Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Last week I had the opportunity to speak with the NutshellMail co-founders, Mark Schmulen and David Lyman, about building their company and the quick exit to ConstantContact. While we had a long conversation, I’ve cut down the interview to 7 key points that we covered during our conversation. There are some great takeaways for entrepreneurs looking to build their own businesses.
Read the rest of this entry »

Craftsman puts their tools through a series of rigorous tests in their new Craftsmen Labs video campaign.  The campaign consists of a series of Jackass-esque videos, in which the Craftsman Labs team measures the strength and durability of their tools in surprising and entertaining ways.  Craftsman Lab’s slogan, “The Proof Will Be Proven”, says it all.
Read the rest of this entry »

Kiva is a non-profit organization that facilitates micro-loans to alleviate poverty. They connect budding entrepreneurs in developing and developed countries around the world to lenders using the Internet. We got a chance to talk to Chelsa Bocci, the Director of Marketing and Community Outreach at Kiva about the way Kiva uses social media for social change.
Read the rest of this entry »

ClipWire Games is announcing their newest social gaming title, Haven, and I had the chance to sit down with their CEO, Ritesh Khanna, to discuss the title and the social games market in general.  We discuss the status of Mafia Wars-style games, the importance of using metrics to guide your games and virality.  Read below for the interview and brief discussion of Haven.
Read the rest of this entry »

For today’s Podcast Friday, we sat down with Donna Powell, one of the co-founders of Neopets who has now helped found social gaming company Meteor Games.  Their debut title, Island  Paradise has rocketed to 7.5 million MAU in only a matter of months without leveraging advertising networks: the game grew mainly by word of mouth.  See below for the podcast.

Read the rest of this entry »

Want to learn more about some of the Facebook Page promotion opportunities that are out there? In this interview between MediaBistro’s Matt Van Hoven and Vitrue’s CEO Reggie Bradford, we learn more about Vitrue’s offering including Wall Apps, a feature we wrote about earlier this week. Unfortunately this is not part of our normal podcast series so for those of you viewing this in the feeds, you may need to visit the page to view it.
Read the rest of this entry »

I recently had the chance to have a few words with Sean Rad from ad.ly, an advertising service for Twitter. Ad.ly describes itself as “an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands”. In short, ad.ly connects big brands with the biggest Twitter accounts on the web, and allows brands to propose advertising to the top publishers. Some of their publishers are TechCrunch, Kim Kardashian, Newsweek and Gossip girl, and some of the brands are NBC, Sony, Microsoft and Universal.  Reports have indicated that Kim Kardashian earns up to $10,000 USD per tweet.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ayogo Games are an independent social games shop from Vancouver, Canada.  They’ve worked on some high profile titles like Mob Wars, and have some interesting insights into the social games community.  I sat down with CEO Michael Fergusson to discuss the social games environment, monetization and the Vancouver social gaming scene.
Read the rest of this entry »

The browser gaming world has slowly been adopting Unity3D as its tool standard for 3D gaming, and dimeRocker is taking that one step further by connecting these 3D games with Social Networks like Facebook and OpenSocial.  Used in games by companies like EA and The Cartoon Network, the technology has begun to gain prominence as a true alternative to standard full-install disc based 3D gaming. 
Read the rest of this entry »

As a journalist, former programmer and senior editor at Fast Company, Lynne D. Johnson is a social media maven. She was also a general manager for Vibe and Spin magazines with an award-winning blog. She’s been fusing technology, community and journalism since back in the days of online bulletin boards. It’s no surprise that the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) recently snagged her as their first senior vice president of social media to help guide the industry into the new age of community tools. I recently sat down with Johnson to get her take on how brands should be listening while navigating the social web.
Read the rest of this entry »