Social shopping has been a big trend over the past year and there have been few more successful startups in this domain than Groupon. It's a relatively simple concept: offer daily shopping deals to groups of consumers. The details are a little more complicated, in that a deal only eventuates if a pre-set number of people take it. But that's what makes Groupon attractive to businesses, as usually they can only afford to offer low prices if items are bought in bulk. So the service has been a win-win for consumers and businesses.
I caught up with Groupon CTO Ken Pelletier, who has been with the company since it was founded in 2007, to find out how Groupon began and what's made it such a success.
This year check-in apps have moved beyond location, to encompass every thing from checking into movies, books, songs and (yes) even food. Foodspotting launched last November and has quickly built up a passionate following of foodies. It enables users to make and find food recommendations, in particular through photos and quick ratings of food items.
It may sound like an odd thing to do, to stop and take a photo of a plate of food. But it turns out that Foodspotting is a handy way to discover what foods are recommended in a particular city or area. It might come in useful when on holiday, for example. I spoke to Foodspotting co-founder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski to find out what inspired the product, who's using it, and the company's surprising plans to expand beyond food.
CiviGuard is a new mobile-based solution for emergency communications. At heart it's an alerts and notification system, with messages distributed via text messages, an HTML5 web app, push notifications and social media services like Twitter. The product was developed by 3 students of Singularity University: Zubin Wadia, Shawna Pandya and Timothy Coleman. It was inspired by 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and other recent crises.
CiviGuard is an inspiring example of how mobile and real-time web technologies can be used to bring about meaningful change. I spoke with the 3 founders to find out more.
A common theme of our product innovation series has been exploring applications that take advantage of new devices - and the user experience patterns that evolve out of that. Instapaper is perfect example of this. It started out as a web application, then embraced smart phones, and now it's being used by many iPad owners. In a nutshell, Instapaper is an app that saves web pages for reading later. But unlike older 'web 2.0' social bookmarking services, it doesn't just bookmark a web page. Instapaper saves a copy of the content so it can be read later, offline if need be, within the app.
Instapaper was launched in January 2008 by the co-founder of Tumblr, Marco Arment. In fact Arment has only just gone full-time with Instapaper, announcing last month that he's moving on from Tumblr after 4 years as its lead developer. He has big plans for Instapaper as a business, as you'll discover in this interview.
The advent of the iPad has triggered a new round of innovation in the startup community. And few startups have utilized the iPad's touchscreen UI to create a unique user experience more than Flipboard, a magazine reading application built specifically for the iPad.
As part of our continuing product innovation interview series, I spoke with Flipboard co-founder and CEO Mike McCue. We discuss how he came up with the idea, before the iPad had even been announced, then rapidly developed and launched Flipboard. We also talk about how people are using Flipboard (hint: it's more than just for reading magazines) and its future plans to expand beyond the iPad - including to smartphones.
Caterina Fake was one of the co-founders of Flickr, an iconic web 2.0 online photo service that was sold to Yahoo. Her latest product is Hunch, a service that started out as a Q&A service but is now being positioned as a personalization service. It's basically a recommendation engine that shows you movies you want to see, books you want to read, vacation destinations you want to go to, and much more. Fake and her three co-founders at Hunch - Chris Dixon, Tom Pinckney and Matt Dattis - are on a mission to "map every person on the Internet to every object on the Internet, be that a product, a service, or a person."
I spoke to Caterina Fake to find out how Hunch got started and the progress the company has made in its ambitious mission.
Television is one of the biggest markets in entertainment, but it is at the early stages of a huge shift online. While most people still watch TV through cable and via traditional linear programming, increasingly TV will be delivered over the Internet and with the user in charge of their own programming. The big TV networks are already making moves to prepare for this shift, of course, with efforts like Hulu.
Just as interesting to watch is how new startups will design for the changing usage patterns of TV consumers. Clicker is one such company. Co-founded by ex-Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, Clicker aims to be the TV Guide of Internet TV. I spoke with Lanzone to find out how the idea came about and to hear his thoughts on how Internet TV is evolving.
When it comes to unique, 'out there' startup ideas, it doesn't get much more far out than Ponoko. The simplified concept for customers: design your own custom product and someone will make it for you. Example products created for Ponoko users so far include custom chairs, jewelry, toys, wine racks, laptop stands. As if the concept of customers designing their own products and having them custom made wasn't enough, the company behind it all comes from New Zealand.
I've known Ponoko co-founder Dave ten Have in a professional capacity for over 10 years. We both live and work in Wellington, New Zealand. Ponoko is a remarkable concept, so I sat down with him to find out how he came up with the vision - and more importantly, turned it into reality.
Yesterday we looked at the evolution of GetGlue, a service that allows you to "check in" to TV shows, movies, music, and more.
One of the striking things about GetGlue is how it has used cutting edge web technologies (recommendations, Semantic Web) to build a future-proof foundation. And how it has taken advantage of currently hot platforms (like iPhone and iPad), while also targeting future platforms (like Internet TV). In Part 2 of our interview with Alex Iskold, the founder and CEO of GetGlue, we find out how he's steered his company towards the future. We also find out what other trends Alex Iskold is tracking currently.
Sometimes a successful web product takes a while to find its niche. Occasionally it morphs into a different product altogether, along the way. Both things have happened to GetGlue, the service where users "check in" to watching TV shows, reading books, listening to music - indeed, to just about anything.
I caught up with GetGlue founder and CEO Alex Iskold to discuss the evolution of the product since its inception. It's changed from an under-used geeky Firefox browser add-on, to a mainstream service where hundreds of thousands of people check-in to Mad Men and other popular entertainment shows. How has GetGlue made this transition? One word, by getting emotional.
