We’ve grown up in the age of extreme sports. Not only did we get to see the X Games when it was a new thing, but we also got to see sports like snowboarding make their way into the Olympics. I’m sure many of you have tried (and failed if you’re anything like me) your hand in at least one extreme sport. The best thing about extreme sports is that they’re huge confidence boosters for kids. While just playing baseball isn’t usually good enough—you actually need to be good at it—being able to do an extreme sports is an accomplishment in itself. That’s why it’s a perfect outlet to help “enhance the health, abilities, personal growth and social engagement of people with autism,” which is what the Basalt, CO based non-profit, Extreme Sports Camp, is all about. Continue reading about Extreme Sports Camp…
Over on One Day, One Job I’ve been collecting user data over the past week to help me make the site more useful. So far the survey has received hundreds of responses, and there are a number of common themes that keep coming up. It’s amazing at how well an 8 question survey can tell me about what you students want in a job search tool. For companies that need a little more than an 8 question survey, there’s Communispace, a Watertown, MA based market research company. Their name probably wouldn’t have made them too popular during the cold war, but fear of communism has been replaced with community building—which is what Communispace is all about. Continue reading about Communispace…
If you’ve been searching for internships for very long, you’d probably do anything to go back to Senior year of high school when you were applying to college. It’s not that the admissions process is particularly fun, but at least it has a set timeline and a fixed set of options. Still, there’s plenty of room for improvement. That’s why there are quite a few young entrepreneurs who have built companies that aim to make the college process better, just like I’m doing with the entry level job and internship searches. One of these companies is San Francisco based Zinch, which was founded by Mick Hagen, a Princeton dropout. They’ve created a social network that allows high school students to connect with the colleges that they want to attend. There are more than 700 colleges and universities that invest in Zinch, which is why more than 1.5 million students have created Zinch profiles to show off to admissions counselors and to apply for scholarships and financial aid packages. Continue reading about Zinch…
As someone who has just tweeted his 5,000th tweet, I have to say that I’m getting a little sick of all the buzz about social media. It’s not that I don’t think tools like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are valuable—if that was the case I wouldn’t be writing this right now—it’s just that too many people are forgetting that results, not tools, are most important. That’s why it’s cool to see a company like WeTheCitizens that is putting social media to work in a results-driven way. They’ve developed a platform to help “you recruit, mobilize, and track the effectiveness of your supporters.” Ok, YOU may not need something like that, but politicians, non-profit founders, and movie producers do. WeTheCitizens is an Atlanta based startup (with an office in DC) , and they’re going through a bit of an identity crisis right now (it’s not all that uncommon for startups). They’re very confident in their product—Wildfire Platform—but they’re apparently in the process of changing their name from WeTheCitizens to Mobilization Labs. To make it more confusing, a lot of the branding that they’re doing is for Wildfire Platform. If you can look past all of that, you’ll see a really cool company in its formative stages. Continue reading about WeTheCitizens…
Do you have a secret? An embarrassing story? Maybe you have a real problem (like not having an internship) or a health issue. It could just be something that you’re passionate about. If you have experiences that you want to share or you want to read about the experiences of other people, then Experience Project is the site for you. It’s a free web site that allows people across the world to share their experiences. It all started when Armen Berjikly, Experience Project’s founder, was inspired by a friend to build a support community for multiple sclerosis patients. It was so successful that Armen decided to expand the project so that it could serve everyone—it’s now “the first social network based upon who you are and not who you know.” The company is based in San Francisco, and according to their data and the data on Compete.com, they’re doing some pretty serious traffic. Continue reading about Experience Project…
Want a crappy job? You’re in luck. Today I came across WhatACrappyJob.com, which is actually the internship site for Bozell, a Omaha, NE based full-service public relations and advertising agency. There’s nothing extraordinarily special about the site beyond the domain name, but it’s well designed and informative, which is rare when it comes to Careers websites. I guess that’s what you should expect from the agency behind the “Got Milk?” mustache campaign and the “Pork. The Other White Meat.” slogan. Bozell’s history includes quite a few mergers, acquisitions, and buybacks. As of 2001 Bozell has moved away from Wall Street and returned to it roots as “an independent, client-focused, employee-owned agency.” They have an impressive portfolio of work and seem like a pretty cool place to work. Continue reading about Bozell…
I think that online education is going to be a really big deal in the near future (possibly why I developed an online course for job seekers); however, I still have doubts about online degree programs. I get pitched quite often by online universities that want to advertise here on One Day, One Internship, but it doesn’t feel right to me. I just don’t know how to separate the “degree mills” from reputable online universities, so I stay away. Luckily, this won’t be a problem for long. 2tor, a New York City based startup, is changing the face of online education by partnering “with preeminent institutions of higher education to deliver rigorous, selective degree programs online.” Prestigious college and universities can bring their brand name and time tested curricula online by using the “tools, expertise, capital, and global recruiting” that 2tor provides. Continue reading about 2tor…
Last spring when sports fans on the North Side of Chicago were still hopeful, Amy and I decided that we wanted to go to a Cubs game. It was the day of the game, and we didn’t have tickets. We checked out StubHub, and saw some pretty good prices, but we decided that waiting would get us even better prices. We waited. The prices went down. We waited some more. The prices went down some more. And then disaster struck. StubHub stops selling tickets 2 hours before a game. We were shut out. We ended up heading to Wrigley and buying from some “ticket brokers” outside of the park. We got a pretty decent price, and we had a great time (I may or may not have been listening to the Yankees game on my iPhone at the same time), but we were left with the question of when is the best time to buy tickets on the secondary market. Apparently SeatGeek has the answer—they’re a New York City based web startup that predicts the price of sports and concert tickets. We’ve seen similar startups succeed in the travel market, and I think this business may make even more sense for event tickets. Continue reading about SeatGeek…
It looks like Yahoo! Finance has taken a page out of my book and used Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list to highlight some companies that are hiring. I found the link on Twitter, and was pleased to see that I had already featured a number of the companies. One that I haven’t yet featured (and don’t remember hearing about before) is Slide. They’re a San Francisco based startup that claims to be “the world’s leading social entertainment company.” I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but they do make social networks more fun for hundreds of millions of people. Their 40 Under 40 CEO is Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal (which was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay). He is apparently well on his way to having built another billion dollar company, considering the fact that Slide was valued at $550 million last time that they took money. Continue reading about Slide…
Social networking is a new thing, right? Not at all. Social networks have been around almost as long as the Internet. They’ve just become way more mainstream in recent years. Take Redwood City, CA based Care2 for example. They’re an online social network that aims “to help people make the world a better place,” and they’ve been doing it since 1998. That’s impressive, not only because it means that they were early to social networking, but also because it means that they survived the dot com bust of the early 2000s. “Making the world a better place” used to be strictly the territory of non-profits, but now we’re seeing more and more companies like Care2 that are choosing to be B Corporations. That means that they can do good and build a profitable businesses at the same time. That’s exactly what Care2 is doing with their “more than 50 employees, 11 million members, 400 nonprofit partners and hundreds of responsible advertisers making a difference.” Continue reading about Care2…
I’ve never found a use for start pages and portals. Until Safari came out with a feature that allowed me to view a dozen of my most visited sties at a glance, I just set a blank page as my home page. However, I realize that many people have very different web browsing habits, and a lot of people find start pages really useful. One company that is trying to update the start page by making it social is ZooLoo. They’re a Phoenix, AZ based startup that, despite an unfortunate name that sounds like a bathroom at a wildlife park, is trying to own the market for customizable start pages. They’re competing with behemoths like Google and Facebook to be your home page, but they do have an advantage in that they’re laser focused on start pages and only start pages. They think if they can own that market, they can deliver lots of relevant advertising and make lots of money. Continue reading about ZooLoo…
I guess it’s a little awkward when you find a company that immediately makes you think of a very similar, more successful company. In this case, when I came across ideeli, I immediately thought of Gilt Groupe (which we covered a while back). Both are New York City based startups that offer online sample sales that give shoppers the opportunity to buy luxury goods—mostly clothing and accessories—at serious discounts. According to Wikipedia a sample sale is “used by retail businesses in order to discard excess merchandise.” That’s exactly what these companies do, but they’ve moved the entire process online (which is way more efficient). Both sites require invites to get in on the deals, so if you want to try ideeli click here and if you want to try Gilt Groupe click here. Although I haven’t made any purchases on either of these sites, my girlfriend Amy loves this way of shopping. There’s the element of surprise, because you never know what you’re going to find, yet you still get to enjoy the ease of shopping online. Continue reading about ideeli…
When it comes down to it, most of the problems in our world have some sort of economic root. Unfortunately, people rarely see economics as the solution. One non-profit organization that is an exception is Washington, DC based Green America (formerly Co-op America). Their “mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.” I like their approach. They’re not trying to force their ideals on people by regulation or intellectual intimidation. Instead, they’re working towards a building a powerful new economy that not only holds to their ideals, but also works efficiently. They may still be imposing their ideas, but they’re doing it purely with economic power. Continue reading about Green America…
I’m not a total gearhead, but I can get pretty excited about gadgets (like the ones that we just gave away in our Back to School, Back to Work contest). Luckily, there are plenty of gadget sites on the web to keep us all up to date on the newest and greatest tech toys. We have Gizmodo and Engadget and hundreds of others to bring us breaking news on what’s hot. So, why would the guy who started both Gizmodo and Engadget (both of which he sold off) start another gadget site? The New York Times says that Peter Rojas thinks he can do it again—this time with gdgt, a user-generated content site for owners of gadgets that aren’t necessarily the best new things. Continue reading about gdgt…
Today is your last day to enter our Back to School, Back to Work contest where one winner will win a prize package of 2 HP laptops and a Timbuk2 bag worth more than $1,000. You have until 11:59 PM EDT to enter (we extended the contest by 12 hours).
Since I’m spending the weekend in San Francisco, I thought it would only be fitting to feature a San Francisco based startup today (as if we haven’t already featured enough). I decided to cover one in my industry (job search and online recruiting), because I really like what they’re doing (and they’re probably the best source for San Francisco based startup internships too). Their name is Job Alchemist, and they’re the creators of one of the few job boards that I actually think is worth using—Startuply. They’ve also developed a number of other niche job boards like HomeBy3 (flexible jobs for moms) and Reddit’s job board. Beyond that, they’re working on a project called JobSyndicate, which is an affiliate network for jobs. I’ve seen a lot of entrants to this industry in the past couple years, and Job Alchemist is one of only a handful that have impressed me. When a company creates a job board that I actually use, that’s saying something. Continue reading about Job Alchemist…
More and more often, I’m hearing from people whom I haven’t heard from in a long time. The e-mail usually goes something like this: “I was just looking around online for summer interns, came across your site and then realized it was you!” A few weeks ago, the guy who e-mailed me was friend from high school whom I hadn’t seen in probably 8 years (that makes me sound old). He’s living in New York City and is part of a very early stage startup called LiveIntent that needs interns. They’re focused on “helping advertisers to unlock Twitter as a channel for advertising and customer acquisition,” which sounds like a pretty smart thing to be doing these days. I don’t have much more on what the company is all about, because they really are that new. Continue reading about LiveIntent…
I’ve already written posts about internships at Activision (Guitar Hero) and jobs at Harmonix (Rock Band) and Tapulous (Tap Tap Revenge), but can you ever really get enough of the music playing video game genre? Of course not! That’s why we’re looking at JamLegend today. How are they different from the other game makers that I just mentioned? First, JamLegend is free. Second, it offers more songs. Third, you can use your computer keyboard as a guitar. Fourth and most importantly, it’s social! You can play your friends, you can play the world, and you can even enter tournaments to win prizes. JamLegend isn’t just the name of the game, it’s also the name of the company, a small startup based out of San Francisco. Continue reading about JamLegend…
Have you always wanted to be a secret agent? Well here’s a mission, if you choose to accept it: try to land an internship with New York City based kgb. No, I’m not talking about Russia’s version of the CIA. I’m talking about “the world’s largest independent provider of directory assistance and enhanced information services.” Formerly known as INFONXX, kgb is in the business of making information easily available. If you’ve seen their commercials, then you’re probably most familiar with their “Ask Us Anything” service. I personally think it’s for lazy people, but that’s because I’m a huge advocate for developing your own research skills. If getting the answer to your question is worth 50 cents, then that’s cool, but I’m gonna Google it myself. The good news is that kgb’s business goes well beyond charging lazy people who need their stupid questions answered. Continue reading about kgb…
This is a guest post by Heather R. Huhman. Heather is the media relations manager at a national health care professional association. She is also the entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com, a career expert for the CAREEREALISM Twitter Advice Project, the job search expert for Campus Calm and author of the e-book “Gen Y Meets the Workforce: Launching Your Career During Economic Uncertainty.”
What do financial services, home/building and healthcare have in common? All three fields can expect good things to happen when they “converge” with IMRE, a full service digital, advertising, marketing and public relations agency in Baltimore, Maryland.
Let’s start with their financial services practice. Strategically expanded in July 2008 near the beginning of our country’s economic troubles, IMRE saw an opportunity for “financial services companies to gain market share.” Did you know you can buy wedding insurance from Travelers? IMRE won this client by proposing—no pun intended—to launch a campaign on Valentine’s Day about nuptial nightmares ranging from heart attacks to blackouts to hurricanes. They won the account and reached more than 74 million people with their messages. Like most public relations practitioners, I’m not a numbers person, but I do love weddings!
The “green” market is hot right now, so it makes sense for Arxx Corporation to be included in IMRE’s home & building practice. IMRE “moved Arxx away from a product message and positioned them as a longtime leader in energy-efficient solutions.” Despite being a midsized firm with only one office location, their client list in this practice is impressive—ranging from John Deere to The Home Depot to Target.
Their final practice area is healthcare, which is also my specialty. What I like most about healthcare PR is that you feel like you’re helping people live life to its fullest with every tactic you use to reach them. IMRE’s clients in this sector mostly are nonprofit organizations, including American Red Cross, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shady Grove Fertility.
Interested in any one of those practice areas? IMRE is extremely open about who heads up each, providing their biographies, fun Q&A’s and e-mail addresses. Continue reading about IMRE…
When I lived in the suburbs of Connecticut, finding local news was easy. We got a bi-weekly paper that covered our town. There was also a larger daily newspaper that covered any bigger stories that happened. Now that I live in a major city, you’d think it’d be easy to find local news, but it’s actually more difficult. First of all, now local means within a few blocks, not a few miles. Second, there’s so much clutter with so many people and so much going on, that what may interest me doesn’t even get covered. Luckily, there’s a startup based in New York City that covers the news that interests me. It’s called Outside.in, and they don’t have any reporters. What they do have is technology that aggregates relevant news and discussions from my area.
Although Outside.in is a local news company, they’re also a technology company. They’re trying to get a jump on what’s next in news, since the printing press is pretty much dead. That’s why an internship with Outside.in would be an exciting way to spend the summer. They’re looking for interns in content, community, technology and metrics at their Brooklyn office. The internships don’t appear to be paid, but you’ll get some awesome experience doing real work in a startup. They don’t offer a ton of information on what the internships entail, but I’m sure you can connect with them online to get more info. If you’re interested in applying, let them know at interns@outside.in.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
Have you used Outside.in?
My first experience with video chatting was with CU-SeeMe in an internet cafe in the mid 90s. It was insanely cool, but it was also terrible quality. Things have come a long way, and once again people are using video chat to meet random people online. I was a little creeped out when I first saw WooMe, but I think that I get it now (even if I’m still creeped out). It’s a website that allows you to meet new people through “60 second one-on-one online video sessions.” Basically, it’s speed dating on the web. I was almost too sketched out to cover them here, but I figured if TechCrunch didn’t rip on them too hard and they’re able to get $17 million in investment, there has to be the potential for a real business. Continue reading about WooMe…
I never really had a use for URL shortening services until I started using Twitter, but now that I’m trying to cram messages into 140 characters, I use them all the time. Honestly, I almost always use TinyURL.com, but I should be using Bit.ly. Their service is more user friendly, and they allow you to track your links to see how many clicks they get. That can be pretty useful – especially for Internet marketers, but I’m still not sure what Bit.ly, which is based out of New York City, looks like as a business. URL shortening has a ton of users, but what’s the revenue model? I don’t know, but it’s not my job to know. Some people whose job it is to know have invested $2 million in Bit.ly, so I wouldn’t be too worried. Maybe, as ReadWriteWeb suggests, it’s all about the data that Bit.ly collects. Continue reading about Bit.ly…
Sorry for the delayed post today. For some reason the Internet connection in our office wouldn’t connect to our server, which meant that we couldn’t publish today’s post this morning. I trudged across town through the snow in 12 degree weather to make sure that you got your internships today.
Niche communities have always been a big part of what the Internet is all about. In the olden days if you lived in a small town and had eclectic interests, you’d have a really tough time meeting people with the same interests. Those days are over. Now you can find an online community for anything – anything. Although today’s company isn’t all that odd in the market that they target, they’re certainly focusing on a group that has been forgotten until now. Savvy Auntie is “the first community for cool aunts, great aunts, godmothers, and all women who love kids.” We’re not sure whether they’ve sided on the pronunciation “ant” or “awnt,” but either way they’ve decided to own the market for enthusiastic aunts.
In a lot of ways having an internship is like having a savvy auntie. If you want to have both, then you’re in luck. Savvy Auntie is currently looking for a number of interns. They have internships available in Video Production, Content, Gifts, and Community. The internships are unpaid, require 10-20 hours of work per week, and are located somewhere in New York/Northern New Jersey (they don’t make it very clear). They also require that their interns own a laptop. There isn’t a whole lot of information available on these internships; however, you can check out the profiles of Savvy Auntie’s current interns. If you think it would be cool to work with a former Fortune 500 executive to build a community of savvy aunts, then send a cover letter and resume to Jobs@savvyauntie.com. If you’re apply for the Content internship, be sure to include 3 writing samples.
Links to Help You Begin Your Research
Do you think a community for aunts and other women who love children is a sustainable business idea?
When I was in elementary school, we had the upper playground and the lower playground. We usually ended up playing on the upper playground, but I think that I remember that the lower playground was a lot more fun, even if it was intended for the younger kids at the school. I guess that doesn’t bode well for today’s company, since in my book Upper Playground is inferior, but we’ll give them a shot anyway. If you’re like me, and had never heard of Upper Playground until today, here’s what you need to know. Upper Playground is a “premier independent clothing brand. They have stores across the country (ok, across the West Coast and in NYC). They also have an online store. I really have no idea how to describe their style, so you’ll have to check it out for yourself. Continue reading about Upper Playground…
You know how sometimes you know that other people will find something to be cool even though you have no idea why? Yeah, it’s called middle school (and high school, and college, and life). Today’s company, MashON, is one of those for me. I don’t really understand why MashON is a cool company, but I know that some of you will be totally into it. Since I don’t really get it, I’m going to use MashON’s own words to tell you about the MashON Platform, which is:
an interactive suite of online tools which allows users to create and share their own digital stories, e-cards, comic books and graphic novels by combining their personal photos, music, videos and narration to create their own unique personalized story. The result is a rich media, digital comic creation which can instantly be shared with friends and syndicated across the web and on their favorite social networks.
Continue reading about MashON…
When I first heard the name Whole Child International, I was a bit perplexed. I usually take for granted the fact that children are whole. I quickly realized that they mean emotionally whole, not physically whole (although that is important too, I’m sure). Whole Child International is focused on working “in existing children’s institutions to improve the quality of care and help prevent the bleak outcomes that await most children raised in the world’s orphanages.” They first started in Nicaragua, but they are now in El Salvador too. Their goal is to help children in orphanages develop the basic psychological tools that they “need to succeed in school, work, relationships, and families of their own.” They have a distinctive model for institutional change that aims to directly affect the orphanage administration and caregivers so that they can better serve the children in their care. Continue reading about Whole Child International…
A week from tomorrow I will be leaving Connecticut and making a move to Chicago. First I’ll be stopping in Ithaca, NY for Cornell’s homecoming (any readers want to meet up?), but then it’s on to the Windy City. I have an apartment leased and furniture ordered. It’s a big move, and I’m really excited about it. You’ve probably envisioned your first apartment after college, and I can almost guarantee that you envision yourself buying furniture online or at a store like Crate & Barrel – just like I did. Well, doing that won’t make Miriam Tucker too happy. She’s the CEO and Partner in charge of all staff and internal business affairs at Rago Arts and Auction Center, an auction house that specializes in the sale of 20th and 21st century art and design, and she’s trying to figure out how to build a larger client base of 20 and 30 somethings. This is a challenging problem because most young people are intimidated by auctions and would never even think of them as offering a better value than a retail store. I have to admit that I’m intimidated by the idea of buying my furniture at auction, but I’d love to try it. Ms. Tucker is looking for creative ways to solve this problem, and she thinks that interns are the answer. That’s why she came to us for help finding some. Continue reading about Rago Arts and Auction Center…
Do you feel that your Facebook profile just isn’t a good enough representation of who you are? Does it feel a little… flat? Is AIM a bit too 2-dimensional for your socialization needs? You could always try interacting with people in real life, but if you’d prefer to stay behind the keyboard, you can look to Vivaty for a solution. Their product, called Vivaty Scenes, creates a 3D world for Facebook and AIM (with more social sites to come) in your browser. It’s kind of like The Sims meets real life. We’re sure this isn’t for everyone, but Vivaty has done some pretty cool things with technology to expand the possibilities for online communication. Continue reading about Vivaty…
