In Germany it is very common to start an online advent calendar, which is essentially a countdown to Christmas eve. The obvious would be to have a new product in the spotlight every day. Almost every platform dealing with products and reviews is doing something like that. After Christmas it is all over. But we wanted to create something a little more sustainable, something for young people and older folks alike, something that crosses religious boundaries, based on something that has been around for ever.
We are very proud to announce Twitterbingo.
Just play.
Sven Schmidt (Verwandt.de/Dealjaeger.de) hat in der aktuellen Ausgabe der Internet World Business unsere Wunschzettel-Applikation Wishero.de vorgestellt. Zwar mag Sven unsere Templates nicht und bezeichnet sie als “Kinderzimmertapete”, aber nach der üblichen, mehrere Dosen umfassenden Ration Red Bull am Abend sieht sicherlich alles sehr bunt aus, das sehen wir ihm gerne nach. Sven fasst zusammen: “Der Dienst stiftet jedoch Kundennutzen, ist einfach zu bedienen und eine Idee, deren Zeit nun gekommen ist.” Dem können wir nichts mehr hinzufügen, ausser: “Vielen Dank, Sven!”.
Gestern haben wir Wishero.de gestartet, ein kleines, aber wie wir finden sehr feines Tool für Wunschzettel. Wishero.de soll das Erstellen eines Wunschzettels stark vereinfachen, anstatt direkte Produkttitel eingeben zu müssen, kann man bei uns nach Stichworten suchen und bekommt dann eine Auswahl von Produkten angezeigt. Mit ein paar Mausklicks kann man sich so sehr leicht und einfach einen Wunschzettel zusammenstellen. Für den Wunschzettel gibt es verschiedene Designs, passend für Geburtstage, Weihnachten oder die Geburt eines Kindes. Wir werden sicherlich auch noch mehr Designs in den nächsten Monaten präsentieren.Jeder Wunschzettel erhält einen Permalink, damit man diesen Wunschzettel schnell und einfach an Freunde und Verwandte schicken kann, aber natürlich kann man auch einfach das Wishero-Widget auf das eigene Blog oder auf sein MySpace-Profil packen. Weihnachten kann kommen, mit Wishero.de wird das Schenken leicht gemacht.
Ever since we started Shoppero.com we had to explain to many people why we are relying on Amazon EC2 and S3 even though there is no SLA available. We figured that Amazon will make a big effort to assure that the services will be running all the time and that they’d be better at keeping the systems running than us as a small startup without a big sysadmin department.
Well, now Amazon has announced the Amazon S3 SLA and while this is just a small document, we feel even better now, knowing that we’d get at least some credits on future payments in the case of a downtime. Sure, this is not as much of an SLA which large corporations would require from their provider, but for us it is a step into the right direction.
Am 31. August wird der Digital Lifestyle Award 2007in Berlin verliehen. Stimmt für Shoppero ab, das geht auch ohne Registrierung!
On August 31st Germany’s Digital Lifestyle Award 2007 will be given to a number of companies in their respective fields. Please vote for Shoppero, it works even without registration!
In the last couple of weeks we developed an application for Facebook - and we are happy to launch it today! Please check it out at http://apps.facebook.com/shoppero
What does it do? I’ll try to sum up most of the features:
1. Invite Friends to the Shoppero App on Facebook. This is an obvious first point since social shopping makes more sense (and fun) if you don’t do it alone.
2. Write new reviews. We developed a cute little tool that queries the Amazon.com product database as you type, hopefully suggesting the right products to you. After choosing a suggested product, the image and the URL automagically get inserted into the review. Of course, you can always write about anything you like regardless where to buy it online. Actually, you can even write about products only available offline.
3. Mark each and every product as “want it” or “got it” - thereby populating a wishlist and a list of stuff you already have.
4. See what your friends have or want. Convenient, especially with christmas coming up real soon now.
5. Create as many lists as you want or need.
6. Look at some of your Shoppero account details. For instance, how much money you have earned so far.
All reviews get pushed to Shoppero.com as soon as they are written, even from within Facebook. If you already have a Shoppero.com account and you would like to have it merged with your facebook shoppero account, drop us a line and we will be happy to do this manually until this feature is ready to publish. Also, as soon as you write a review, we update your personal newsfeed and thereby let other people know what you are writing about.
Please try it out and join our group on Facebook for further discussions regarding our facebook app.
It is weird to see that we are already in mid-August - time flies when you are having fun. After our start in May a lot of things have happened and we are quite happy with the outcome. Obviously, our to-do list is still way too long, but that is the beauty of running a startup - you always have things to do.
Shoppero is becoming a better a better product with every little release, it is kind of like watching a toddler learning new tricks like sitting up for the first time. This also means, that the internals are getting more complex and we need more people to work for us. We are currently looking for experienced PHP coders, a Template wizard who knows AJAX back and forth and also some Smarty, the PHP template engine that we use. We also need a Designer who has good experience with Flash. If you are interested, send me an email.
We are currently working on more language versions of Shoppero, simply because we believe an international approach makes sense for a social shopping platform. So expect to see more languages to be released soon. We also work on getting the usability of the product even better and do a better job of explaining why somebody should join Shoppero and start writing reviews. Speaking of reviews, one big issue currently on our to-do list is improving the way new reviews get into the system, basically making it easier for a user to find the product to write about. We still hope for some magic “watchamacallit” brain-to-shoppero transfer, but until that issue is solved, we need to improve our product search and do a better job in suggesting products the user would like to write about.
Our aim is to get Shoppero in shape by the end of summer, surely to be ready for the shorter days in fall and winter - but also of course for the big shopping season starting sometime in November. It is a lot of fun to shape the product, but also means lots of heard work, setbacks, wonderful coincedences and meeting great people along the way. That said, hopefully this explains why we don’t blog too much lately. We simply have too many things to do and it will stay that way.
Check out Shoppero.com and discover new products, review products and earn money by doing so!
Link: sevenload.com
Als neues Hamburger Startup wurde ich vor Kurzem von Hamburg@work interviewed, dabei ging es kurz um Shoppero.com, aber auch um den Standort Hamburg und meine Lieblingsblogs.
This video shows a recent interview with myself done by Hamburg@work and we briefly talked about Shoppero.com, Hamburg as a location for the company and my favorite blogs.
The popular blog Mashable compiled an E-Commerce Toolbox: 30+ Leading E-Commerce Sites and included Shoppero in the section about product reviews.
While we are truly flattered, we are also suprised to be mentioned as a “Leading E-Commerce Site” shortly after our launch. To us this is a clear sign that we are on the right track and we will work hard to live up to these expectations.
Heute kam unser erster Viking-Katalog. Als Geschäftsführer erfüllt mich das mit unbändigem Stolz, erinnert mich aber auch daran, dass wir dringend einen Mülleimer für Altpapier anschaffen sollten.
