fancy – the new pinterest like commerce platform

New York based start up Fancy is stacked with a board that includes Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square and original Facebooker Chris Hughes; endorsements from celebrities like Kanye West.  There is a tight-knit community fancying top-notch content and building a social commerce platform that allows brands and merchants to sell products directly from Fancy.  Check it out at http://www.thefancy.com/

Fancy - social commerce

Tech Crunch did a write up recently one the company direction - access now

Fast Company did a article that digs into the business plan for Fancy - access now

online social site news

Notable and cool social sites recently surfed – January 2012.

Oyster – New Travel site   www.oyster.com

Xobni – Outlook/Android/ios contacts social enhancement   http://www.xobni.com

Web Maxed – Small Business Web Help   www.webmaxed.com

We Follow – Social Charts   www.wefollow.com

Klout – online social media influencer score site   www.klout.com

BCC Click – Internet Blog England   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/default.stm

Media Bristo – Tech Blog for media types   www.mediabristo.com

Tumblr – Blogging Platform seeing tremendous success   www.tumblr.com

Scene Tap – nightlife through web cams   www.scenetap.com

Bread – Social Media Billbard link jumps   bre.ad

CNET – tech and online news    www.cnet.com

Pica Boo – new online photo site    www.picaboo.com

Mix Book – new online photo site and photo books    www.mixbook.com

Namesake – social media conversations site    www.namesake.com

Visibli – social analytics   www.visibli.com

Time hop (past posts) -  online social memories   www.timehop.com

Morning Pics – photos delivered to your inbox daily    www.morningpics.com

20 x 200 – photography and art site    www.20×200.com

Crowd voice – social media violence and protest site – www.crowdvoice.com

Milk Shake – save share find images   www.mlkshk.com

Path – photo site with proximity location based for mobile    www.path.com

Buzz Feed – social content news site    www.buzzfeed.com

Moo Cards – print cards for business contacts    www.moo.com

twitter redesign

Twitter launched a fairly significant redesign to its interface and hopes to catch more users and keep them longer. The company looks to broaden its appeal by simplifying its process for new users while providing a more robust platform. The new design puts ease of use front and center, an effort to bridge the gap between power users and inexperienced “newbies.” The interface change moved rhe tweet stream over to the right bar and slide the “profile and trend bar” to the far left.

Twitter should be usable for people who know the shortcuts and also equally usable for those who don’t,” said Jack Dorsey, one of Twitter’s three co-founders and current chairman. “It’s not just a visual redesign but a conceptual redesign to make Twitter more accessible to the next billion users,” said Satya Patel, a Twitter senior executive, at an event inside the company’s future headquarters in an Art Deco building in a blighted, San Francisco neighborhood.

The revamped home page is now topped with three icons: Home, “@Connect,” and “#Discover.” Twitter seeks to rebrand the two most commonly used site functions — the at sign (@) and the hashtag (#) — making big strides in reducing the learning curve.
On the Home page, the overall feed is much more user-friendly and Facebook-like than before. Photos and videos show up within tweets and all information is presented in an easy-to-understand format. The other major development are brand pages to create “an even more compelling destination on Twitter for their brands,” as it sets its sights on long term monetization of the service. The redesign also makes several changes to the new user experience in order to make discoverability process easier for the new guys.

The new twitter interface

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/12/09/what-need-to-know-about-new-twitter/?test=faces#ixzz1gNpMq8WI

Sprint Business Online

Visit the new sprint.com/business

Business customers visiting Sprint.com will see a number of changes including a redesigned Business homepage at www.sprint.com/business. Visitors will find new pages with information on devices, services and solutions tailored for businesses of all sizes across a number of industries. Small business customers will be able to buy phones, tablets and mobile broadband devices in the new online store; and purchase pre-built solution packages that combine the best in mobile devices, accessories and plans in a streamlined shopping experience. Customers researching machine-to-machine solutions, converged solutions, information on mobile and cloud applications or business discounts will also find new pages and resources that help them learn more about how Sprint helps businesses get work done.

All visitors to sprint.com will see an update to the top navigation bar with two new tabs that allow visitors to switch quickly between personal and business sections of the site. An updated Contact us page provides a cleaner view of important phone numbers and enhanced chat features to make it even easier to get help when it’s needed. The new design is another reflection of Dan Hesse’s mantra to “simplify the customer experience” at Sprint.

Sprint Business online - new re-design live

Disclosure: I am the Manager of Online Strategy for eBusiness and eCommerce at Sprint. Blog contains own opinions.

social media

Been researching social media lately in order to devise a B2B plan overall. Here are some of the social media resources I have been using for information and news.

http://socialmediatoday.com/
http://usefulsocialmedia.com/
http://usefulsocialmedia.com/b2b

July news and info

Its been a busy month already at the online cribb.

Mashable Reports: Twitter has acquired comment tracker turned social analytics platform BackType for an undisclosed amount. On the BackType blog, the company says the team and IP will move to the Twitter platform group. Here, the BackType team’s focus will be on “developing tools for Twitter’s publisher partners.”

CNET News reports: In a battle of apps, HBO Go and Hulu Plus can’t keep pace with reining champion Netflix. (The numbers on the left reflect the number of the rankings for each period.)The research firm’s report collects the rankings for each of the companies’ apps once a week. Strategy Analytics’ data from May 2 to June 20 showed Hulu Plus to be well behind Netflix and HBO Go in popularity. Some observers suspect that Hulu Plus has failed to catch on with consumers. One of the top complaints about the service is that Hulu Plus charges a monthly subscription in addition to requiring users to watch ads. Netflix offers unlimited viewing for a similar price, but it is ad-free. Hulu’s struggles may may be among the reasons owners Disney, News Corp., and NBC Universal are trying to sell the service.

Onlinecribb reports: Google + is finally out but for private invitation only…Still waiting for mine. Its pretty exciting for users to be giving the service praise in the first week that it has been out. Google is overdue for a hit in the social media scene after buzz and the other one that I have totally forgotten the name of.

Check out more online at : https://plus.google.com/up/start/?sw=1&type=st

the planets move…site of the day

Stumbled on this totally cool dynamic galaxy view. The swf file shows the planets and moons moving around their resepected object in space. It is coupled with a speed switch and time indicator. Way cool. Great job on this piece from Dynamic Diagrams. I just love these types of info graphs and dynamic renderings.

http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf

the milky way