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Rebecca Seel

By Rebecca Seel 5/01/12 4:08pm

Fashion Tech

Tumblr's David Karp and Mashable interviewer Lauren Indvik at Decoded Fashion. (Photo: Mashable Tumblr)

The Ever-Affable David Karp Talks Tumblr’s Two-Pronged Advertising Strategy at Decoded Fashion Conference

Armed with infographics and and boundless enthusiasm, tech prodigy David Karp wowed the audience at the fashion-tech conference Decoded Fashion on Monday with Tumblr’s astonishing growth and success.

Betabeat was sipping coffee in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall when we saw a young-ish man walk in. He looked like a well-dressed college coed, in a dark suit, black tie and gray sneakers. It wasn’t until we got a good look at his face (and shaggy bowlcut) that we realized we were looking at Mr. Karp, the founder and CEO of Tumblr, and one of the closest things the tech world has to a rock star. A very nice, sort of nerdy rock star.

Mr. Karp settled into his seat onstage with an enthusiastic wave, plying the audience with slides detailing Tumblr’s insane growth. For example, Tumblr has 16 billion pageviews a month, soon to reach 17 billion, with 600 posts per second. Read More

By Rebecca Seel 5/01/12 1:19pm

Fashion Tech

Tumblr founder David Karp onstage at Decoded Fashion. (Photo: Tumblr fashion director Valentine Uhovski)

Decoded Fashion Conference Highlights Fashion and Tech’s Tricky Relationship

It’s far from perfect, but the fashion industry is in a committed relationship with technology. The day-long Decoded Fashion event at Lincoln Center on Monday explored the facets of the fusion of tech and fashion. While the two can get along swimmingly, the fashion industry’s understanding of tech is limited, and technology is (currently) unable to fix some of fashion’s biggest problems.

Comprised of ten panels with three keynotes (including Tumblr’s wunderkind David Karp), the event celebrated technology’s role in the fashion industry, though many panels also addressed the myriad problems that fashion faces with its expansion online in the era of social media. Read More

By Rebecca Seel 4/24/12 12:01pm

Pinteresting

100 Photos

Pinterest anonymous

100 Best Pinterests

It’s been established that Pinterest is the Next Big Thing in social media. Though the site has a reputation as an outlet for wedding-crazy girlfriends and middle-aged women, there’s something to entice every use. Yesterday we brought 100 Worst Pins on Pinterest; here’s a cross-section of the 100 best boards Pinterest has to offer. We tried to keep the number of wedding boards to a minimum. Read More

By Rebecca Seel 4/06/12 2:50pm

Pinterest for Blank

SparkRebel.

SparkRebel, Pinterest Lookalike for Fashion, Has Tween Appeal

In the land of the Internet startup, it seems the latest discovery is… well… the discovery. The algorithm is king in the quest to give users exactly what they want in order to (hopefully) turn a profit. SparkRebel, a Pinterest-like (but not Pinterest! they insist) fashion discovery site, is the latest fashion-focused social media startup to crop up out of New York.

Although founder and CEO Elad Baron insists SparkRebel is different from “other websites” (“Pinterest” never crossed his lips in our conversation), the similarities between the two sites are striking. On Pinterest, you “pin” images which go on your “boards,” pages on which you can arrange images of things you like. On SparkRebel, you can add “sparks” or “respark” items to your “collections,” which is the same basic idea. You can follow users and their collections on SparkRebel just as you can on Pinterest.

“The next wave is in discovery, and fashion is a great candidate,” Mr. Barons said. “You’re not looking for a specific cardigan. You’re looking for ideas and inspiration. You need to get inspired and discover things.” Read More

By Rebecca Seel 3/23/12 10:30am

The Internet Is The New Black

Mr. Morton.

With Fashion Startups, Success Is More Than Just a Popularity Contest

For an industry based entirely on trends, fashion is having a social media moment.

Designers and retailers have their own social media accounts, using Twitter, Facebook and other sites to hawk their goods to people who enjoy spending their time quantifying their friends through a number on a webpage. Fashion-centric startups are increasingly en vogue. There is even a blog to keep track of them all: FashInvest, “where fashion meets finance.” Read More