As our world gets smaller, online communities are becoming more and more ubiquitous. I’m not talking about huge social networks like Facebook, which target everyone, but more focused communities that target a specific niche. We just ran a post on Scoutzie a couple of hours ago, which brings together mobile designers in one place –…
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DC-based digital health startup Audax Health launched a really interesting online health platform today called Careverge. If one of your goals – for this year, or maybe it’s just ongoing – is to get and stay healthy, Careverge could be a fun way to go about it, as the platform combines social networking and gaming. The Careverge…
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It’s no secret that social media is an important part of managing a brand’s customer relations and marketing. Facebook and Twitter have become popular channels for customers to recommend or trash products and brands, as well as places for brands to connect with their existing and potential customers. Many companies offer tools and services aimed…
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Editor’s Note: This is article is a revised version of an article written by Jen Consalvo and Frank Gruber that appears in the January 2012 issue of The Social Media Monthly. If you like this article you might want to download the The Social Media Monthly iPad app or iPhone app and subscribe to get the scoop in 2012….
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A Vietnamese entrepreneur I interviewed recently said: “Developing countries with big populations have lots of opportunities: China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam. You can make a lot of money from collecting dimes and cents from a lot of people.” But where are those people? According to a December 20 Pew Research Center survey, they’re on cell phones…
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When Locai launched at the 2011 SXSW Conference, they were quite taken aback by the competition and the noise surrounding location-based services and apps. They quickly decided to make adjustments to differentiate themselves, so they shifted focus from consumers to businesses and launched a platform that lets you create a community around a brand, retail…
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Following closely behind the announcement of Facebook opening a new office in New York City solely dedicated to engineers, the social media giant has in fact just made a much larger splash. According to numerous reports, Facebook has acquired the location based social networking service, Gowalla. Facebook has yet to comment on the deal. The…
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Finding the perfect social media marketer, search engine optimization specialist, or writer is undoubtedly a grueling process. Everyone with a Twitter account thinks they’re a “social media ninja.” Everyone who’s ever added a title tag to a webpage thinks they’re an SEO expert. Anyone with a keyboard considers themselves a qualified writer. Many business owners…
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As we grow older, we lose touch with friends, move to new cities, and start new jobs. No matter how socially savvy we are – how many Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or Circles we have - sometimes it is tough to make new friends. San Francisco-based BlendAbout wants to match you with new friends using…
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With the loads of daily deals offers out there you probably got a slew of Cyber Monday emails yesterday. I did. I am sure there were lots of great deals but my email inbox got pummeled by the extra deliveries. I could not sort through them all so in many cases I deleted them without…
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Facebook, intermittently blocked by the government in Vietnam, still boasts over 2.5 million users there. But Tamtay, a local social network started in 2007, has used its home-field advantage to gain a reported 4 million users. Inspired by Facebook, Tamtay features games, photo and video sharing, blogs, and instant messaging. It caters to Vietnamese users…
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You know how Amazon always seems to find great products you’ll like, based on your browsing and purchasing behaviors? DC-based Converge is applying this concept to your social networks so you can discover people you don’t know yet, but probably should. Founders Collin Anderson and Dan Snyder (not to be confused with the Redskins’ owner)…
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In China, LinkedIn trails far behind professional social network Tianji and its 8 million members. Meanwhile, Tianji is growing at 380,000 users per month and plans to expand from 80 to 200 employees next year. Its success traces back to cultural differences between Western and Chinese networking, detailed in Tianji’s recent infographic. While Americans are content to trade…
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CoCollage was a showcased startup at our Tech Cocktail Seattle mixer last week, and I really wish I had been there to meet the CoCollage team and shake their hands, because they are attempting to take social networking to the next level. Yes, that is a lofty goal, but I think they are on to…
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Do you lean on certain groups of friends to share and recommend books, websites or videos? Chances are you are sharing via email. Email takes care of one-to-one sharing; Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon cover one-to-many sharing, but there are few services that cater exclusively to small group sharing. Skmmr offers a new way to share…
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Every hack authoring an article and every flack penning a proposal has encountered The Question: how many users does Social Network X have? Sure, you can Google the answers, but then you run into the problem of making sure that your source is authoritative, current, and doesn’t confuse active users (those who log in at…
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There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More
Coming off of one of our biggest Tech Cocktail mixer events in Chicago this past week, which showcased 14 early-stage start-ups, we thought it would... Read More