By Nitasha Tiku 2/14 6:00pm

Early Adopters

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Supermodel Coco Rocha’s Social Media Game Is On Some Other Level

As a supermodel–and here Betabeat can only conjecture–the product you’re selling, essentially, is you. Your matchstick stems, all the places you go, your cool attitude = you. Therefore, as with most celebrities (and increasingly regular humans) run-of-the-mill personal brand building on social media is directly tied to revenue.

But even if Coco Rocha‘s entire extended Canadian family depended on the number of her Instagram followers, you still have to respect the 24-year-old’s commitment. We discovered as much this afternoon at panel run by Decoded Fashion hosted on the mouth of a runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/08 1:25pm

Fashion Plate

13 Photos

A Fashion Week Hackathon With All the Right Ratios?

Silicon Alley is awfully fond of putting “proximity to other industries” in its plus column. As the line goes: We’re down the street from the top media, financial, and fashion companies in the world! Despite being neighbors, however, fashion and tech have had some trouble understanding each other–hence the growing number of fashion startups that have hung up their stilettos for good.

Into all that drama jumped Decoded Fashion with an exceedingly practical idea: a fashion hackathon where industry insiders tell techies what’s actually lacking in the market. In other words, rather than the umpteenth street style photo-sharing apps, how about the next Fashion GPS, a digital tracker for samples and look books used by designers like Lanvin, Dior and many, many more. Read More

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