Have you ever had an idea that you know without a shadow of a doubt will be the next big thing? Have you ever seen yourself coming up with the next idea that will be sure to shake the earth? If you said yes to any of the above questions, one of your main problems will be to find funding like any new business. Symbid.com attempts to use crowd-funding just like kickstarter.com to help those brilliant or not individuals to raise capital. If everyone had the amount of money that they needed to turn their ideas into reality, then we can be sure that we would be having a lot more businesses in our world. How is this possible?

In an attempt to solve this problem for the entrepreneur, symbid.com offers a unique feature where you can post all your bright ideas. The process does not end there, you; the entrepreneur will still need to get funding for your projects. So how do you get the money you need to kick start your idea? Posting your idea on symbid.com is just the first step. The next thing that you will need to do is to find investors who will invest in your bright idea. After you have posted your idea in symbid.com, anyone who is interested in your idea will be able to invest in it with as low as two euros to as much as they would wish to invest. Through funding the investor becomes a shareholder of the promising business opportunity. With symbid.com the entrepreneur surely comes out smiling; his or her idea is given a lease of life through crowd sourcing and crowd funding. Founded by Korstiaan Zandvliet symbid.com surely helps out many entrepreneurs with funding for their projects and ideas. Korstiaan Zandvliet saw the need for a way in which entrepreneurs would find funding for their great projects. If there is one thing that is absolutely great about symbid.com is that as long as an idea is great, you can be sure that you will find the much needed funding.

If you are wondering whether or not there is another similar crowd funding provider, then I can inform you that there are other providers such as Maxclass.com or kickstarter.com  which is in one way or another similar to symbid.com, and a few others. By the look of things, symbid.com has nothing to worry about when it comes to competition. With its firm grip on the market, you as an entrepreneur can be sure to get the funding that you need and your dream will finally see the light of day. What symbid.com actually tries to achieve is crowd funding for the great ideas that many people have. Thanks to this principle, we will be seeing many bright ideas being birthed.

As for my opinion on the potential that symbid.com has and how its future is likely to shape up, I can only say that many entrepreneurs and many investors have been waiting for such a platform, but some competitors are already very well positionned. A platform where they can share their ideas with the world, on the part of the entrepreneur and where investors can find the right projects which they can invest in is a crowing trend. We can be sure be seeing a lot of changes in the way businesses are created and the number of businesses will surely be on the rise.

In conclusion, there is a lot for us to see from symbid.com. We can be sure that we will see a lot of ideas being given life by symbid.com and thanks to symbid.com, you can be sure we will see great ideas coming to life. We can only thank Korstiaan Zandvliet for seeing the problem that many face when trying to kick off their ideas. With crowd sourcing and now crowd funding, your idea will finally find life. The only thing that you need to do is to dream more, you can be sure to find the much needed funding with symbid.com.

One of the startups previously talked on smartideabox.com is currently seeking funding on Symbid. Sellanapp.com

This is certainly good news for many entrepreneurs. Considering that there will always be competition from various angles, it is best that as an entrepreneur you find a way in which you can stay ahead of your competition by applying all that you need to and at the same time avoiding the mistakes that your competitors made. So how does mixrank.com work to show you what measures your competitors took up and the results that they had? Mixrank.com is actually a spy tool for contextual and display ads. This means that with the help of mixrank.com you can see exactly where your competitors are buying traffic and which ad copy is performing best for them across over 93000 Google AdSense sites. When it comes to getting the right market for your products it is important that you take up the right measures that will be sure to propel your business to a whole new level.

When you get to know what your competitor is doing to get traffic, you can go ahead and employ the same measures or even take up a new strategy for you to get the traffic that you so much need for your business. You and your business are at a point of authority when you can actually see what your competitor did and what results he got. You can then go ahead and choose which measures you will employ to thrust you and your business to higher heights.

Founded by IIya Lichtenstein, mixrank.com offers to change the growth of businesses. With what mixrank.com offers, you can always look at what your competitors are doing and you can then go ahead and align yourself in the right path so that you can get the results that you want.

As for my personal opinion on what the future holds for mixrank.com, we can be sure that we will see a lot of businesses using it so as to keep ahead of the competition in the field that they are in. Mixrank.com acts like a tool that a business can use to stay ahead of its competition by simply looking at what other businesses are doing. The one thing that I hope businesses can do with this tool is to fully utilise it and we can be sure that we will see a lot of growth not only in the quality of goods and services that consumers get but also in the effectiveness of the products. With mixrank.com I am looking forward to a time where the goods and services that I get will be quality products which are very efficient in nature.

In conclusion, we can only hope that businesses will adopt mixrank.com and all that it offers and then go ahead and use it to better their output and by what they get from mixrank.com, they can go ahead and get more traffic and stay ahead of the competition. From the above, it is clear to see that with the help of mixrank.com, we will see better services and goods for the consumers.

When it comes to travel, maybe you are on a vacation or just on a business trip, we are always out to find some adventure, something that is far from the norm, something new. For you to get the best experience from a place, then you need to have everything planned out quite well. It is at this point that many people go wrong and eventually wind up not enjoying their visit as much as they should. With getyourguide.com, you can get all that you need online. This means that you will not only find an experienced guides to show you all the exciting places in the area, but you will also get the best guide who knows the do’s and don’ts in the place.

It does not mean that you will only be getting a guide to guide you around the place of visit; you will also be able to book for tours, attractions, and even activities. This is quite a great idea. To be able to complete all your booking in one site is amazing. If you are a constant traveller, you do know how hard it is to have everything that you want planned out for you in advance.

Let’s say you are going to Kenya on your vacation, all that you will need to do is to log onto getyourguide.com and you will be able to book for everything you need. You can book a camel ride, you can also book a visit to the Maasai Mara, and you can also book yourself a stay in one of the exquisite hotels in the country.

Through getyourguide.com, travel has been made hassle free at pretty favourable prices. With getyourguide.com you will get the best deal for the best experience. This is because getyourguide.com works with local travel companies who will be out to make sure that you get to experience all that your place of visit has to offer. If you would love to visit Europe, North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania or even south America, all you need to do is to log into getyourguide.com and all your needs will be addressed. By getting rid of all the intermediaries, you will be sure to get the best price, guaranteed.

Founded by Johannes Reck and Pascal Mathis, what getyourguide.com has to offer is quite unique to the market as it works with local providers so that you can get the best experience. This goes beyond what we are usually used to. We are usually used to individual providers providing booking for their services online, with getyourguide.com; you get everything in one place. If you would love a spa treatment during your visit and some rock climbing at the same place of visit, getyourguide.com will help you make all the arrangements with the best providers around. All you need to worry about is the important stuff; having the time of your life. If you are out to find the perfect visit, where you practically have everything worked out for you then Johannes and Pascal have it done for you through getyourguide.com.

As for my personal opinion on the whole idea, I must admit that I love the idea. Too many times we find our holidays and vacations getting all messy due to some few mishaps here and there, which are all as a result of not finding the right provider for the service you want. Previously all we had were many providers from different parts of the world that offered online booking, now with getyourguide.com; you will get all that you need in one site. The one thing that really intrigued me is a provision that they have. It states that if you happen to find your booked tours at a lower price elsewhere, they will make sure that they refund you the difference. This will be done without any questions. I guess that getyourguide.com is what we have all been looking forward to when it comes to having a great experience while travelling to exotic places all over the world. I sure know what to do the next time I want to visit the pyramids to get the best experience.

In conclusion, getyourguide.com is for sure a great idea. The one thing that we can expect from getyourguide.com is more growth in terms of service. This only means that we will be seeing even much better deals than the ones that we currently have. If you do love travelling then getyourguide.com will let you enjoy your travel with all your needs being addressed no matter how diverse they may be.

What is Topguest.com? This is the question that’s on a lot of people’s minds. This is because the idea behind it is quite radical and appeals to a large group of people. Topguest.com is a social media loyalty programme. With this programme all that you need to do is synchronise your various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Loopt and even Google Latitude. Now based on where you check in, you are awarded with points towards discounts on future hotel stays and other travel perks. This gets you thinking about the spa treatment that you have always wanted.

Founded by Geoff Lewis, who says that Topguest.com was all inspired by, the love of travel and of course, the ever dynamic technology; the ultimate combination which brought about Topguest.com. Just recently, location based social networking services have become very popular. Now with Topguest.com hotels have a great way of staying ahead of the social curve. When you go to a participating place and you check in to your social media accounts, Topguest.com credits you with points. If you are wondering how they actually ensure that you are indeed in participating areas, then you do not have a clue of what geological check in software is all about. It is with the help of this geological check in software that they are able to track your exact location and get to credit you with points.

So how do you get it to work for you? The one thing that you will need is a smart phone and everything will be so easy. I almost forgot to state that it is a member’s only mobile application, which means, you will need to know someone who is already a member for you to register and start earning points. After you are registered as a member and have downloaded the application, you will get real hotel points, air mile and even elite travel perks automatically for your visits to your favourite social networks only in participating areas.

Yes, there are other providers of similar services. Among them are Jetsetter.com and Vacationist.com. What sets Topguest.com apart from other competitors, is that, only with Topguest.com will you find that you are not actually being sold discounted luxury vacation packages. You are actually earning very valuable points that will get you discounts on future hotel stays and more travel perks. Another advantage that Topguest.com has over its competitors is the ease with which one is able to sign up, but of course, you will need to have an insider for you to join the club. This is one thing that not so many people are happy about. It bluntly means that if you don’t have anyone who is already using Topguest.com then you will just have to do without the benefits and all the perks that Topguest.com has to offer.

As for my personal opinion on the potential that Topguest.com has, I must first of all say that I was really excited to join the member’s club. I really love massages and a whole load of other Spa treatments. For me, there is no better way to relax than by having a massage, somehow the daily stresses seem to disappear. With me being a twitter addict, I surely stand to gain a lot from my numerous visits to various places in New York. I also heard that as a member you can choose to earn currency from priority club rewards, viceroy rewards or standard rewards. This has gone a long way in making sure that I visit my favourite hotel for all my dining needs. I’m just waiting for my points to accumulate so that I can order several rounds of drinks the next time I’m out with my pack of friends.

In conclusion, Topguest.com embraces both the old and new in that it takes up the traditional concept of loyalty rewards program and fuses it with geological check in software to award you points every time you visit your favourite hotel restaurant. The future for Topguest.com seems to be very bright. With the right improvements, we will be sure to see a lot of Topguest.com not only being used in hotels but also being used in other fields of the economy. We can only wait and see what the next move for Topguest.com will be.

Related articles

• Topguest Hooks IHG, All-Star Investors [Video] (techcrunch.com)
• Loyalty Goes Virtual: Driving Behavior with Gamified Rewards and Location (gamification.co)
• Paul Frank and Element Tap Loopt for Location-Based Incentive Programs (mashable.com)
• Location-based social network BuzzMob launches. We’re not sure if it’s awesome, yet. (venturebeat.com)
• Tripbirds – check out the teaser page (tedvalentin.com)

One of the biggest headaches organizations face today is the ability to attract the best human resource. Placing a job ad in the mainstream media may result in tens, hundreds or even thousands of applications. Despite such overwhelming response and the tedious screening process, it is very probable that the vast pool of applicants will still not result in the right candidate.

This is why networking is one of the best ways to get a good job since the best jobs are rarely advertised. Now Socialreferral.com seeks to somewhat automate the job networking for the benefit of both the job seekers and the employers.

As a platform developed for businesses seeking to fill staffing positions, Socialreferral.com rides on the social network of a business’ existing employees. For it to work effectively, the first step is for the business to encourage staff to link their online social profiles to Socialreferral.com. Whenever there is a vacancy, employers need only upload the details of the jobs onto Socialreferral.com.

The platform will scan through the social networks of each participating employee to identify social connections that are a close match. Each employee with at least one near-fit social connection is then presented with the list of potential candidates within their own online social circle.

No employee will see the matches from another employee’s circle of online friends unless the two share a connection with the same person. The employee assesses the matches within their online social circle and identifies the candidate(s) that are, in their view, the best fit for the job before they proceed to invite the person(s) to apply for the position.

Socialreferral.com goes beyond conventional networking and actively converts each participating employee into a head hunter. Through Socialreferral.com, businesses can have a smaller pool of applicants to choose the new hire from yet have nearly all applicants being persons with skills that are fairly close to what the job demands. Compare that with a public job ad where persons with closely matching skills are often in the minority and recruiters have to sift through piles of enthusiastic but unqualified candidates.

Does Socialreferral.com have weaknesses? Yes. First, Socialreferral.com is only as effective as the number of participating employees and the size of online social networks. Fewer employees and smaller social circles mean a smaller pool to choose from. The second is employee bias. Since it is the employee who notifies their friend(s) to apply, they may skip an otherwise qualified candidate in favor of a closer friend who they would prefer gets the job.

Related articles

• Rypple – Socialize & Gamify Your Workplace To Drive Performance & Collaboration (smartideabox.com)
• Get Hired With Help From Your Social Network Friends (mashable.com)
• Google blocks ex-employee’s “Social Circles” book over Google+ launch (slashgear.com)
• Unusual business ideas: Social network recruiting (1000ideas-en.blogspot.com)

All new entrants into the location based social networking space have two people to hank – smart phone manufacturers and Foursquare. The number of location based apps entering the market is growing at a phenomenal pace as more players seek to benefit from the momentum Foursquare has created while carving a niche for themselves that will differentiate them from Foursquare. Like SCVNGR.

Think about FourSquare but with a stronger gaming element. That is SCVNGR for you. That being said, SCVNGR consider themselves to be the reverse of this i.e. a gaming platform but with strong social networking functionality. Either way, there are certain elements of SCVNGR that are not too different from the capability found in location based social networks like Foursquare.

Users check in to a location, use Twitter or Facebook to indicate their arrival and then have the option of creating and/or attempting a couple of challenges in order to earn points. SCVNGRs discover new places, share from the experiences of persons that have been to the same location all while they carry out short fun activities on the platform for real or virtual rewards.

The fact that the challenges can be tied to a location has made SCVNGR attractive not just to individuals but for businesses as well. So far, more than 650 institutions have signed onto the service. SCVNGR runs on two of the largest smart phone operating systems – iOS and Android – and so has a large potential target audience.

In today’s business environment where competition is quite intense, the institutions a startup is associated with can sometimes make or break its reception in the market. On this front, SCVNGR has fared well with Google Ventures in its corner as one of its major financiers. Funding has also been provided by DreamIT and Bantam Group.

SCVNGR is an original idea in many respects. But the platform will find it difficult to run away from constant comparison with Foursquare. SCVNGR also has to contend with one of the biggest problems for budding social networking sites – numbers. Whereas Foursquare can sometimes have as many as a hundred people checked into one location at the same time, not so with SCVNGR.

The large user numbers on Foursquare is what makes contests such as battles for ‘Mayor’ attract intense interest and competition. Unless SCVNGR can find a way of rapidly attracting users in their hundreds and thousands, the allure of competing for points, badges and rewards will not be strong enough to draw and retain interest inthe platform.

Related articles

• HOW TO: Start Marketing on SCVNGR (mashable.com)
• How SCVNGR’s First National Brand Partnership Scored Big During March Madness (mashable.com)
• SCVNGR Looks To Make ‘Checking In’ Less Antisocial, More Physical (techcrunch.com)
• “We Have Only Made Two Mistakes…Our Most Notable Was SCVNGR” (businessinsider.com)
• Finalists for Best Use of Gamification at MITX Awards (gamification.co)

Paper.li is a Swiss startup based in Lausanne. Todays world in full of information that we have a hard time to digest, News Feeds, Social Media feeds, links or videos fly around the web. We are somewhat overwhelmed by the volume of information we have access to. We try to classify it through bookmarking site or rss feeds, but we also seem to classify the information we are interested in by connect with people of the same background or similar interests.

Paper.li decided to take the challenge of digesting information with tools from the social end. What else than the two biggest networks at the moment, Facebook & twitter, could be as relevant. The goal is to use real people to filter the information that really matters to you or that you want to publish.

The process to generate your own daily or weekly newspaper is as simple as login on twitter. Login with your twitter or facebook credentials then choose the streams you want to include in your paper.li and click generate. After a few seconds paper.li generates a beautiful newspaper witha perfect layout based on those feeds. You can then easily share your paper and people can follow your paper.

Twitter has become so rich in information it’s impossible to take value out of it without the specific tools. Everyone uses tools like tweetdeck of hootsuite in order to manage their twitter feeds but it is still very difficult to get a global overview of the activity. Furthermore if you’re someone who , like most of us, doesn’t have time to be online 24/7 then you miss 99% of the relevant information. Paper.li give every on a chance to quickly recap the most important events that occurred in their social networks.

watch this video of Guy Kawasaki who is an adviser to Paper.li:

Some kind of competitors are in the same field such as Flipboard or Zite for iPad or Twitter Tim.es. We can say that Paper.li differenciates itself by encouraging publishing and not necessarily personal use. This enable them to target companies or even publishers on top of individual users.

At the moment over 12 million articles are curated daily by Paper.li publishers, creating highly personalized and contextually relevant content collections. The company’s enhanced search now provides the Paper.li community easy access to this filtered information, for an unprecedented content discovery experience. ANd recently on the 20th of April paper.li partnered with HBO to deliver a daily, branded newspaper to fans of the network’s new series, Game of Thrones (http://paper.li/GameOfThrones), based on George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy books.

“As the volume of social media content on the internet grows, curation tools such as Paper.li offer an immense value to consumers” said Sabrina Caluori, director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO. “We are excited to use this innovative platform to deliver a branded, highly relevant, daily Twitter newspaper to Game of Thrones fans.”

Now considered as one of leading social news publication application Paper.li raised  $2.1 million in financing, from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital and Endeavour Vision, to improve their service. In the future the “publishing company” aims to revolutionize the publishing industry explains their COO and CEO:

“Paper.li is shaping the modern state of publishing, by matching context and content from diverse streams of social media information and packaging it in an easy to consume manner,” said Iskander Pols, COO and Co-Founder of Paper.li. “We’re thrilled that Eric has chosen to help us shape the next wave of publishing and curation, and we thank our millions of readers and publishers for helping us advance our application to where it is today,” added Edouard Lambelet, CEO and Co-Founder of Paper.li.

As of my personal opinion on the service I was pretty exited. I love Flip board or Feedly to go through my favorite rss feeds, it helps me have all the information I care about in one place. I wanted to see if with my twitter feed I could achieve the same result, Well I guess I can and its quite nicely presented. On the downside though is that you can only see an excerpt of the articles which is really a bugger… you have to leave the site to reas the news! I don’t understand why they don’t want to keep users on their site like feedly!!! It’s the same with the mobile app it’s not very user friendly and to be honest if you leave the site for every article you don0t get the risk of landing on site not optimized for mobile. But overall their site was beautiful and easy to use and i’m sure there is potential to innovate and gain more users.

Related articles

• What’s new at Paper.li (paper.li)
• Paper.li upgrades social news curation platform, adds Eric Hippeau as an advisor (eu.techcrunch.com)
• 3 Social Publishing Apps That Empower Human Curators (mashable.com)
• Golf Tweet Gets Employee Fired: What You Can Learn From Their Mistake (socialtimes.com)
• Former HuffPo CEO Eric Hippeau Joins Up With Twitter Startup Paper.li (AOL) (businessinsider.com)

For students preparing to join college and that have received their admission letters, the initial excitement is usually tinged with a fear of the unknown. Having already established a circle of friends in high school, they will in many respects have to make new acquaintances in college.

The discovery process will be a mixture of successes and disappointments before they eventually find people they can relate to. What if students could start to connect with each other way before they join the institution?

Thanks to the internet, that is not just a possibility but a reality. Inigral’s Schools Facebook App enables educational institutions to have a private network that facilitates the development of acquaintances and interaction between students.

For a student, joining School Apps starts after they receive confirmation on their admission. They will get an email from School Apps to join the college’s private and branded network. This invitation is strictly limited to admitted students. Since many people will not always act on the first such email, School Apps will send regular reminders to ensure as many students join the network as possible.

Students that join the network are required to complete a number of basic steps providing some information about themselves that will assist them better fit into the community and attract like-minded members. Of the information they provide, none is more important than their interests as this is what will attract people that like what they like.

Schools App – The Student Perspective from Inigral Inc. on Vimeo.

What do schools and colleges stand to gain from School Apps? First, colleges that use School Apps have shown a much higher percentage (as much as 94%) of transitions from admission to actual enrolment than the average. Second, colleges that use School Apps have on average seen 3 times more members than their own Facebook Groups or Fan pages.

Even though the Schools App primarily targets future students (i.e. have been admitted but are waiting for the opening date) there is no restriction on current students continuing to use the app to interact and make new friends. With 3 of the 5 major reasons students drop out of school being social, School Apps can keep existing students continuously engaged and still be the focal point for the establishment of new friendships on large college campuses.

Any internet business that runs for 3 years can in many ways be considered successful. School Apps celebrates its 3rd year in August 2011. Already, School Apps has graduated into Facebook’s exclusive 50-strong club of app developers known as the Preferred Developer Program. Members of the Preferred Developer Program have privileged access to Facebook’s management and engineering teams and so have an inside view of upcoming changes.

While School Apps definitely presents something more than Facebook Groups and Fan pages, Inigral’s greatest challenge will continue to be convincing more schools of this unique value proposition.

Related articles

• Social Media Strategery (steveradick.com)
• New Facebook App Tells College Applicants What Their Chances Are (textually.org)
• Facebook and College Admissions (q-ontech.blogspot.com)
• What Do Selective Colleges Look for in an Applicant? (education.com)
• “Facebook Class” Made Stanford Students Millionaires (good.is)

While ecommerce is an all encompassing term for transactions that take place over the internet,social commerce refers to transactions that are triggered by or conducted over a social networking platform. Some have considered social commerce to be the next natural step in the Web 2.0 evolution.

And this is not unfathomable. Facebook, the undisputed king of social media, now has a user base that exceeds the population of every other country on earth except China and India. Businesses that can successfully tap into this vast market will no doubt have a leg up over their competition.

Already, there are a number of social commerce applications on Facebook. The current leader is Payvment. Since it was launched in November 2009, Payvment has grown to have over 60,000 brands, merchants and celebrities that use the service to sell their products on Facebook.

Payvment tackles one nagging problem that has bedevilled payment solutions residing outside Facebook – the need for Facebook users to be redirected to a different site in order to complete the transaction. With Payvment, everything runs from within Facebook. Users view and pay for the product without ever leaving the social networking site.

Payvment’s advantage over many other payment solutions on Facebook is in the Open Cart Network. Ordinarily, most payment services only allow your shopping cart to contain the goods of one vendor. In other words, you have to pay before you can move to another store – you cannot shop in different stores and do one final payment for all.

That is now possible with Payvment’s Open Cart Network. As the name suggests, Open Cart allows you to carry your items across as many Payvment-enabled stores as you would like before you make a single payment to all the retailers you bought from at the end of your shopping.

Payvment allows you to search for a product not just in the Payvment-store you are currently on but also conduct a Facebook-wide search. The Facebook-wide search will check for the product in every Facebook store running on Payvment.

Payvment is still on free public beta. Though Payvment’s founder has admitted that at some point they will start to levy a fee for the service, merchants that create a store during the current beta phase will still continue to enjoy the service for free when Payvment starts charging new entrants.

Payvment’s greatest hurdle will be to convince retailers to get on a Facebook-centric payment service when other major non-Facebook online payment service providers have or are already rolling out Facebook APIs. Why be on two payment services (e.g. Payvment and say, PayPal) when you can be on one?

Unless Facebook social commerce experiences dramatic and exponential growth, Payvment will be at a disadvantage against the major general payment solutions that have Facebook APIs.

Related articles

• Payvment Brings A Social, Virtual Shopping Mall To Facebook (techcrunch.com)
• 4 Ways to Set Up a Storefront on Facebook (mashable.com)
• 5 Ways Retailers Are Winning Big With Facebook Commerce (mashable.com)
• How to Monetize Social Media (inc.com)
• Beetailer Lets Ecommerce Web Stores Easily Import Products to a Facebook Page Storefront (insidefacebook.com)

Location based content services are fast becoming the point of focus of new web technologies.

FourSquare is probably the most recognisable such service and can in fact be credited with opening
up the market to several other niche local services. To a large extent, the phenomenal growth in
smart phone sales has also provided impetus for individuals and businesses intent on developing
internet-powered location-based services.

Hunch.com and its Hunch local iPhone app is one of the new entrants that is making a significant
mark. Established by Chris Dixon and Caterina Fake, a co-founder of Flickr, the Hunch local app
allows users to make recommendations and discover locations that are consistent with their stated
tastes. You can find everything from museums and spas to grocery stores and restaurants.

To place the practical use of the Hunch local app in context, think about sitting in an office and
craving a cup of coffee or an afternoon cocktail. If you are a travelling businessperson that is new
in that part of town or you are a local who simply wants to explore a different restaurant or bar, all
you need to do is go to the Hunch local app on your iphone and you will get suggestions on the most
popular coffee shops and bars in your area.

The suggestions are not just listings of places or products. Rather users can leave a review of a venue
that other users can read in order to get better informed on what they can expect to experience
when they do go there. Hunch local also uses an intelligent iterative algorithm where a user’s
recommendations and responses to random questions are used to tweak the user’s future search
results of the same keyword(s).

Users of Hunch local can sign onto the service directly or through Twitter or Facebook. Given that
Facebook boasts more than 650 million users and Twitter having a substantial user base as well,
this ‘single sign on’ functionality adds to the convenience of the site. Naturally, the quality of data on
Hunch local depends on the number of users that participate. For this reason, the service is currently
most accurate and informative when in urban areas. As the number of users grows, so will the
quantity and quality of recommended locations in rural and remote locations.

Where does Hunch local stand now and where is it likely to go? The service is currently limited to
the US and major non-US towns. The Hunch service initially did not require one to log in to access
the data. When Hunch enforced the log in requirement in May 2010 the number of unique users fell
from 750,000 in May to 250,000 in June. However, Hunch substantially recovered with unique users
bouncing back to 350,000 by July 2010 and has been on a growth trajectory since then.

One of the key things that the developers of Hunch local might consider incorporating is the ability
to see one’s followers that are currently in the suggested restaurant a la FourSquare. Hunch.com has
already stated its intent for deeper cooperation with FourSquare so this functionality might not be
long in coming.

Gigwalk is an iphone application that aims to use the growing “smartphone workforce” in crowd-sourcing effort to complete mini-tasks. Today’s world is very dynamic and everything changes at a very fast pace: Shops, Roads, or services etc…Google and other companies send a lot of money and time to try and map our world but it’s an effort that will be continuous and with big risks of quickly being outdated.

The idea is this: If you need something simple done at your store or other physical location, as long as it’s something almost anyone can do, you can put a job up on Gigwalk for people to grab..

Gigwalk classfies the tasks (Gig is how they call it) into 4 different categories:

Mapping

Mapping tasks range from Verify Roads & Signs to Transportation or even for people who want to Create their Own Map. More precise tasks exemples:

Local

Shopping

For instance, making a decision to drink at least eight glasses of water each day is easy – consistently sticking to that routine for consecutive months and years is the hard part. Worse still is not having any quantitative data that can show you how well you are faring against your target.

Greengoose.com is a start up that uses wireless sensors integrated with a web based platform all of which are meant to help you automatically track progress on the realisation of your lifestyle goals. The sensors communicate with an egg-shaped wireless receiver each time you perform an action. The receiver is plugged into a port on the router. The receiver battery lasts for 1 year.

There are different types of sensors each meant to track different types of lifestyle actions. The ones meant to monitor exercise are the same size as a credit card and so can easily fit in a purse or wallet. Water or energy drink bottle sensors on the other hand are stickers that are placed on the side of the bottle. The tooth brush sensor is egg shaped and with a slot where the stem of the tooth brush can be slipped through.

Each time you perform one of the actions, you earn ‘lifestyle points’. If you remain consistent, you get bonus points. Greengoose.com also allows for the exchange or sharing of points with partnering organisations in return for a reward. Similarly, the information can be shared with other applications. You can even integrate it with a reward system for the kids. The strength of Greeengoose.com lies not only in its functionality but also in its ability to appeal to persons of all ages.

Greengoose.com incorporates fun and play even into those activities that have a serious impact on our health. The sensors can be just as home with the kids as they would be with parents. True to its name, the Greengoose.com encourages people that have no more use for the receiver and sensors to send them back. The company will then recycle them ready for reuse. Other than being a gadget for individual use in the home or office, Greengoose.com has a bright future as a tool for business.

The best prospects for Greengoose.com will probably lie in future partnerships with health services organizations and other institutions that would naturally be drawn to customers of Greengoose.com. Such partnership may range from simply co-branding Greengoose.com sensors and receivers to investing in the development of new types of sensors to measure an even broader range of activities.

Despite the growing reliance on email and other means of electronic communication, certain aspects of non-electronic communication such as wedding invitation cards have proven difficult for many to let go of. There is just something about receiving a physical card that creates a personalised touch that an email invite still struggles to do.

Of course, email invites have their advantages too. They cost far much less and can be distributed faster. Is there a way to merge the benefits of both forms of event invitations? Paperlinks.com sure thinks so.

Paperlinks.com is a new smart phone app that incorporates QR codes into event invitations. The QR codes are then linked to a special micro site specifically created for the event.

When the invitees receive the card, they use their phone to read the QR code and are redirected to the webpage where the host can incorporate different elements of the event. This may include pictures, videos, map directions and even RSVP and comments fields for feedback and interaction.

Paperlinks.com envisages the transition of hyperlinks from the virtual space to the physical space thanks to QR codes. Unlike earlier approaches to QR codes that focused on simply reading the codes, Paperlinks.com addresses the entire cycle. The event host creates the QR codes and then has them embedded in the card invites.

While event invitations is what comes to mind first as the most practical use of the paperlinks.com app, there are numerous other potential uses. In fact, the creators of the app view it is a powerful business tool for Context Sensitive Marketing.

Businesses can create QR codes and use them to run an elaborate product promotion campaign off a customized internet page. Through Paperlinks.com, businesses have the power to create the compelling content that will drive customers to purchase the product.

There are a number of things going for paperlinks.com as relates to its future prospects. First, the fact that the app is free removes one major hindrance to its use that would otherwise arise if it were to have a cost element to it for end users.

Second, card recipients do not need to have an account with paperlinks.com for them to access the content. Thus, businesses and event hosts can distribute the cards or other physical media with the PR code with the confidence that audience will mainly be limited by just one thing – access to an iphone or iPod touch.

Which brings up the third positive for Paperlinks.com’s future – growth in smart phone sales. Even though paperlinks.com can be used on the iPod touch, it is the iphone that hold’s greatest promise. Despite ceding significant market share to Android smart phones, the iphone is still chalking up huge sales numbers.

That said, Paperlinks.com would likely have even better future prospects if the creators could develop a version for Android smart phones given that the Android OS is expected to take the number one smart phone OS spot in 2011 (Gartner and IDC research projections).

Try This One!

Why? one of the main reason is that it’s not real money and people don’t treat like real money. It’s not easy to spend and it expires…yes real money can be spent everywhere and doesn’t expire. This is the main reason why giftcards are of great intrest for companies. According to the Corporate Executive Board Tower Group in Harvard Business Review April 2011, The amount of money lost by US costumers on unredeemed giftcards is of a whooping 2.5 Billions Dollars Lost every year. It’s basically free profit for the card issuers. In 2007, this loss was as high as $8 billion.

How can we come up with an idea to make costumers benefit a maximum from those cards and stop those giant companies taking it from our pockets. Well I’ve identified 2 companies that are around the same concept.

“buying unwanted cards at a cheaper price and reselling them with a margin”

It’s beneficial the card seller because he would not have been able to get anything from it and the re-buyer because he gets to by card for cheaper.

The First company is GiftCardRescue.com who was featured on US TV show Shark Tank. here is a video on how they work.

The second one is Cardpool.

they claim “Buy gift cards for up to 35% off or sell gift cards for up to 92% cash back”

But the huge size of the social media user base has created a new problem – too much ‘noise’. Businesses with a presence on major social networks end up inundating their fans and followers with numerous updates and posts that are irrelevant and that some of their audience will have no interest in. Short of manually creating multiple profiles, there is virtually no room for businesses with a Facebook or Twitter profile for instance to vary the audience with each new update.

Hyperweek.net provides a platform for today’s major brands that empowers brands to have much greater control and flexibility in defining their own social network than is possible on current social networking platforms. The flexibility in sharing makes Hyperweek.net ideal for business networks that are publishing oriented. In Hyperweek.net, a brand can have multiple groups within its social media space each serving a specific purpose.

A single brand can create multiple communities ranging from groups limited to employees of a specific department in the organisation, to complex collaborative groups that include employees, select clients, subject matter experts and a number of third party service providers. Hyperweek.net refers to these two types of groups as enterprise networks and public networks respectively.

Public networks will find application when businesses are looking at ways of gauging or improving customer facing processes such as sales, marketing, customer service, quality of support and public relations. Though referred to as ‘public’, Hyperweek.net public networks remove the broadcast element of Twitter and the compartmentalisation inherent in Facebook by allowing the business to clearly define who the information is shared with.

Communication is limited to select interest groups depending on brand goals. For instance, certain key customers can be sounded for feedback on the potential reception of an advertisement campaign before it goes out to the wider public. Changes can then be made before the advertisement is released.

Enterprise networks are restricted to employees or departments. Hyperweek.net enterprise networks encourage teamwork, candid conversation on plans & strategy, knowledge sharing and rich creativity. Enterprise networks can be the originator and distributor of concepts that go viral within the organization.

For years, human resource experts have known that the formation and cohesion of informal and formal groups within an organisation are at the heart of energising and driving organisations to meeting their objectives. Through Hyperweek.net, employees can join and form formal or informal groups, gather and share news, pictures and videos in real time.

Hyperweek.net has great promise but faces a number of challenges. One of these is that the business case and benefit is not clearly articulated on its website. A short video would be a great way to briefly show what advantages the platform delivers.

Second, some businesses will not see the value of setting up a new platform for internal employee communication & interaction whereas this can be achieved using existing tools such as email and shared network folders (though not to the same level as Hyperweek.net).

Platforms that allow for the creation of custom social networks are fast gaining acceptance as the preferred social networking solution for brand success. That is why the Crowd Factory social media platform is particularly attractive for internet marketing professionals and heads of marketing departments.

Of course there is nothing that prevents large organisations from tasking an internal team of web developers with creating a custom social media platform. But this not only takes time and resources, but it also requires in-depth expertise on how online social media works – not many organisations will have in-house web developers that already have that level of expertise.

Going with a pre-built platform ready for configuration and rapid deployment such as Crowd Factory, saves the business time and money in the long run. What’s more, Crowd Factory is available as either a partial deployment where it is integrated with an organisation’s existing, custom built social media platform, or it can be a complete deployment where the business builds its social media campaign entirely around Crowd Factory.

One of the strongest capabilities of Crowd Factory is detailed tracking of how social media activity ultimately translates to sales. Crowd Factory goes down to the smallest tracking detail including the location, email and gender of each person. Brands can launch an elaborate campaign across multiple social channels and be able to track the resultant reactions back to conversions and purchases. By doing this one thing, Crowd Factory has achieved what many marketing teams have long dreamed of – business-savvy analytics including amount of revenue generated and brand awareness achieved by an online campaign conducted via various social media streams.

The Crowd Factory analytics show businesses which social media streams and users were responsible for generating the most product interest and sales conversions. The business can then target these ‘super fans’ and leverage their influence for future campaigns by for instance engaging them prior to a major marketing campaign or by giving group discounts to them and the persons they refer.

The Crowd Factory is deliberately developed to make an organization’s audience a powerful tool for amplifying the message to an ever larger audience across multiple social networks. The different functionalities of Crowd Factory are divided in three products – Social Campaign (integrating with different social media channels for a multipronged campaign), Social Offer (e.g. group buying offers and promotions) and Social ROI (results tracking and analytics).

Crowd Factory has already had remarkable success roping in a number of big names including Microsoft, Sony Music, HBO, Universal Music Group, McAfee, Mitsubishi Motors, American Red Cross, VEVO and Billboard. This is important for Crowd Factory’s future growth because large customers are a strong endorsement. So, in addition to meeting an existing need, its heavy-hitting references should see Crowd Factory continue to grow – all other factors constant.

This presents a headache when one needs to connect to someone else on each of their social networking profiles. Separately logging into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Flickr and Blogger to connect to the same person is time consuming to say put it mildly. If one is connecting to more than one person, the time it takes to connect to each individual’s multiple profiles is itself multiplied several times over.

Fullyfollow.me addresses this problem by enabling one to connect with the service user’s entire spectrum of social networking profiles via a single click. All a user needs to do is to create a profile on Fullyfollow.me (this is free) then specify all the social networks that they are a member of and that they would like to be part of their Fullyfollow.me profile. Each user profile gets a unique user defined URL (e.g. www.fullyfollow.me/peterjohnson) that they can then provide to anyone that wants to connect with them.

The service is flexible. For instance, when anyone visits the user’s Fullyfollow.me profile page, the visitor has the option of selecting which of the user’s social networking profiles they would want to connect to. They can choose to connect to their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles but leave out Twitter.

In addition, this service does not automatically connect or add the requestor to the Fullyfollow.me user’s LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Service users still retain the authority to vet and accept or decline requests. For Twitter, this is automatic which is consistent with requesting to follow someone on Twitter directly.

Another strong point of Fullyfollow.me is that visitors to a service user’s profile page do not have to be members of Fullyfollow.me in order to connect to the user. Once visitors to the profile page indicate the social networking sites they want to connect on, they are redirected to a confirmation page for each site they selected.

At launch Fullyfollow.me only covers the top three – Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Plans are likely in the pipeline to integrate other sites so as to accommodate the networking needs of different internet users. The more sites Fullyfollow.me can incorporate the better its chances of success.

The service addresses a real problem and can gain wide acceptance if the business model is executed well. Its target market is vast – tens of millions of internet users have profiles on more than one social networking site.

Spam email may be the single biggest and most stubborn problem plaguing the internet today. Various studies have estimated email spam as comprising 78-97% of all email worldwide. One study estimated that about 260 billion spam mails are sent each day. Spam is the reason many internet users are hesitant to publicly share their real email addresses online or to register on a site.

Bouncr.com is a new service that allows internet users to create a temporary email address to mask their real email address. One can then publicly share their Bouncr.com email address without the fear of their real email address being known. Emails to the Bouncr.com email address are automatically forwarded to the user’s real email address.

If the Bouncr.com email account starts being inundated with emails the user is not comfortable with, all they need to do is to cancel the address and the account will be automatically closed. There is nothing that prevents the user from creating a new Bouncr.com email account tagged to the same real email address.

Spam protection has come a long way and many email service providers have achieved significant success in nipping spam in the bud. However, even the best spam protection system cannot guarantee protecting its users from all spam. And closing one’s real email address because of spam is often impractical. Bouncr.com makes closing an account much easier. When faced with unsolicited email, all one needs to do is delete their Bouncr.com email and start over.

Bouncr.com also protects the user’s privacy. Some email addresses are too revealing and may serve as an easy clue for identity thieves. For instance, the email john.peterson@placeofwork.com reveals the name of the email address owner as well as where they work. Using Bouncr.com ensures such information remains hidden.

Bouncr.com is a convenient way to protect email users from unsolicited email. However, it is not the first time that creating an alternative email address has been used to net spam email. Craigslist, the online ad site, creates an email account that lasts the life of the posted advert. The email address forwards to the advertisers real address. Once the advert expires on the site, the email address is automatically retired. The only difference is that Craigslist accounts are restricted for use in its adverts.

There are also numerous free internet email services such as Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Hotmail. Many internet users often create one or more ‘dummy’ email accounts on one of these services with the intention of using them for a specific purpose or for a specific time frame. They would then either abandon the address, request the closure of the account or (where such feature is available) enable forwarding to their real email address.

Bouncr.com’s competitive advantage here is that it automates the process of creating ‘dummy’ email accounts. With Bouncr.com, internet users no longer need to go through the arduous process of creating a new internet email account. All that is required is for them to key in their real email address and a new Bouncr.com email address is created with automatic forwarding to their real email address.

The statistics attest to this. As at 2010, the average age of US gamers was 34 years. The average adult gamer has been playing online, computer or video games for 12 years. The average gamer spends 8 hours each week playing a video game. Monthly revenues for the gaming industry exceed $5 billion per month.

Gamify.com is putting this gaming appeal to good use. Riding on a concept the site refers to as ‘gamification’, Gamify.com allows website and web-enabled application developers to integrate aspects of gaming onto their site.

Gamify.com defines ‘to gamify’ as the application of gaming dynamics to everyday circumstances in order to foster better engagement and boost productivity. Gamify.com thus brings the fulfilling, rewarding and exciting atmosphere that is such a strong part of gaming, into different spheres of life.

The Gamify.com platform delivers gamification as a service and can be applied to virtually any web-based system. Users can interact with the gamification platform on their own or they can do so through any one of several ‘Gamify Experts’.

The experts serve as consultants on Gamify.com and are ranked on a leader board depending on their achievements and end user ratings. Gamify.com has also developed a Gamification Encyclopaedia, a wiki that is geared to towards the collaborative documentation of all elements of the gamification movement.

The Gamification Platform has four modules – the Engine, API, Admin and Features. The Gamify Engine is driven by end user activity and provides feedback in real time. The Gamify API is a flexible interface that ensures deep integration with all Gamify targets.

Gamify Features module is the home of reward programs as well as customizable widgets. Gamify Admin is the nerve centre. The Admin module provides analytics in real time and is the control centre for all general administration activities.

Gamify.com holds great promise in the coming months and years. That said, its greatest challenge to attracting established businesses will be the common stereotypes of gaming being an anti-productivity activity. Never mind that gamification only changes the end user experience and does not ‘create a game’ per se.

In other words, conventional businesses will need to be convinced that the incorporation of gamification in their application or website will bode well for the realisation of their objectives. How well Gamify.com will be able to advance this argument will determine how successful gamification ultimately becomes.

To say that travelling can be a nightmare is an understatement. What comes to mind first is the strenuous check in process at many airports. But airport red tape is just one of the key hassles that travellers must grapple with.

Another major pain is finding accommodation especially when one is looking for short term accommodation. Hotels may have rooms available but the cost can be prohibitive. This is where short term rentals (sometimes referred to as home stays) can be ideal.

However, anyone that has tried it knows that finding a good quality, decently priced rental especially on short notice is not easy. HouseTrip.com tries to give some method to this madness by serving as an intermediary between hosts on the one hand and travellers on the other.

Launched in January 2010, HouseTrip.com has had resounding success with about 20,000 persons using it to find short term rentals last year. 90% of traveller reviews so far have indicated having a positive experience.

HouseTrip.com provides benefits for both travellers/guests and hosts. For guests, cost is probably the largest incentive. One can get an entire apartment for the same amount (or less) than they would spend on a modest hotel room.

Staying in a rental provides a more authentic experience than staying in a hotel room. The guest gets to see and be a part of the day to day life of the locals. The third advantage is HouseTrip.com ensures the security of the guest’s money each step of the transaction – no need to fear falling prey to scammers.



For hosts, the main advantage is the ability to enjoy a steady of income from letting their property. Second, a host enjoys the economies of scale that looking for guests through HouseTrip.com presents.

It would take a lot more effort and present many risks were the host to look for guests on their own. HouseTrip.com works hard to ensure that properties listed on the site appear among the first pages on search engine results thus increasing the list’s audience and the likelihood of getting a guest.

Another benefit is that the host ultimately has the last word on who stays in their house and who does not. It takes a simple mouse click for one to reject or accept a booking. Getting one’s property listed on HouseTrip.com is free. The host determines what price to charge and also decides when they want to rent out the property.

HouseTrip.com is not the first website that has sought to connect rental apartment hosts with guests. However, HouseTrip.com has sought to distinguish itself by developing a more careful and systematic approach. For instance, HouseTrip.com covers only a certain number of countries – the site does not list rentals from every country in the world.

This is in contrast to the go-for-broke methodology employed by other sites where there is little or no control to ensure that guests and hosts get value and are not swindled. That said, it is expected that with time, HouseTrip.com will cover ever more locations. As long as the site sticks with its stringent but efficient process, such expansion is not likely to see deterioration in the quality of service.