7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter via ducttapemarketing.com

As a marketing tool Twitter gets much more interesting and useful when you can filter out 99% of the junk that doesn’t apply to your objectives and focus on the stuff that matters.

The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. The advanced search function offers more ways to slice and dice the stream, but still leaves some room for improvement as it only searches what’s being said and where. From a marketing standpoint who is saying it might be more useful.

Now that the search engines are all pretty geeked up over real time search you can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter.

1) Target by occupation

Let’s say you have a business that sells an awesome service to attorneys. A simple search on Twitter will turn up thousands of mentions of the word attorney, but many of them will be from people talking about this or that attorney or the need to hire or not hire one. That’s probably not very helpful for your purposes.

However, if you cruise over to Google and use a handful of operators from the Google shortcut library (more on that here) you can create a search that plows through Twitter and gives you a list of all the users that have the word “attorney” in their title (username and/or real name) – Click on this search phrase and see what happens – intitle:”attorney * on twitter” site:twitter.com – what you’ll find is a handy list of attorneys of one sort or another on Twitter.

Without getting too technical, this search basically asks Google to look in the title attribute of profile pages on Twitter – obviously you can use any word to replicate this. The * tells Google to find the words “attorney on Twitter” without regard to order or other words – “on Twitter” appears in the title of every profile page so we need that term to make sure we search profile pages only.

2) Target by bio

In some cases searching through the optional biographical information can be more helpful than the username or real name fields. Maybe you’re looking for a very specific term or some of the folks you are targeting only reference their profession in their bio.

Google search to the rescue here again. This time add the intext attribute, the word bio and our key phrase to search bios – So a search for web designers would look like this – intext:”bio * web designer” site:twitter.com. When you look at this list you might notice that none of the people on the list would have been found by searching in their title, as in the first tip, for web designer. Try it both ways to test for best results.

3) Target by location

Location search by itself is simple using the Twitter advanced search tool – if you want a list of people in Austin you would use this in Twitter – near:”Austin, TX” within:25mi and Twitter would use the location field to show you Austin Tweeters.

But . . . let’s say you wanted to target salons in Austin or maybe the whole of Texas – it’s back to Google to mix and match – (intitle:”salon * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * salon”) intext:”location * TX” site:twitter.com – we search the title, bio and location to get a very targeted list of Salons in Texas on Twitter. Note the OR function for multiple queries.

4) New sign ups

Another handy thing about using any of the searches above is that you can also use the exact operators to create Google Alerts. By going to Google and putting in your search string as described above you’ll get everything they have now, but by setting up an alert you’ll get an email or RSS alert when a new attorney (or whatever you’re targeting) joins Twitter – I can think of some powerful ways to reach out to that new person just trying to find some new friends!

5) Keep up on your industry

Some of the best information shared on Twitter comes in the form of shared links. In other words people tweet out good stuff they find and point people to it using a link. I love to use a filtered Twitter search to further wade through research on entire industries, but reduce the noise by only following tweets that have links in them and eliminating retweets that are essentially duplicates – “small business” OR entrepreneur OR “start up” filter:links – this gets that job done and produces an RSS feed if I want to send it to Google Reader. Don’t forget the “quotation marks” around two or more word phrases or you will get every mention of small and business.

6) Competitive eavesdropping

Lots of people set up basic searches to listen to what their competitors are saying and what others are saying about the competition. I would suggest you take it one step further and create and follow a search that also includes what the conversation they are having with the folks they communicate with – not just what people are saying about them, but to them and vice versa – from:comcastcares OR to:comcastcares.

7) Trending photos

Photos have become very big on Twitter and the real time nature of the tool means photos show up there before they show up most anywhere. If you want to find an image related to a hot trend, or anything for that matter, simply put the search phase you have in mind follow by one of the more well known Twitter image uploading services such as TwitPic and you’ll get nothing but images. So, your search on Twitter might be – olympics twitpic OR ow.ly (You can add more photosharing sites to expand the search).

There, Twitter just go way more interesting didn’t it?

via ducttapemarketing.com

Being able to search Twitter in this way is super valuable - once the 'I just don't get Twitter' business owners are shown the results relevant to them from these handy tricks they will be converted immediately. The marketing information that is held within Twitter is a vital source when beginning to develop your online marketing strategy, here you can see what people are saying, what they want / hate and also what their 'problems' are. Where else would you get primary market research like this for free?

Small businesses are now in a unique situation, with the emergence of Social Media and the fact that it is mostly free to use, we have the opportunity to compete with the big brands. But here's the catch....
WE MUST PLAY CLEVER!!!

We need to spend the TIME NOT MONEY using the information that is out there to plan an effective strategy, engage with our audience and most of all LISTEN to what they want.

So go forth and get engaging and turn your small business into a big brand!

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter via ducttapemarketing.com

As a marketing tool Twitter gets much more interesting and useful when you can filter out 99% of the junk that doesn’t apply to your objectives and focus on the stuff that matters.

The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. The advanced search function offers more ways to slice and dice the stream, but still leaves some room for improvement as it only searches what’s being said and where. From a marketing standpoint who is saying it might be more useful.

Now that the search engines are all pretty geeked up over real time search you can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter.

1) Target by occupation

Let’s say you have a business that sells an awesome service to attorneys. A simple search on Twitter will turn up thousands of mentions of the word attorney, but many of them will be from people talking about this or that attorney or the need to hire or not hire one. That’s probably not very helpful for your purposes.

However, if you cruise over to Google and use a handful of operators from the Google shortcut library (more on that here) you can create a search that plows through Twitter and gives you a list of all the users that have the word “attorney” in their title (username and/or real name) – Click on this search phrase and see what happens – intitle:”attorney * on twitter” site:twitter.com – what you’ll find is a handy list of attorneys of one sort or another on Twitter.

Without getting too technical, this search basically asks Google to look in the title attribute of profile pages on Twitter – obviously you can use any word to replicate this. The * tells Google to find the words “attorney on Twitter” without regard to order or other words – “on Twitter” appears in the title of every profile page so we need that term to make sure we search profile pages only.

2) Target by bio

In some cases searching through the optional biographical information can be more helpful than the username or real name fields. Maybe you’re looking for a very specific term or some of the folks you are targeting only reference their profession in their bio.

Google search to the rescue here again. This time add the intext attribute, the word bio and our key phrase to search bios – So a search for web designers would look like this – intext:”bio * web designer” site:twitter.com. When you look at this list you might notice that none of the people on the list would have been found by searching in their title, as in the first tip, for web designer. Try it both ways to test for best results.

3) Target by location

Location search by itself is simple using the Twitter advanced search tool – if you want a list of people in Austin you would use this in Twitter – near:”Austin, TX” within:25mi and Twitter would use the location field to show you Austin Tweeters.

But . . . let’s say you wanted to target salons in Austin or maybe the whole of Texas – it’s back to Google to mix and match – (intitle:”salon * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * salon”) intext:”location * TX” site:twitter.com – we search the title, bio and location to get a very targeted list of Salons in Texas on Twitter. Note the OR function for multiple queries.

4) New sign ups

Another handy thing about using any of the searches above is that you can also use the exact operators to create Google Alerts. By going to Google and putting in your search string as described above you’ll get everything they have now, but by setting up an alert you’ll get an email or RSS alert when a new attorney (or whatever you’re targeting) joins Twitter – I can think of some powerful ways to reach out to that new person just trying to find some new friends!

5) Keep up on your industry

Some of the best information shared on Twitter comes in the form of shared links. In other words people tweet out good stuff they find and point people to it using a link. I love to use a filtered Twitter search to further wade through research on entire industries, but reduce the noise by only following tweets that have links in them and eliminating retweets that are essentially duplicates – “small business” OR entrepreneur OR “start up” filter:links – this gets that job done and produces an RSS feed if I want to send it to Google Reader. Don’t forget the “quotation marks” around two or more word phrases or you will get every mention of small and business.

6) Competitive eavesdropping

Lots of people set up basic searches to listen to what their competitors are saying and what others are saying about the competition. I would suggest you take it one step further and create and follow a search that also includes what the conversation they are having with the folks they communicate with – not just what people are saying about them, but to them and vice versa – from:comcastcares OR to:comcastcares.

7) Trending photos

Photos have become very big on Twitter and the real time nature of the tool means photos show up there before they show up most anywhere. If you want to find an image related to a hot trend, or anything for that matter, simply put the search phase you have in mind follow by one of the more well known Twitter image uploading services such as TwitPic and you’ll get nothing but images. So, your search on Twitter might be – olympics twitpic OR ow.ly (You can add more photosharing sites to expand the search).

There, Twitter just go way more interesting didn’t it?

via ducttapemarketing.com

Being able to search Twitter in this way is super valuable - once the 'I just don't get Twitter' business owners are shown the results relevant to them from these handy tricks they will be converted immediately. The marketing information that is held within Twitter is a vital source when beginning to develop your online marketing strategy, here you can see what people are saying, what they want / hate and also what their 'problems' are. Where else would you get primary market research like this for free?

Small businesses are now in a unique situation, with the emergence of Social Media and the fact that it is mostly free to use, we have the opportunity to compete with the big brands. But here's the catch....
WE MUST PLAY CLEVER!!!

We need to spend the TIME NOT MONEY using the information that is out there to plan an effective strategy, engage with our audience and most of all LISTEN to what they want.

So go forth and get engaging and turn your small business into a big brand!

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Remote-controlled farming for city dwellers: tailor-made, no-fuss vegetable gardens

"Have you forgotten where the vegetables on your table come from?" It's a question agricultural firm Azienda Agricola Giacomo Ferraris asks potential customers. Offering Italians the opportunity to reconnect with the origins of their food, the company's innovative online offering—Le Verdure Del Mio Orto ('The Vegetables from my Garden')—lets anyone build an organic garden right from their web browser.

How it works? Users first select a garden size based on the number of people they'd like to feed; 30m2 is sufficient for 1–2 people and costs EUR 850 per year. The virtual gardener can then choose from 40 different types of vegetables, using a highly intuitive interface that includes information on expected yields and harvest times. Optional extras include a photo album of the garden's progress (EUR 49), herb and fruit beds (EUR 50/75), and even a scarecrow with a picture of the customer's own face (EUR 39). Once the garden has been designed and fees paid, planting begins on the farm, which is located between Milan and Turin in northern Italy. As the organic produce grows, it's picked and delivered to the customer's door within 24 hours. Weekly deliveries are part of the package.

A souped up version of community supported agriculture, Le Verdure del Mio Orto capitalizes on consumers' hunger for locally grown food and—in a wider sense—for anything that's faithful to its roots. As our sister site trendwatching.com would say, it's (still) made here. The time seems ripe for farmers of all varieties to consider setting aside a few lots, adding branding and logistics, and serving it all up for city-dwellers with an enticing online presence. Of course, there's also an opportunity here for smart companies willing to take care of the non-agricultural elements on a farmer's behalf. Better yet, contact Azienda Agricola Giacomo Ferraris and ask if they're willing to license their system. (Related: Innovative olive farmers — Adopt a Maine lobster trap — More homegrown vegetables, without the sweat.)

Website: www.leverduredelmioorto.it
Contact: info@leverduredelmioorto.it

Spotted by: Giulia Cuccolini

via springwise.com

This is something I would love to be involved with, I have no clue about growing vegetables, in fact plants generally don't like to live with me! We do have some land though, so if anyone is interested in setting up a little allotment, and either has green-fingers or wouldn't mind learning about all that good stuff, I'd love to give it a go.

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Do I need a website?

Cartoon of the Week

March 12, 2008

via funnytimes.com

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

EVERYONE should have a Customer Database

Cartoon of the Week

October 14, 2009

via funnytimes.com

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

MyMillionDollarMovie.com – So Cool We Had To Invest | IDDICTIVE.COM | Innovative Business Ideas

Every now and then we see an idea that ticks all the boxes – it’s new, it’s innovative and it’s very very cool.

MyMillionDollarMovie.com is just that kind of idea. In short, up and coming film and TV director Casey Walker wanted to get his feature film made. Unfortunately he didn’t know any Hollywood power brokers, rich uncles or Angel investors.

So, inspired by Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Home Page, he decided to sell individual frames of his movie, inviting the public to become his producers – and in a neat twist – help raise money for good causes at the same time.

We caught up with Casey and asked him to tell us a little more about the project – and just in case you’re wondering, Iddictive are now officially assistant movie producers too.

We bought frame number 22,507.

Can you explain your project in one sentence?

“MyMillionDollarMovie.com is a fundraising initiative designed to finance my first feature film by offering everyone the chance to not only participate in the making of a movie, but the ability to fundraise for the environmental charity of their choice.”

Once you had the idea, how did you get this going?

“At first we launched a simple beta site that was all manual. I sent out a press release and we had so much traffic the site crashed every day for a week. We then took what we learned, along with the initial sales, and put our time into designing an automated site. The purpose for this was so that I would be able to spend more time on making the film, and not on managing a website.

After some traditional press, we started to get noticed by bloggers, and people on sites like Facebook. Now we’re concentrating more of our efforts to promote the project online and not simply the traditional media.

We’re getting ready to launch an aggressive online campaign to build awareness for the project. I’m pretty excited.”

Apart from the investment what other positives have come out of this for you?

“I’ve made many new contacts online and friends around the world (there are producers in 22 countries now). I get a lot of support from people in the UK and I’ve never even met them …

Several distributors are paying close attention to our progress. I always get job offers, but I’m very selective as I don’t want to take on something that removes me for too great a time from this project.”

I read somewhere that you’ve bagged mytwomilliondollarmovie.com – what’s the deal there? Any plans?

“After I’ve proved this business model works, I want to be able to give the same opportunity to other first time film makers. So I went out and bought a bunch more domains, so that we can keep moving forward. The big plan is to have an online studio where people can choose to support the genre of their choice.”

Why should our readers invest in your movie?

“Purchasing frames in mymilliondollarmovie.com not only provides you with an advertising platform for your own business or project, but as the site gains more attention, so will you. There are contests and incentives for producers, you get to participate in the casting process by voting on your choice of actors, and if you surf around the site, there are some pretty cool people to network with.

And once we’ve sold the film, you will receive your initial purchase back, and get to choose the environmental charity that your profits go to. We are certified Climate Neutral so you can rest assured that your purchase is not harming the planet. And seeing your name up there on the big screen is pretty cool too.”

What’s been the feedback from those who have invested?

“Feedback has been fantastic and honestly, it is sometimes what keeps me going during the hard times. A lot of producers just believe it’s a good idea and want to be apart of it. We’re making history here and it’s not often you can say you were apart of something like this.

I didn’t design this project to get lots of money from a few people. I set the price at $10 so a larger body of people from all walks of life could be a part of something unique.

And it’s because of people like this that my dream is coming true.”

Site: www.mymilliondollarmovie.com

Subscribe for Free: RSS | EMAIL

Tagged as: alex tew, casey walker, crowd funded, fundraising, milliondollarhomepage, mymilliondollarmovie

via iddictive.com

Another cool idea! Think I'm gonna invest in this too...

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Marketing With Meaning

There’s a new evolution in marketing that’s about improving customers’ lives. It’s called meaningful marketing or marketing with meaning. Either way, the concept has been around for a while and we’ve been tracking its development. Unlike a fad, the mark of a trend is staying power. And we believe that economic and social forces are colliding to fuel the staying power of meaningful marketing. As this subject is much too large for one post, we’ll tackle it over time.

What distinguishes meaningful marketing from other forms of marketing?
“If direct marketing was about approaching strangers individually, and permission marketing was about turning strangers into friends and friends into customers, marketing with meaning is about improving customers’ lives through the marketing itself.” – Bob Gilbreath, The Next Evolution of Marketing

Why does it make business sense?
Meaningful Marketing not only improves customer’s lives, but according to research from Doug Hall, a longtime proponent of the practice, it also impacts the bottom line. Companies that practice meaningful marketing are twice as likely to deliver sustained success and four times less likely to require significant price discounting.

How do we market with meaning?
We stop interrupting people to tell them how great our products are and we start doing something to prove our greatness. At it’s core meaningful marketing is about creating value. And when we ‘Do’ versus ‘Declare’, we create more of it:

What’s fueling the need for more value?
Since the recession, value has been a consumer hot-button. Most everyone, even consumers in the luxury category, are looking for more value for their money.

Even though the global economy is pulling out of the recession, analysts predict it could be years before consumers recover; recessions triggered by financial crises tend to be followed by a recovery period as long as the recession itself. And if the jobs numbers don’t bounce back, as some analysts fear, recovery could linger. Value could be a strategic imperative with staying power.

If you’re interested in learning more about meaningful marketing, simply stay tuned. Up next, we’ll cover brands that are improving peoples’ lives in a meaningful way.

#thetrendwatch

ShareThis

via thetrendwatch.com

I so love the sentiment of this article and really do hope that 'Marketing with Meaning' does take over. I hate, hate, HATE (!) sales / promotion type marketing but really love this notion that a brand or business should actually care about their customers, rather than just watching the bottom line.

I find that those who are most passionate about their product or service are usually the worst at bottom line thing - finding that balance is very difficult, but I really believe that 'Caring and Sharing' really is the best way to build your brand reputation and ultimately grow your business.

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

How to Add Google Analytics to Your Facebook Fan Page | Social Media Examiner

How to Add Google Analytics to Your Facebook Fan Page

By Mariam John
Published March 24, 2010

You’ve created a Facebook fan page and people are frequenting your page.  But do you really know how many people visit your page, what areas are popular and what parts of the world your visitors come from?

Facebook Insights shows some demographic information on your page, but is limited to information about interactions with your fans.  The free Google Analytics tool offers more sophisticated and comprehensive data.  Adding Google Analytics to your fan page can be done easily but requires some special steps.

One of the limitations of Facebook fan pages is they can only run limited JavaScript. Google Analytics needs JavaScript code included on a page to correctly track visitors in the traditional way.  And running JavaScript won’t work on your fan page…

However, there is a new solution.  Using free and opensource FBGAT (Facebook Google Analytics Tracker), you can get Google Analytics working on your Facebook fan page. Now you can track visitor statistics, traffic sources, visitor countries, and keyword searches with all the other powerful reporting of Google Analytics.

What follows are the instructions to set up Google Analytics tracker on your Facebook fan page. (Note: Your fan page must use an HTML application like static FBML for you to use this method.)

#1: Create a Google Analytics account

If you already have a Google Analytics account, create a new website profile to separately track visits to your Facebook fan page.

Where it says "Add a Profile...", simply paste your fan page URL or use Facebook.com.

After the step above, Google will display your tracking code. The tracking code generally looks like this: UA-3123123-2.  Note: Google will tell you to activate the website.  You do not need to do this.

#2: Get your tracking images

The way to work around the Facebook JavaScript limitation is to generate custom images. FBGAT is a free tool that will generate your custom image code to track visits on each of your Facebook fan pages.

The above screenshot shows what the code generator looks like.

Here’s what to include in the fields shown above:

• Analytics Code: This is the tracking code that you got in step #1. (It is very important that you enter this correctly.)
• Domain on Analytics: The domain name you created in step #1 (use Facebook.com if you used it in step #1).
• Page Link: This is to let you track the page on Google Analytics. What would you like to call your page so that you’ll recognize it in Analytics?
• Page Title: This is for your reference.

After clicking the “Generate Code” button, you’ll get a code which you’ll need to copy in full. You’ll have to generate a separate code for each fan page you want to track and place it as shown in step #3 below.  Note: If you have multiple pages powered by FBML, you can do this for each page.

#3: Add the code to Facebook

Place the code generated as shown within your Facebook page using an app like Static FBML.  Programs like Static FBML allow you to add HTML to your pages.  By simplify editing your Static FMBL pages and inserting the code from step 2, Google Analytics will track all visits to those pages.

You can place the code anywhere as long as it does not disrupt functionality of your existing page. I prefer the top or the bottom of the page.

That’s all there is to it. The tracking has begun. Google Analytics will now need about 24 hours to show you a report of your visitors.

Tracking Visits to Your Fan Page Wall

The wall might be your main page. To track this, again you will need to create a page with static FBML. The only difference is that to show this on the wall, you are required to make it a box. Just click on the (add) on the Box, and it will be added to the wall. To change this setting, click on “Application Settings” under the FBML that you would like to create as a box. As with other pages, please note that you have to create a unique tracking code for this page as well.

What do you think? Will you be able to better justify your Facebook marketing with this added insight? Please comment below.

Tags: analytics code, application, facebook, facebook code, facebook fan page, facebook google analytics tracker, facebook insights, facebook statistics, fan page wall, fbgat, fbml, google analytics, javascript, keyword search, mariam john, tracking images, traffic sources, visitor countries, visitor statistics

via socialmediaexaminer.com

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Does Coworking Newry Budget stretch this far!?

That mobile phone charging is a universal nuisance is underscored by all the many efforts we've seen to alleviate the pain, including harnessing the wind, the sun, bicycles, dancers and foot pumps to make it easier. With similar intentions, Finnish Powerkiss has developed an approach that imbues everyday furniture with wireless charging capabilities.

Powerkiss's technology consists of two parts: a charging transmitter that gets integrated into furniture, and a charging receiver that gets plugged into the electronic device. To charge a phone, users simply attach the small receiver stick to their phone and place it on the surface of the enabled object. The proximity allows the resonating coils in each of the two parts to work together to charge the phone. Powerkiss's charging packages have already been integrated into a meeting room table and a coffee table from Finnish Martela; the technology is also available for public use in Café Alvar A and the Via Lounge at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. Though currently limited to mobile phone charging, laptops and other devices will eventually be supported as well, Powerkiss says.

Ultimately, Powerkiss hopes cellphone manufacturers will begin enabling their handsets with wireless charging capabilities, which would eliminate the need for the plug-in receiver. Towards that end, it seeks partners in the mobile technology world as well as those in interior architecture, vehicle design and—of course—furniture. Who will be the first on your block to release customers from the charging-cord shackles?

Website: www.powerkiss.fi
Contact: info@powerkiss.com

Spotted by: John Greene

via springwise.com

Posted via web from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Encouraging Hackers - Great Idea :-(

I was just reading the lastest Mashable article called iPhone, Firefox, Safari, IE8 Hacked at Pwn2Own Contest they say 

"Vincenzo Iozzo and Ralf Philipp Weinmann sent an iPhone to a web site they’d set up, crashing its browser and then stealing its entire SMS database (including some erased messages). It is possible, however, to set up a similar attack to work without crashing the browser, hackers claim, and set up different attack payloads. Iozzo and Weinmann won a $15,000 prize for successfully demonstrating the attack. Details about the attack will be released once Apple is notified and the security hole is patched."

"Charlie Miller, principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, managed to hack Safari on a MacBook Pro without physical access, which won him $10,000. Nils (no last name given), head of research at UK-based MWR InfoSecurity, won $10,000 for hacking Firefox, and independent security researcher Peter Vreugdenhil won the same amount for hacking IE8. All the browser attacks were done by having the browser visit a malicious web site; although full details aren’t disclosed, Cnet has some more technical info on the attacks."

Now seriously why are they being encouraged!? And on even more of a rant what do hackers get out of breaking things!? I know that these guys are obviously very talented but surely they can better use their talents?? There seems to have been a huge increase in the amount of viruses and spammers recently, and especially with the viruses - what do their creators get from it!? Of the sites that I know that have been infected recently none of them hold databases of customer information or anything else that may been seen as valuable. I genuinely don't get it!! Is this the modern version of mindless violence? 

Seriously spammers and virus wielding low lives - GET A JOB!!

Rant over - I feel much better now ;-) 

Posted via email from Grow Sales Online's Posterous

Y Combinator presents 26 new startups

Startup incubator Y Combinator is hosting its semi-annual Demo Day today. Twice a year, the Mountain View, Calif.-based incubator parades its latest batch of companies onstage to present before potential investors.

This afternoon, 26 companies will pitch their business plans. Approximately half of them have not yet launched. We’ll be in Mountain View to cover the ones that catch our fancy.

Y Combinator companies generally receive about $5,000 plus an additional $5,000 per founder and are relocated to Y Combinator’s Mountain View destination for three months, in return for a 2-10% ownership. The program’s alumni include Loopt, Justin.tv, Weebly and Scribd.

Below are 21 of the companies presenting today that agreed to be mentioned, along with descriptions that they provided. Five others are still in stealth mode, and requested to go unnamed.

LaunchHear
Founders: Alex Krupp, Allan Young
LaunchHear is a platform for introducing new & unreleased products to digital influencers. We reduce the cost of sending free products to bloggers and tweeters by 10x. We also host Swagapalooza, the first invitation-only event for only the most-followed bloggers and tweeters from across the country.

NewsLabs
Founders: Paul Biggar, Nathan Chong
NewsLabs turns an experienced offline journalist into VentureBeat or TechCrunch for their niche. We provide tools, traffic, monetization and community to allow journalists to succeed as personal brands online, while allowing them to focus on the writing and reporting.

Seeing Interactive
Founders: Lloyd Armbrust, Jason Novek
A white-label Yelp for newspapers: Think Yellow Pages + Cars + Homes + Craigslist all launched as one package for small US markets. We work through local newspapers, TV or Radio stations to brand the product as their own and make money through monthly fees and upsells.

Notifo
Founder: Chad Etzel
Creating a mobile phone push notification platform which allows any service/business/app/website/anyone to send instant notifications to their users’ mobile phones without the need to develop applications for specific hardware models.

Zencoder
Founders: Jon Dahl, Brandon Arbini, Steve Heffernan
Cloud services for video encoding, delivery, and monetization (AWS for video)

Nowmov
Founders: Thomas Pun, James Black, David Kelso
Nowmov shows you the hottest videos on Twitter RIGHT NOW. We discover the most talked about videos well before our competitors do (YouTube, Redux and Bitly.tv). Our user experience intentionally mimics TV watching — discovery is passive, rather than requiring the user to click around. Videos are presented continuously in an elegant user interface. Users can skip and replay clips at any time just like surfing TV channels.

Crocodoc
Founders: Ryan Damico, Bennett Rogers, Peter Lai, Matt Long
Crocodoc makes it easy to collaboratively mark up and share documents online. Our goal is to do to Adobe Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook: replace a popular desktop application with a better online version.

Gamador
Founders: Kevin Lacker, Dan Silberman
We make social games. We launch faster, iterate faster, and use metrics better.

Cardpool
Founders: Anson Tsai, Tim Wong
Secondary market for the $100 billion / year gift card market.

Tweetflow
Founders: Troy Kruthoff, Robert Bagley, Josh Unfried
Replace your twitter profile page with a custom website. Crowd source and engage content from the tweet stream with language processing technology to automatically identify questions, praise and complaints mentioning your brand. Collaborate with team members, site visitors and twitter users with our embedded multi-account twitter client and CRM. Track results and tweet smarter with built-in analytics and dashboards.

CHROMAom, Inc.
Founders: Darius Monsef, Aaron Epstein, Chris Williams
Profitable and reaching over 1 million visitors per month with the largest color community on the web, we’re positioned to turn our online dominance into a global color authority. In the near future, we see a world where every color – in the products we buy, brands we trust or spaces we live in – will be influenced by CHROMAom.

Answerly.com
Founders: Joe Fahrner, Jason Konrad
Answerly has developed a technology and methodology to identify under-served, high value segments of the web search market and rapidly prototype vertical search engines to address these opportunities. Our first product, Answerly.com, is a Q&A search engine that receives nearly 1MM questions per month which we monetize through targeted advertising and referrals to online experts and local service providers.

Zenedy
Founders: Dan Morin, Jeff Morin
The current practice of creating content around a perceived audience interest and attempting to monetize it through potentially unrelated advertising is an inefficient business model. Zenedy is taking the opposite approach by first determining algorithmically what content people are searching for, then identifying what portion of that content could effectively be monetized through targeted advertising, and finally contracting out the creation of that content to qualified freelance writers. This model minimizes the risks associated with creating content based on little or no data, and results in content which quickly pays for itself, and then continues to generate revenue into the foreseeable future.

Data Marketplace
Founders: Matt Hodan, Steve DeWald
Data Marketplace helps people find, buy and sell data online. We are like Amazon.com, but for data. Sellers publish data to Data Marketplace for buyers to purchase and download. We reduce friction between buyers and sellers by (a) making it easier for buyers to find and access the data they need, and (b) offering sellers a more efficient sales and distribution channel than is currently available. In addition to the marketplace, we are developing a number of new technologies that facilitate paid information exchange, including a social data request and fulfillment system and payment gateway for third-party APIs and data feeds.

Embedster
Founders: Denis Mars, Arend Naylor
Imagine if you as the site owner could make money every time someone played a video (such as YouTube, Vimeo, etc) on your website or blog. Embedster makes this possible.

Etacts
Founers: Howie Liu, Evan Beard
Etacts is Salesforce for everyone–an individual CRM that keeps track of people and relationships (instead of deals). We also fix the email overload problem by adding social data and previous communication history to your emails and filtering emails by the importance of the sender.

Embedly
Founders: Sean Creeley, Arthur Gibson
Embedly is a single source solution for embeddable any piece of content on the web.

500Friends
Founders: Justin Yoshimura, Hong Hu
500Friends enables online retailers to dramatically increase their brand image, traffic, and sales by effectively leveraging social media. Merchants use our technologies to identify active social networkers and offer them rewards such as discounts, loyalty points, and charitable contributions in exchange for sharing the site with their friends. We’re already generating sales for our existing clients!

Infoharmoni
Founders: Kovas Boguta, Paulius Jurgutis
Infoharmoni visualizes the real-time social web. We aggregate content, aggregate people, aggregate relationships and then express those visually, in real-time and over time. Our tools visually slice and dice the stream and put that into actionable context by correlating it with business data. This lets marketers demonstrate ROI on today’s most relevant platforms: Twitter, Bit.ly, Gowalla and Foursquare.

140Bets
Founders: Jason Wilk, Paras Chitakar
140Bets makes social sports (and soon pop culture) betting applications for Twitter, Facebook and Mobile platforms.

Greplin
Founder: Daniel Gross
Greplin is a search engine that runs through all of your cloud data. Much like Google indexes webpages, Greplin indexes your Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Basecamp etc data and provides a fast, cross-service full-text search.

via venturebeat.com

Some really great ideas here, some rather naff ones too though! I love the idea of the 500Friends one, really simple and everyone gets something out of it. Tweetflow also sounds good, though I fear that there may already be tools out there that do the same, they say 'and CRM' - if its integrated with the social media channels then Brilliant!

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