I’m a big fan of location based networks. I’ve been using Foursquare since last July, but I have to admit that I’m getting a little bored of it. Facebook Places seems somewhat interesting, but it’s more because most of your friends already have accounts. If I’m going to be motivated to keep checking into places, I need an incentive. Foursquare occasionally gets me something for free, but the gaming element of the service seems like an afterthought. That’s why I was excited to check out SCVNGR when a reader recommended them as a company to feature. They’re based in Boston, MA, and their focus is on getting people to do challenges at specific places and share what they’ve done with friends. Their go to example is making tin-foil origami out of the wrapper from a burrito place and then uploading a picture of it, but I’ll bet that it can get way more interesting than that. For instance, anyone can build a set of challenges and treks with rewards on SCVNGR—I could take the Cornell Daily Sun’s list of 161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do and turn it into a SCVNGR trek. Maybe I could even team up with a sponsor to reward people who knock off certain items on the list. SCVNGR seems like a really fun way to learn about cool things to do and then share what you’re doing with friends. I can definitely see this taking off—maybe I’ll make a trek for getting an internship. Continue reading about SCVNGR…
I’ve never done a live video event for job seekers, though I’ve seen a lot of others in the career space do them. I figure that the video content that Jason Seiden and I put together for Found Your Career is way better than anything that I can do on the spot. However, if you think that a live Q&A or something would be valuable, you should definitely let me know via e-mail at willy@onedayonejob.com. Since you’re probably going to bombard me with e-mails, I’ll probably have to sign up for Ustream, “the leading live interactive broadcast platform.” Ustream, which is based in San Francisco, was founded to enable soldiers stationed abroad to connect more efficiently with their families. The technology required for doing that has plenty of other capabilities, which is why Ustream can be used to broadcast nearly anything—from political debates to sporting events and from move premieres to interactive games. Shoot, Chad Ochocinco says, “Ustream is big for me. It allows me to have a voice.” And Continue reading about Ustream…
You know how I know that I’m cool? I saw the Bed Intruder Song video (if you haven’t seen it yet, watch the original version first) on YouTube before you and pretty much everyone else who saw it. Pop culture fluency used to be based on your generation, but now it seems that it has more to do with when you last signed online. If you want to be as cool as I am, you may want to start using BuzzFeed. It’s a website and New York City based company that publishes and tracks viral media. They won’t tell you what’s hot this year or this week, but what’s hot right now this second. It may not seem all that important now, but when you’re out with your friends and they’re referencing the latest YouTube craze, you don’t want to have to sneak away to the bathroom to watch on your phone. Continue reading about BuzzFeed…
I don’t play Facebook games with one exception—a game that a friend built. I guess this makes me unusual (I do play iPhone games though) because the stats on Facebook games are crazy. It’s hard to believe that anybody gets work done these days. If only there was a Facebook game where winning meant you’d landed an internship. That’s not going to happen, so if you insist on Facebook gaming your way through the internship search, then you better be looking to work for a company like Lolapps. They’re based on San Francisco, and they make Facebook games. They actually started with a user-generated quiz business, then they moved on to building games for well-known brands. Now, they’re focused on becoming their own gaming brand. Their current products include games like Garden Life, Band of Heroes, Diva Life, Yakuza Lords, and a few more. I’m sure they’re working on plenty more as they try to grow their name in the ultra-competitive world of Facebook games. Continue reading about Lolapps…
This morning I sent out the following tweet: “I entered the Bonobos/Tucker Blair Wardrobe Giveaway! for a chance to win 5 pants/5 belts/5 polos: http://wfi.re/1sy9s.” (By the way, you can follow me @willyf.)I usually get annoyed when I see tweets like that, but every person who enters through my link gives me another entry, and I want to win. I also wanted to take it as an opportunity to learn a little bit more about Wildfire Interactive. They are a Palo Alto, CA based company that has built an amazing web-based software platform to enable “interactive promotions for brand marketing.” For a very affordable price, you can use Wildfire to run sweepstakes, contests, give-aways, incentive-based surveys, and more. I’ve struggled putting together online contests in the past, and Wildfire is exactly the kind of app that would have made my life a lot easier. They’re like a self-service, web 2.0 Don Jagoda Associates (and they shouldn’t be confused with WeTheCitizens which renamed itself to Wildfire Platform). Continue reading about Wildfire Interactive…
Yesterday I spoke on the phone with Keith Petri, a recent grad from Skidmore. Unlike most of the recent grads whom I interact with, he’s not worried about finding a job. He, much like me, is instead starting his own business to help other young people move forward their careers. His business is called eBranding Me, and it “informs students about online privacy and social responsibility through on-site lectures and a supporting website.” Basically, it helps you understand the ramifications of your social media use, so that you can make informed decisions. San Francisco based SocialShield is a startup that is focused on the same problem, but they’re taking a different approach with a slightly different market. SocialShield is a software as a service platform that allows parents to monitor and evaluate their children’s online social activity. Continue reading about SocialShield…
Early in the recession it seemed as though the video game industry would never be affected. Traditional game publishers were busy selling their wares to the unemployed and hiring to keep churning out games—so there were plenty of internships in video games. Things seem to have slowed down over the past year, but I think it’s more about a change in the games that people play than macroeconomic conditions. Facebook and the iPhone have created new markets for cheap and free (ad-supported) games to gain a lot of traction. There are a ton of gaming upstarts entering the market, and traditional publishers are changing the platforms that they develop on. One of the upstarts is Watercooler, a Redwood City, CA based social games developer that has already reached “over 25 million application installations.” The company started as a network of online fan communities focused on sports and TV, but they’ve switched focus and used their “social product expertise to create innovative and engaging social games.” Continue reading about Watercooler…
The most common question that I get asked is “Where do you find all of the companies that you write about?” There’s no simple response to that; however, I consume a ton of information every day, and it usually leads me to some interesting companies—and often those companies are hiring. It’s funny because I was terrible at finding companies when I was a job seeker, and now I do it every day. One of my favorite sources for new ideas is blogs, and specifically blogs of venture capitalists (since it’s their job to identify and fund exciting new companies). The ones that I read most often are Brad Feld’s blog and Fred Wilson’s blog. Yesterday I learned about BigDoor Media from Brad Feld’s blog since his firm just gave them $5 million. They’re a Seattle, WA based startup that allows web publishers to add game-like mechanics and virtual currencies to their websites to promote loyalty. Continue reading about BigDoor Media…
Everybody acts like social media and social networking is a new development, but it really isn’t. Even 15 years ago there was a web service that enabled you to create profiles, connect with friends, engage with communities, and communicate instantly or asynchronously. It was called Aol, and there’s a good chance that you used it. I feel bad for Aol. They had it all. They were the behemoth of the social web before anyone knew what the social web was, but they were too big and not agile enough. They continued to act like an ISP, and their market share eroded as people transitioned to high-speed connections. Today most people think of Aol as irrelevant, but the NYC based company is doing their best to make a comeback. The good news is that they aren’t living in the past. They’re not trying to win at social networking or being an ISP—they’ve repositioned. They now describe themselves as “a leading-edge web services company, with an offering of premium and niche content sites, world-class tools and platforms.” The focus is on content, and in some ways that’s what Aol was always about—making great content easy to access for the masses. The tough thing for Aol is that they’re already a huge company, so they’re going to have to swing for the fences if they want their new business model to work. Continue reading about Aol…
Since we’re talking about social media today, why don’t you Like Us on Facebook and Follow Us on Twitter.
It wasn’t all that long ago when having a URL in a tv commercial was a big deal. Companies were slowly moving to the web, and they were even slower to invest money in advertising their web presences. Now we see companies investing big money on properties that they don’t really own like Facebook pages and Twitter profiles. Would you build a house on property that you didn’t own? Me neither. But what if that house was in your dream location and it wasn’t all that expensive to build. Would it be worth it then? Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media sites offer unparalleled access to potential customers, but they also come with a lot of uncertainty. That hasn’t stopped many popular brands from investing big time in social media, and if they’re going to do it right, they should probably hire New York City based Buddy Media, a company that “provides brands, advertising, public relations agencies with a scalable set of tools to easily control all of their social marketing efforts.” Continue reading about Buddy Media…
Today’s company is one of the stranger ones that I’ve come across recently, but I guess that makes sense considering that their name is Quirky. They’re a New York City based product development startup meets social network. That’s right—they’re doing for products what Threadless did for t-shirts. You submit an idea (at a cost, which is weird), and the community decides whether they produce it or not. Everybody has a product idea, but how many people actually take the initiative (and have the ability) to have their idea turned into a real product? Not many. Quirky will do the hard work for you, and they’ll only produce ideas that have been validated by enough pre-sales to make the project worthwhile. Continue reading about Quirky…
Social networking sites have a serious TMI (too much information) problem. Never has it been easier for our friends to tell us stuff that we really didn’t want to know. And now it’s getting even easier with websites that share where we’ve most recently swiped our credit cards. Take for example my girlfriend, if she used Swipely, you’d know that the last place that she swiped her credit card was in the toilet of her office. No, she doesn’t work for Ryanair and have to pay to use the toilet. She just had a little a mishap when her credit card fell out of her back pocket. Yuck (but I’m still laughing because she had to wash it off). Ok, that’s not exactly how Providence, RI based (yes, a startup based in Rhode Island) Swipely works, but it gives you an idea. We already discussed the idea of social networks for spending a few months ago when I wrote a post about Blippy, and now it’s a hot topic again because Swipely just launched in conjunction with securing a $7.5 million round of financing. We’re starting to see location based social networks take off, and it’s only a matter of time before we share our purchases too (although Blippy’s data leak from a few weeks ago might have set the timetable back a bit). Facebook is already abusing the hell out of your data, so you might as well give in and start sharing everything on your terms before Facebook does it without your permission. Continue reading about Swipely…
It’s hard to go a week on One Day, One Internship without seeing me mention some company’s venture capital financing. I’m sure that some of you have no idea what I’m talking about, so here’s how it works. Venture capital firms provide investment in (typically early stage) companies to help them grow more quickly. They get a piece of the company, and they provide cash to help the company do things like hire people, buy more servers, or get office space. It’s the reason that you see companies that may not be profitable (yet) spending money. We feature a lot of venture funded companies here, and a number of them including 10gen, Etsy, Meetup, Pinch Media, Twitter, and Zynga are portfolio companies of New York City’s Union Square Ventures. Without money from Union Square these companies may not have been able to add jobs and end up featured on One Day, One Job or One Day, One Internship. Typically Venture Capital is an extremely difficult field to break into, but I just got word that Union Square Ventures is hiring, and I figured we could also take a look at potential internships. Continue reading about Union Square Ventures…
When I was growing up, I suffered from a pretty bad case of asthma. I didn’t have scary attacks like some people do, but I had triggers that would have me wheezing for hours. Running always did it. So did cigarette smoke. Sometimes it was freshly cut grass, or some other unknown allergen. If I caught a cold, it was significantly worse because of the way my lungs reacted. I saw doctors, I got tests (I was apparently operating at half of normal lung capacity), and I tried medications. Nothing really helped, and a lot of the medications had side effects that made me feel even worse. Luckily, I eventually outgrew my asthma, but I wonder if I could have dealt with it more effectively if I had the opportunity to interact with other kids who were in a similar situation. A site like PatientsLikeMe would have been perfect. Put simply, it’s an online community for patients with similar conditions, doctors, and organizations to interact and share experiences. The Cambridge, MA based company was started in 2004 by 3 MIT engineers who had their lives touched by ALS, and it’s the kind of “healthcare reform” that nobody can argue against—by the patients and for the patients. Continue reading about PatientsLikeMe…
We all have that friend who shares way too much information on social networks, and in many cases we are that friend. The problem with status updates is that most of them aren’t very interesting. Lately, we’ve been moving in a much more interesting, but also much creepier, direction. Now we have services that tie into our Twitter and Facebook accounts that can tell people where we are, whom we’re with, and even what we’re buying. It’s that last one that we’re going to talk about today. Blippy is a Palo Alto, CA based startup that lets you and your friends share and discuss recent purchases. It may seem a little weird at first, but it makes sense. Why go to review sites to get reactions from people you don’t know or trust, when you can see what your friends have bought and what they have to say about it? Continue reading about Blippy…
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…
