ImaginativePRO Blog

28 SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT TOOLS RATED, SCORED, AND REVIEWED (STUDY)

Global hotel chain Hyatt tweets 1,600 times a week. Chevrolet tweets 4,300 times each week. But American Airlines makes that little blue bird sing loudest, tweeting an astonishing 6,400 times every single week.

How do they do it? And why?

To answer those questions and find the best social media management tools for big, medium, and growing brands, we surveyed 1,133 social media managers who build their companies’ brands on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and emerging mobile social networks. With help from Texifter’s DiscoverText technology, we analyzed over 250,000 tweets. We tracked the 1,600 brands with the most followers and the most engagement in their use of social media.

And we talked to dozens of vendors. Everyone, apparently, has a social media management tool. Small wonder, when social has become critical to almost every company’s marketing strategy.

But which one is the best for you?

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The answers are now in.

For enterprise, Oracle is surprisingly good, as are Sprinklr and Komfo. For smaller companies, Meshfire, Sendible, and Hootsuite lead the pack. And for the midsize company, Sendible, Meshfire (again), and Oktopost are leaders. Other tools you can’t ignore? TweetDeck, Buffer, SocialFlow, Spredfast, and Crowdbooster.

Those are just a few of the results from VB’s social media management report, released today.

But it’s not just about the tools. Even more important than tool is technique, and as our analysis of brands clearly shows, those who truly engage are much more successful than those who simply broadcast.

VB analyst Stewart Rogers said.

“Most surprising for me when it came to how big brands use Twitter was the big difference between the ‘high message volume’ users and the rest,  The vast majority of those sending hundreds of tweets per day are engaging with their audience: answering questions, solving problems, and ‘being social.’ But when you look at the rest of the list, the majority use Twitter as a broadcast channel.”

In fact, nearly 70 percent of big brands use Twitter in broadcast mode. The ones who don’t, however, use the right social media management software to “fully engage even with the highest volume of tweets,” Rogers said. That speaks to brands who tweet hundreds or thousands of times a week: they’re not sharing their second-by-second status, but engaging with customers who have questions, concerns, complaints … and, hopefully, kudos.

A strong social media management plan, therefore, consists of not just posting to social networks, but also following the right accounts, listening for both brand mentions and sentiment, and engaging in the right conversations at the right time.

Accomplishing that at scale is a challenging endeavor.

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The right tools, of course, can help. And they can vary by social network as well company size and type.

In fact, many companies use multiple tools, both because some tools are better at listening or engaging or other aspects of social media management, and because some tools work best with specific networks. For example, Royal Dutch Airlines largely relies on Radian6 to listen to both followers and those that mention the brand online, and will typically use that tool to respond directly. It also uses Hootsuite and the Twitter web client to deliver messages, in addition to Twitter Ads for promoted content.

I asked Rogers what tool works best with Facebook, for instance.  Rogers said.

“Sendible scores highest, according to the opinions of our survey respondents, and supports a wide range of networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more.  For Twitter, however, it is hard to look past Meshfire for SMEs and mid-sized companies alike.”

While brands do use Hootsuite frequently, individual social media managers for smaller companies use it more than twice as much as the next contender:

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Interestingly, while 22 percent of the over 1,100 social media marketing professionals we surveyed are using marketing clouds, many are not using the social tools in their clouds.

For instance, within Adobe Marketing Cloud users, 19 percent use Adobe Social, but 27 percent use Hootsuite. And when we asked Oracle Marketing Cloud customers, 25 percent of them use the included Oracle Social Relationship Management product, but an equal 25 percent use Hootsuite.

The entire report on 28 major social media management tools, and the most successful social techniques, is available now on VB Insight.

COMMENTARY:   The criteria used by social media managers for selecting SMM software depends on a number of different factors including costs, features and capabilities, accessibility, platforms supported, scalability, ease-of-use and customer support.

It is very important that your firm be ready to make the transition to SMM software before you have too many social media accounts and too much social media activity to track.  How many accounts are too many?  In my personal opinion you should not have more than four social media accounts to track.  Any more than this, creates a a social media environment that is unwieldly or even chaotic to manage without a good SMM system.

Buyers Guide To SMMS Platforms

Technological change and innovation has hit social media at a speed that makes it very difficult for social media managers and marketers to keep up.  In most instances that change and innovation is good, especially when it helps us do our jobs more efficiently and offers value to our respective communities.

Consider for a moment how far social media monitoring platforms have come just over the last two or three years. Back in 2009 social media marketing professionals were happy with a tool that helped them monitor mentions of their brand for the purposes of crisis mitigation. Now these same professionals have the ability to create sophisticated dashboards and raise the collective intelligence of their organizations by listening to the online chatter of the consumer.

Social media management software tools have undergone a similar evolution as brands have looked for ways to more effectively scale social media efforts.  

Over the last few weeks Oracle and Salesforce.com have jumped into the ring to take advantage of the obvious CRM applications of these tools. Time will tell how these tools evolve after being purchased by much larger enterprises, but in the meantime marketers are looking at and evaluating them to help their companies.

Because social media tools have evolved at such a rapid pace there is quite a lot of confusion at the point of purchase. What should you be looking for in one of these tools if you are purchasing one for your brand? A few things come to mind:

• Easy to navigate user interface - These are the absolute minimum requirements:
• Scheduling content - keeps us from having to be at the computer 24/7/365. Most of the current tools on the market have this functionality, but check before buying.
• Ability to post to all major social channels – Again, a core functionality of most tools, but you should be able to post to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube without much difficulty. 
• Uploading multimedia content – Can you easily attach photos and videos to posts in your current SMMS? We know how important visual content can be for brands so if you can’t upload multimedia with your posts it might be time to start looking elsewhere.
• Geo-targeting – A feature of some tools, but not all. If you are posting information about an event in Chicago chances are good that your fans or followers in Dallas, for example, do not care. The more relevant the content to a particular audience, the more engagement it is likely to receive. Check to see if your current tool allows for geo-targeting.
• Post tagging – This is critical for reporting down the line, but you should be able to assign tags to individual posts. Properly tagging posts will save you from having to go through every single post at the end of the month.
• Robust analytics dashboard - This is the biggest source of frustration because some of the SMMS tools that are thought to be best in class have what we would categorize as awful analytics dashboards.  What data should your SMMS tool be offering?
  • Everything you can get through Facebook or YouTube Insights – Listen, this isn’t a technical problem anymore. Both Facebook and YouTube have made their Insights platforms available via API. Wouldn’t you like to access that data from the same platform you are using to post? Yeah, so would we. Does your platform offer this currently?
  • Twitter data – We realize gathering Twitter data is a little more complex, but your platform should be offering up impressions, clicks, retweets and replies.  
  • Competitive data – There are tools currently on the market that offer Facebook data on competitors within the publishing platform. That’s invaluable competitive intelligence as you evaluate your own performance. We wouldn’t categorize the lack of competitor data to be a deal breaker, but it is certainly helpful.
• Avoid SMMS with arbitrary black box algorithms - We could spend a lot of time on this point, but we are not a fan of algorithms within SMMS tools that place an arbitrary value metric on your content. The threshold should be that if you cannot stand in front of the CMO and defend what you are presenting, do not use it.  In almost every instance, that describes these algorithms.
• Reliability - This would appear to be a “no duh” point, but you would be surprised how unstable some of these platforms can be. Double posting, inability to upload multimedia at random times, broken links and out of date data are all frequent issues with these tools. We totally understand the occasional outage, but if you are having constant technological challenges it is time to look at another tool.
• Scalability - The SMMS platform you select should have the ability to grow as you add more social media accounts and keep up with the volume of activity.  The SMMS tool should be modular so that you can add additional module to handle the demands of increased volume as you need it.
• Mobility - The SMMS platform should offer the ability to now or in the near future access your publishing engine or data via mobile devices.  If you are on your computer 24/7/365 access to your SMMS publishing engine or data via mobile devices is a must. 
• CRM connectivity -  A big plus would be for your SMMS platform to be social CRM capable or  having customer data merged with social content data. 
• Monitoring platform integration – We feel strongly that the winning combination will be some form of listening tool and SMMS platform. Imagine the power of being able to monitor for mentions of your brand, post from your brand page and then gather the data all from one platform. Very powerful combination that has yet to truly come to fruition.

19 Questions to Determine Corporate Social Media Readiness

In order for companies to realize the maximum benefit from social media marketing, there must be a certain level of understanding about the nature of online communities, social media sharing web sites and applications. One of the most effective ways TopRank Online Marketing has found to assess a company’s awareness, capabilities and resources for social media marketing is to conduct an external audit and an internal survey.

Identifying a company’s current state of social media readiness helps determine benchmarks and sets a baseline from where to build from. This is part of developing a social media strategy and helps avoid the random testing many companies are calling their “social media strategy”.

There are a number of free or low cost tools that one can use to identify a brand’s current social web participation, ranging from social media monitoring software to profile checking tools like KnowEm to social search tools like How Socialable, 48ers or socialmention.

With many companies, there are often a mix of official and unsanctioned social media accounts setup. It’s important to get a handle on such participation, who’s managing the accounts, whether they are run by employees or fans and what the company can learn from them. Getting a handle on the difference between how social the company is and will need to become is essential for planning, training and strategy development.

As part of the evaluation process, here are a few questions companies might ask themselves and answer as they embark on a social media marketing journey:

1. What goals do you hope to achieve from a social media marketing effort?
2. What measures of success will be used to evaluate a social media marketing program?
3. What are your current social media channels and destination web sites/pages?:
4. Do you employ a full-time community manager?
5. If not, do multiple staff share the role of community manager?
6. Are you conducting a formal effort at monitoring social channels using a social media monitoring/analysis software application? (Ex: Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs, SocialRadar, Radian6)
7. Is there a particular business unit, division or product that can serve as a test case?
8. If active, how long has the company participated with social media sites and which? Blogging, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wikis, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc
9. Are current social media participation on different sites coordinated?
10. Is a dashboard and campaign management tool used for social media content promotion?
11. Have you noticed any particular preferences within the target audience in their social web participation?
12. Do they prefer particular sites? (Twitter vs Facebook – blogs vs forums)
13. Do they comment, do they contribute content, do they tend to observe, do they not participate at all?
14. Have you identified and engaged and/or networked with influentials in your target industry on social web sites?
15. What unique value do current social media efforts offer clients/prospective clients? What need do they satisfy better than the competition?
16. Are text content or media regularly shared on other social media sharing sites?
17. Is there a user generated content component of your web site? Profiles, comments, reviews, content sharing: text, image, video or audio?
18. What departments, business units, cost centers and approval entities would be involved with the Social Media program? Is there an internal social media council?
19. What internal human resources are available within the company for support and implementation of social media marketing initiatives? (Content creation, network development, promotion, monitoring & analytics, community engagement)

Obviously each situation is as unique as the company and its objectives, but the list above can provide valuable insight into a company’s state of social media marketing readiness as well as provoking new thoughts and concepts. The more informed companies are about the social web, the more successful they will be at qualifying and managing social media marketing agency engagements.

Comparing Social Media Management Software

If you are seriously considering implementing an SMMS platform at your company, I would highly recommend this valuable online tool by G2 Crowd for comparing different social media management software platforms.

G2 Crowd helps you compare the best Social Media Mgmt Software products. You can compare products on a Grid similar to the Boston Consulting Group Matrixx, or by selecting any of the products for a side-by-side comparison. In addition, you can download the full report for more detailed information about Social Media Mgmt Software products. Only products with 10 or more reviews are included in the Grid. For a full list of products, click on the Products tab.

Courtesy of an article dated April 21, 2015 appearing in VentureBeat, an article dated September 2009 appearing in TopRank Online Marketing Blog, an article dated June 21, 2012 appearing in SocialMediaExplorer, and the Social Media Management Software comparison grid by G2 Crowd

 

 

https://www.g2crowd.com/categories/social-media-management

 

                    

comSCORE: YAHOO! IS THE TOP US WEB PROPERTY IN JULY 2013; GOOGLE STILL TOPS IN VIDEO AND ONLINE SEARCH

Yahoo's network of websites had more unique monthly visitors last month than Google's for the first time since May 2011, according to recent data released by comScore.

Yahoo sites had 196.5 million unique US visitors in July, compared with 192.2 million for Google. Microsoft sites were third, with 179.5 million visitors, and Facebook was fourth, with 142.2 million.

Those numbers do not factor in mobile traffic, only Web visits. They also do not include search queries.

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Below, additional comScore data from July 2013.

Top Categories

• Back-to-school shopping was top of mind for many Americans in July, as seen by a spike in traffic to fashion and accessories sites, as well as consumer goods sites for school supplies. 
• Coupon sites also drew a significant increase in traffic.  

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Video

• Google, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in July with 167.9 million unique viewers (up 6% since June). 
• Facebook was second with 61.3 million unique viewers, followed by AOL with 57.9 million, VEVO with 49.6 million, and Microsoft with 49.6 million.  

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Search

• Google led the US search market in July with a 67% market share (up 0.3%). 
• Microsoft was second with 17.9% of searches, and and Yahoo was third with 11.3%. 

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About the research: To learn more about the July 2013 data, see comScore's reports on the month's top web properties, video properties, and search engines. 

COMMENTARY:   Although Yahoo! beat out Google in terms of unique visitors during July 2013, Google still beats both Yahoo! and Facebook in terms of revenues.  Google generated $14.1 billion in gross revenues for the second quarter ending July 31, 2013.  Yahoo!, Microsoft and Facebook generated gross revenues of $1.135 billion, $19.896 billion and $1.813 billion respectively.

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Courtesy of an article dated August 27, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs

HOW 'SOCIAL SNOOPING' SERVICES ARE HELPING EMPLOYERS SCREEN EMPLOYEES THROUGH THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA BEHAVIORS

Hopefully most readers of this column are aware that their social media profiles are fair game for potential employers, who may peruse the photos and updates posted to a Facebook page to gather evidence as to the character and sobriety (often literally) of a prospective job candidate. This week brings more evidence that ill-advised social media content can hurt your chances, courtesy of a survey of executives responsible for hiring decisions in Australia.

The survey of 1,255 bosses and other hiring executives, conducted by Pure Profile on behalf of Australian telecom Telestra, found that 28% of the respondents use social media to screen job candidates by doing research into their backgrounds. Within this group, respondents said they were turned off by something posted on a profile around 40% of the time. That compares to one-third who said that something posted on a profile helped decide them in favor of a particular candidate.

No surprise, one of the biggest mistakes made by job applicants in their social media profiles was criticizing their current employer:

• 44% of Australian employers who use social media for screening said they automatically disqualified jobseekers who posted critical comments about their current workplace, according to the Pure Profile-Telestra survey.
• 37% said making discriminatory remarks about your previous employer was an automatic deal-breaker.
• 31% of employers actually fired an employee who made critical remarks about them.

Again unsurprisingly, Facebook was the most popular source of information on job candidates, used by bosses:

• 41% of bosses screened applicants using Facebook.  
• 31% of bosses screened applicants using LinkedIn
• 14% of bosses screened applicants using Twitter
• 7% of bosses screened applicants using both YouTube and MySpace 

Interestingly, social media surveillance may continue even after someone lands a job:  

• 43% of Aussie employers say they accept friend requests from their employees. 
• 33% of Aussie employers say they check their employees’ social media profiles. 
• 18% of Aussie employers say they monitor their employees to make sure the employees aren’t badmouthing the company online. 
• 15% of Aussie employers say they monitor for productivity.

Back in the U.S., there’s no question employers are zeroing in on social media profiles as sources of information about job candidates -- sometimes with the help of professional background researchers. In June of this year I wrote about a decision by the Federal Trade Commission which effectively allows everything an individual puts on social media (which is publicly available under their privacy settings) to be archived by third parties for up to seven years, for the explicit purpose of background checks -- even if the individual has deleted the content in question from his or her own account.

The FTC determined that a company called Social Intelligence Corp. was operating within the bounds of the law when it created "cached" archives of social media profiles for review by employers, including potentially damaging photos and statements.

According to Social Intelligence Corp. CEO Max Drucker, the company focuses on screening social media profiles for the usual suspects -- racist remarks, sexually explicit content, pictures with guns, knives, or other weapons, and other illegal behavior (think bongs).

There are some limits on how employers may use archived social media content, however. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, companies are required to tell prospective employees (or, say, credit applicants) that they are going to perform background check and obtain their permission to do so. Also, companies must tell the applicant about any damaging information they find online.

COMMENTARY:   In a blog post dated October 3, 2010, I profiled Social Intelligence Corporation, a "creepy startup" and "truly scary" firm that screens job applicants by what they say or do on social networks for employers.    This is a quote from Max Drucker, CEO of Social Intelligence Corp:

"Once employees have been hired, their online behavior poses a possible threat to your company. Employees may criticize managers or coworkers on a social networking site, post questionable photos on a blog, or regularly update personal sites while on the clock. Therefore, it is vital that employers implement and enforce a strong social media policy. Social Intelligence offers nearly real-time surveillance of employees' online behavior (based on e-mail, SMS, and workflow) using customizable reports, summaries, and screenshots to document activity. Findings are prioritized by predefined, color-coded alerts, ensuring that employers see only the information they desire. Consistent monitoring creates awareness and strict adherence among employees, thereby reducing “cyber slacking,” fraud, and negative company publicity. Social media monitoring leads to an increase in overall productivity and a significant improvement in your bottom line."

He says employers should "implement and enforce a strong social media policy" and he calls its service "nearly real-time surveillance of employees".   

The idea that your employer can play "Big Brother" on its employees in "real-time" including screening their "email, social media sites and workflow" is "truly scary."  Does this mean that employers are eavesdropping on their employees at will?   I call that invasion of privacy.  I would like to know what they mean by "workflow."  I would go as far as to call it "employer peeping-tom"  This should be worrisome for you.

In a blog dated October 3, 2011, I again profiled Social Intelligence Corporation, I discussed the Federal Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) of 1996, 2004 with amendments there to.  The FCRA is a fairly complex 86 page document (see below) that provides consumers with certain rights.  

Social Intelligence Corporation had been sued by privacy advocates claiming that the company was in violation of the FCRA, but the FTC dropped the case after its investigation of Social Intelligence, finding that it is in compliance with the guidelines of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. 

I became very interested in learning exactly what information Social Intelligence Corporation provides employers "using customizable reports, summaries, and screenshots to document activity," includking which social sites they were using for screening and how they determined that a particular jobseeker "presents a threat" to a prospective employer.   I sent them an email requesting this information, but I received a very lame response from one of their spokespersons that they could not provide that information unless I were a client.  

Social Intelligence Corporation provides two services to employers:

"Social Intelligence℠ Hiring is an FCRA compliant background screening service that enables employers to navigate the complicated legal landscape of social media with clear, consistent, and insightful results. Using a combination of automated and manual review processes, Social Intelligence Hiring ignores information that is not legally allowable in the hiring process, such as the “protected class” characteristics defined by federal anti-discrimination law (race, religion, national origin, age, sex, familial status, sexual orientation, disability status, and other qualities that are not allowed to be used as decision points). Therefore, job candidates are protected from discrimination based on these characteristics and, in turn, employers are protected from allegations of discrimination."

Social Intelligence Employment Solutions

"Social Intelligence℠ Monitoring enables employers to implement and enforce a strong social media policy. Using a combination of automated and manual review processes, Social Intelligence Monitoring provides a powerful, cost-effective method of alerting employers to social media policy violations, including negative publicity, fraud and “cyber slacking,” and mitigating risks posed by existing employees. As with Social Intelligence Hiring, Monitoring ignores “protected class” information to insulate employers from employee discrimination claims. Whether employees are displaying or discussing illegal behavior, publicly disparaging management online, discussing sensitive company information, or updating personal websites while at work, Social Intelligence Monitoring provides employers with the knowledge and tools necessary to protect their organizations."

The word "Monitoring" sounds an awful lot like "watching" or "spying".  If I say, "I am going to monitor you," I think you would automatically assume that I am watching you.  Yes, that's Big Brother watching over you.   

Incidentally, Social Intelligence Corporation is sponsoring a live webinar titled, "Using Social Media for Hiring Online" on Friday, December 2, 2011 between 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. (PST).  Here's what's on the agenda:  

"Attendees will learn what social media is and how to use it their advantage when hiring for their organization. They will learn its powerful way to augment traditional employment background screening using FCRA compliant social media searches. Lastly, we’ll show a demonstration how Social Intelligence and TalentWise makes a comprehensive social media screening simple and risk-free with searches that allow HR, recruiting and staffing professionals to gain deeper insight into job candidates’ personal and professional characteristics while screening candidates in a systematic way to ensure compliance with federal, state and local employment laws and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)."

I am pleased to report that I have registered for this webinar and encourage anyone interested in their invasion of privacy to do the same.  You can register HERE.   Just so you know I am in no way plugging Social Intelligence Corporation.

Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in MediaPost Publications The Social Graf

COMSCORE: "IT'S A SOCIAL WORLD: TOP 10 NEED-TO-KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL NETWORKING AND WHERE IT'S HEADED"

 

comScore recently released our global social networking report, “It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows about Social Networking and Where it’s Headed,” which we certainly encourage you to download if you haven’t already. And while the report offers a comprehensive global view of what’s happening in social media, I thought it might also be interesting to drill down into the latest snapshot of the U.S. social networking market.

Top 10 Need To Knows About Social Networking and Where It Is Headed

View more presentations from turk5555.

In light of recent IPO activity in this market, and rumors of more to come in 2012, it is worth understanding why the U.S. market is stronger than it has ever been before and how it’s managing to accommodate the emergence of several upstarts.

The data shown here for the leading social networking sites focuses on visitation to the primary web pages for the selected sites via home and work computers, and excludes any activity from mobile phones & tablets. While these mobile channels contribute to incremental audience and engagement – in some cases, significantly so – it is important to recognize that this data looks at each site through a similarly defined universe of computer-based web usage. Many of the social networking sites covered are household names by now, while others have gained prominence in the past year.

Facebook is still the undisputed leader the U.S. social networking market with 166 million unique visitors in November. The average user spent 6.6 hours per person engaged on the site during the month, an increase of 37% in the past year. These outsized audience and engagement numbers should not be a surprise to anyone at this point. Meanwhile, Twitter.com and Linkedin.com have been jockeying over the past several months for the #2 spot in audience size. In November this is how they measured up.

• Twitter - Eked out the second position with 35.4 million unique visitors.
• LinkedIn - Right behind with 35 million unique visitors. Myspace currently owns the #4 position with 25 million visitors, but it has seen a steady decline in audience over the past two years.

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Outside of these established players, there are three upstarts worth mentioning.

• Tumblr - One of the most consistent growth stories over the past year has been Tumblr.com, which now boasts 15.9 million U.S. visitors – an increase of 131% since November 2010, with the majority of that surge happening since April 2011. What is significant about Tumblr is not just its growing audience but how highly engaged its users are, with the average one spending 2.4 hours on the site per month. Its engagement numbers are now second only to Facebook.
• Google Plus - Just behind Tumblr is Google Plus, which has received a great deal of attention this year, with 15.2 million U.S. visitors in November. While Google Plus nearly matches Tumblr from an audience standpoint in the U.S., it does not yet attract similar levels of user engagement on its primary web pages. Importantly, these figures account for activity on plus.google.com and do not include engagement with the Google Plus toolbar or other distributed content throughout the Google network of sites. Given Google’s strategy of integrating Google Plus throughout its network, including Google Search and YouTube, it will be interesting to see if increased exposure to this extended social functionality exerts any gravitational pull towards the primary Google Plus experience.
• Pinterest.com - One final social network that deserves some attention is online pinboard Pinterest.com. The site, which first came onto the comScore radar in May 2011 with 418,000 unique visitors, has surged over the past six months to nearly 4.9 million visitors. Also significant is that, like Tumblr, Pinterest is exceptionally sticky and keeps it users engaged for long periods of time. In November, the average visitor spent nearly an hour and a half on the site over the course of the month and more than 15 minutes per visit, ranking it third on consumer engagement.

The U.S. social networking market has never been stronger, and the current dynamics suggest that while Facebook clearly remains the leader, there is room for some other players in the market to emerge and become successful in their own rights. We’ll be keeping an eye on how their audiences and engagement continue to grow as we head into 2012.

COMMENTARY:    I just love Pinterest because of the variety of incredible content users post there.  Looks like a subject for a future blog post.

Courtesy of an article dated December 28, 2011 appearing in comScore

 

READWRITEWEB'S "TOP 10 STARTUPS FOR 2011" REVEALS SOME COOL INTERNET AND MOBILE APPS, BUT WHICH ONES ARE THE WINNERS?

What happened to startups in 2011? E-commerce and mobile payments continued to grow, and group buying startup Groupon went public. Facebook, the biggest social network around, expanded in a huge way, announcing Timeline, frictionless sharing and a settlement (finally) with the FTC. It also swallowed up many promising startups, including group messaging service Beluga, social network-enhancing service Friend.lyand software company WhoGlue.

The mixing of social gaming and mobile payments, social network alternatives to Facebook, consumer cloud storage and apps that actually make you feel productive (read: not like you're just wasting more time online) came out on top as just a few of the most important startups of this year.

This year's top 10 startups list is a combination of companies that launched in 2011, and others that gained considerable attention. We chose these startups based on how they've changed or disrupted their niches and how they've influenced trends this year and for the year to come. They are listed in no particular order. Take a look after the jump.

Fab.com: Social Shopping That Works

Fab.com wasn't always as glamorous as it is today. The site first launched in April 2010 as Fabulis.com as a "cross between Facebook and Yelp" specifically designed for gay male consumers. Yet by February 2011, the site had come to a serious halt with 130,000 members, only 30,000 of which were active. Co-founders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer decided to trash it and start over, retaining only the social graph and a flash sales feature that had already been working quite well called "Gay Deal of the Day." In the wake of total mainstreamification of the gay market - Glee, Lady Gaga, gay marriage becoming legal in New York and Don't Ask Don't Tell finally being repealed - the need for gay niche sites was declining. Instead of closing down the site for good, Goldberg and Shellhammer decided to reinvent it as Fab.com, a flash sales site aimed at the design-conscious shopper (who may or may not be gay and male). The experiment worked.

By September 2011, Forbes reported that member numbers were up to 600,000 and sales were in the six-figure range. Shellhammer handpicks every product that is sold on the site. It doesn't rely on email blasts or fatigue-inducing daily deals. And unlike other flash sales sites, merchants who sell on Fab.com don't lose money on their products.

To make the e-commerce experience more social, Fab.com launched its Live Feed, which aggregates everything that the site's users are buying, liking, tweeting and sharing about on the Web. The new feature is opt-in, meaning that Fab users don't one day wake up and realize that everyone in their network knows their purchasing habits. As I said in my 2012 predictions post, this social networking-turned-flash sales site will continue to grow. Fab.com's only real competitor in the flash sales market is Gilt Groupe.

Dwolla: Mobile Payments That Act Like Cash

Apparently Des Moines, Iowa, is the mobile payments capital of the U.S. It is also the home of mobile payments platform Dwolla, which has been on the RWW radar this year. Here is how it works: Sign up for Dwolla, load up your account and then head over to a retailer that's using Dwolla for mobile payments. The company says it is working on partnerships with banks and financial institutions so that money can go right from user's bank account to the retailer.

Dwolla sees itself more like Visa than a PayPal type of mobile payments solution, except it uses cash instead of credit. Its main competitor is Square, which offers Square Card Case, except that relies on a user's smartphone and the retailer's iPad cash registers. Dwolla is much simpler.

Users benefit from Dwolla's location and social features, and that it's basically digital cash rather than credit-based money. In that way, Dwolla acts like cash in your wallet, except it's digital and your wallet is your smartphone. And at the end of the day, Dwolla wants to partner with retailers to make this concept work. Its "Grid," which launched back in June, works like Facebook Connect for payments - a user's personal information is stored on Dwolla, not the merchant's servers. If a third-party app wants to connect to Dwolla, it has to first ask permission just like Facebook Connect. That's one way Dwolla makes users feel more in control of their accounts, which are also based entirely on cash. Dwolla transactions are 25 cents regardless of the amount unless it is under than $10, in which case it's completely free. PayPal, on the other hand, always charges 30 cents per transaction plus 2.9% of the transaction.

Zaarly: Mobile Local Commerce Comes To Your Neighborhood

Zaarly is one of the few startups on our list that did in fact launch this year. It launched in May 2011, positioning itself as a mix between Craigslist "For Sale" section and an online auction house. To use it, sign up for a Zaarly account, post what it is you want to buy and how much you're willing to pay, and then sit back and wait for folks to submit bids. The kicker here is that you select the time frame for the product you want, and the distance you're willing to travel. This brings a more instantaneous element into the entire mobile local commerce experience. Zaarly shares your request to its company Facebook and Twitter pages in addition to the web and mobile versions of the site. After enough bids come in and the buyer is satisfied, they pick one and either pay with cash or the Zaarly integrated payment system.

Whereas EBay is entirely bidding based, Zaarly acts more like the local commerce facilitator. Zaarly users don't need to limit themselves to stuff, per se. They can also post about errands they need done and tasks they want someone else to do for them, from "delivering a candle" to "finding an indie music expert to make me feel cool again." The company raised $1 million in its seed round from investors such as Ashton Kutcher, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit and Chicago's Lightbank, which also backed Groupon. In late October, it raised $14.1 million from Kleiner Perkins and Sands Capital Ventures, just to name a few.

BankSimple Finally Launches, Rebrands Itself As Just Plain "Simple"

Web-native bank BankSimple said it would launch in 2010, but waited until nearly mid-way through 2011 to send its social Web application out into the world. The idea behind BankSimple is simple: Create a Web-based bank that let users deposit checks by photographing them with its mobile app. Make cash withdrawals from ATMs anywhere without the obnoxious fees. Receive recommendations and value-added services based on the private data that you provide.

While the "location optional" feel of BankSimple seemed great, in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and people transitioning back to local credit unions, the idea of putting all of your money into the cloud felt a bit less appealing. The service finally launched in late September, but raised concerns about the security and potential sale of customer data. In November, BankSimple rebranded to just "Simple" and officially opened for business. It is not actually a bank, but it does work with FDIC-insured banks that handle a user's money.

Path: If You're Serious About Not Being On Facebook

In the second to last month of 2010, former Facebook Platform Manager Dave Morin, Napster Co-Founder Shawn Fanning and quite a few star investors launched Path.com, the social network that isn't about size, popularity or social status. Friend lists are small and personal. Path notifies you immediately when someone looks at a photo of something you post. It is essentially a "path" of your life as you go, which is essentially what Facebook Timeline wants to be. Except on Path, things stay small. The company calls itself an app that helps you "share life with the ones you love" by streaming your life, taking you on one big ego trip.

As Jon Mitchell wrote in his smartly titled post "Path, Timeline and Worship of the Self," the big difference between Path and Facebook Timeline is that Path is closed, though you can choose to syndicate your content to Facebook or Twitter. Some have said that Path is what Facebook should be, a space for real friends not thousands of Facebook "friends" that you've met twice. In the wake of social Web overload, could Path be the way to bring some balance to your socially networked life?

Pinterest: Start Pinning Pretty Pictures And Forget About Socializing 

2011 was a big year for visual social bookmarking site Pinterest, which is growing at rapid speed. It launched in March 2010. During the week ending December 17, the site received 11 million visits, which is 40 times what it received six months prior. We first wrote about it in September 2011 just as it was gaining speed on the social Web. The concept is quite simple: Users sign up for the site and then add the Pinterest bookmarklet to the browser. Find an image on the web and then "pin it" to the site based on category and a brief description. Users with the iPhone app can snap a photo and do the same thing. Pinterest's user interface is wholly visual. Sites like Delicious and Q&A social network Quora are starting to look like Pinterest, too. Ben Silbermann, a West Des Moines native and the CEO of Pinterest, noted that the first people to understand and use the site were women in the Midwest. Pinterest is growing larger everyday. Don't be surprised if you see a steady stream of email invites continuing well into the new year.

SCVNGR: The Gamification Of Location-Based Commerce

We've been keeping a close eye on SCVNGR since 2010. A Google Ventures-backed mobile location startup launched in 2010, initially vowed to beat Facebook Places. The now 22-year-old founder Seth Priebatsch launched SCVNGR as the game layer on location. Initially, it was a consumer product, but has since changed the mobile payments game all together with its game dynamics. Earlier this year it launched LevelUp, a platform that brought together gameification and daily deals, allowing users to receive better deals so long as they keep using the system and unlock levels with merchants as they go. The LevelUp app gives its users a personalized QR code that ties to debit/credit cards that are already in the system, but not on the device itself. Bringing together mobile payments to location-based games is unique from both Foursquare and the now-defunct Gowalla. We'll keep a close eye on SCVNGR in the coming year.

Evernote: How To Organize Your Life

Evernote CEO Phil Libin said that only 13% of its users had the Evernote Web version, which indicates one thing and one thing only: It's all about the app. Initially only a product used by professionals, Evernote has expanded to many new users, including students. Evernote added ways to share with individuals over Facebook and email, the former of which felt pretty slow in coming. Evernote made its Windows app more social, updated its Chrome extension for better web clipping, added audio for Macs and greatly improved its Android app. When it scored $50 million in new funding from Sequoia Capital, Libin boldly declared that the company would be around for another 100 years. Evernote updated its iOS app with rich text editing within notes, mobile access to shared notebooks, search features and a new way to look the app using a passcode.

Everything seemed to be going well for Evernote this year until the introduction of its Evernote Hello app, which is supposed to help users remember people they meet in real life by taking their picture. Unfortunately, it's only available for iOS and it assumes that the user is willing to hand over his or her phone to a stranger. ReadWriteWeb's Joe Brockmeier notes that this could be awesome, if "Evernote is using Hello as a prelude to acing contact management features into Evernote." If it does, this could be a great way to manage contacts. Even better, it could collaborate with LinkedIn's CardMuncher iPhone app to sync everything up. Next up, Evernote wants to conquer the world of "Read Later" apps; it just added its "Clearly" clean-reading extension to Firefox. We named Evernote one of the top 10 consumer Web products of 2011. It is certainly one to watch in 2012.

Dropbox: Consumer Cloud File Sharing At Its Best

Last but not least is Dropbox. It is a concept so simple that you'd think someone else would have thought of it sooner. Basically, Dropbox is a folder that syncs to the Internet, and allows for super easy file sharing between users. Gone are the days of YouSendIt megafiles. Just go for Dropbox. BusinessInsider named it the world's 5th most valuable startup, but is it? A complaint against Dropbox was filed with the FTC, stating that Dropbox misled users about its security and privacy, which is sure to scare any startup. But despite this little roadblock, it has nailed down its place as a key player in the consumer cloud right alongside iCloud.

COMMENTARY:   All excellent choices for Top 10 startups for 2011.  I have already written about or used three of them:  Path, SCVNGR and Zaarly.

• Zaarly - I loved using Zaarly.  I was looking for something, posted what I wanted, and within just a few minutes had two responses.  Checkout my blog post dated November 28, 2011.   Watchout Craigslist.
• Path - I originally discovered Path in 2010 and in a blog post dated November 15, 2010, and found their concept of a mobile social network limited to only 50 friends a bit limiting.  I didn't think much about Path's business concept which I felt was more philosophically-based, non-sensical, didn't offer much in terms of features, and placing a limit of 50 close friends would limit their growth.  In a blog post dated February 2, 2011, I reported that Path had raised $8.5 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Still, I didn't see the need they were filling in the marketplace.  I wrote:  "John Doerr, if by the remotest chance you read my blog post, please contact me at your earliest convenience and explain to me why you invested $8.5 million into Path.  Thanks in advance."  Well, it looks like I was right about Path, because in a blog post dated December 1, 2011, I announced that Path had reinvinted itself into a "Smart Journal," that puts your news stream announcements on auto-pilot based on what you do and where you go during the day or night.  Now you can add up to 150 friends. Path still remains a lightweight, mobile-only, private social network (150 friend limit), but with added features making it more fun for its users.  They now have one million users, but I wonder how many of them are truly active, and what's their strategy to monetize the site.   Time will only tell, but let's hope that Path co-founders Morin and Mierau are on the right Path.      
• SCVNGR - In a blog post dated January 5, 2011, I wrote:  "SCVNGR has a few similarities to foursquare, but that's where the similarity ends.  SCVNGR is a gaming platform, that allows merchants, museums, schools, clubs, etc. to create their own unique games called Challenges and Treks that earn points towards Rewards.  This makes the user experience a lot more fun, interactive and varied.  User's never know what to expect next because merchants have full control over the games they create, they can add as many games as they wish, and often as they wish to keep things fresh and interesting for users."   SCVNGR founder and Princeton dropout Seth Priebatsch says he is "building game dynamics on top of the world," replacing social networks and loyalty programs, which he considers out-of-fashion and not very good. I like the business concept of a social network that uses game dynamics to effect individual behaviors.  Merchants can create their own games in the form of "challenges."  If you complete the challenge you win.  Stupid things that Millennials and teens are likely to do, "take a picture of a drunk sleeping on a sidewalk," for instance and you win a free Coke.  Anyway, there's no end to these games, and this goofy kid named Seth just might be on to something, but we will just have to see if he can change the world.  

Courtesy of an article dated December 23, 2011 appearing in ReadWriteWeb

STUMBLEUPON'S MOBILE USAGE INCREASES BY 800%, COMPANY UNVEILS MAJOR REDESIGN, BRAND CHANNELS AND USER CUSTOMIZATION

StumbleUpon, the discovery engine that enables its users to "Stumble" onto personalized web content, unveiled a major redesign Monday, introducing a slew of upgrades that include a streamlined interface, recommendation improvements, and the addition of brand channels.

But what's really driving the overhaul isn't some product-cycle deadline--it's StumbleUpon's mobile growth, which has rocketed 800% in the last year, becoming core to the company and its future business potential.

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CEO Garrett Camp says.  

"We're doing a complete relaunch of the site, and a lot of it is inspired by our mobile experience. It's basically because of our mobile traction. That streamlined experience, which is simpler and without complexity, has really resonated with users. We wanted to take what we learned from mobile and bring that to the web."

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Like Reddit and Digg, StumbleUpon helps users discover new content, but with a slight twist: 

A "Stumble" button adds a bit of random serendipity into the equation, allowing users to leap to unknown content with one click. Roughly 20 million users press that Stumble button more than a billion times a month. Now, mobile is fast catching up: In November, StumbleUpon reached about 200 million Stumbles on Apple and Android smartphones and tablets.

Camp says.  

"Mobile is going to be big [for us].  Looking at our current growth rate, I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now, 40% to 50% of our usage is on mobile."

Such rapid growth led to the site's revamp--it also gives some insight into the advertising potential for StumbleUpon. Part of the site upgrades include the addition of brand channels, designed to gives users more control over the content in their StumbleUpon stream. Before, users could specify a general topic to Stumble--celebrities, technology, fitness, parenting, and so on--but couldn't take a deeper dive. Now users can customize their experience based on specific brands. Camp says.  

"You can follow The History Channel instead of just history, or Funny or Die instead of just humor." 

More than 250 brand partners from Audi to ESPN signed on for the launch, and the company has hundreds more partnerships in the works. StumbleUpon does not charge for the privilege of having a channel--the company hopes it will drive more user engagement and attract more advertising partners.

Camp says.  

"I think this will spread awareness. A lot of people know about StumbleUpon, but not a lot of people know that we have a really interesting ad platform. We think by working with a lot larger number of brands and websites, that it will eventually lead to more ad clients."

With exponential mobile growth and users that spend an average of seven hours a month surfing the site, it's a surprise Camp and company would even find that necessary.

COMMENTARY:   Usually you go from the Web to Mobile, but StumbleUpon quite literally stumbled on the fact that a growing number of their traffic is coming from mobile devices, so they are going in reverse--from Mobile to Web.  

I like that StumbleUpon is allowing its users to customize their web content discovery experience, instead of the random experience they offered before.  This should really allow its users with interests in fashion, technology, inventions, cooking, restaurants, and so forth, to home in on what they like the most.  That's right up my alley.

I get a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, and look forward to getting some more.   

Courtesy of an article dated December 6, 2011 appearing in Fast Company

HOW FATHOM'S INFORMATION-VISUALIZATION TECHNOLOGY CAPTURES THE WORLD'S 7 BILLION PEOPLE IN BRILLIANT 'DENCITY' MAPS

In Fathom's latest visualization, bigger graphical elements mean fewer people. Wait, what?

In the visual syntax of infographics and maps, bigger equals... well, bigger. Large dots on a map or bars in a chart correspond to a proportionally large quantity of stuff being visualized--like, for instance, the number of people living in a certain geographic area. But its new visualization of world population density called "Dencity," Fathom turns this basic graphic language on its head. What if bigger dots on a map signified fewer people, sparsely scattered? As it turns out, this counterintuitive approach makes brilliant sense.

Fathom, the information-visualization firm cofounded by Processing inventor Ben Fry, created "Dencity" in response to a somewhat ambivalent milestone:  the world's population surpassing 7 billion souls. What does this look like, really? Well, it looks like a #$*&load of people squished into a relatively few urbanized patches of earth, and a whole lot fewer people spread thinly over everywhere else. Density, as the infographic's title rightly implies, is the real story here--not absolute quantity.

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In that light, Fathom's choice to represent larger quantities (the aforementioned #$*&load of people) with smaller graphical elements (smaller, brighter circles on the map) ingeniously captures the narrative of "what seven billion looks like." In densely populated parts of the world, every person has less space--just like each of those small dots takes up less room. But by being packed tighter, they're also brighter--literally (the light-colored small dots visually jump out of the map, just like glowing cities do in a satellite photograph). The smaller graphics also invite you to zoom in on those dense areas to really get a good look at what's going on. After all, it makes sense to look at human activity in Beijing on a scale of meters, not hundreds of kilometers.

Conversely, huge patches of barely settled land--like Saharan Africa, northern Asia, and the Australian interior--don't need that kind of detail to tell the same story. A zoomed-out perspective of darker-hued, larger dots (signifying the correspondingly less dense population) does just fine. And they recede into the background of Fathom's map, just like the real human presence in those parts of the world does in comparison to denser areas.

This reversed graphic language makes Fathom's map visually rich--the information-carrying graphic elements fill up the entire map, instead of clustering in pockets surrounded by neutral negative space. But it's also narratively richer, as well. Glancing at the entire map at once tells a different story than peering closely at one of those densely packed yellow and orange clusters. No wonder Fathom is selling "Dencity" as a gorgeous poster:  This is an infographic you won't get bored of looking at on your wall anytime soon.

China. The largest city in the world is Beijing, with 17.8 million people. China is home to six of the twenty most populous cities in the world, more than any other country.

India and Pakistan. Delhi and Karachi are the second and third most populous cities in the world. The two countries are almost uniformly dense until they hit geographic boundaries such as the Himalayas to the north, or political boundaries such as Afghanistan to the west.

New York City. The East Coast is the most densely populated region of the United States, but New York City is the only American city to rank in the top twenty of the world's most populous cities. It's one of only three in the western hemisphere on the list.

COMMENTARY:    India and China are just one gigantic blob of yellow, signifying their massive populations.   Very interesting visualization technology to show how things look in a very eye-pening way.

Courtesy of an article dated November 29, 2011 appearing in Fast Company Design

MOBILE SPEED SELLING AND BUYING SITE ZAARLY RAISES $14 MILLION IN VENTURE CAPITAL, COMPETES AGAINST CRAIGSLIST AND EBAY

EBay transformed the way people sold vintage trinkets online. Craigslist changed the way people bought new sofas and hunted for apartments in their towns. A new start-up called Zaarly hopes to alter the way people outsource simple errands and tasks.

Zaarly Homepage (Click Image To Enlarge)

On October 26, 2011, Zaarly announced that it raised $14.1 million in financing from Kleiner Perkins and Sands Capital Ventures, among others. Previously, the company raised a seed round of $1 million from a notable list of investors, including Ashton Kutcher, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit and Lightbank, among others. The company says it will use the fresh money to invest in its operations and technical development, as well as to hire employees to zero in on connecting buyers and sellers in each specific market.

Zaarly CEO and founder Bo Fishback

But Bo Fishback, the chief executive and founder of the company, said the most exciting piece of the news was that the company was  also gaining Meg Whitman, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard and the former chief executive of eBay, as a board member.

He said. 

“She joined eBay when it was almost the exact same size Zaarly was, 30 people.  In the world of building marketplaces, build trust and engage in the community, there’s no one better than her.”

Zaarly, which was beta-tested in Austin, Tex., during South by Southwest last March, was introduced nationally in early May. Since then, the company says the service has attracted more than 100,000 users, with more than $6 million in transactions posted to the site. The site works by letting people post requests for an item or service, and then lets other people, businesses and companies bid to fulfill those needs. Once an agreement is met, Zaarly connects the two parties so they can complete the deal. People can either pay in cash, or through Zaarly’s payment system.

 

Mobile speed selling and buying apps like Zaarly and Task Rabbit are creating a mobile marketplace for peer-to-peer transactions, in real time and in the immediate vicinity of the users. WSJ's Andy Jordan checks out a few, and farms out the bathing of his own cat.

Mr. Fishback said Ms. Whitman’s expertise would come in handy as the company began building momentum in major cities, each which have their own particular quirks and demands. In Los Angeles, for example, the market for second-hand cars is denser than in New York, where Zaarly users are much more interested in hiring people to help them out with service and errand-oriented tasks.

He said.  

“Until now, our main goal was to get it up and running.  Now, we have to figure out how to really nail a hyperlocal technology company.”

COMMENTARY:   Zaarly is an interesting concept, especially when you incorporate mobile technology to bring buyers or sellers together near where you live.  It means you can sell just about anything--anytime and anyplace, and get offers to what you are offering for sale or looking to buy anytime and anyplace.  

Zaarly isn't alone in this mobile, speed selling and buying market.  Task Rabbit, another startup, is a more task-related service site, where individuals offer their services for hire.  With unemployment being what it is, this could become a favorite for those looking to make some cash by selling their services, special skills and knowledges.  

Task Rabbit also allow buyers of services to post reviews for the inidividuals performing the tasks. This is more like eBay, since it reduces the risk of hiring the wrong person to perform the task.   

If you are a SELLER, Zaarly offers the following screen that explains How Selling Works:

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If you are a BUYER, Zaarly offers the following screen that explains How Buying Works:

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I didn't download or use the Zaarly mobile app because I don't own an iPhone or Android phone, so I didn't have an opportunity to try out the app, but you can use Zaarly online using your desktop or laptop without any problems.

I tested Zaarly by first registering and then listing that I wanted to purchase a laptop and would be willing to pay a certain price.  This was at 11:30 a.m. PST.  I received the following email response from a seller at 11:38 a.m. PST, but it didn't match my specific requirements so I turned it down.

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Right after I sent my response to the seller, I received another email from Zaarpy:

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I clicked on the "Click here" link and saw an online record the seller's offer and my response (see below).  Zaarly does a good job of keeping track of all communications between sellers and buyers in the same fashion as eBay does when you place a bid.     

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Both Buyers and sellers must adhere to certain Marketplace Rules.  

Your Zaarly account is FREE, the leads are FREE,  FREE to place offers, FREE to get jobs, and completely FREE to post to buy on the site too.   Users are going to love FREE.  They should promote the FREE more.

The only thing that costs money is if you choose to use Zaarly to accept credit card payments.  We allow you to accept payments incredibly quickly and easily.  The money just shows up in your bank (or Paypal) account within 48 hours of the buyers payment.  The cost is 10% of the transaction, to cover credit card and bank fees.  

I can definitely see where Zaarly could become a potentially huge money maker and give Craigslist and eBay a run for their money. They keep 10% of all sales transactions from sellers using their credit card payment system.  If they do $1 billion in sales, and 5% use the credit card payment method, that's $50 million in transactions x 10% = $5 million profit.  That 10% is a userous if you ask me.

The one potential problem that I see, is that there are no real barriers to entry to overcome.  They already have one competitor in Task Rabbit, and there will probably be more.  The competitive situation could become intense like deal sites Groupon and LivingSocial.  What is Craigslist began doing the same thing.     

Zaarly and Task Rabbit have first-mover advantages, which catapulted Groupon into No 1 in the deal industry space.  I do prefer Zaarly's business model over Groupon any day.

The articlles covering both Zaarly and Task Rabbit refer to their services as "virtual assistants" or "personal assistants", but I much prefer "mobile speed buying and selling" because it's really a classifieds mobile marketplace to sell things (goods and services) anytime, and not just for performing odd jobs or services like "picking up the groceries once a week" or "walking my dogs". I like the fact that buyers can list what they want to buy, which is really, really convenient. Let the sellers come to you.  Great idea.  

I am very impressed with the background and experience of Bo Fishback, Zaarly's founder and CEO.  He has the entrepreneurial experience while working for the Kauffman Foundation and founded several bioscience startups.  He has an MBA from Harvard, too.   He'll need that and more.

Courtesy of an article October 25, 2011 appearing in The New York Times blog and an article dated November 27, 2011 appearing in The Wall Street Journal

AN UNABASHED LOOK AT ONLINE REVIEW SITE YELP'S NUMBERS AFTER THEY FILED FOR AN IPO

Online reviews site Yelp filed for an IPO today, elbowing to get in line while also taking some of the thunder away from fellow business-reviewer Angie’s List, which debuted in a big way.

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The breakdown by industry of local businesses that have received reviews on Yelp’s platform through Sept. 30.

Here’s a quick look at the filing by the numbers:

• 2010 REVENUES:  $58.4 million: Revenue for the nine-month period ended Sept. 3o, up 79% from a year ago. That’s slightly less than the $63 million Angie’s List reported for the period. At that growth rate, Yelp’s revenue for 2011 would be roughly $86 million. Local advertising represents 69% of this year’s revenue, with brand ads taking 22% and “other services”–we’re talking Yelp Deals and various partnerships–grabbing 9%. 
• 2009 REVENUES: $22 million: Reviews on Yelp’s platform as of Sept. 30, up 66% from the year earlier.
• 2010 EARNINGS:  $7.6 million loss: The loss for the nine months, which is slightly narrower from the $8.6 million loss in the year-ago period. Yelp’s adjusted Ebitda loss sat at $1.1 million.
• INVESTORS CASHING OUT: $37 million: The amount of money cashed out by six founders and executives in February 2010 when private equity firm Elevation Partners bought shares in addition to funding the company with $25 million. Paypal alum and Yelp seed funder Max Levchin and CEO/founder Jeremey Stoppelman sold the most stock, each reaping $15 million in the deal. When that deal was announced, Elevation said it would buy as much as $75 million worth of stock. We guess there weren’t enough takers.
• VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDING: $55 million: Funding raised from venture capital firms Bessemer Venture Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Elevation Partners from 2005 to 2010 over five rounds.
• VC STAKES IN YELP :  22.5%: Bessemer’s stake in Yelp as the largest shareholder, and its first, investing in 2005. Elevation is right behind with a 22.4% stake, while Benchmark owns 16.2%. DAG isn’t listed in the filing as owning at least 5%. Interestingly, Levchin owns a larger stake (13.8%) than Stoppelman (11.1%).
• KEY METRICS:  
  • UNIQUE VISITORS: 61 million: Unique visitors as of Sept. 30, up 63%.
  • NO OF REVIEWS:  22 million:  Reviews as of Sept. 30, up 66% from prior year.
  • LOCAL BUSINESS LOCATIONS:  529 million: Local business locations, up 114% from prior year.
• SALES & MARKETING COSTS: $15 million: The amount Yelp expects to spend on sales and marketing internationally in 2012, mostly to hire sales staff.

COMMENTARY:   You can view Yelp's S-1 Registration Statement for their IPO HERE.    Below is Yelp's Consolidated Statement of Operations and Balance Sheet:

Consosolidated Statement of Operations:

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Sources of Revenues and Advertising Expense as a Percentage of Each Revenue Source:

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Yelp Consolidated Balance Sheets:

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Stockholders Cashing Out Including No of Shares Sold and Proceeds Received:

• Jeremy Stoppelman:  7,375,000 shares for $15,000,750  
• Geoff Donaker:  1,932,987 shares for $3,931,696  
• Jed Nachman:  539,044 shares for $1,096,416  
• Laurence Wilson:  339,863 shares for $691,281  
• Max Levchin:  7,389,162 shares for $15,029,556  
• Vlado Herman: 533,157 shares for $1,084,441  

Majority Inside and Outside Stockholders:

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Overall Financial Condition of Company:

Yelp has been able to consistently grow revenues, but has never made a profit and has never made a profit.  Yelp has total accumulated losses of $32. 149 million since inception and is carrying total a total accumulated stockholder's deficit of $23.863 million as of September 30, 2011. 

Working capital does not appear to be a problem.  Yelp has a healthy current ratio of 3.1-to-1 which is considerably better than Angie's List, which had its IPO on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.  Yelp has cash and equivalents of $23.128 million as of September 30, 2011.   Yelp has no long-term debt. The VC's own 61.1% of total commaon shares outstanding.  Officers and employees own the remainder. 

If Yelp has an IPO it will most likely occur in early 2012.   

Courtesy of an article dated November 17, 2011 appearing in The Wall Street Journal's Venture Capital Dispatch

FOUR REASONS WHY SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE POISED TO GENERATE PAYOFFS FOR BRAND MANAGERS

While social networks amass huge audiences and are the most dynamic sector in digital advertising, they tend not to bring in revenues to match. Luckily for brands, that’s beginning to change—and we have the four reasons why.

More metrics. 

For advertisers wondering whether their efforts are paying off, new social analytics services seem to be launching every week. Facebook, for instance, recently unveiled a new measurement tool called Insights, which has stats like “Friends of Fans.” The social networking company also says advertisers will soon be able to aim their messages at users even more carefully using data from Facebook’s integration with media services like Spotify and Hulu.

Facebook Insights Dashboard - Sharing Metrics

Facebook Insights Dashboard - Sharing Metrics

Facebook's Insights Dashboard provides deeper analytics on user demographics, “Likes,” shares and reshares.  The above sample dashboard images are designed for page owners, publishers using the new social plugins and application developers.

In September 15, 2011, Twitter announced that they were implementing a Web analytics  Dashboard.  The new analytics tools has been in beta since late 2010.  The dashboard will consist of four tabs:

1. Traffic: this tab will correlate information between the number of tweets linking to a site against the number of people actually clicking those links. There will also be a graph that measures this information with the following options; one day, the week and the past month.
2.  Tweets: this tab will display all tweets containing links to a site, including any tweets sent from the site’s embedded Tweet button.
3. Tweet Button: this tab displays interaction and engagement a site gets from its Tweet button.
4. Content: this tab compiles the site’s top-performing pages.

It will be nice to be able to see how this is being shared in the Twittersphere, the amount of traffic (or Twaffic) being referred and measure the amount of interaction a Web site generates with the Tweet button.

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Content is advertising is content. 

Facebook and Twitter have both emphasized turning regular user content into ads—Facebook through its Sponsored Stories unit and Twitter through its Sponsored Tweets. But that doesn’t mean the death of traditional advertising copy. In fact, Facebook has a new ad unit that blends a friend’s activity (e.g., “Anthony likes Movie X”) with a message from the advertiser.

A new Facebook advertising product, "sponsored stories," plans to pull content out of members' posts for use in advertisements that will appear on their friends' Facebook pages. 

Sponsored Tweets : Twitter Advertising

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Social blindness less blind. 

The bad news: Some, like Altimeter Group principal analyst Brian Solis, believe “blindness or deafness” to brand messages is going to increase on social networks as they’re flooded with promotional content. But there’s good news, too: Some companies are working on ways to fight the clutter. Facebook, for instance, announced that it’s starting to organize user newsfeeds based on an algorithm that it calls Graph Rank—so brand activity that’s actually generating user interest won’t get buried.

Social discovery of apps is seen as the next frontier in solving the troublesome problem of finding useful and relevant programs from among hundreds of thousands of choices. 

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor wrote. 

“App discovery is an important part of the Open Graph philosophy.  The structure of the Open Graph enables apps to grow more quickly based on usage. The more engaging your app is, the more people will discover it on Facebook.”

It’s not just about Facebook. 

Yes, Facebook claims the majority of social ad spending, but other services are starting to make progress, too. For example, an advertiser survey conducted by The Pivot Conference found that 16 percent of respondents had run campaigns with Foursquare, and another 26 percent planned to do so in the next year. And eMarketer is projecting that LinkedIn’s ad revenue will grow from $79 million last year to $250 million in 2013.

COMMENTARY:   I don't agree completely with Anthony Ha's assessment that social media is about to take off as a platform for generating revenues.  The data I have seen clearly shows that social networks are not very effective in either driving traffic to a brands websites or generating a buy decision.  Only about 50% of small business owners are using social media.  There are a lot of Likes, but these don't correlate into real buying decisions.  

There have been several studies about social commerce or f-commerce and the revenue projections are hardly worth talking about, which might explain why there has not been a huge rush by brands to embed their site within Facebook.  That 30% cut that Facebook takes for Facebook Credits, the standard currency on Facebook, does not help matters either.  

Overall, I do believe that the addition of analytics by both Facebook and Twitter is a good thing, but has been very slow in coming, and are only going to be useful if brand managers know what they need to measure, can establish achievable goals, are prepared to be pro-active, and know how to act on the data being measured to improve engagement and potential revenues.

On the whole, I believe that social networks are better suited for generating feedback from fans about their products and quality of service via polls and surveys.  Some marketer's have referred to social networks like Facebook as the world's largest focus group.  This is where social networks truly shine.

Social networks can be very powerful forces in generating viral traffic, but this can also backfire, so brands need to be extra careful.  RIM BlackBerry's recent worldwide service failure is a great example where a major service failure can undo ten years of customer loyalty.  The BP oil spill is another great example of negative viral marketing.    

Courtesy of an article dated October 17, 2011 appearing in AdWeek and an article dated September 13, 2011 appearing in ReadWriteWeb