store only 45 minutes from my parents house. She tried it on, loved it, and bought it. The only issue was that she had already spent a bunch on another dress. What do you do with a never worn, beautiful wedding dress? You put it on Tradesy. They’re a Santa Monica, CA based company that can help you “turn your closet into cash.” It’s a marketplace for new and gently used fashion.
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