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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I tolerate living in Chicago because my wife is from here, the summers are awesome, and the food is exceptional. Unfortunately, it’s not the best place for someone like me who loves spending time in the wilderness. That means I spend a lot of time in Northern Michigan, which is five hours away. It would be nice if I could discover some recreation options that are a little closer. That’s exactly what AllTrails offers. They’re a San Francisco, CA based startup that has built “the leading digital network focused on outdoor enthusiasts, providing 1 million people monthly with the information and tools to discover top destinations near them.”
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Happy 2014! While New Year’s resolutions are probably one of the worst ways to make a positive change in your life, people continue to set themselves up for failure by assuming that a change of calendar will give them all of the motivation that they need to accomplish a goal. The first few weeks are pretty easy, but how do you keep it up when the new year isn’t all that new anymore? You need other sources of motivation. If your resolutions are fitness based Fitocracy might be the answer. They’re a New York, NY based company that aims “to make fitness a more fun, more addictive experience.” They do this with the power of social networks and gamification.
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Merry Christmas Eve! Tonight my family will go to the candlelight service at the church I grew up in. It’s the only church that has ever felt like home to me. I’m not exactly sure how my parents started going there, but I’ll guess that it had something to do with the fact that it was about 150 yards from our house. Finding a great place of worship isn’t always so easy. I church-hopped in college, and never really found one that felt right for me. FaithStreet might have helped. Whether you’re looking for a local Christmas Eve service or a place to worship for the rest of your life, the New York, NY based company can help you find the right faith community. The founders asked, “Why is it so hard to find a church?” And instead of admitting defeat, they decided to do something about it.
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Much of what we do on social media sites is completely frivolous, but we all know how powerful they can be when directed in the right way. Whether it’s raising money, awareness, or a volunteer force, there’s no better medium than the Internet for pushing a specific cause. Causes is a San Francisco, CA based company that wants to be the place that people go to when they want to “discover, support and organize campaigns, fundraisers, and petitions around the issues” that matter to them and their communities.
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Yesterday was a day to celebrate our freedoms. Being able to speak and express ourselves freely is the most important in my book. Even though we have that right, there is no guarantee that anyone will listen or pay attention to us. If you want to be heard, you have to promote your voice. That’s what See.Me is all about. They are a New York, NY based company that has built a platform that allows artists of all kinds to “share the best of what [they] do and gain recognition and support within [a] vibrant international community.” It’s a place to get exposure, meet other artists, and even earn financial contributions from those who want to support your work.
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I remember when Facebook was just for friends your age. Now it’s common to be friends with your parents, your parents’ friends, your professors, and your coworkers. I don’t know anyone who is friends with his or her doctor, but I can just imagine posting a picture of an awesome dessert that you’re about to eat and getting a notification saying “Dr. Jones commented on your photo: ‘Are you sure you want to eat this?'” Nobody needs that (ok, maybe some people do). We should probably give doctors their own social network so they can talk amongst themselves. That’s exactly what Sermo is. They’re a Boston, MA based company that “created the largest online community, exclusive to physicians.” They already have 125,000 medical professionals participating, and I’m sure that number will keep growing.
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I have a favorite Yankees blog, and I occasionally participate in a Cornell Hockey forum. I follow a few athletes on Twitter, and sometimes get into sports debates on Facebook. I’d imagine that I’m a pretty typical sports fan in terms of my social media and web use–my attention is fragmented across a lot of different sites. LockerDome is a St. Louis, MO based startup that offers a social media platform to help “professional athletes, brands, media personalities, and other sports properties” reach their fans wherever they’re consuming content online. The idea is that LockerDome acts “as a social hub [for athletes and brands] to amplify their overall social media strategy.”
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Job searching and looking for love can be similarly painful. There’s the fear of rejection, the lack of useful feedback, and the constant pressure to make something happen from family and friends. While there’s no holiday that makes being unemployed feel like being alone on Valentine’s Day, there are plenty of day to day reminders that you need to get a job (hopefully these e-mails are a positive reminder). I think that one of the reasons that people struggle to find both love and jobs is that they try to do it alone. What if you had a few friends to help you along the way? That’s what Grouper is proposing. They’re a New York, NY based dating startup/social club “that sets up drinks between 2 groups of friends.” They don’t even use the word “dating” on their homepage, and I think that’s a brilliant branding decision–it’s all about meeting new people. I’m especially fond of Grouper because they’re running with the fish theme.
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Amy, my fiancée, and I communicate a lot over the course of the day. Beyond talking in person, we typically talk on the phone, we e-mail, we Gchat, and we iMessage. It works for us, but I could see how someone might want all of those communications in one place. Others might want to participate in some online PDA without the P. Either way, Pair is a solution. It’s an app created by a company called TenthBit in San Francisco, CA that is “for just the two of you.” Its features include “texting, sharing, videos, photos, sketching together, thumbkiss and more.” It’s a little overkill for me, but I can see why some couples love it.
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While I built this site to help college students internships at interesting companies, I’ve heard from a few people who use it very differently. One of the most surprising uses was from someone in Corporate Development at a pretty big company–she was using the daily e-mails to source potential acquisitions (though I don’t think any have actually happened). I think that’s pretty cool, but there are certainly better places to find deals. AxialMarket is one of them. They’re a New York, NY based company that “is revolutionizing the capital formation process for private companies.” In other words, they’ve built a marketplace where private companies can find partners for “M&A, capital raises, and debt financings.”
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Happy Election Day! I’m not going to scold you to vote today because I find that insufferable. Whether you vote is as much a personal choice as whom you vote for. I know plenty of people take politics seriously, but in a lot of ways it’s a spectator sport for people who don’t like sports. You cheer for your guy or girl. You’re jubilant when he or she wins or you’re crushed when he or she loses. But in reality you have as much control over the outcome as you had over last night’s Saints-Eagles game (and some may say that the outcome affects you about as much too). You need more skin in the game, and that’s what Fantasy Politics is about. They’re a Boston, MA based company that offers “a fun opportunity for you to build a team of national politicians and pundits and get points from their real life actions.”
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I constantly get asked where I find all of the companies that I write about. The short answer is everywhere. But one of my favorite sources is you. You may be running short on ideas right now (that’s why you signed up for my e-mails), but things will change. You’ll get an internship, and hopefully you’ll report back where. That’s what one reader did, which is why I know about Ampush. They’re a San Francisco, CA based company that helps “advertisers leverage the scale and precision of the Facebook media platform to develop and engage their customer graph.” Facebook’s advertising options are amazingly powerful, but only if you know how to use them. I’ve toyed with buying ads, and it has never been ROI positive for me. Ampush combines knowhow with technology to helps make sure that their investment in Facebook advertising is worthwhile.
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I used to be a big proponent of social media, but it keeps getting harder for me to see it as anything but a waste of time. Maybe that’s going a little too far, but I’m at the point where I’m overwhelmed by the endless flow of mostly irrelevant information. I need filters! Depending on what I’m trying to accomplish at a given time, my interest in social content can vary greatly. Spindle is a company that is building “the discovery engine for the social web.” They’re based in Boston, MA and they find “the most relevant and useful social content from shops, restaurants, bars, event venues, museums, art galleries, parks, and other businesses and organizations around you.” It’s only one piece of the puzzle, but when I’m looking for somewhere interesting to go or something fun to do, I’d love to use social data to see what’s out there.
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I’ve been pretty lazy in terms of fashion lately. It’s been ridiculously hot in Chicago, and I have no interest in wearing anything but shorts and a t-shirt. I can get away with it because I usually work from home, but if I didn’t I might go to Chictopia for inspiration. I know Chictopia, which is based in San Francisco, CA, sounds like a place that a 14 year old boy circa 1992 would dream of, but it’s actually “the ultimate online destination for trendsetters to be inspired, socialize, and share in fashion.” It’s certainly targeted more towards women than men, but they do have stuff for the guys (it’s chic as is in “sheek” not “chick,” I think). The end goal is to “democratize fashion by giving everyone a voice.”
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I remember my first experience with online video. I was in middle school, and I would setup my computer to download South Park episodes overnight. The videos were in the RealPlayer format. Now I watch all of the Yankees games live over the Internet in HD quality. We’ve come a long way. Still, I think the sweetspot for online video is short clips that make you laugh. YouTube is probably the best place for that, but Dailymotion, which was started around the same time, is another great site for sharing videos. They’re actually based in Paris, France but also have an office in New York, NY. They offer 34 localized versions of their site and reach “over 110 million unique monthly visitors” who view more than 1.8 billion videos a month.
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If there’s a driving holiday, it has to be Memorial Day. I didn’t spend much time in the car this year, but last year I was in a nasty traffic jam coming back from Michigan. The jam was exacerbated by some buffoon who decided to block off a lane for at least a mile by driving slowly (it was closed for construction ahead). If only there was a way to contact him and let him know that he should read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Then he’d know that full lane utilization with a zipper merge at the obstruction is the most efficient way to deal with a lane closure. BUMP is a La Jolla, CA based company that wants to create “the world’s largest communication, marketing, and safety network” by connecting license plate numbers with online profiles.
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Last week a guy I knew in college e-mailed me looking for some career guidance. I’m happy to help just about anyone as long as they ask pretty specific questions, but I’m especially willing to do whatever I can to help him out. Why? While I thought I was taking a risk by doing a startup after graduation, he’s been flying helicopters in Afghanistan for the Army. It’s easy to forget that there are people like him who are risking their lives every day to protect us. Memorial Day weekend is all about thanking them and remembering those who have lost their lives in the call of duty. That’s why we’re going to take a look at an organization called Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America today. They’re based in New York, NY and Washington, DC, and they are the “country’s first and largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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If you haven’t heard something about the Facebook IPO in the past few days, you must have had a really good weekend. What annoys me about successful startups is all the knockoff attempts. A lot of people think that a good idea is enough to build a business on, so they copy the successes and usually fail miserably despite having a “good idea.” A much better approach is to take inspiration from the big successes and apply what you learn to a more focused niche. Doximity has done exactly that–they’re a social network for doctors and healthcare professionals. The San Mateo, CA based company has picked a great market in that a big part of being a doctor is communicating with other doctors. It’s also a market with amazing monetization possibilities.
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I love Easter. I get pretty amped about the candy, which is why in past years I’ve featured Just Born Quality Confections, Jelly Belly, Russell Stover, and the PMCA at Easter time (and Mars, The Hershey Company, NECCO, Charles Chocolates, and Vosges at other times of the year). But in my family it’s really all about the cash. We have an annual Easter Egg Hunt that is high stakes–elbows have been thrown. The eggs with candy are the duds. The heavy ones are ok because they have dollar coins. But the ones that you really want are light–they have bills in them. Over the past few years, I’ve been able to make Easter Egg Hunts pretty profitable, but it doesn’t come close to what Hatchlings has done. They run “the world’s largest egg hunt” via Facebook, and apparently the Des Moines, IA based company has been able to generate significant advertising revenue through their app.
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Everybody wants their stuff to go viral on the Internet. The problem is that it’s way easier to do with funny pictures than it is with useful things like articles and products. If you can’t get the natural word of mouth flowing, you need to incentivize (bribe) people to spread the word. I’m sure that you’ve participated in some sort of referral program before (I love Gilt’s program), and hopefully earned some sort of reward. I’ve seen so many companies use referral bonuses to accelerate their growth, and it’s often amazingly effective. Surprisingly, most of these businesses build their own technology for referrals. Why do that when you can pay Chicago, IL based Buzz Referrals to do it for you? They’ve developed a platform that easily plugs into an existing site and creates “referral programs and buzz worthy promotions that drive new customer acquisition and increase engagement.” (Would any of you participate in an ODOI referral program?)
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Admit it! You’ve used the Internet to self-diagnose a medical problem, and you probably used WebMD. For some of you it was to convince yourself that you’re not going to die tomorrow, and for some of you it was probably the opposite. It’s great having access to so much information, but it’s kind of dangerous when you a) can’t verify its accuracy and b) have no idea how to use it properly. Running to the doctor for every little issue is ridiculous, so there needs to be a better way to get medical information online. Luckily my little sister (who is awesome because she went to art school and then decided she wanted to go to med school, so she’s doing a postbac now) let me know about HealthTap. They’re a Palo Alto, CA based company that provides “free online and mobile answers from thousands of the best physicians in the U.S.” It’s kind of like Yahoo! Answers for medicine, but the people responding to your questions aren’t complete morons.
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There’s no doubt that Japanese companies have been and continue to be leaders in the gaming industry. Nintendo, Sega, and Sony are some of the names that you’re most likely to recognize, but it’s very clear that the old guard of gaming is facing stiff competition from upstarts like Zynga and ngmoco that are focusing on mobile and social gaming. While Japan has historically been big on console gaming, they’re not missing out on this trend. GREE is a Japanese that is fervently entering the U.S. market in order to grow a business that generated $1.7 billion in revenue last year. GREE is unique in that their U.S. based branding has been more about hiring than games. They’ve opened a San Francisco, CA office that they’re promoting heavily with billboards, referral bonuses, and even Google AdWords campaigns. They also acquired a company called OpenFeint to speed along the growth.
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Sharing a meal is a great way to get to know people. Eating provides enough of a distraction to cover up awkward pauses that might come up in other settings without completely killing the ability to have a conversation. Yet very rarely do people use eating as a way to meet new people. You either eat alone or you eat with people you already know. Grubwithus is a company that throws a little uncertainty into your dining experiences by pairing you with strangers who have common interests for a tasting menu at a local restaurant. Grubwithus is based out of Venice, CA, and they’ve built a ton of buzz. I know a bunch of people who have already tried it and had good experiences, and I’d totally host a One Day One Job/Internship focused Grubwithus meal in Chicago if there was enough interest (e-mail me at willy@onedayonejob.com).
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There’s one reason that I’m not a “social gamer.” If my friends found out how much time I spent playing games like Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds, I’d be totally embarrassed. If only we all could admit to each other that we’re compulsive gamers and start talking openly about it. That’s what Heyzap is all about. They’re a San Francisco, CA based “social discovery platform for mobile and online games and the largest social network for mobile gamers.” Through “check-in” functionality much like that of Foursquare they let you tell your friends what games you’re playing and show off to them about how skilled you are. Don’t you wish you had a similar social network for your internship search? “Hey everyone! Look! I applied for this internship and I got rejected in a record time! 2 minutes flat.”
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While I’m not a serious gamer, I definitely enjoy playing casual games on my iPhone and iPad. Although the App Store does offer recommendations, I find that it’s still hard to find good games. Instead I rely on getting recommendations from people I know–namely my girlfriend’s 10 year old sister. I watch what she’s playing, and if it looks fun, I buy the app. Then I can try to top her score and talk smack even though I can’t come close. Games are inherently social (even though gaming can become super anti-social), so it’s no surprise that gaming companies are bringing mobile and social gaming together. One of the big players in the industry is ngmoco. They’re based in San Francisco, CA, and their name is pronounced “en-gee mo-ko” (apparently it’s an acronym for Next Generation Mobile Company). ngmoco is all about building a social entertainment company in a time when “there will be more iOS/Android devices shipped than PCs/notebooks.” It makes sense.
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Though I’ve never had the opportunity to try an online dating site, I do have some interest in the industry. First, I think that online dating and online job search have a lot in common. Second, a lot of online marketing innovation comes out of the online dating industry. Third, I have a good friend who has a side project in the online dating space, and I enjoy learning from him and helping him build the business. I guess that’s why I’d heard of Zoosk before. Or maybe it’s those commercials with a bunch of really good-looking people huddled around a computer having fun on a dating site. Either way, I didn’t really bother to take a closer look at San Francisco, CA based Zoosk until I got an e-mail from a reader who recently landed a job there. Now I realize that Zoosk has kind of come out of nowhere to be a massive force in online dating. They have millions of users (they’re apparently bigger than Match.com) and a revenue run rate that was pushing towards $100 million annually back in February.
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In case you haven’t heard, we’re hiring! I’m looking for help in Writing/Editorial/Content Development, Marketing/Outreach/SEO, and Web Design/Development/User Experience. You can learn more here.
Sometimes when I’m watching television I get irritated by how stupid the ads are. Then I realize that the ads are targeted to the show, and it’s my fault for watching something idiotic. Ad targeting is getting better and better as advertisers gather more and more data on us, and this presents a great opportunity for us to learn about ourselves by observing which ads are targeted to us. The obvious next step in advertising is social, and RadiumOne is a San Francisco, CA based company that “is the first online ad network to leverage social data on the Web.” I know it’s a little creepy, but it’s the future. Brands want to be able to “identify users who are most likely to interact with their ads,” and that’s exactly the service that RadiumOne provides. I just hope the ads they serve me don’t tell me that I don’t have any friends.
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Communication in the workplace can be a major hassle, especially considering the fact that a lot of people who work together are doing so from different locations these days. E-mail was an amazing step forward, but it still has a ton of flaws. (I’m dying for an e-mail client that is built for how I think and work–nothing comes close.) Now that I’m starting to consider hiring interns or part-timers (more on that soon!), I need to come up with a way to communicate with them and manage projects. Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are on to something with their interfaces, but they are most certainly not for communicating about work. I’ve played around with the the WordPress P2 Theme, which turns blogging software into something Twitter-like, but I’m not completely sold on it. I’ve also heard some good things about San Francisco, CA based Yammer, which seems to be a pretty sweet solution. Yammer enables “people to create private enterprise social networks.” It’s more collaborative than e-mail, and it allows you to open up conversations to a wider audience without annoying them.
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It seems as though every business has a Facebook page and a Twitter account these days. Everybody is excited about social media marketing, yet very few people know how to get it right. We have a Facebook page with 3,041 Likes, a Twitter account 3,888 followers, and a LinkedIn Group with 749 members, and I barely know what to do with them besides send out our daily updates (but you should still Like, Follow, and Join). Offerpop is a New York, NY based company that helps businesses use social media more effectively through a suite of tools and apps. They’ve only been around for about a year and a half, but they’ve already done some really cool stuff with some big name clients.
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