In the past two months, Estee Lauder has been staffing up in its online and social media departments, which means more opportunities for job seekers. In July, the beauty giant was looking for a community manager, and now it has an open position for an assistant manager in its community department. Read more
The new web site says it can help you influence your representatives by speaking to them directly and voicing your concerns. You can rally your friends and neighbors, converse and share positions on issues and points of interest in your community, state and the nation.
Kaboodle is the leading social shopping site on the web with more than 1.2 million users engaging with over 10 million products. We had the opportunity to sit down with Shari Gunn, Chief Marketing Officer of Kaboodle, to discuss Kaboodle’s unique approach to cultivating a community of shoppers and empowering the consumer.
News of Xmark’s death has been greatly exaggerated. The bookmark syncing startup that had been announced as dead just a week ago has gotten a new lease on life, thanks to 30,375 loyal users.
Last week, the freely available cross-browser bookmark syncing startup Xmarks announced that it had failed to find a sustainable business model. It was collecting tons of data about how popular sites were, and what its 2 million users were interested in, but it just couldn’t make that info work as a search tool, or as a tool for advertisers. With capital running low, and no buyers in site, co-founder and CTO Todd Agulnick decided to close up shop. But he left the light on just in case there was enough interest to turn Xmarks into a paid service.
The company set up a page on PledgeBank, a UK non-profit startup that lets people post petition-based pledges. Example: I will give $1,000 to this charity if 25 other people also give $1,000. The pledge posted by the Xmarks founders was a little different: “I will commit to $10 – $20 per year for Xmarks Sync but only if 100,000 other people will do the same.”
So far 30,375 people have signed the pledge. And while it’s only a pledge, not money in the bank (and it’s still far short of the goal of 100,000), it was enough activity to attract the eyes of some buyers.
Company CEO James Joaquin posted on the company blog that Xmarks had received multiple buyout offers as a result of the “death” announcement and the pledge.
“This is not a signed, sealed done deal yet. But with multiple offers on the table we’re pretty confident that Xmarks will continue on with no service interruption,” wrote Joaquin. He added that Xmarks will send out an email update to users with more details once a deal has been signed.
Joaquin chalked it all up to the power of the Xmarks community, and scoffed at the idea that the Xmarks team had engineered the whole thing as a publicity stunt. Either way, the team now has an exit strategy, and the users keep their service.
Tom Johansmeyer is the Senior Content Director at enter:marketing. He also blogs for Cigar Reader, of which he is co-founder, Gadling, and Luxist.
As a blogger, I’ve always kept in mind the basic rule that you want to attract an audience and retain it. The traditional dynamic is to retain existing readers while attracting new ones, growing your base of loyal followers over time while continually adding to it. There’s nothing complicated in this thinking. Well, even the new media world is changing, and I’m seeing a shift in what has always been a reliable rule of thumb.
It’s a universal fear: you or a loved one gets diagnosed with a rare disease. After the dust settles, one of the first things many people do is hit the Web to begin research. With so much information to wade thorugh, separating the good from the bad is a difficult task. One of the best things you can do is find someone who has suffered the same illness.
RareShare announces that it has launched a health social networking platform specifcally for rare medical disorders.
Currently in ‘early beta,’ the Website hopes to bring patients, families and healthcare professionals together to share information and personal knowledge about rare diseases.
“Our goal is to build a network of micro-communities where people can help each other by sharing firsthand knowledge about living and being affected by these medical disorders,” explained Eric Steele, Co-Founder of RareShare. “By launching an early-beta version of RareShare, we hope gain further insight about our initial user-base to help improve the services and tools offered through RareShare,” he added.
The community is currently broken out into 500 micro-communities, each dedicated to a specific rare disorder. They plan to double that number by summer’s end. With more than 1,500 recognized rare diseases, there’s unfortunatley no shortage of illness.
The Website is a great resource. Now let’s hope you don’t ever have to check it out.
A significant discussion took place over the weekend and continued into yesterday evening. Sarah Perez provides a great write-up of the discussion that took place. This discussion is monumental. For the first time bloggers are becoming concerned about the same thing that media companies have been complaining about for the past 10 years as Napster sparked the beginning of commoditized content. Other sites can take our content and reuse it and ultimately take the conversation elsewhere.
One of the key offenders: Friendfeed. Friendfeed doesn’t stand alone though. Facebook, Digg and numerous other sites have been doing this for years. They take our content and other peoples’ content and offer it as a way to spark conversation on their site, not ours. This is substantial, they provide the venue for conversation to take place and take the content for free. I would argue that the key differentiator between friendfeed and the content creator is the community.
The battle taking place on the web is over community ownership. Ultimately we are members of multiple communities in our lives. If sites can build a community of passionate users around a topic that they are passionate about, then everybody wins. The only challenge is in how that content is leveraged and if the community members benefit from this usage of this new technology. The saying goes around that if we all raise the water level then everybody can float up and everybody benefits.
While I would argue that some peoples’ raft (or whatever flotation device they are using to stay afloat) eventually gets holes punctured in it, most of us get a net benefit. If you want to build value then build a community, don’t simply produce content. That has been the failure of blogs and while breaking news will always attract visitors, it is an unsustainable business. While content has become commoditized, it isn’t completely free. Fortunately though content has been commoditized into different subsets: high quality, medium quality and low quality content (not very original categories, I know).
We will not see the complete commoditization of content as a whole but in the end do you really want to be playing in a commoditized market? I don’t! Are journalists the next farmers? I hope not. Where I foresee the real value is in community. Mainstream media has destroyed this but fortunately thanks to their reach there is time to revive some of what has been lost. If you can become a central node for a community, you win and ultimately all the members benefit.
We are all content producers and we all deserve our fair share of revenue for the commodities we produce. In the whole scheme of things if you are in the content business, you better start building a community because that’s what matters. What are you doing to build community with your content?
An article in the New York Times highlighted the challenge of making a business out of blogging. They suggested that you blog regularly but don’t expect a significant pay day. Ultimately, the blogging can lead to other things. The New York Times is completely accurate aside from a few blogs that are generating relatively significant revenue.
There’s not as much money in building a blog for most people because you need to generate a substantial amount of traffic before it makes a lot of money. This morning while getting ready for the day I realized that the real value is in the community. Gary Vaynerchuk is the person I always use as an example of someone that has successfully built a community. He also knows that building the community will reward you greatly. Check out his video:
So often I simply write content but I’ve realized that the real value is in building the community and providing them with a platform for discussion. I’ll be working on that for Social Times. If you own the platform for the community, there are many other things you can do to add value and generate revenue. The secret is not in the media but instead in leveraging the media to build a community.
Everybody writes differently. And I’m not talking about their personal style of the vocabulary they use. I’m talking about the method in which they construct written work. The system I often employ when writing a lengthy item, includes writing sentences and paragraphs and then shuffling them around, filling in the gaps as I go.
A new Website, Paragraphr, must hope that I’m not alone in the piece and puzzle approach. Billed as an online platform for people who love reading and writing, it’s important to note that the site is currently in Alpha – and it looks it. Read more
I don’t know about your family, but mine extends from Brooklyn, NY – all the way to the Philippines. As you can imagine, arranging a family reunion is no small task. Thanks to MyGreatBigFamily, the entire clan can get together as often as they like and connect online.
The private family Website, which builds mini social networks for extended families, continues to grow, rolling out many new features along the way. Read more
