"Turkey's leader has accused WikiLeaks of spilling its beans to benefit Israel, which might be a credible accusation, if it wasn't being made by the Turks." ~ Yasha Harari
Fresh Baked Goods
Laughzilla the Third (2012)
The Third Volume in the Funny Stuff Cartoon Book Collection Available Now.
Simple, the startup that essentially places a sexy, modern user interface over the traditional consumer banking experience, has been acquired by a much more conventional banking company – Spain’s BBVA – for $117 million in cash.
In an announcement on its website, Simple says “Working with BBVA gives us the resources, scale, and autonomy we need to accelerate our growth while staying true to our mission.” Simple will remain a separate operation from the rest of BBVA’s US businesses.
The Google-owned ‘social GPS’ app Waze has been updated to add support for navigating to destinations directly from calendar entries.
From today, events with location info automatically appear in your navigation list and you can navigate to them in just one touch. If you have a particularly busy diary, don’t worry, only two events are shown at a time. Naturally, if you’d rather not use the feature you can disable it from in the app’s settings menu on Android devices, or from your phone’s settings if you’re using an iOS device and don’t want the integration.
The new feature has been rolled for both the iOS and Android versions of the app, but the Windows Phone build appears to be left wanting, for now.
Denis Duvauchelle is CEO and co-founder of Twoodo, helping your team organize itself using simple #hashtags.
The essence of innovation and the foundation of many start-ups are to imitate and adapt from existing concepts. New ideas are mostly incremental improvements of past ideas, just as we as a biological species have evolved improvements over centuries. We at Twoodo are trying to make team collaboration tools a little bit better, for example.
One thing that never gets old in business is knowing your customer – and that’s because of how often we get it wrong. Too often we rely on our narrow worldview to inform us of who we think would use our product or service.
Data-gathering from scratch is a daunting prospect. The good news is that with a little research, you’ll find that a lot of this data has been gathered for you.
You just need to know where to look. Often times it’s not very far from your competitors.
1. Borrow their Twitter followers
Unless you’ve entered a “blue ocean market,” it’s likely that there are at least 10 other more successful companies doing what you are trying to do right now.
But that’s OK! That means there are ten companies with curated lists of people interested in your kind of service.
This is where the hijacking of open social platforms come in. Twitter is a famous example. Just click on the “followers” list of your competitor’s company and you have a list of Twitter handles worth getting to know.
If you just want to get a list of the top influencers of an account, use this tool to generate the data. If you want more comprehensive data on your competitors’ followers you can use this tool. It is important to make connections with influencers early on so they can be evangelists for your brand.
Similarly, on Google+ you can go to a page and click to see who the followers of a brand are. It’s pretty easy to link up with them, and once you are, G+ allows you to send email notifications to them of your updates or shared news.
I’m not suggesting you should contact them to spam them or tell them your service is better. But starting a conversation and finding out why they love or are frustrated by your competitors is a great way to find vital information. You’d be surprised at how many people are willing to share their experiences.
Here’s a cool article on how to growth hack Google Plus if you want to harness its full growing potential!
2. Spy on their feature requests
Want to make sure that your new app doesn’t fall into the same traps as your competitors once did? Check out their “feature request” lists and past FAQs to get an idea of what users/customers are finding challenging.
Do this by simply going to your preferred search engine and typing “COMPANY feature request.”
You can create an improved business by avoiding the mistakes made by your competitor in the past, and also try to get ahead by offering features that users are requesting (but have not been developed yet). Totally legit and totally serving the user.
3. Win over their haters
It’s as simple as typing “I hate XXX” into Topsy and seeing who hates the company and why. This is also a good way of discovering features people hate/love/want and incorporating the info into your business.
Grab their Twitter handle and offer them your far superior service! Careful not to become their next punching bag!
4. Take advantage of their inability to be everywhere
This won’t pose much of a challenge in North America, where English and Spanish covers pretty much the whole population. However, step outside of that bubble into Europe, Africa and Asia and you’ll find that an almost-copycat service done in a local language is niche enough to make you a sweet business.
Here’s an early example:
Tuenti launched in Spain as the Spanish social network when Facebook was only just allowing 13-year-old school kids on in the USA.
Spain has a population of (give or take) 50 million – more than enough people for the founders to enjoy a good income. This proves that, if nothing else, you can use language as your niche.
5. …and their inability to do everything
Mergers and acquisitions anyone? This is another area where your research on the FAQs and feature requests is useful.
Build a company or develop features fulfilling a need that the your large competitors have. Then, negotiate a partnership or buy each other out.
A famous examples is eBay buying PayPal and iBazar (a European online marketplace), therefore acquiring a payments system plus a continent worth of customers that it could convert to eBay users.
You will have to be fast on your feet if you decide to take this route, in case the company in mind is large enough to build a solution itself.
6. Borrow their demographic data
Data on visitors and customers is being generated in gigantic quantities. And it’s not limited to websites – there are startups developing ways to use street cameras to analyze who goes into shops.
Although much of this data is hidden or protected by law, there are some tidbits available online that can give you some insights into your target market. For example, if you are targeting US women then not being on Pinterest is crazy. Pinterest has an audience of 80 percent women, and 20 percent of all American women are on it.
There are other kinds of data available to assist in building your information about potential users, if you persevere on the search engines. If you are a game company, it is interesting to know that people who play Candy Crush do it from 6 to 9 PM and on Sundays.
This is important for your marketing efforts and for your live customer support. Here’s one way of finding out about the users of your competitors:
Choose a social networking platform (we’ll use G+ here)
Go to the page of your competitor
Click on the “have them in circles” number on the right
Check out the list of fans, complete with contact details, geographic location, email (often), hobbies, and tons of awesome qualitative customer info
A recent experiment I did with Facebook also brought some interesting results. I joined an interest group (Arduino boards), and clicked “add friend” on all the members that had the option available (which was plenty).
Quite a lot added me back after a quick message to check that I was a legit person. Once I had connected with a large enough sample from the group, I was able to find such data as age, gender, location, industry and so on.
This is gold when you are trying to figure out who your ideal customer is.
7. Hijack their search engine rankings
If you do a Google search for your keywords you’ll probably see a bunch of competitors on the first page results. If they’re on the first page then they must be doing something right with their backlink strategy. Imagine how powerful it would be if your site had the same backlinks as not only the first result but every single one of the top 10 results!
This is possible with a few steps and a bit of elbow grease. The good news is that you can see precisely the backlink strategy these competitors are using.
It’s possible to find all the websites, blogs, forums or online magazines your competitors are getting their links from. Once you’ve got that list it’s up to you to get busy and replicate them by commenting on the same blog posts, asking for guest posts from the same blogs, posting on the same forums and so on.
Matthew Woodward has created a complete comprehensive guide to this growth hack. You’ll soon be appearing in the top 10 results for your targeted keywords – and apparently it can even survive Google’s algorithm updates.
This is long-term SEO with a strong foundation – a useful habit to begin with early.
Is there anything I shouldn’t steal (I mean, borrow)?
Being “inspired by” or “adopting features of” other businesses is common practice. It’s costly and difficult to fight legal battles against anyone who decides to take your idea and run with it. Patent laws are not equally enforced around the world and it’s pretty hard to keep your secret sauce secret on the internet.
Even giants like Samsung and Apple are not above such controversy. Uber has allegedly poached drivers from competitors by calling up and canceling cabs (thus acquiring the driver’s number) and then offering them a job with them.
How wrong was this? I’m not sure. Marketplace ethics are a grey area.
Mobile social gaming company PapayaMobile has opened the beta for Kiwi Calendar, a new Web-first smart calendar app that recommends activities when it thinks you’re working too much. A limited number of Kiwi Calendar beta slots are available today for US users.
While it might come as a surprise that PapayaMobile is releasing a Web app first, the company felt that most users check their calendars on the desktop rather than from a mobile device.
Kiwi Calendar is designed for workaholics. It uses machine learning to study the rhythm of your schedule and then recommend times for you to get out and have fun with your friends. Social sharing features let you show friends what times you’re free without revealing the rest of your calendar. You can also find events that your Facebook friends are planning on going to.
“With many of us committed to demanding jobs, we’re reluctant to pencil in ‘fun’ because we struggle to find a moment for anything else. Kiwi Calendar swoops in to squeeze in an hour or two for exciting activities,” PapayaMobile CEO Si Shen said in a statement.
I haven’t given Kiwi Calendar a try, but the app’s unique features definitely have my attention. I could use a calendar that nudges me when I’m working too hard and can find out what my friends are up to when I get some free time.
If you’re interested in Kiwi’s concept but want to wait for a mobile app, you probably won’t have to wait long. PapayaMobile hinted that it’s working on a native app too, which makes sense for a company with mobile in its name.
Chute, a visual marketing and media-sharing platform, today launched a new product aimed at helping online retailers leverage user-generated content to help improve sales. Chute Commerce allows marketers to transform the traditional shopping experience that consumers have when viewing products online away from a static, non-engaging experience to one much more social and highly visual.
There’s no doubt that more people are doing a lot of their shopping online. In 2013, eMarketer estimated that US online retailers would bring in $259 billion in sales, a 14.8 percent increase from 2012. This percent is expected to increase at a 14 percent compound annual growth rate through 2017. But eventually, all shopping sites will become very similar, so how can consumers differentiate between buying clothing on Overstock.com, Amazon, Target, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, or the Gap?
Chute Commerce is a tool that brands and publishers could use in order to curate user-generated content and then feature it alongside their own product listings. For example, Cole Haan could use this service to find all the media across Instagram, Twitter, YouTube with the hashtag #colehaan.
In the Chute Commerce dashboard, marketers can see all of the content and then assign it to specific product pages, such as its LunarGrand shoe brand. The end result is that consumers who visit Cole Haan’s online store and look for a pair of LunarGrand shoes will see fan photos showing other people wearing the shoes.
It’s believed that with this form of social merchandising, consumers will be able to “see” themselves wearing the product without guessing how the shirt, blouse, jacket, desk lamp, couch, curtain, or whatever else will look like based on a professional photo of the item.
Chute co-founder and CEO Ranvir Gujral explains it this way:
A visual conversation is taking place with or without the retailer. Brands need to embrace social merchandising and amplify their customers’ enthusiasm for their products. Those who do will rise above the noise.
Interestingly, Chute Commerce functions like a file management system. Marketers can use it to keep track of media content that they’ve acquired through voluntary submissions from consumers or through Chute’s Rights offering. This Commerce dashboard offers more than just a e-commerce solution — it includes detailed analytics that marketers can use to better understand customer engagement, whether an image viewed converted into a purchase, and more.
Another feature marketers can take advantage of in Chute Commerce is its workflow creation tool. Recognizing that each of its customer companies operates differently, this tool allows marketers to specify their own procedures for curating content, securing rights, and implementing them into the brand’s various campaigns. It’s a blend of human and automated processes that marketers can set up at any time.
For example, you could have the system automatically pull in content based on a specific hashtag or user, media type, and across a specific date range. Then, it would prompt a human being to manually filter which photos can be used. Afterwards, if permission is needed, the system could send out a notification en masse to secure the rights, and finally then a worker can assign it to a specific product listing.
“We designed Chute Commerce to be incredibly simple to integrate within a brand’s existing eCommerce platform without impacting site response times,” says Chute’s other co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Gregarious Narain. “Our solution automates the process to both discover and organize customer photos and videos, which saves our customers time and needless frustration…”
Chute’s Commerce product is guided by the company’s belief that a “visual revolution” is taking place online. And it’s certainly the one piece that’s missing from Chute’s big picture. Launched in 2011, it started off as a photo platform that brands could use to display content. Eventually, it released its native advertising product, Chute Ads before debuting its rights offering. However, through it all, there was something amiss to connect all the dots together and make it a complete platform — Chute Commerce completes the circle.
As mentioned earlier, Chute Commerce functions akin to a file management system that allows marketers to organize assets, photos, and videos. Included in that is its integration with Chute Ads so marketers don’t need to have multiple systems to set up one campaign — now it’s all done from a single source.
Chute says that its Commerce launch partners include Benefit Cosmetics and Conde Nast. The service will be available in a SaaS subcription model and is priced according to a brand’s usage need.
Simple, the startup that essentially places a sexy, modern user interface over the traditional consumer banking experience, has been acquired by a much more conventional banking company – Spain’s BBVA – for $117 million in cash.
