10 Hot Web Startups Changing the Face of Retail

10 Hot Web Startups Changing the Face of Retail

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Macala Wright is the publisher of FashionablyMarketing.Me, one of the leading fashion and retail industry business websites. She is a retail consultant and business strategist who specializes in marketing consulting for fashion, luxury and lifestyle brands. You can follower her on Twitter at @InsideFMM or @Macala.

In 2010, branded content was one the largest trends among retailers and brands. In 2011, branded content shifted to branded entertainment. Now, in 2012, we’ll look toward content cultivation and aggregation.

By creatively using Pinterest and Tumblr, brands are becoming enthralled with consumer curation, primarily because these types of curated sites create non-linear paths to purchases.

First, retailers post visually appealing images and ideas that are accessible to the online user/consumer. Then, consumers post those images to curated sites. From there, retailers can build brand awareness by directly linking to product pages and encouraging purchase conversions.

“We’re demonstrating the power of peer-to-peer shopping search,” says Buyosphere’s Tara Hunt. “Algorithms are a long way off from picking up nuances that a person can. And personal taste is full of nuance.”

The future of ecommerce, search and social marketing is now tied to personality-influenced consumer curation. Here are 10 product discovery and sharing sites worth paying attention to.

1. Mulu

Launched in December 2011, Mulu is a social platform for sharing the things you love and making the world a better place at the same time. Mulu allows users to make product recommendations, ask for suggestions and earn money for themselves or a social cause they want to support.

Mulu CEO and founder Amaryllis Fox says, “Zooey Deschanel and HelloGiggles are using their Mulu to support 826 LA, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.”

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tetsuomorita

More About: content curation, ecommerce, features, Marketing, pinterest, Social Media, social shopping

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Curated Commerce: How Retail Brands Can Cash in on the Latest Craze

Curated Commerce: How Retail Brands Can Cash in on the Latest Craze

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John Doyle is VP of digital strategy for Cramer-Krasselt / Chicago. Keep up with him at johndoyle.posterous.com.

As we kick off 2012, one of the most prominent online trends is an increasingly diverse array of content curation platforms. While sites like Digg and reddit have been around for years, a new crop of sites like Polyvore, Svpply and, most notably, Pinterest are allowing people to organize their favorite discoveries from around the web into themed collections that friends and contacts can follow.

Marketers are excited about the trend’s subsequent opportunities, as it appears to be an evolution in online influence. (Consider that Pinterest, with only 5.3 million active users, drives more traffic to Real Simple than Facebook.)

Shoppers are turning to these curated experiences to help filter the Internet’s overwhelming amount of content down to manageable collections of products centered around shared taste. Unless you know specifically what you want to buy (in which case, search is the weapon of choice), browsing curated collections can be the most interesting way to discover new products and retailers. As an example of the power of human curation, just compare the results of a Google search for gloves with the same search on Pinterest. Now ask yourself which search makes you want to buy something?

With a little practice, shopping curated collections can be a lot like shopping in a real-life boutique — a boutique where the goods are selected and stocked to meet the needs of its best customer: you. And because these collections are created by real people (in many cases, friends from within the shopper’s own personal social network), the resulting shopping experience is authentic, powerful and hugely influential on purchase behavior.

The trouble for retail brands? Consumers often prefer curated collections, which tend to be absent of overt branding and promotion. They don’t turn to curated communities to learn about the Gap’s winter line or the latest sale on Macys.com. No, what drives both curators and the consumers who enjoy these experiences is discovering and sharing “products on the verge.”

But that doesn’t mean established brands and retailers can’t leverage this trend and capitalize on the powerful influence curated collections can generate. Try these three ways that brands and retailers can leverage curated commerce.

1. Look for Your Brand ‘In the Wild.’

Just because curated collections don’t often feature bigger brands doesn’t mean these retailers don’t show up at all. And when they do, it presents a huge learning opportunity for brand and store managers to see products in a new context — the way influential tastemakers see you. By understanding which other brands or products surround yours, you may discover a new dimension to your merchandising strategy.

A simple Pinterest search for “Brooks Brothers” yielded this visually rich and focused collection called “Preppy Cool.” Perhaps the Brook’s Brothers site could benefit by creating similar visual appeal, leading customers to purchase items that naturally fit a targeted style preference.

2. Bring the Outside In.

If you find that your brand has been included in a curated collection, take pains to identify the curator, explore past collections and try to gauge her influence and audience. If you can’t find yourself in curated collections, you can still look to identify tastemakers that share your aesthetic or ethos.

Once you’ve identified the right individuals, encourage them to consider adding you to their collections. Better still, invite these curators to create a collection on your owned site and in stores, thus giving them a new platform for expression and self-promotion, and you a fresh take on your merchandising. For an example of a brand that understands the power of bringing the outside in, check out J.crew’s partner-curated collections and brand partnerships.

3. Go Off Property.

Sure, you can curate a collection on your own website or other digital properties, but you’ll tap entirely new tastemakers and audiences by integrating your products within an existing community site. Just be sure not to focus too much on your own brand, or else you risk being labeled a shill and, thus, lose customer-valued authenticity. Your brand should be the garnish on a plate of freshly discovered “products on the verge” — never the main dish.

For example, check out how a few Sephora products benefit from a widened context on this color-themed Svpply.com set.

Leveraging the effects of curated commerce will require extra time, effort and imagination. However, it can have an extremely powerful impact on both shoppers and your brand. When it comes to influencing consumers, the human touch is everything.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MarsBars

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Storify Reveals Its Favorite User-Generated Story of 2011

Storify Reveals Its Favorite User-Generated Story of 2011

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Social media curation tool Storify doled out its Story of the Year honor Thursday to Josh Stearns, who is using the service to keep track of journalists arrested during the nationwide Occupy Wall Street protests.

Stearns works for Free Press as the journalism and public media campaign director and began documenting the arrests in September when a TV reporter was jailed in New York City.

Storify describes his story, which has been viewed more than 14,500 times, as “an effort that evolved over weeks and months, preserving what would otherwise be lost in the social media flood.”

Since launching into public beta in April, Storify has allowed professional and citizen journalists to take content from various social networks — such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Instagram — and plop everything into one interactive post that can be embedded onto other websites.

Stearns filled his story with links to news articles, videos, photos, quotes and resources for journalists. The story edged out others from Reuters social media editor Anthony De Rosa (2011 Timeline of Protest, Revolution and Uprising) and SMH reporter Glenda Kwek (Riots in the UK).

Storify announced the winner Thursday in a blog post, which of course included a Storify (see below).

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6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011

6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011

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The year 2011 brought extraordinary progress for online journalism.

From breaking news curation to new revenue models, many an organization put its best digital foot forward. Social media became more tightly integrated into reporting and overall strategy, while mobile app creation and content optimization were no longer a nice-to-have, but a must.

These trends are quickly shaping the young and agile web news industry. As journalists redefine themselves with new tools and skill sets, they’re reinvigorating a business that just a few years ago was written off as doomed.

Here’s a look at six moves with the biggest impact on digital journalism this year.

1. Paywalls Find Their Footing

If 2010 was the year of the paywall, 2011 was the year the paywall worked. News organizations stopped using “our content is worth paying for” as a sole rationale, and began strategically providing value for their online content.

While the The New York Times‘s strategy was much-criticized when it launched in March, it has since turned a profit. The Minneapolis Star Tribune made an estimated $800,000 in digital circulation revenue during its first month of having a paywall, despite a 10-15% decline in web traffic. For both papers, tying online access to print subscriptions has been key to success. The Strib saw nearly 20% of its new digital subscribers also buy a Sunday subscription, while The Times said 800,000 print subscribers have linked their accounts for digital access.

These paywall models have shown the potential for creating dedicated digital subscriber bases that advertisers could eventually pay more for.

2. Andy Carvin Becomes an Icon

The Arab Spring was undoubtedly one of 2011′s biggest news events — and its main newsman comes in right behind it. When the Tunisian uprisings began last winter, Andy Carvin’s duties as NPR’s senior strategist took a backseat while his Twitter account became a one-man newswire dedicated to the culminating situation in the Middle East. He paired his knowledge of and contacts in the region to curate the best and most accurate information tweeted from the ground.

What set Carvin apart was not only his volume of tweets — his record is 1,200 tweets in 48 hours, according to The Guardian — but also his recognition of fellow Twitter users as experts. He wouldn’t hesitate to tweet unverified information and ask his Twitter followers to help him determine its accuracy.

For the journalism community, Carvin proved the value of social newsgathering and its ability to complement rather than replace traditional reporting.

3. Journalists Flock to Google+

Google kickstarted digital journalists’ biggest love affair of 2011 when it launched social network Google+ in June. Many were quick to sign on and explore the platform’s potential for news gathering, reporting and audience building.

New Jersey newspaper The Trentonian was lauded as the first to use Google+ for breaking news after its producers found a key source in a breaking news story via her comment on the paper’s Google+ page. For Missouri’s KOMU-TV, it was a social breakthrough when reporter Sarah Hill began integrating Hangouts into live TV broadcasts. She would give Hangout viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the newsroom and then interview Hangout participants on-air.

While interest in Google+ has waned since its launch, news organizations’ initial enthusiasm shows a desire to expand to communities beyond Twitter and Facebook. As the social media landscape continues to grow, this early adopter mentality will be crucial to web journalism success.

4. Mobile Gets Competitive

Though the necessity for a mobile presence was recognized far before 2011, news organizations showed a new commitment to smartphone and tablet apps this year.

News Corp took its chances with a mobile-first strategy when it launched iPad-only newspaper The Daily in February, while Betaworks’s News.me came on the scene in mid-April. Both much-hyped efforts flopped, in part because free social news reading apps, such as Flipboard and Pulse, were already widely used on tablets.

In arguably the biggest mobile move by a news organization, CNN acquired iPad app Zite in August. KC Estenson, CNN’s general manager of digital, told Mashable that Zite’s technology would help improve CNN’s digital properties and help it serve more personalized content.

There are now so many news apps, Apple felt compelled to launch Newsstand, a digital repository for magazine and newspaper apps. With an increasingly massive pool of apps, news organizations will need to find their own competitive edge in the mobile news market.

5. Facebook Makes Personal Branding Easier

Since Facebook Subscribe rolled out in September, journalists have been using the tool as a personal branding and content distribution opportunity. While Facebook fan pages have long been common for recognizable names like Nicholas Kristof, Subscribe gave lesser-known journalists a way to connect with readers on a larger scale.

For some journalists, the switch from using Facebook as a personal network to a public forum has been a challenge. Others are embracing the platform’s change by openly offering subscribers a look at not only their work but their lives.

Establishing a bonafide web presence is becoming essential for journalists who aim to become thought leaders in their coverage areas. Taking it beyond professionalism and showing personality adds to journalists’ appeal because it makes them more relatable. Moving forward, they’ll become more open about what they share on social networks, showing that they’re not just journalists, but people too.

6. The Pulitzer Goes Digital

The Pulitzer Board announced earlier this month it had revised its Breaking News category criteria to emphasize real-time reporting. This is the ultimate recognition that web journalism has come into its own.

Under the new set of guidelines, “it would be disappointing if an event occurred at 8 a.m. and the first item in an entry was drawn from the next day’s newspaper,” said to the board. In other words, the web is crucial to alerting a community about a breaking news event.

The Pulitzer Board’s gesture sets a precedent for future breaking news coverage. The recognition of web reporting’s importance by such a well-respected journalism entity will inspire more news organizations to invest in digital reporting — if they haven’t already.

What This Means for 2012

After an incredible year of news events and milestones, online journalism in 2012 has a tough act to follow. We can certainly expect more successes and more failures when it comes to business models and mobile strategies. News organizations will clamor to be the first on new social networks — they’re already flocking to pinboard site Pinterest. Journalists will connect further with their individual followers, and the 2012 Breaking News Pulitzer winner will have done a great service to its community via the Internet.

While we can only guess what the future of digital journalism holds, 2011 paved a strong path, leaving us hopeful and confident that the best has yet to come.

Image courtesy of Flickr, personaldemocracy

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Google+ Now Up to 62 Million Users, Adding 625,000 a Day [REPORT]

Google+ Now Up to 62 Million Users, Adding 625,000 a Day [REPORT]

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Paul Allen, a Google+ watcher whose estimates about the social network’s growth have proved accurate in the past, claims that the site now has 62 million users and is adding 625,000 new users per day.

“It may be the holidays, the TV commercials, the Android 4 signups, celebrity and brand appeal, or positive word of mouth or a combination of all these factors,” Allen wrote on his G+ profile page Tuesday, “but there is no question that the number of new users signing up for Google+ each day has accelerated markedly in the past several weeks.”

Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com, takes an unusual approach to come by his estimates: He and his staff run hundreds of queries on surnames they’ve been tracking since July and then extrapolate the size of the network.

At this rate, Allen writes, G+ will reach 100 million users by Feb. 25, 2012 and 200 million by Aug. 3. By this time next year, G+ will have close to 300 million users.

Allen, however, doesn’t address how many of those 62 million are active users. Experian Hitwise, however, found that those users are on the rise as well, though they represent a fraction of G+’s base. Hitwise found that total visits to G+ hit 9.4 million for the week ending Dec. 17, the most recent full week it tracked. That was a nice jump over the 7.2 million visits G+ experienced in the comparable week in November, but below the 15 million visits to G+ for the week ending Sept. 24, when Google opened the previously invitation-only site to the public.

Google’s last official acknowledgement of G+’s membership came during a conference call with analysts, when CEO Larry Page pegged the figure at 40 million.

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Introducing the Mashable Publisher Platform

Introducing the Mashable Publisher Platform

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At today’s Mashable Media Summit, we announced the Mashable Publisher Platform, a new editorially curated syndication experience that brings content from select publishers to our site.

Starting next week, you’ll begin seeing articles from AppAdvice, Causecast, ClickZ, GeekSugar, International Journalists’ Network, paidContent, Pocketnow, PSFK and UX Magazine appearing on Mashable.

For readers, the Publisher Platform means more great content that goes deeper into the topics that you care most about – hand-selected by our editors – appearing on Mashable, on topics ranging from app reviews, to business and marketing, to the future of journalism. This content will complement the original reporting created by our editorial staff, which consists of more than 30 journalists in New York, San Francisco and around the world.

For publishers, our platform offers what we believe is a unique value proposition, with each story featuring our M-Share button, which lets readers share it simultaneously to multiple social networks, a new module that allows readers to subscribe to the publisher on Facebook, Twitter or Mashable Follow, and a “related link” area that drives readers directly back to the publisher’s website.

Starting Nov. 10, content from our partners will start appearing on Mashable. In the months to come, we plan to add more features to the platform and open it up to additional partners.

Media Summit 2011

The Mashable Media Summit on Nov. 4 at the Times Center in New York City attracted professionals in digital, tech, advertising, sales, marketing, mobile and publishing from all over the world.

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Now You Can Share Your Google+ Circles With Others

Now You Can Share Your Google+ Circles With Others

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Google has rolled out a new feature for Google+ that lets users share the circles they’ve curated with their friends.

“Starting today, you can actually share your favorite circles with others,” Google+ engineer Owen Prater said on Google+. “So if you’ve got a great Photographers or Celebrities circle, for instance, then you can share a copy with your friends.”

A new “Share” link now appears when you hover over a circle on the Google+ Circles page. Clicking the link will let you add a comment and share that circle with your friends on Google+. The search giant is careful to point out that this only shares the members of the circle you’re sharing and not what you’ve named the circle. That will always remain private.

The young social network is on the rise ever since it opened itself up to the public. A recent report claims that Google+ now has 43 million users, an increase of 30% since dropping the invite barrier. Another report pegs Google+ as the eight largest social network in the world, just behind MySpace and LinkedIn.

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10 Delicious Tumblr Blogs Serving Up Food Fun [PICS]

10 Delicious Tumblr Blogs Serving Up Food Fun [PICS]

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In a continued attempt to curate terrific Tumblr blogs, we present to you a feast of food-themed fun. While there’s plenty of Tumblr content looking at the more serious aspects of cuisine, we’re taking a look on the light side with some entertaining options.

From delicious daily dollops of food porn to candid fridge photos via dissected delicacies, we’re sure there’s something for everyone in this hand-picked selection, whatever your personal taste and appetite.

SEE ALSO: 10 Entertaining Tumblr Blogs About Your Parents

Take a look through the photo gallery below showcasing an image from each blog. Let us know in the comments which you will go back to for a second helping.

1. Funny Food Face

Anjulie and Paul offer up some food-themed whimsy as they make a habit of playing with their food on a regular basis.

2. Burgers and Nails

We’re not entirely sure if this fetishist blog, obsessed with painted nails clutching burgers, is entirely savory — but it’s certainly fascinating.

3. Scandybars

This exercise in delicious dissection gives you a cross-section view of common candy bars from around the world.

4. Lunch Bag Art

This cool dad draws a picture on his kid’s lunch bag everyday. Luckily for us, he also snaps them and posts them to Tumblr.

5. Fridgemania

A cool collection of “creative” fridge photos, as curated by Moncef Belyamani, make up this brilliant blog.

6. Scanwiches

Chances are you’ve already heard of the popular “Scanwiches” blog, but as a Tumblr must-follow, it more than deserves a place on this list.

7. Cupcake Junkie

Celebrating particularly creative cupcake design (such as the awesome rainbow-themed cakes pictured) Cupcake Junkie’s stream is so sweet it might give you toothache.

8. It’s All About the Bacon

The title says it all. If you’re looking for a daily dose of bacon-flavored goodness in your digital life, look no further.

9. Art In My Coffee

Latte art is well-documented at “Art in My Coffee.” Some of the submissions are incredible. Hit this blog up for an arty caffeine high.

10. Dogs Eating Pasta

Finally, you could argue “Dogs Eating Pasta” is as much about the canine as the flour-based foodstuff, but frankly we love this blog so much the flimsiest excuse to feature it will suffice. It’s dogs — eating pasta!

Thumbnail image courtesy of Dogs Eating Pasta

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Yahoo Hooks Up With Facebook for Socially Curated News

Yahoo Hooks Up With Facebook for Socially Curated News

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Yahoo is betting the farm on Facebook with the launch of a completely new and social way to consume news.

The new Yahoo News feature, whose release coincides with the launch of the new Facebook Open Graph, is an attempt to infuse social into the news curation and discovery process.

“Yahoo has always had amazing content and amazing editorial ability,” Yahoo Director of Product Management Jonathan Katzman says. “Now users can discover the content through their friends.”

Once a user opts into the service (via the new Facebook permissions screen), she will be able to see what news stories her friends have read on both Facebook and Yahoo News. This simple two-way stream of information makes it possible to discover news content through your friends.

The crux of the Yahoo News-Facebook integration is the “facebar,” a row of your friends’ faces that appear above any article you read. Clicking on any of these faces will bring up their recent activity. There is also now a “You on Yahoo News” widget that sits to the right of the content. This widget lets you see a history of what you’ve read and gives you options for removing different stories from your Yahoo News feed and turning the social features off altogether.

This is only the beginning for Yahoo, though. The digital media company is also integrating Facebook with IntoNow, a mobile app that “listens to” and tags TV shows (the company acquired IntoNow earlier this year). “What we’re trying to have happen, and Facebook is trying to do as well, is to be the river of information flowing around your activity,” Katzman says.

Other Yahoo products will roll out with Facebook integration in the next few months, thanks to the additions the social network has made to the Open Graph. Yahoo believes that Facebook integration is good for business as well — it will lead to higher engagement, the struggling Internet giant argues.

The new Facebook integration in Yahoo News is simple, but it’s just the beginning for what the the company has planned. Facebook is about to become a whole lot more prominent on Yahoo.

You on Yahoo News

The “You on Yahoo News” widget lets you see and control your social activity on Yahoo News.

Your Activity

You can check your news reading history with the You on Yahoo News widget.

You’ve Read Content!

A prompt warning you that content you’ve read has been added to your feed.

Privacy

You can turn the social features on or off at any time

“Facebar”

The killer feature of Yahoo’s Facebook integration is the “facebar,” which shows what your friends have been reading just by clicking their profile photos.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, macida

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