Look, it wasn’t any secret that Pinterest was going to reach new heights of D.I.Y. decadence this holiday season. Can you think of a better place to burn workdays looking at wintery craft projects you’ll never, ever complete? But we hadn’t expected anything quite as over-the-top as the newly launched “30 Days of Pinspiration,” Read More
Marketers know that Pinterest can drive a flood of acquisition-minded traffic. But hammering out a specific strategy is a different matter entirely, and the social network is only just emerging from the earliest, have-the-intern-run-it stages of social media popularity.
“The most followed people don’t necessarily equate to the most effective people,” HelloInsights CEO Kyla Brennan told Betabeat. Her company hopes to help, with its newly launched analytics platform. Read More
Goooood Morning Silicon Alley!
This is a guest post from Gary Sharma (aka “The Guy with the Red Tie”), founder and CEO of GarysGuide and proud owner of a whole bunch of black suits, white shirts and, at last count, over 40 red ties. You can reach him at gary [at] garysguide.com.
Mayor Bloomberg and the NYCEDC recently launched a prototyping competition, where six lucky winning teams will get an opportunity to prototype new products while receiving studio space from sponsor NYDesigns and mentorship from industry leaders Shapeways, Adafruit Industries, and Honeybee Robotics. Alison Hodgson and Miquela Craytor from the NYCEDC will be at the Hardware Startup Meetup today to explain the competition and take any questions. Read More
Pinterest began rolling out “one of its most frequently-requested features” yesterday: so-called “secret boards,” which let users aspire until their hearts’ content without anyone watching–unless of course they’re into that sort of thing. Read More
ECommerce Rules Everything Around Me
There must be some pins in the water over at Bessemer Venture Partners. Back in May, Sarah Tavel, the former Bessemer VP who led the firm’s prescient early investment in Pinterest, left to head up “business” at the social network for “regular people” connoisseurs of pretty, special things.
Now, founder and CEO Michael Segal, a former Bessemer analyst, also finds himself going after the exact same target market that Pinterest helped define. Yesterday, he launched Curio Road, a New York-based “curated discovery site” (i.e. online shop of rotating collections of jewelry, accesories, home decor, and gifts) heavily influenced by his ecommerce training at Bessemer, he told Betabeat.
“We are saying to the Pinterest user–hey, here is an end-to-end shopping experience where you can channel your love for unique, creative stuff,” Mr. Segal explained. Read More
As long as it’s a feeling of materialistic lust, that is. On the heels of enabling users to send and receive IRL gifts, Facebook has moved even deeper into e-commerce territory. The social network is working with brands, including Pottery Barn and Fab.com, to create something called “collections,” photos sets that’ll come with the options to “want,” “collect,” and “like,” as well as–but of course!–a link to buy. [Mashable]
The U.K. apparently takes terrible Facebook postings very, very seriously. A West Yorkshire man has been fined and ordered to complete 240 hours of community service after posting a status that said ”All soldiers should die and go to hell” after six British soliders were killed. [BBC]
Several big tech companies, including Facebook, Google and Apple, have joined forces with the Internet standards organization WC3 to create webplatform.org, a kind of authoritative wiki for open web development. [TheNextWeb]
There’s now an iPad app to teach your kids proper email habits. Because let’s face it, it’s never too soon to start learning manners. [Fast Company]
Backblaze’s habit of buying up every hard drive in Costco during a hard drive shortage got them banned from the store. [GigaOm]
Even if you’re not a Pinterest power user, only navigating to the site occasionally on Sunday nights when you feel like you’ve read the entire Internet, you’ve undoubtedly noticed. Pictures of gaudy, elaborate nail art, 18th century European castles and Olivia Palermo (Pinterest’s official spirit animal) are interspersed with inspirational quotes Photoshopped by tween designos. Quotes once uttered by intelligent and creative people like Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare are being adopted by the People of Braided Updos and Asparagus Dip, stay-at-home bloggers and young married girls bred in red states.
This is what the New York Times is calling “The Gospel According to Pinterest,” in reference to the way this fortune cookie wisdom spreads across the social network. Read More
The Fancy*, the New York City-based Pinterest competitor where users can browse and share products they love, has decided to enter the subscription box service. We thought you were too fancy for that, Fancy?
According to a press release sent to Betabeat, The Fancy has launched its first ever monthly subscription box that is curated entirely by the crowd. A $60 value for $30/month, users can pick from their favorite categories like “Art” or “Pets” and get a box filled with some of The Fancy users’ favorite products in that category. Read More
Don’t be alarmed, but at this very moment, a Chinese man might be registering the Italian domain for your ultra-hot startup.
GigaOm reports that one dude is buying up “dozens” of URLs suspiciously like those of up-and-coming U.S. startups. Nor is Nanjing resident Qian Jin merely registering domains like Pinterests.com, Pinterest.it, and Pilnterest.com. (We assume that last one is part of a plan to launch a Pinterest clone devoted to the appreciation of pilsners.) He’s also applied for trademarks that might sound awfully familiar–think Foursquare and Instagram.
Both of those things could create major headaches for a company eyeing eventual global expansion. Read More
Uptime monitoring company Pingdom crunched the numbers behind the U.S. demographics of some of the internet’s most devoted communities in 2012, and unearthed some pretty interesting stats. Though the majority of the web’s infrastructure was built by people who have never played Pokemon or seen an episode of Boy Meets World, social media is largely touted as a young person’s game. But according to Pingdom, the majority of social networks are actually populated primarily by users over 35.
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